Today's forage and discovery

[juliesewell]

On the way to Curium late this afternoon, I pointed out the wall to a cemetery on the B6 (the old Limassol to Paphos road) between the turnoff from the highway at Episkopi and heading towards Curium (after the Wine Museum and Pastos Tavern) on the left side of the road.

So we decided to take a peep at it on the way back. We discovered it's a Turkish cemetery, sadly run to rack and ruin and wildly overgrown with Agave Americana cactus. It has the name HASAN KAHYA 1950 above the gate.

Some photos here:

[emgee]

Thanks for posting this.

Alan

[cactuslil]

How interesting but sad to see any cemetery in this state.

[Jim]

We have a Turkish cemetery in Pafos just past Chlorakas on the main road into town, they have recently renovated the long stone wall, I will try and snap some shots but they will look similar..The Pafos cemetery is in even worse condition, understandable I guess..

[Streaky]

Is there any significant relationship to the name of the cemetery and the name on the grave in picture 3?

I note the cemetery gate is dated 1950 while the grave indicates 1958.

[juliesewell]

Hi Streaky

The 2 graves you see there with the same name over the gate are in a large enclosed area, you can see them better in the photo below. I gather there must be some importance to those but I struggled to find any information about the cemetery on Google

However, looking more closely at the inscription below, it says "Piskobu Muhtar" which probably translates to Episkopi (or equivalent name at the time) Mukhtar. He would have been the head of the village...

[juliesewell]

Great photos- the flowers of the agave cactus are quite extraordinary

Apparently, the cactus' sprout those huge shoots with flowers and seed pods when they are in their dying years. The huge stalks carrying the pods eventually drop off but then new growths appear from the pods. I guess that's why the place is overrun by them.

You have to be really careful walking through that stuff as the spines that drop to the floor are like needles. We had to make sure we got them all off the soles of our shoes before we went home as they would have punctured our dogs' feet had we taken them indoors with us. A lot of scraping and shuffling of feet on the roadside as we left the cemetery was being done as we made our way back to the double cab.

[Streaky]

That makes sense Jules. I'd speculate that the Muhktar probably arranged for the cemetery to be established and that it was named after him in 1950. It take it he was then buried there after his death in 1958.

It's the sprouting of the cactus shoots that actually kills the plants. Until then they are healthy but all the plant's energy is used in the production of the shoots and flowers.