Dear ………………. , The enclosed pamphlet is an invitation to you to join us in the walk of the refugee women of Cyprus to their homes on April 20,1975. The tragedy of Cyprus transcends the boundaries of this small island, it involves men and women everywhere. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3212 seeks to uphold the fundamental right of the people of Cyprus to live in safety in their homes. If this resolution is allowed to be blatantly ignored the affront will be against the World Organisation and mankind itself.
This was the call that brought more than one hundred and thirty women from all over the world to Cyprus.
At Larnaca Airport, the only airport now open, we were met by a committee of Cypriot women. Tension was acute, emotions high. We were driven to the Kennedy Hotel, situated a few yards from the Turkish barrier line, now surrounding Nicosia on three sides. There is a narrow corridor, six miles wide, leading south to unoccupied Cyprus.
My companion was Professor Winnifred Alston of Brock University who in the past had visited Cyprus to dig at archaeological sites. We had asked to stay with a Cypriot family and were driven to the home of Mr. and Mrs. D.B. Stephanides who design jewellery and have a workshop and store in Nicosia. Their original workshop near the Green Line was destroyed by Turkish mortar shells. Betty Stephanides took part with us in the ‘Women Walk Home’.
On Sunday, April 20 at 8:30 a.m., a great caravan of buses started out from Nicosia and headed toward a vineyard near the village of Phrenaros. Here, those of us who had come from Nicosia were joined by others. Cypriot women were arriving from the length and breadth of the island: country women, city women, tens of thousand of them refugees.
At Phrenaros the foreign women took up the flags of their countries. Waves of press reporters and cameramen appeared with tape recorders, television microphones — a veritable storm of journalists. A silent walk had been agreed upon, and the 30,000 women were quiet. Speeches were made from the platform erected in the middle of the grape field, some of them impassioned, but these were given mainly to accommodate the media.
The moment had come for the walk to begin. The platform was deserted. The press scurried to their vehicles. The marshalls called to the women to form their lines.
The women went forward in close rank and with a common purpose, walking for the cause of humanity and the simple dignity of home. First went the flag-bearers. Behind came the rest of the foreign women and after them a great surge of Greek-Cypriot women moving in orderly fashion. They poured out of the grapefield, thousands upon thousands. A white dove was let loose. There was no singing. There were no lamentations. The women walked in silence.
Looking back we could not see the end of the column. Farmers riding mules through the distant fields waved, two bronze-gold oxen raised their heads and stared at the procession. Country people gathered by the roadside, waving, clapping, cheering and weeping. A young man, perhaps thirty years old, blinked back tears.
When we arrived at the village crowds lined the streets, the balconies, the roof tops. Derenia is the last outpost before the Turkish barricade, a little village that stands on a wind-swept slope within sight of Famagusta.
The villagers thrust flowers into our hands and scattered petals on the road as we passed. ‘On no account step off the road!’ we had been told. Perhaps the marshalls were afraid of land mines. Red Cross trucks were on hand, at the end of the road for emergencies, ready for possible feminine breakdowns, but none occurred.
The final checkpoint was reached. We were greeted by sand bags piled high, seventeen barbed wire barriers, trenches dug in the fields between the UN Checkpoint and the Turkish lines. One hundred women went forward, stopping a few yards from the Check¬point to indicate their peaceful intention. Ten women advanced, passed the UN Checkpoint and entered a small ‘no man’s land’ at the end of which was a table — the meeting place. There was no meeting, however. The Turkish authorities refused any communication.
The area was alive with hidden soldiers. Spread out over the bare fields, they peeped from their trenches, their steel helmets barely discernible above the high stacked sandbags. Later, during a sudden rain squall, hundreds of them suddenly emerged and ran for cover in the whitewashed buildings beyond.
A handful of Turkish women — four or five at the most—stood for a while in the distance. They, too, refused any communications but the Cypriot women accepted a message from them which turned out to be a formal protest about the Turkish soldiers killed during the invasion.
A heavy downpour of rain brought proceedings to a conclusion. The women, downcast, returned. They left their flags on the first barbed wire barricade, mute testimony to futility.
A number of Cypriot women — some could see their homes from where they sat — remained on vigil for three days, determined not to withdraw until their message concerning UN Resolution 3212 was accepted. Finally someone suggested that the message be telexed to the Turkish Embassy in London. The answer came: ‘Message Received’. The Women’s Walk was over.
Jubilation, tears, and a joyful rush to the coffee shops of Derenia. Already anecdotes were circulating. Indelible memories of a deeply shared experience were slipping into the subconscious. But what had been accomplished? Perhaps just another documented illustration of man’s inhumanity to man.
