Shenol Arap who had waited throughout his life for his father’s burial site to be found and his remains to be returned to him has passed away… His father, Sami Huseyin Arap had gone on his motorcycle from Lefka to Agia Irini village on the 31st of December 1963 to check on his parents. Due to the intercommunal conflict and fighting among the two communities, Sami Huseyin Arap had been worried about his parents who had been in Agia Irini, he had not received any news from them…
Shenol waited for the return of his father who never came back… Shenol passed away, without knowing the fate of his father…
The tragedy of these relatives of missing persons, is the tragedy of most of the relatives of missing persons, be it Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot. The relatives of missing persons are passing away holding onto the photos of their loved ones who might have gone missing in 1963 or 1974… They pass away without finding out the burial site of their loved one, without getting back the remains, without having been able to bury these remains with a proper funeral according to their religious traditions… They pass away without having the chance to say goodbye, without closure, without easing of the endless pain… They pass away with a huge longing to their loved ones without finding peace… Even though more than 50 or 60 years passed from the time of their loved ones going “missing”, not having the chance to learn what had actually happened to them, not finding the burial site, not getting back the remains and not having a funeral has made the tragedy even heavier for them and their extended families… Because as we all know and feel, having someone “missing” from your family is like no other pain: It is an open wound, bleeding… They are neither “dead”, nor “alive”, but living in the “twilight zone”, always in anticipation of their return, paralysing the whole life of the whole family, particularly the lives of their wives or husbands and their children…
Sami Huseyin Arap, still "missing"
Sami Huseyin Arap is still “missing” since 1963… That means he had gone “missing” exactly 63 years ago and we still don’t know his burial site. He had gone on his motorcycle from Lefka to Agia Irini to check on his parents since he had not received any news of them. When the intercommunal fighting began towards the end of December 1963, he had got worried about his parents who were in the village and had tried to call them through the telephone lines but without success. He had decided to go there and check on them… While on his way from Lefka to Agia Irini, he was passing from Gaziveran where the mukhtar of the village, Niyazi Hasan had stopped him. Perhaps this was the last conversation he had with a Turkish Cypriot. He had told the mukhtar that he had not received any news of his parents, he was worried and hence he was going to check on them. Niyazi Hasan had advised him that the situation was not good and he shouldn’t go but despite these warnings from the mukhtar, he would continue on his way. But he would never reach Agia Irini village or return to Lefka. He is still “missing” for the past 63 years…
In 2010 I had visited his wife Mrs. Hursiye in their house in Agia Irini and I had interviewed her, exactly 16 years ago… She too passed away without getting back the remains of her beloved husband Sami and did not have the chance to find and bury the remains of her husband… Her lifetime was not enough for that…
We tried very hard to find the burial site of Sami Huseyin Arap. There were many rumours about his fate. One of those rumours was that he had been wearing a coat similar to the coat that another Turkish Cypriot had been wearing for whom some Greek Cypriots had been looking for and due to this similarity he was shot and wounded while riding his motorcycle… Afterwards when the Greek Cypriot killers found out that they had shot the wrong person, they would kill him and bury him somewhere… Among the rumours was that he might have been buried in a well in or around the yard of one of the Greek Cypriot officials of Morphou Prastio. There was another rumour about him that we had written about: According to this, some Greek Cypriots of Fyllia (Φυλλιά) were saying that they had seen a Turkish Cypriot who had an accident in 1963 with his motorcycle, that a piece of iron from the “gandjelli” of a garden fence had been stuck in his stomach during the accident, that he was heavily wounded, that they had cut this piece of iron and then had taken him to the Nicosia General Hospital for treatment.
If what these Greek Cypriots’ claims were true and if that Turkish Cypriot had passed away in the Nicosia General Hospital, then he might have been buried together with other Turkish Cypriots killed during the conflict in December 1963 by the Greek Cypriot authorities. Because we know that those Turkish Cypriots killed after 21st of December 1963 in the area of Nicosia were gathered in the morgue of the hospital and they would be buried by Greek Cypriot authorities outside the Turkish Cypriot cemetery of Agios Vassilios.
There were some mass graves outside the cemetery that the Turkish Cypriot authorities would exhume in February 1964 and take out the bodies and rebury them at the Tekke Cemetery Gardens in Nicosia without proper identification. One night before the Turkish Cypriot authorities would dig out those mass graves at Agios Vassilios, some Greek Cypriot authorities would go there and take out some bodies of Turkish Cypriots from the mass graves and would bury them elsewhere, somewhere we still don’t know about…
There have been exhumations at the Tekke Gardens Cemetery after a huge struggle by us and by the relatives of missing persons but Sami Huseyin Arap’s remains has not been found in the graves that has been exhumed there… We still don’t know where his burial site is…
Two young children
Sami Huseyin Arap was from Agia Irini village. He had been working at the CMC company in the mines of Lefka. Together with his wife Hursiye and two young kids, they had been living in the small CMC houses given to the miners at Xeros.
When the intercommunal fighting began in 1963, Sami Huseyin Arap was refraining from going to work. Some Greek Cypriot friends of his would visit him at the CMC houses and had told him that they might not be safe there, that they should leave Xeros. Therefore, Sami would take his wife and kids and go to Lefka to be safe…
Until the day he would set out on his motorcycle to check on his parents, he was in Lefka… When he had gone “missing” he was only 28 years old… He had two kids: His son Shenol Arap who passed away recently and his daughter Shenel Akcan. Shenol buried his mother Mrs. Hursiye while waiting for the remains of his father and he himself passed away on the 19th of February 2026. His sister Shenel also lost her husband Erol Akcan some years ago, who had tried to help us to find the “missing persons” of Agia Irini and Hulu. Erol Akcan was from Houlou and he had some “missing” relatives from the village. We had gone together with him and with Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of CMP and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart to do investigations about “missing” Turkish Cypriots from Hulu village. Erol Akcan was a very talented person doing paintings of villagers, creating ceramics and had even wrote a book about the stories from Agia Irini where he included information about the missing persons from Agia Irini… We had gone many times to his small coffeeshop with Kallis and others from CMP and he had helped us to explore the area in search of “missing” Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots from that village. May all rest in peace, Erol Akcan, Xenophon Kallis, Mrs. Hursiye and Shenol Arap… We share the pain of their relatives…
If you have any information about the “missing” Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots of Agia Irini, please call me on my CYTA phone at 99 966518 or send me an email or SMS and I can call you. I don’t need to know your name, you can remain anonymous, so long as we can help the relatives of missing persons...
