Pembe Mentesh learned there was another woman in her family, aside from her mother, called "Fetine", when she was at university working on a family tree project.
“I have always loved learning the history of my relatives and hearing stories about Cyprus from my parents. I became very close with my relatives when we went to Cyprus on holidays. I wanted to meet with everyone and get to know them,” she said.
She was checking to make sure the spellings of the names on her family tree were correct when her mother,Fetine, told her she had a great aunt with same name who was sold in marriage to Arabs when she was young in Cyprus.
“Sold?”
“What do you mean?” she asked her mother. “why did your grandfather give your aunt away?”
Pembe’s mother told her he didn’t have choice. There was a drought, they had no money. There were five or six children and she was the eldest daughter.
“This was the first time I learned that I had a great aunt who my mum has named after. I found out Aunt Fetine was married at the age of 14 to a Palestinian man,” Pembe told SBS Turkish.
It was 1935 or 1936. Both Cyprus and Palestine were British colonies.
Source: Tetraktys Films
It was easy for Palestinian merchants to travel to Cyprus.
There was a shortage of males in the Turkish Cypriot population and they were a poor community. It was quite common for Arab merchants to travel to Cyprus seeking “European-looking, blond, blue eyed” muslim brides.
According to a book by retired teacher Neriman Cahit, about 4000 Cypriot Turkish girls were sold to Arabs between the 1920s and 1940s.
The dowry for a Cypriot bride was reportedly much lower than for Palestinian brides.
Pembe discovered this was something nobody wanted to talk about in her family. The only thing she learned from her relatives was that Fetine did not want to marry and leave her family. There was no written documents, no birth certificate and no photos of Fetine.
Fetine’s story stuck in Pembe’s mind.
Pembe Mentesh was born and raised in Sydney. Twelve years ago she moved to Cyprus for a UN Development Program job. In Cyprus she met another Australian woman, Melbourne born Yeliz, a former backpacker and film maker.
When she told Yeliz her great aunt’s story, the two women decided to try to find her, and record their journey.
Pembe Mentesh (left) with Yeliz Shukri Source: Supplied
The story of the documentary “Missing Fetine” began in 2011 when they decided to travel together to Palestine.
“I really felt bad for her. I really wanted to know where she went and whether she had a good life,” Pembe said.
“When I went to see my elderly family members they told me there is nothing about her. That was not true. That person existed. There is always information out there if there is a willingness to search.
“You need to ask questions that people don’t want to ask. This was the hardest part for me because it’s not something that's easy to talk about. It’s basically opening a closed wound in a way. If a family has kind of forgotten about something, and you dig it up again, you've got to be ready for all sorts of reactions.”
“I must say this was most challenging and rewarding thing I have ever done in my life.”
The research was the hardest part. Pembe didn’t want to upset anyone. “We did things very delicately. We didn’t push people to talk if they didn’t want to talk,” she said.
One piece of information led to the next.
They travelled to Palestine twice. The search itself was not difficult, but the emotions provoked by the information and stories they uncovered were sometimes overwhelming.
They realised it wasn’t just about one person, one family or one community.
This documentary is not only my family’s story. It is many womens' story.
The issue affected thousands of Palestinian families too.
“What we had to understand was that while we were searcing for one person; on the Palestinian side, they had never met anyone from their mother's side of the family. In Palestinian culture the mother is the matriarch. The mother is so important. If you don’t know anybody from your mother's family it is felt as such a huge loss, terrible pain and trauma . And you realise, wow, this is not about one family and one person, but many families,” she said.
Missing Fatine screened at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival early in March 2018. It was sold out. Relatives of many Greek brides who were sent to the US after World War II to mary Greek man were there. “We saw people crying after the screening. They had the same experience,” Pembe said.
Pembe Mentesh Source: Supplied
The Missing Fetine story has continued to grow in their minds. Pembe has learned that forced marriage still goes on around the world. “Very young girls are still promised to men today in many cultures and countries around the world,” she said.
Yeliz and Pembe hope to screen their documentary in Australia.
Do they find Fetine? They ask to watch the documentary to find out.
