I transcribed and translated the following documentary created as a project by journalism students at the University of Cyprus, which includes interviews with both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot former residents of Agios Sozomenos. I am grateful to Danae Michael, Andreas Paphitis, and Raphaella Stavrinou for their work and letting me translate their video.
[NARRATOR:] Agios Sozomenos: a village of the Nicosia District, between Geri and Potamia. A small village, which was once shared by Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, living peacefully under mud-brick roofs. The only thing that separated them was a road.
If you happen to pass by the fields of the village, you probably don’t realize the history hidden in their soil. The fields were once playful, carefree places — symbols of unity, coexistence, and trust.
All of this until 6 February 1964, when the village’s fate would take a decisive turn. That was when the fields were transformed into symbols of suspicion, division, and conflict. The occasion for this transformation was the intercommunal strife of 1963–64, which could not have left the village unaffected.
On 6 February 1964, fighting broke out in Agios Sozomenos that left 6 Greek Cypriots and 7 Turkish Cypriots dead, and led to the abandonment of the village by all of its residents. Here, I present the narrative of those events as we can reconstruct them from the surviving sources.
The issue of Phileleftheros on 6 February 1964 led with the headline “Cyprus was Painted with Fresh Blood from Turkish Chauvinists”.
Turkish Cypriots who recount the event start the story on 21 December 1963, when there was also fighting over the water pumping station in Agios Sozomenos, or even 30 October 1963, when a Turkish-Cypriot shepherd was kidnapped. For them, the events of 6 February were part of a series of escalating events that disrupted peace in the village.
On Thursday 6 February itself, fighting broke out over the water pumping station (υδραγωγείο), which controlled water access to the larger villages of Athienou and Pyroi, as well as Agios Sozomenos itself. According to multiple Greek Cypriots interviewed after the events, a group of six police escorted an official of the municipality to the water pumping station in order to open a valve. As they were nearing the Alikos river near the village, they came under fire from an ambush of a handful of Turkish Cypriots who were hidden on the opposite bank. The automatic weapons riddled the Land Rover with bullet holes and killed the driver and one other passenger instantly, with the car veering out of control and a subsequent exchange of fire.
Reinforcements of Greek-Cypriot police arrived, and fighting continued between the two sides. (It’s unclear how many of those fighting were from Agios Sozomenos itself, although the police were certainly from other parts and the Turkish Cypriots involved in the ambush were from the village itself.) British troops were dispatched to calm the situation and tend to the wounded. The British took 4 to 5 hours to calm the situation, imposing a ceasefire and tending to the wounded.
The immediate result were 5 Greek Cypriots dead and 12 wounded, with 1 seriously injured person dying the next day. 7 Turkish Cypriots were reported dead and 15 wounded. (It’s worth noting that the village itself was predominantly Turkish; inhabitants say there were 30 Turkish-Cypriot families and 6 Greek-Cypriot ones, with census data from 1960 saying there were 172 TC inhabitants and 25 Greek Cypriots. One former resident said that most Greek Cypriots left the village even before fighting broke out, so that there were only two old Greeks left in the village on 6 February.) The Turkish Cypriot press subsequently claimed that there was no ambush per se, but rather 6 Greek Cypriots who came with the intent of terrorizing the inhabitants of Agios Sozomenos. Nonetheless, it is clear that the fighting started with conflict over the water pumping station when the Land Rover driven by Greek Cypriot police was attacked by Turkish Cypriots.
The dead Greek Cypriots were honored in Parliament the next day, and given funerals in their own villages and cities. Particularly notable is the case of Demetris Chamatsos, who was an 18-year-old student at the vocational school in Nicosia. Today, there is a statue dedicated to him in the nearby village of Dali. Among Turkish Cypriots, an 11-year-old boy named Ismail died in the fighting.
The village was evacuated under the supervision of British forces, with most Turkish Cypriot villagers going to the nearby enclave of Louroujina (Akincilar). They subsequently moved to other parts of Cyprus, with many ending up in Nicosia and many other in Argaki near Morphou (Güzelyurt). The remaining Greek Cypriots joined those who had fled earlier in the nearby villages of Geri, Pyroi, and Potamia. When Turkish Cypriots returned to the village several years later, they found the mosque destroyed and many of the houses in ruins.
This event took place within the context of rising tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and the breakdown of constitutional order, commonly known as the “disturbances” of 1963–64. In the aftermath of the fighting in Agios Sozomenos, many political actors appealed for calm (including President Makarios, AKEL, and the Confederation of Trade Organizations). Nonetheless, the situation continued to escalate. On 4 March 1964, the Security Council agreed to adopt Resolution 186, which established the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. UNFICYP continues to patrol Cyprus until today.
