In the `Chambers of Memory`: Neshe Yashin... (*)

She `crossed` the division because this was the only way for love to survive. And love was the only thing that could make us realize our utopia: that Cyprus was one and only, one you could not divide...
Her life was like almost any other life of a Cypriot, affected by the conflict... She was born in 1959, the dark years of EOKA and TMT, heading towards bloody confrontation. Her family was from the Peristerona village, a place of peace and tranquillity in the beginning... As the conflict grew in 1963, they were displaced and started living in Nicosia. Her father, Ozker Yashin was a famous poet, journalist and activist at the time... He was the leader for the Turkish Cypriot refugees of 1963... He published poems of war and suffering, poems widely read at the time... He published a newspaper called `Savash` meaning `War`... These were the years of conflict... Neshe’s brother Zeki was born in 1960 but in 1963, as her mother Jale expected another baby and was ready to deliver, there was no way out of the village Peristerona... Two Turkish Cypriots decided to bring her to Nicosia for the birth of the baby but on the way they were arrested by EOKA as prisoners of war and Neshe’s mother and grandmother were brought to Nicosia General Hospital... The name given to the baby born under such conditions was `Savash` (War). Later a Greek Cypriot man helped to smuggle her back to Peristerona with the grandmother and the baby... So as Sartre has said, `Hell is other people` but `Heaven is also other people` we can add. Because you could find the darkness but also the light, the crime but also goodness in `other people`. Later, her mother had another baby girl under better conditions, so they called her `Barish` which means `Peace`. She was born in 1972 and they named her `Peace` to reflect the desire for peace on the island. One baby was `War`, perhaps with the new baby called `Peace`, peace would finally come to the island...
We were friends since childhood – Kutlu Adali, the murdered journalist (my sister’s husband) had opened `an account` for me in her father’s bookshop. Even though my mother was a librarian and I grew up in the library, books were not enough for me! I used to go to the `Ozker Yashin Bookshop` to get books and Neshe used to come to the library. Books were not enough for her either! We were reading, she was writing poems from a very small age like 3 or 4... As soon as she learnt to walk and talk she started writing I guess, because these are what poets are made of: words to describe love, suffering, words to describe the unseen world by others, the unnoticed or repressed feelings, the flow of life and everything that surrounds us...
Later we went to the same school and were in the same class: The English College... We would compete together in poetry competitions and would write notes to each other in class. Sometimes we would argue and not speak with each other – we were growing up with all the pain and suffering around us, all the poverty and misery... But with all the love and joy of being young and reaching out to the impossible because that’s what dreams are made of and so long as you’re alive, as Che has said `Be realistic, ask for the impossible!`
In 1970 her father was elected to the Turkish Cypriot parliament as an MP and we would go together to the makeshift parliament (the building is now the headquarters of the National Unity Party UBP – Eroglu’s party). We would sit and listen to the arguments, discussions and we would be the only kids in the Turkish Cypriot parliament. We would sit at the back of the room and try to understand the issues and politics at the time, sometimes giggling and sometimes getting bored and going back to the library or to her father’s bookshop to find more interesting things to talk about or read or write or do our homework. At one time, we had exactly the same shoes: they were red and we would admire our new red shoes!
In 1976 she went to Turkey for her university education, later got married there and had a baby whom she called `Hazar`. She only returned to the island in 1985. These were the darkest years for our progressive struggle – the regime was very arrogant... You could not find a job, even if you did, you would be thrown out after some time because of your political views, activism – the biggest sin was saying `Yes, we can live together with Greek Cypriots` and Neshe was one of the ones committing this `sin`: ` One should love one’s homeland/So says my father/But my homeland is divided into two/Which part should I love?` She suffered like many of us: From 1985 till 1997, she did odd jobs to survive on the island... She would write and be in headlines of the newspapers of the regime... She would write and be thrown out of her job... She was a teacher for one year at Lapta Secondary School (Lapithos) on a temporary contract but the regime could only put up with her for a year... In punishment of what she was saying out loud, her contract was not renewed. It was the time when we set up the `Women’s Movement for Peace and a Federal Solution` and the attack of the regime on the women, calling us `names` and trying to make us the `laughing stock` of the community, trying to marginalize us and finally punish us... My husband, myself, Neshe and others were all unemployed... You could not find jobs even in the private sector – the regime took care of that and there are letters when my husband had applied for a job in the private sector:
`Because of your effective past, we cannot employ you!`
You could not take credit from the banks either, to start a business:
`Why don’t you go to your party?` they would say and humiliate you... The regime did not have to put you in prison – they would destroy your economic means of survival so that you would leave...
She had committed another `big sin` while she was in the northern part – she had run a `conscientious objection campaign` for Salih Askeroglu. Salih had refused to go to serve in the army – he is the only one so far... How dare he refused to go to the army? And how dare Neshe helped organize this campaign? I remember that those were one of her worst times in Cyprus – the regime openly had her followed by secret police and the army, harrassed her friends and everyone was afraid to come to contact with her... They stole her address book, terrified everyone around her and tried to completely isolate her... This was one of the darkest time of her life in the northern part.
In 1997 Neshe decided to go to the southern part of the island – this was her biggest `crossing`. She would be going to a different environment but it would still be her homeland. Previously when she wanted to `cross` she depended on `permission` from the military authorities to `cross the division`. Many times we went to the Ledra Palace check-point to see if there was `permission` for us to `cross` since they would never tell us beforehand, if we would be `allowed` to cross or not. We would be arranging meetings with Greek Cypriot women or would be doing activities for peace and many times we would be refused the `permission` to cross. As a way out, we would try to arrange meetings abroad which was difficult, costly, time-consuming. In order to `cross` from Nicosia north to Nicosia south, Neshe would be flying to Istanbul to Athens to Larnaca or Istanbul to London to Larnaca and back... Since our homeland was one and a whole in our hearts, to speak to those living in `the other part of the island` was an essential necessity – we would be lacking half of us if we chose only to look into our own `part`...
Neshe started living in the southern part – many of us could not understand it at the beginning – this was a big taboo... Later we all started comprehending what she was trying to do... She was challenging a taboo in our brains that `Turkish Cypriots should live in the north and Greek Cypriots in the south`. How could a Turkish Cypriot live in the south and still be a Turkish Cypriot who loved her country? Wasn’t this a scandal? It took time for all to get used to this idea – she was setting an example that no one had dared before... A year after she went to the south, she found a teaching job in the university and now that she was in the southern part, she had the task to connect with the northern part, always trying to maintain her relationships, her friendships and her voice that would speak to us closely even though she was beyond the `barbed wire`.
And it did not matter where she lived because she was still the `target` of the regime... Even though Dervish Ali Kavazoglu was murdered four decades ago and buried in his grave in Dali, there still is a campaign by the regime against him... Even though the lawyers Ahmet Muzaffer Gurkan and Ayhan Hikmet who published the newspaper CUMHURIYET have been killed by the regime four decades ago and buried in their graves, even today there is a campaign against them... So it did not matter that Neshe lived in the southern part – she still had a voice and an influence in all of Cyprus so she had to be stopped and marginalized... So the dirty campaigns against her continued. When her novel `The Secret Story of Sad Girls` came out two years ago, all the erotic parts from the novel was `copied and pasted` together and a big campaign ran against her, claiming that she was telling her own sex life and encouraging the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot youth to have sex together! Even Rauf Denktash made a statement during this dirty campaign, accusing her and making her a target...
The `opening` of the checkpoints in April 2003 changed her energy: `Because of this division it was as though there was a block in my energy but now everything flows, I can feel it even in my body` she told me in an interview... She was in Istanbul during the `opening` and I called her to come back...
`Come on Neshe, you can’t miss this!` I had Robert and Lilian with me, two young filmmakers from Berlin who were making a movie about her life. So she flew to the north, crossed to the south with Robert and Lilian, went to her house, took a shower, changed her clothes and came back to the north! This was like a miracle for her – now she could `cross` any time she wanted and stay anywhere she wanted... `For me, unification is the unification of people... I don’t care about states and percentages, our country is not a company, I care about other things, about how people will be reunified...` she said...
This week we recieve news from her on the e-mail that her new book of poems called `The Chambers of Memory` has just come out in Istanbul... On her birthday, 12th of February, there will be a cocktail party in honor of her new book in Istanbul... And on the 15th of February, we will go to listen to her new poetry, the poetry she put together after the `opening` of the checkpoints, together with the ones she wrote before...

