Books – Books – Books on Cyprus

By Heidi Trautmann

Aydin Mehmet Ali is a Cypriot woman, a fascinating woman. I have interviewed her as contribution to the second Volume of my book: “Art and Creativity in North Cyprus”, soon to be published.

“…..Deep eyes. Eyes changing colour with the movement of thoughts. A Mediterranean face, could be Spanish, with masses of dark curly hair she constantly plays with, one moment it envelops her like a shawl the next she curls it up on top of her head, which constantly changes the expression of her face. Iron-grey patches on her temples, she seems to have accepted them and shows them with pride. The sun, filtered through purple bougainvillea, gives her face depth and lines she has gathered through her active years as a world shaker, Aydın Mehmet Ali, the revolutionary, the rebel.

“Yes, I consider myself a world shaker, literally shaking people awake, out of their ignorance, their selfishness, or on the other side helplessness, laziness and even cowardice.” Stepping into people’s way to make them stop and then think twice, open their eyes to see the truth is one first step but that is not enough. “No, that is not enough, the next step is knowledge and that is education. In order to find the appropriate approaches, I had to go deep down to the roots, I had to be with them, people of all colours, backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures, live and work with them in order to understand, in order to get a clearer picture of what had to be done”.

She dedicates the book to those who wander in forbidden zones and return to tell the stories….and in the introductory part of the book she says that the book is a rescue operation for her stories written over the last 35 years, still valid with their fearlessness and the spirit in which they were written. After all they are fictionalized realities.

Although they are fiction, they are based on her meeting people, her deep interest in people and…trespassing zones of taboos, she writes with the warmth of a woman with the feeling of a poet, and absolutely truthful to herself and the cause.

Aydin Mehmet Ali was born in Cyprus and has lived and worked in London for many years but has also living places in Nicosia South and in Famagusta. She was educated in Cyprus, USA and Britain. She is an international education consultant, project manager, researcher and writer. As a well-known intellectual community activist and advocate of multiculturalism and multilingualism, she has spoken at international conferences and her work appeared in numerous publications. She has set up and managed many empowerment projects in the UK and in Cyprus. Her work focuses on young people and women. She is a passionate campaigner for peace in Cyprus and amongst Cypriots in the Diaspora. She has been a consultant adviser to the London Mayor and to numerous education and cultural establishments.

She is the author of the acclaimed book, Turkish Speaking Communities & education - no delight (2001) and editor and translator of Turkish Cypriot Identity in Literature (1990). She is an award winning author and her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Diaspora City (2003), Uncut Diamonds (2003,), Index (July 2002), Crossing the Border (2002) and Weeping Island (2000), and in the journals Cadences (2005), Exiled Ink! (2005) and Orient Express (2005).

Her work was part of the art installation, Bedtime Story, at the [IN] visible exhibition, London, 2005. Her poetry translations and articles on literature have appeared in Mother Tongues, Journal of Poetry in Translation (2001), Agenda Poetry Journal (2002), The Silver Throat of the Moon: Writing in Exile (2005), Klandestini website (2004), Negating the Silence (2003), Nicosia (1995), Writing in Exile (2005), Klandestini website (2004), Negating the Silence (2003), Nicosia (1995), Cadences (2005), Orient Express (2005) and have been performed at numerous international poetry festivals and on radio for over fifteen years. She has done readings in a number of venues including the October Gallery as part of the renowned International Music Village Festival, Soho Theatre, Birkbeck College, Waterstone’s Bookshop, the Fawcett Women’s Library and Deptford Artists Studios, London. She is editing an anthology of Turkish Speaking Women’s writing in London. She has organised Arts and Literature festivals, bilingual creative writing workshops, poetry and short story competitions for Turkish Speaking Women, Cypriot poetry evenings in Turkish, Greek and English, seminars, exhibitions for individual artists, Arts workshops for parents and young people, projects using the Arts to diffuse racial tensions and conflict between different communities. She recently managed four projects, including The way we are, a multicultural and multi-lingual photographic project, in the north and south of Cyprus, with Cypriotturkish, Cypriotgreek, Cypriotroma, settler and mixed heritage children. She took part in numerous documentaries and Arte TV broadcasted a documentary in France and Germany about part of her life (2004).

Her first short story collection, Pink Butterflies/Bize Dair was published in October, 2005.

ISBN No. 978-0-9515656-3-6