New hope for the young shepherd Fikret and shamishi maker Balligari...

A Greek Cypriot reader, out of the blue, gives me the coordinates of a well in Dali…

It is in the area called `Mazeri`, the plan 64E1, 553 portion, 3rd section, the well number 30…

`Two Turkish Cypriots who went `missing` back in 1963 are in this well` he says… `One of them is from Ayios Sozemenos (Arpalik) and the other one from Louridjina... They were killed by the group under the control of K…`

`Who was this K…?`

`He was in the `Organization` of Yorgadjis… He was from Dali. He had also kidnapped one Greek Cypriot journalist whose views he did not like. This journalist was put in a cage and was beaten up so harsh, in the end, when he was set free, he had found it better for his life to change his views and start writing the way K… wanted him to… K.. was with Yorgadjis until Yorgadjis and Makarios had problems… Then he started moving with Makarios… These two Turkish Cypriots were killed by the men of K… K… also served as a high level official in the past. He is an old man now, has couple of sons, one of them thinking like him but the others, progressive ones…`

There was only two persons to fit the description of `missing` Turkish Cypriots my reader was giving me: The one from Ayios Sozomenos (Arpalik) would be Fikret Huseyin Sefer, a young shepherd, barely 22, when he went `missing` on the 30th of December, 1963. He had gone, between Ayios Sozomenos (Arpalik) and Dali to the field belonging to his family to graze his flock of goats. He had laid down his long coat on the floor and his bag like a pillow and had gone to sleep there… A landrover had come with three persons and had kidnapped him. According to the information that his brother would gather later, it was the commander of the area, M. and his relative Y. and a policeman from P. who had kidnapped him…

The young shepherd had begged his kidnappers:

`Please, don’t kill me! I am so young and if you kill me, my mother will be so sad…`

A Turkish Cypriot shepherd who was nearby was a witness to this scene… He too, had come to water his flock and had seen the three kidnappers and had heard the begging of the young shepherd Fikret…

Years later one night, Y., one of the kidnappers, after getting drunk with a friend had admitted to killing Fikret… He was in tears:

`I did not want to kill him you know,` he had told his friend, `but I had to…`

Why he `had to`, he had not explained… There were rumors in the village that Fikret and the shamishi maker Balligari from Louridjina had been kidnapped in order to be used in the `exchange of prisoners` but this was never verified. For a few days, they had been kept in the mill belonging to Y.M. in Dali.

The goat flock of Fikret had returned to the village alone, without him and his father, Huseyin Cafer Sefer who had a lot of friends in Dali, had begun searching his son… He had started going to Dali and asking his friends to help… But one day, his friends had warned him:

`Don’t come again… They will also kill you…`

He had stopped going to Dali and after some time, Turkish Cypriots from Ayios Sozomenos had fled the village after fighting due to a provocation set up by some young Turkish Cypriots. Ayios Sozomenos villagers had gone to Louridjina as refugees…

The brother of Fikret, Cafer Seferoglu, currently the mukhtar of the village Argaki (Akchay) explains to me:

`The only thing I am jealous of in life is seeing two brothers embracing each other… We were eight brothers and sisters, two of them died, one went missing. We are five now – four sisters and me. I do not have a brother. After so many years, when I lay down in my bed at night, I still say to myself, `What if my big brother comes home now?` I had only one brother and he is `missing`. It is quite different to be a relative of a `missing` person. I am not searching for my brother in order to take revenge, I am doing this in order to ease our conscience. I want to find him… Those who have brought so much pain to both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots should be ashamed of themselves. Whether it is a Greek Cypriot or a Turkish Cypriot, the pain they feel is the same. We need to remember these, embrace each other and not allow such things to happen in the future so that our children can live in peace…`

Balligari is another story. Mehmet Osman Balligari, who had been working at the Nicosia Airport was told not to come to work after the conflict began among the two communities back in December 1963. He began making shamishi (sweet pastry) to sell and he had gone to Dali on the 27th of December, 1963 with his bicycle, in order to buy cigarettes and he had never returned…

I speak to his daughter Kadriye… `My father was a very poor man… He had gone to Dali and they found his bicycle between Dali and Potamia, there were blood stains on the ground. He left behind five kids, three girls and two boys… We grew up with community aid…`

She is sad, like all the children of `missing` and it is not easy to speak about his father, after so many years…

I go to Dali, to look at the well that my Greek Cypriot reader has told me about… It is on the road between Dali and Ayios Sozomenos (Arpalik). The well is not visible – apparently it has been closed last year and it is not far from the place where the Missing Persons Committee has exhumed another well recently, in search of the shepherd Fikret and the shamishi maker Balligari…

The Missing Persons Committee has been looking for them for some years… Perhaps this time, with this well, we  would all be more lucky and at last the brother of Fikret, Cafer and the daughter of Balligari, Kadriye would be able to come to a closure to this endless waiting and hoping… Their pain would take a different form then but at least, their loved ones would not be laying down lonely, at the bottom of a cold well… They would be buried properly and Cafer would be able to visit his brother’s grave and Kadriye would bring her children to his father’s grave… The twilight zone they live in would clear out and we would find one more piece of the puzzle called `missing`…