\n<\/p>\n
The elevator doors open, and suddenly they are standing before me: Eleni Foka, the heroic teacher from the Karpasia Peninsula in the northeast corner of Cyprus, who remained behind to keep the flame of Hellenism alive in the occupied territories, educating the enclaved children of her war-torn homeland for decades. Not for a moment did she waver in the face of torture, humiliation, or the brutalities of the Turkish occupying forces. And Evridiki Pericleous-Papadopoulou, the distinguished writer and author of the compelling book \u201cAnd Much She Was Embittered, Eleni of Karpasia\u201d (published by Nefeli), which was presented last week in Athens \u2013 a sweeping novel and, simultaneously, a thorough documentary of the indomitable teacher\u2019s life of suffering. We shake hands. Eleni\u2019s eyes are moist. We sit down. Outside, it\u2019s raining. We are in the restaurant on the top floor of the Titania Hotel in downtown Athens, where both Foka and Pericleous-Papadopoulou stayed during their brief visit. Behind us, the Acropolis seems to hover over the rain-soaked, foggy glass railing of the terrace.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you endure?\u201d I ask Foka.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that when you reach the point of no return, my dear, you decide either to live or to die. I chose to be an obstacle to the conqueror. Of course, I didn\u2019t have any weapons; I only had words, the fewest words. With complaints, letters, reports and messages I sent about my land, and the drawings of the children I hid inside bunches of daffodils, hoping to inform the government first, I wanted to raise awareness among the powerful of the Earth, the global Greek community, and ask for their help in liberating our homeland. Because occupation, especially Turkish occupation, is worse than death. You get used to loss, but not to occupation. We were supposed to have the guarantor power, the UK, and the motherland Greece, yet it was the greatest betrayal, and my homeland was enslaved by the Turks.\u201d Her voice cracks.<\/p>\n
Pericleous-Papadopoulou gently touches her, as if to soothe her, and we begin discussing the book, the 10 years of exhausting research the author needed to gather material from chaotic archives, extract and decode testimonies from people barricaded in fear, uncover stories \u2013 there had been no previous documentation \u2013 and decipher sighs. She transformed the vast, raw material into a poignant portrayal of the island\u2019s tragedy after the 1974 invasion, while using fiction to protect the secrets of vulnerable people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not easy to describe the life of Eleni,\u201d says the award-winning poet, prose writer, and playwright. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just Eleni\u2019s life; it\u2019s also the history of Karpasia, the suffering of the enclaved and displaced people from their ancient land, the Coast of the Achaeans. It is the life of her students at Agia Triada during those bitter years, when, from one day to the next, they found themselves going to a school with shattered roofs \u2013 the settlers were stealing the tiles \u2013 broken windows, under the threat of guns. \u2018Attila\u2019 was relentless, and the greatest problem after enslavement was fear. But the central figure in my book is Eleni, the heroic teacher who struggled under the conqueror\u2019s boot to keep the Greek language and Orthodoxy alive in the occupied territories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u2018Twenty-eight years have passed, and it is still impossible for me to accept that I can\u2019t return to my homeland\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Upon hearing the word \u201cheroic,\u201d Foka expresses discomfort. \u201cShe gets upset when I call her a heroine; she doesn\u2019t want to, out of modesty,\u201d says Pericleous-Papadopoulou.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this label disarms me; I feel like it cuts my legs. Because what I want, the freedom of our land, has not yet come. Nothing has been achieved \u2013 what heroine?\u201d Foka interjects.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t a woman who was deprived of everything in a Turkish-occupied land a heroine? A woman who kept Greek culture alive, preserved the memory of our ancestors, and instilled values in her students, teaching them to love the homeland, the sea, even the humblest flower? A woman who silently recited the Lord\u2019s Prayer, whispered the national anthem, and read \u2018Thourios\u2019 [a famous patriotic poem written by Rigas Feraios, a prominent Greek revolutionary, intellectual, and poet of the late 18th century]? \u2018If it weren\u2019t for Eleni Foka, we would only speak Turkish today,\u2019 say her students. There were two other teachers who stayed to run the school in Rizokarpaso (a town in Karpasia known in Turkish as Dipkarpaz), Androulla Vassiliou and Despina Kolatsi-Mouzouri, but the difference is that they managed to rebuild their lives. Eleni rejected personal life; she never married, had no family. The children called her Desposyni, meaning Miss. \u2018By her own will,\u2019 she rejected her personal desires. A monumental contribution to the homeland, she is the symbol of Karpasia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever I go, I mourn,\u201d Foka replies. \u201cTwenty-eight years have passed, and it is still impossible for me to accept that I can\u2019t return to my homeland.