Suzan Ari A Great Helper to a Great Educator (1927 - 2002)
“…loss of valued Suzan Ari we are grieving” (Salih Cosar –Leader Democrat Party [Minister for Economy kktc] ~in ’Halkin Sesi’ -26 Nov. 2002)
Premier of Nth. Cyprus attended her funeral.. from Canada university education staff to others in the USA & the UK who as ‘auntie’ referred to her poured in messages, including from persons knighted by Britain to representing the nation in Europe, of commiseration…
Suzan Ari, in the cultural and social development of the Cypriot was a great helper in the efforts of her late husband Orhan Seyfi Ari “whose mark on the nation’s history of education is not a small one”.
As the Greek and Turkish Cypriot pupils of her husband and many people of the British Colony of Cyprus Orhan Ari’s efforts, so did many from the later Republic of and still later the Northern Republic of Cyprus remember and appreciate Suzan Ari’s help in those efforts to educate, modernize, a society previously resisting or helpless in cultural progress.
She was born in Morphou –where after her compulsory education and training as dress-maker under the British system of apprenticeships and self-education in Turkish and Greek comtemporary literature and with an avid interest in current affairs (perhaps resulting from her father Mr. Uney’s social activities as a successful businessman and local community leader in central Nicosia –the capital) she was one of the very first to show with her husband (Mr. Ari -a young idealist teacher) in 1941 the courage of the conviction that, while there was nothing wrong with the Cypriot Turkish and Greek custom of dowries, marriage should be for love.
In Nicosia, during the intercommunal troubles, in the salaryless and food-rationless days from the 1960s, she fed many an immigrant villager guest of her husband’s, stood by him unlike many not to emmigrate...
There, peoples of e.g. the city of Paphos and the town of Loudrijina, still tell of Suzan Ari’s, in the budgetless days after the Second World War in the 1940s & 1950s with young children sleepless nights to gratis make costumes for their secondary-school’s first taste to them of their cultural heritage, in the latter with only oil-lamp light to gratis sew up national flags for the first celebrations of their national days which her husband was instilling awareness of in the people ~they still tell of her opening her home, as her husband was helping have roads and electricity and water and getting schools built for those whose illiteracy was to the extent of many’s not even seeing how their sons and especially daughters could possibly benefit from education, to dentists to set up equipment in to treat people, to host artistes to put on cultural shows for them, to learn to gratis teach new skills to her husband’s students. Mrs Ari, as regarded by her husband the ‘Teacher of Teachers’, was indeed ‘The Great Helper’...
Suzan Ari had been to prayers on the night of Wednesday 20 Nov. ‘02, had met and chatted and prayed with her dear neighbours and friends ~the following morning she was found to have peacefully passed away.
The following verses by her late husband Orhan Ari also apply to her...
The pure in heart truly die never Joyous be, in hearts they live forever
Tulips representing donations in her honour to the educational trust surrounded Mrs. Ari’s coffin
