zan wrote:Thanks for that Kikapu and yes I did read it before but I still do not know what the point of your questioning me is. I was born in 1960 and was three when it all went off. I have told my story before but for a quick sum up of the whole thing, I did not remember much. Well, I thought I did not until a few years ago when I had a nervous breakdown and horrific dreams that I could not fathom out. The doctors were absolutely useless and I am glad I still had the sense of mind to ask questions. I did not really want to ask my mum and sisters because they would worry like mad but in the end I had no choice. When I asked my mum about the things I could see in my dreams, she said they are not dreams but real events. You may think them small fry compared to some because the Turkish sector of Lefcosa was not taken by the GCs but gunfire and tracer bullets flying over our house in the dark of night. The fear of what happened on Bloody Christmas. The screams and tears of my Mother and sisters. The visit to the house where those children and their mother were machine gunned in the bath all added up. I could feel my feet sticking to the blooded floor in that house and the sweet smell of blood and the remains of peoples' skulls on walls and ceilings. The graphic photos on the wall as you entered, all forgotten but stored with unease in a child’s mind that had no way of understanding what it was all about. The fear of the dark is greater than seeing the monsters face.
Having said all of that I feel I have gotten rid of most of my ghosts but am always worried what might come up in the next forty years. What else is still in there?
That is my story and a few more do exist that I am still finding out about my family like in the case of my brother in-laws sister that nearly died from starvation and infection from one of those camps you are talking about. Doctor Kucuk said that she would not live but she did, all be it with mental scars.
These are not the reasons for my belief that partition is the answer though. If you met me you would find I am about the most practical person you will know and that is what drives me. I am fed up with fairy stories about how man should get on and am more at home with how man really is. Add the political animal into that and there is only one way to go. Simple, practical and reasonable IMHO. Dreams...yeah I have them too but my dream is that people will wake up and stop thinking that there will be a magic formular that will fix all this. Partition, time and forgetting what it was all about, that is the key? There is a shorter route.......the Kifeas way. Let the Turks arm us and then move out. Last man standing?
Zan,
Thank you for your story. I wish I had a chance to have read it before. I'm really sorry that it had affected you so much. I guess, at 3 years old, all we want out of life is food and security, and I think, your security was very much disrupted. For me at 8 years old, I guess it was all a bit of "adventure" I guess.
I don't know what was worse, you being 3 years old in 1963, or me at 8. I remember everything, but never had fear then or since. As I wrote in "my story", the family that was gunned down in cold blood, while hiding in the bath tub is very vivid to me. I remember the stories and the photo of the bodies in the tub, with blood stained walls.
May I ask, why did your family even wanted to go and visit this house, and take you along also. Secondly, I thought this event took place what was to become South of the "Green Line". I don't know, I'm just asking. At times, I thought this event took close to my school, in Kucuk Kaymakli, and every time this bath tub murders come to my head, now and again, I tend to focus on a particular house, that was near my school. Of course, it probably wasn't.
If you look around Europe, other nations have had hundreds times worse than we did in Cyprus, and today, thanks to the establishment of the UN, NATO and EU, people have moved on, and what was once enemies, are now friends and going strong. Are we (GC's & TC's) genetically inferior to the other nations, that we cannot put the past to where it belongs, and move forward as a United Cyprus. This is the part that is most puzzling to me. Let me be totally sincere here and say, I do not dislike VP what so ever. It is his "mind made up mode" that I fight with all the time, and not VP, as a fellow TC brother. I look for a greater horizon for us all, but I see him wanting to remain a isolationist to retain the "Pure Turkishness", within closed walls.
Anyway, you may think a "clean break" is the best way to solve our problems with the GC's. Ever tried to do a "clean break" in any kind of relationship, be it be family or friends.? Not very easily done, and if we go for a Partition, the GC's are not going to go anywhere. There never be peace and quiet unless they too, can have what they want. We only need to look at Israel and Palestine, to see our future. Let's not go down the the same road, as they have taken, which is as Chris Rea sings the song " Road to Hell".
