By Heidi Trautmann

TULIPS, it is not only the national flower of Cyprus, Tulipa Cypria, it is the flower of hope for the Association TULIPS – and the leitmotiv ‘Help those with cancer’ is not only a title, it is a leitmotiv in the true sense of the word .  

Today I visited the TULIPS Studio in Ortaköy, right next to the Levent College, meeting with Mrs. Raziye Kocaismail, the President of the Association, and the two handicraft teachers Mrs. Nazife Sezgin who is responsible for the studio and Mrs. Behice Biran, who comes to help and advise but has her handicraft studio in the Bandabuliya in Old Nicosia where in the last year we have been aware of many art and craft activities.

Cancer patients come here to the Tulips Studio every day to do handicraft work to be sold at festive occasions, at village markets or to be given to the TULIPS Shops. These are people who have cancer  treatment behind them or are right in the middle of it.  A good atmosphere prevails, as if with a family or close friends; they talk while their hands are busy, they laugh, they are not alone.

Raziye has her office in town, near the Turkish Embassy, where the patients come to seek advice, but she also often comes to the workshop in Ortaköy to discuss things and projects with her helpers and most importantly to exchange some private words with everybody. The workshop is a wide deep room with many professional sewing machines positioned, some of them are being used by women for some sewing jobs. Raziye tells me that this shop used to be a cloth factory owned by Artemel Fatin, who two years ago donated the part of the building to TULIPS, just shortly before he left to the United States to live with his son. What a generous gesture, may his heart be blessed, the teachers exclaim, there is a plate on the wall in his memory. In the back of the building and on the first floor hundreds of cartons with all kind of material which he has also left behind, are waiting for the helpers to be transformed into something useful or fancy. What a big challenge.

The teachers want to teach the group of helpers, mostly women – there are about 13 people to come every day – to do some local traditional handicraft, for example silk cocoon work, they have designed flowers, the petals of are made from these; embroidery, beautiful petit-point stitching. They have now started teaching children and youngsters, also cancer patients, to come here and get distracted from their treatments by working for others with cancer. The teachers show me some ceramic plates the kids have decorated.

The busy ladies have their standard little projects such as aprons, bags, pouches, even head covers for the patients after chemo, they are engaged with a project given to them by the UN for the fabrication of hundreds of printed linen bags, very nice. They want and intend to approach companies, institutions and enterprises to entrust them with the fabrication of advertising articles. TULIPS could make a good  price and it would be for a good cause. Anybody interested should get in touch with one of the teachers by phone or email, please find the details at the bottom of the text.  That is a very good idea! I promised I would ask my friends from the press to hand this message on. I was impressed by the positive thinking towards life.

When I was about to leave the shop some young people of the Girne Belediye Tiyatrosu (GIBETSU) came in to talk to Raziye; on 4 September they will give a charity performance in London  at the Regency Banqueting Hall to collect money for the Cancer Unit at the General Hospital which they have already successfully done before. The play is ‘Passadembo’ by the Turkish Cypriot playwright Bekir Kara. A group of eight people, the director is Güler Şen, will be going to London within a couple of days, and they came to the shop to collect some second hand dresses for the play.