For more information on the aftermath and context of these events, see the following two excellent films, which feature both testimony and archival footage:
Primary sources
I consulted the following sources in detail to construct the above narrative:
I want to take the chance to reflect somewhat on how Roger Levine’s A Living Man From Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011) intersects with other things I’ve done and am interested in. First, I want to elaborate a bit on the similarities and differences of Levine’s project from my work on John Wesley Gilbert. Second, I want to discuss my work with Women’s Refugee Care in light of Jan Tzatzoe’s life as an intermediary and interpreter. Finally, I want to think a bit more about Levine’s method — particularly his relationship to “theory” — and consider what I can learn from A Living Man From Africa. Continue reading “Jan Tzatzoe, John Wesley Gilbert, and Women’s Refugee Care”→
The past twenty years have seen a real surge of interest in the San. Since the end of Apartheid in South Africa, more and more attention has been paid to the story of the indigenous people of the Cape, the first people Dutch settlers encountered in 1652. Although relations did not immediately sour, the next century and a half saw the progressive dispossession of the Khoikhoi and San and the disintegration of their society. The San in particular — generally identified with foragers, as opposed to the Khoikhoi pastoralists — were driven to more and more marginal land as the Dutch East India Company’s demand for cattle grew ever greater. The latter half of the eighteenth century was particularly violent, marked by state-sanctioned robbery, massacre, and forced labor. In 2011, Mohamed Adhikari convincingly argued that these events constituted a genocide of the San people. Adhikari’s book was released a year after The Broken String (2010), although it retrod the ground that historians such as Susan Newton-King and Nigel Penn (notably in The Forgotten Frontier, 2005) had already demarcated in painstaking detail.
This, then, is the context in which The Broken String intervenes. In particular, this film documents the story of the Bleek-Lloyd collection, probably our most important source for understanding San society. Between 1857 and 1875, Wilhelm Bleek (a German linguist) worked with his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd to conduct, record, and translate interviews with a few dozen San people — most of whom were prisoners in Cape Town. Bleek’s interest was first aroused as a linguist exploring the development of language by documenting two San tongues, ǀXam and !Kun, before they disappeared. The texts he and Lloyd created not only provide our only sources for these languages but further tell rich stories of dispossession and survival. One of these stories, translated as the “Song of the Broken String,” furnishes the film with both its title and its connecting thread. As the director Saskia van Schaik narrates, through their work Bleek and Lloyd gradually shifted from scientific interest in the San to an attitude marked by empathy and collaborative spirit. Their informants were invited into the Bleek-Lloyd family home in Mowbray, which seems to have been a warm and welcoming environment. Sadly, Bleek died at the age of 48. Lucy Lloyd continued transcribing and editing the collection they had assembled, eventually publishing a selection of stories as Specimens of Bushman Folklore in 1911. The full extent of their work, though, only became known after the Bleek-Lloyd collection was assembled and cataloged in the archives of the University of Cape Town. Continue reading “Review of The Broken String: The Story of a Lost Language”→
Anita Bakshi’s first book is compelling reading that makes important interventions in several areas. Drawing on memory studies and her training as an architect, Bakshi adopts insightful methodological approaches including collaborative mapmaking, ethnography, and archival research to explore issues around the Buffer Zone separating Greek and Turkish communities in Nicosia, Cyprus. Topographies of Memories is important not only because it provides fresh, thoughtful analysis of intercommunal conflict in Cyprus and beyond, but also because its insights undergird intriguing contributions to the study of heritage and the practice of commemoration. Rather than presenting another narrative of Cypriot history, Bakshi suggests strategies for architects and designers to approach memory through embodied, emotional, and multivalent experience. Throughout her work, Bakshi’s perspective is stimulating and her presentation articulate. Topographies of Memories is relevant to anyone interested in heritage, conflict, materiality, and commemoration. Continue reading “Review: Topographies of Memories by Anita Bakshi”→
In Fall 2017, I was fortunate enough to take an engaged course in the French department called L’expérience des réfugiés et immigrés (The Experience of Refugees and Immigrants). This course was developed last summer and offered for the first time this year (see article for more). It combined a survey of Francophone texts by and about migration with an engaged component: working with Women’s Refugee Care (WRC). My French improved because I got the chance to use it in a setting with no safety net: in the community engagement portion of the course, French really was the best means of communication. More importantly, this course was a great opportunity to get involved with a local nonprofit and explore the idea of engaged scholarship (which I’m continuing to do through the Engaged Scholars Program in Archaeology).
My work with Women’s Refugee Care centered on three interviews I did with members of the Congolese refugee community here in Providence. Along with Jeanelle Wheeler, my wonderful colleague, we got to know the community, attending a few gatherings and meeting lots of interesting people. We then arranged interviews with a few of those we met at their homes. After recording the interviews, we translated them into English and then posted them on the WRC blog.
I’m particularly happy with the final result: interviews with Katerina, Aline, and Sylvie. I encourage you to read what they have to say — not just to admire their successes and appreciate the challenges they faced, but to acknowledge them as multifaceted human beings. I also wrote an introduction to the interviews (in French), where I reflect on the entire experience, including obstacles, challenges, and the path we took in presenting them as we did. If you find this interesting or stimulating, I would love to know — just add a comment here or send me an email.1