\u201d The determined teacher endured horrific suffering from the conquerors for 23 years in her village, Agia Triada, until 1997, when she was expelled by the Denktash regime. She moved to the free areas for health reasons, but they never allowed her to return to her land. \u201cBefore the invasion, Agia Triada had 1,200 residents and 200 students at the primary school. After the invasion, only 74 remained. For the students to attend high school, which the occupying forces had closed, they had to be uprooted. The occupying regime forced 11-year-old children to sign an application stating that they were going \u2018of their own will\u2019 to the free areas, with no possibility of return. In 1997, there were only six children left in the primary school. That was when it all ended.\u201d Her voice cracks again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were the worst tortures?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are those that are spoken of and those that are not. Murders, arrests, rapes, abductions, torture, beatings, theft. And harassment, humiliations. I would wake up very early to rush to the school and clean it. In the first years, the settlers would put filth in plastic bags and tie them to the door handle or scatter them in the classrooms, on the walls, in the yard. The unbearable stench. What did the innocent children do to deserve contamination and sickness? I would run to the nearby well to fetch water because they had destroyed the school\u2019s water tank, throwing in dead animals and excrement, and later cut the pipes. I hated myself. I felt constant humiliation, but I told myself they were doing this to drive us out, and so I resisted and tirelessly cleaned. I also tried to protect the children from the aggression of the settlers\u2019 children, who would chase them and throw stones at them. I even took them to the restroom myself and stood guard outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were not allowed to roam the village or approach the sea. \u201cThe 250 of us who remained could not approach one another, speak to each other; we lived in silence. I lost my ability to speak, my ability to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I think of my homeland\u2019<\/h3>\n
Today, she lives in a refugee settlement in Nicosia, but \u201cI think of my homeland every day. I was the first of nine children. My father worked hard to educate us all. He told me to learn Ancient Greek. He admired Greece, its struggles, its heroes. I had an uneducated villager who knew \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 by heart. We are Greek Cypriots. This root is what we are trying to preserve. I would take my students out into nature to get to know their idyllic land and would take them to the ruined churches, to the Basilica of Agia Triada, where not a single icon, chalice or candelabrum remained \u2013 everything sacred had been looted, the benches had been destroyed. And with a camera I obtained in Athens, I would capture the barbarity of the occupation on our houses, on our monuments, because words cannot convey these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer students adored Eleni,\u201d says Pericleous-Papadopoulou. \u201cThey felt safe with her. She showed them great tenderness and love. These children, who became refugees to attend high school, stood on their own, studied, and found their way. However, the trauma of the invasion, the separation from their roots, still lingers. They were isolated, they had no shared experiences with children in the free areas. They had never seen a television, didn\u2019t know what the school bell was, didn\u2019t have uniforms, didn\u2019t know what new shoes were, never had a cooked meal, and never ate chocolate. The people [in the free areas] didn\u2019t know how to deal with them; they called them \u2018little Turks,\u2019 and frightened their own children, saying the refugees would come and eat their food. Those who were hosted by families felt like a burden. They were children who had endured both enslavement and uprooting, who had never heard the voice of their father. In an entire settlement in Limassol, no child has ever heard the word \u2018daddy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n