By Heidi Trautmann

Whenever I come to the Arabahmet Area in Nicosia I have my favourite lanes to roam about very leisurely, lanes where you can nearly touch both sides with your finger tips, where in the afternoons old people sit among flower pots and their grandchildren play with pebbles and where there are no cars. I usually end up at Osman Keten’s Art Studio to see what he is doing. He has the most attractive studio in the area, one of the typical Ottoman style houses with a lovely inner courtyard and royal palm trees, surrounded by old stone walls. An art studio where I have witnessed many cultural events take place.

So, I came along the other day, on a spring afternoon, the big wooden door was open and music filtered through into the space outside. Osman sat with his pipe in his mouth studying the painting on his easel. He was studying the progress on a painting of Dr. Fazıl Küçük’s birth place as he explains to me. “The birthplace was a farm, a house and stables surrrounded by a stone wall in Ortaköy with fields around and nothing but fields. Ortaköy is a suburb in the north of Nicosia, a pulsating city district, where one of the Lemar’s supermarkets is, can you imagine the changes the place has gone through since March 14, 1906, the date when Dr. Fazıl Küçük was born?”

Osman shows me all his 24 paintings of this man’s life stages, a man who had stood up for the rights of his people and cared for them in times of trouble and war. Life stages with him as a student still wearing the fez, as the doctor he had become studying medicine in Istanbul and Lausanne, as activist, writer and politician; then as Vice-President of the newly founded Republic, with his wife Suheyla and his family, and later as founder of the resistance group. While we leaf through the oil paintings on paper of a good size of about 50 x 70cm, I ask him what made him decide to start with this work. “One day my friend Altay Sayıl, a photographer and archivist, former policeman and Dr. Küçük’s Vakıf curator, discussed to put together the information he had in form of old black and white photographs, news cuttings and written statements to establish a book for biographical, educational purposes. So far, the information about his life is not well presented in our school system. But you can talk to Altay Sayıl himself, as he will come over to the studio.”

A man with a good-natured smile on his face, I knew his work as photographer but not of his quality as Vakıf curator.  Altay Sayıl has delivered the text to the new publication with the title “Resimlerle Dr. Fazıl Küçük’ün Yaşamindan Kesitler” and  shows me the manuscript all ready for printing. “We will publish it in two versions, one for primary schools, that means with a text easy to understand for this age group but with the same paintings, and a more detailed version for the older students. But this publication, supported by the Ministry of Education  will also be handed over to other parties concerned and interested, also as a sort of gift to foreign representatives.” 

Enjoying the atmosphere of the studio, the smell of oil paints and turpentine, the view into the garden, I learn a lot about Dr. Kücük’s life and his house, today a museum which was only opened to the public on 14 March 1997, on his 91^st anniversary, still containing his doctor’s office including antiquated equipment, his office as leader and newspaper man, on the first floor his private quarters and next door the Newspaper Halkin Sesi, he had founded and which is today led by his son Mehmet Küçük.  Also contained in the museum are huge bound folders containing the Halkın Sesi copies back to its beginning, a rich source of information for students who occupy the rooms regularly, I am told.  He continued to write articles until just shortly before his death in London on 15 January 1984.

His mausoleum is erected at Anittepe in Hamitköy, Nicosia, and there will be the new Museum where Osman Keten’s oil paintings will be hung.

“Come with me,” Altay said to me, “come, I’ll show you the old museum where you can see his old motor bike and his old type writer.”

And we walk from the Arabahmet area through the back lanes of the Old City, short cutting, and he opens the old door to the building, a few steps from Kyrenia Gate to visit a man’s house so important for the existence of his people.

(My visit in Osman Keten's studio was in 2012 and was published in ZOOM Magazine)