As this year begins and there is no end in sight for another bloody war in Europe, we should take a moment to remember the refugees in our midst. It is on us to empathise with their immense suffering- to not allow their pain to isolate them, to make them feel at home. In doing so we can learn from the experience of past generations of refugees. Their struggles contain lessons for those of us who were lucky enough to escape the violence of war.
A Lost World
It was a hot summer day, and except for the sound of the cicadas outside it was perfectly quiet inside the small church. We had spent some time exploring the restored building, and were standing at the centre of the nave when my grandfather asked us to chant a well known hymn to the Virgin Mary. When we began to sing, I knew immediately that this moment would etch itself into my memory. My family was standing inside the church of the village it used to call home. Until 1974, my grandfather had gone to this church every Sunday. Friends and neighbours had been married at this church, relatives buried in its yard. Then, one day in August, they were forced to leave- driven out of their homes by an invading army. At the time they believed they’d soon return. To this day, my grandfather carries the medieval looking key to his old house on his keychain. A daily reminder of a lost world.
It is hard to describe what it felt like to enter a place so familiar and at the same time so strange. How many stories had my grandparents told us about this village; the old family home and my family’s olive groves surrounding it. The rugged mountains of Pentadaktilos looming above and the beaches of Kyrenia beyond. This was the world of my grandparents’ youth. My grandfather is a great storyteller and I’d grown up imagining that world in vivid detail. Even the happiest stories however, had an undertone of tragedy. It was impossible to forget even for a moment where the story was bound to lead. The war of 1974 was always there in the background colouring everything that happened before it. You heard about people living in places you knew were lost. Although you could look across the buffer-zone and see them in the distance with your own two eyes, a giant Turkish flag painted on the mountainside right above them left no doubt that these places were out of reach. You can’t return, because there’s an army stationed there, and it won’t let you. Plus, your “family home” is now home to a different family.
The border checkpoints had been open for over a decade, but so far we didn’t want to cross the buffer zone. Why would we? To take a closer look at how strangers controlled our lands? The thought of visiting one’s own property like a tourist was hard to bear. Wouldn’t we be playing the role assigned to us by the occupier? Despite these nagging doubts, this summer we decided to visit anyways. For the older generation, it would be a way to consciously see those places one last time. The last time they’d been there, they were so convinced they’d return in a week that they didn’t even pack their valuables. It would also allow us younger ones to see what the land of our grandparents’ stories was really like.
Stories and Realities
The rural village of Trakhoni lies just outside Nicosia. As the driver parked the bus in the town square, it felt like time was slowing down. A group of men in their 60s was sitting in the shadow of a large Eucalyptus tree and was watching with hard to read faces as my family walked up to them. Two men stood up and introduced themselves as the Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot mayors of the community. Our arrival had clearly been expected. Together with the two mayors we walked over to the little church at the edge of the dusty square. The building, we were told, had been looted and destroyed by Turkish soldiers during the invasion. The graves in its yard had evidently been desecrated, too, their marble covers crushed and pried open.
The church itself now looked new, because it had recently been renovated with aid from the United Nations. The simple but dignified space was being carefully maintained by a few dedicated members of the refugee community. For the time being their work means that the thousand year story of this church hasn’t yet come to an end. However, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the invading army succeeded in uprooting the community. There are no Greek-Cypriots left in this village. Its church, the heart of its community, had been vandalised. Yet, there we were, chanting in the restored building. Afterwards we had a coffee with the Turkish-Cypriot villagers. Their families had moved to the village after the invasion and were living in properties left behind by Greek-Cypriots. There was no tension or hostility between us. The relations between the communities in Trakhoni were harmonious and marked by mutual respect. It was impossible to feel resentment towards the farmers sitting in the shadow of the Eucalyptus tree that day. This village was their home, too.
When we walked over to my family’s old house, a grandmother holding a little girl by the hand opened the door. With the help of the Turkish-Cypriot mayor, we introduced ourselves. Again, there was no sign of tension. On the contrary, the Turkish-Cypriot grandmother invited us in and showed us the garden in the back. The olive groves had been burned down and my family’s possessions looted well before her family had moved in. However, my grandfather immediately recognised an old fig tree standing in the middle of the garden: “It used to make such large figs back in the day”. “It still does!” said the grandmother. Having thanked her for inviting us is in, we walked back to the bus. My grandfather noted matter of factly: “There’s no way we’ll return here”.
Justice, Peace and Time
Since 1974, three generations of Turkish-Cypriots had lived in that house. They had their own stories to tell about this place and would never leave it willingly. The term “ethnic cleansing” sounds sanitary, but this is the tragedy behind it: once you uproot a community you can’t just place it back where it once was like a houseplant. Given enough time, the only way for it to return is through unspeakable violence. Ethnic cleansing by replacing one population with another requires time to be effective, but effective it is. It cruelly perverts the basic human tendency to form bonds with others and with specific places. After a few generations there is no way to just undo what is done. The descendants face the choice between revenge and peace. It is a hard choice, because peace means coming to terms with the fact that one’s home is no more. It means recognising that with the passing of time undoing an injustice may be possible only with new injustice. It means recognising that “undoing” may not be an option anymore, and that reconciliation is the only way forward. Because ethnic cleansing works in this way over time, the goal must be to stop it as soon as possible, before it can unfold its full effects. In 2023 Europe is once again confronted with a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
In the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian forces, evidence of mass-kidnappings of civilians has come to light along with other telltale signs of ethnic cleansing. For the West to avoid playing into the hands of Moscow it must help Ukraine liberate its occupied territories as soon as possible. If time is wasted with clumsy prevarications, we risk witnessing a tragedy we’ve seen play out too many times already on our beautiful continent. That summer day in Cyprus, my family saw that there was no sense in imagining that there was a home being kept from us anymore. That home had been taken away and destroyed. It had become a memory and a dream. For millions of Ukrainian refugees it’s still a reality. It’s on us to keep it that way.
ulyssesblog 