Once, in her poem called THE BIG WORD she wrote:
`When the poem utters the big word
all the weapons will hush at once,
the word that's the voice of
the spilled blood and the cry of suffering
the word that's uttered by the chorus of the dead
and by the exiled crowd of history.

It will be whispered by the flower
the weeping cloud in the sky
the rapturous waves of the sea
and the childred who do not want
to join the army.

That day, a new love will emerge
from the foams of the sea
that is distinct in nationality.

War will die of shame
as the silence starts taking revenge from history
and the magic words
will kiss the wind of love.

IF being disloyal to the half
will bring me the whole native land
your nationalism will be a cuckold's egg
I shall betray you
even with your bloody armies after me
I shall make love with all the enemies
I shall betray you
on all the continents of this earth.

When the poem utters the big word
all the deals and negotiations
will come to an end with nothing left to say
all the mediators will be unemployed.

The history will surrender
under that big word which carries
the stars and the rivers
the endless love making of all times
the sounds, the rain, and the seas.

When the big word
will be uttered by the poem
either all the poets will be executed
or peace will descend on earth.`

So she will be speaking to us from her `Chambers of Memory` and here is one of the poems from her new book that she sent to me:

My premonition about the light rising inside me

Who knows perhaps
while you shot at the barricades
that killed our house (home)
I used to mellow into a childish sadness
deaths passing through my deep sighs

I knew back then
one day you would steal my soul

While I ran off to the spaces between stairs
crying over family murders
it whispered dreams of the future
the light born(rising) inside me
(my premonition about the light)

Three angels appeared
one brought a red poppy
the second a gentle kiss from you
the third was empty handed
embarrassed looked me in the face

And then the ghosts of martyrs
chased me in their blood soaked clothes
my history teacher
read out lies at the gates of Heaven

I waited for such a long long time for you
in desolate Babylon towers

Take off your soldier’s clothes
and come close to me
give me three babies from the souls of the dead
One to make me forget all pain
the other to console the earth
the third to wander the city in the night
and hold crying mothers by the hand`
Last poem translated by Aydin Mehmet Ali.
(*) Article published in the ALITHIA newspaper on the 30th of January, 2005.

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