An extensive tribute to the personal story of a Greek Cypriot from Famagusta, signed by renowned author Victoria Hislop, is published by the British Daily Mail.
When she was forced to leave her home and town in 1974, lawyer Maria Hadjivasili was 17 years old.
Forty years later, Victoria and Maria visit together the ghost town that once was, as the article typically notes, "one of the most luxurious and sophisticated tourist resorts in the Mediterranean, with visitors such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Brigitte Bardot and Paul Newman ".
Hislop's interest, as she confesses in the article, was stimulated by "this idyllic teenage story that was cut short".
"I had a happy life as a teenager. I felt protected. I was innocent and ignorant. When the Turks entered Kyrenia, I was watching the events on TV and all this seemed so far away to me, as if it were happening in another country. Then we learned that innocent civilians were killed and women were raped. This also happened to my friends from school. "Only when we became refugees did I realize that the money we had would not protect us," said Hadjivasili.
Hislop notes that the old luxury of the area has been completely lost and has been replaced by abandonment and the wear and tear of time.
Hadjivasili's family was among the richest in the area and Maria, then young, "was only interested in her studies in the arts, pop music and flirting with boys."
Hadjivasili recounts the frightening moments that the planes heard over their heads and the dramatic images that unfolded inside her house when they tried to protect themselves in an old cellar that they had in the house.
Even when Aron-Aron left, she and her siblings believed that all this would be temporary and that they would soon return home. Something that never happened.
Source: City Free Press