By Heidi Trautmann

The Mayor of Girne Municipality, Mr. Nidai Güngördü, had invited me to pay a visit to the International Cemetery together with him, after I had congratulated him and thanked him for his thoughtful action to restore the old International Cemetery opposite the Pia Bella Hotel. It goes back to a talk we had about two years ago on the occasion of the inauguration of my husband’s sculpture done by Sevcan Çerkez, at the cemetery. We talked about cemeteries being a part of the island’s culture and that behind each memorial plaque and cross is an individual piece of Cypriot life, the families thereof have long moved away and cannot take care of the graves. I had asked him, if he could take the care of it under the wings of the Municipality.

We met two days ago at the cemetery and we inspected the enormous effort the workers had done to erect crosses, to repair them by joining the marble pieces lying around together again with cement and thus giving back to the graves an appearance of respect. I remember well how it looked like before. He also told me that many graves are inhabited by people who died during the Cypriot civil war, as many dates of death are around the 60s  of last century, so the place is also connected to the island’s sad history.

On all my travels I used to visit cemeteries as a place of culture, be it in Los Angeles, in Salzburg or Venice or in any other city around the world – and many travelers do so -, as it tells you many details of the country’s history; I also visited the cemeteries in Nicosia and Lefke and especially there near the barrage lake I was impressed by the beauty of it.

There is also a project to renovate the cemetery in Bellapais as a cooperation with Erbil Arkin of ARUCAD, the contract was recently signed. I want to pay my respect and thank Mr. Nidai Güngördü for these respectful and precious undertakings.