War and The Things We Carry

Neatly propped up against the pillows in my bedroom is a teddy bear with golden fur and bright amber eyes—my mother’s beloved childhood companion and sole relic of her life in Cyprus. It was rescued by my παππού (grandfather) along with the stuffed animals of my aunts and my grandparents’ wedding album, as he returned to the house that the rest of the family had been forced to flee only a few days before.

20/7/1974:  Radio announcement declares Turkish invasion from the north of the island, following a Greek-backed military coup. My γιαγιά (grandmother) hurriedly evacuates the three daughters from their home and her parents to their nearest village, Μια Μηλιά (Mia Milia), while my παππού journeys north to provide first aid at the front lines. 

It was at this moment that everything changed—the island that had been their home was no longer theirs. Birds of metal now soared overhead, parachutists rained from smoke-ridden skies, and steel monsters ploughed into the dry earth, leaving trails of despair in their wake.

I was made aware of the war from a young age, although I cannot recall the exact moment that I was first told. Instead, I remember it as a constant presence in our lives—a cloaked figure of melancholy. I have always felt it. Reaching out for me with withered hands, and although I have long marched to outpace it, I cannot deny the temptation to stand still. I have always sensed it walk alongside my mother, and in quiet moments, I have seen it embrace her. The recollection of tales marked with anguish: the screeching of napalm bombs as they plummeted from the sky, the heat of the inferno that consumed the village mercilessly, the image of her mother using her bare hands to extinguish the flames that ravaged her grandfather’s head, scorched into her mind—as it had done to her grandmother’s back. The breath-stealing coldness of the tiled floor of a church in which they sought sanctuary. Villagers collapsed to their knees with clasped hands as they whispered τάματα—offerings of worldly possessions to the Virgin Mary in exchange for their lives. 

My mind cannot begin to comprehend how terrifying it must have been to be a small child caught in the crossfire of such harrowing events—when the land that nurtured you is lost to iron and ash, when the home you once played freely in becomes a hunting ground overnight. It is for these reasons that I have never stood still and allowed myself to be consumed by this grief. For it would only be inherited, never mine. Would that not be selfish, to claim a loss of something that never belonged to me? Would it not be an insult to those who endured such indisputable misery?

I am lucky. My family is lucky. My mother and her family were soon reunited with my παππού, and escaped the north with their lives—unlike so many—with only the clothes on their backs as they sought refuge in the mountains to the south. But like all things in this world, survival comes with a price. George Santayana once wrote, “Only the dead have seen the end of war” (Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies). As an adult, I have begun to understand the truth in those words. 

To this day, only my γιαγιά has set foot on the burnt and bloodied land they were forced to abandon—where their house still stands now. Μια Μηλιά is now Turkish Haspolat, its villagers—their former community—have either returned to the earth in shallow graves or vanished for survival. Beyond the village, near the erected partition, barbed wire twists from the ground where flowers and trees once grew. 

The UN-controlled Green Line severs the island in half, with the Greek majority in the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the south, and above it, the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is the buffer zone and de facto partition that followed the 1974 invasion; it serves as a painful reminder of the violence that devastated the country, a 180km gaping wound slicing its berth.

After twenty years in England, my grandparents retired to Αίγινα (Aegina), a Greek island in the Saronic Gulf. It was too agonising to return to a home that had become unrecognisable, too cruel to be in the vicinity of the life that once belonged to them, stolen and just out of reach. My family and I have visited them in Greece every summer, it was a magical escape in my early childhood and has since become a second home. I have fond memories of exploring my grandparents’ farm with wide-eyed wonder—sucking nectar from jasmine flowers. Treading beneath towering pine trees with branches that grazed great azure expanses. Strolling along the port at night with my mother’s hand in mine, and watching the pale moon bob against the gentle rise and fall of the waves.

My sister and I were christened in Αίγινα, within the white-painted walls of a Greek Orthodox monastery. The nuns who witnessed our spiritual birth still live there and embrace us warmly upon our annual visits. They bless us with prayers in the familiar soft-spoken Greek I understand. The Cypriot dialect, however, remains largely alien to me. I struggle to decipher its harsher consonants and more melodic tones, unable to engage with it as I do with its linguistic cousin. I’ve spent numerous summer days on Αίγινα’s shores, too many to recount, and yet I have only ever visited Cyprus once. It is a hazy dream—a short film captured through the fingerprint-ridden lens of someone else. 

It fills me with discomfort that I am entirely disconnected from an island I owe my heritage to, despite being entitled to a Cypriot passport. It is an upsetting dissociation, as I attempt to grasp onto tenuous links—just to come up with threads, nothing tangible. 

The unresolved conflict in Cyprus is a matter of current affairs, with ongoing talks striving for a solution between the two de facto states. Younger generations have taken to refusing identification as either Greek or Turkish in the name of unity under a singular Cypriot identity—neither friend nor foe, but islanders. Although I aspire to share their idealistic sentiment, to usher in a new era of peace and longevity, I feel unease. A reluctance to deny my Greek identity. This is carried with a guilt, to possess more affection for a country that I have no real birth claim to. Even worse, to hold on tightly to an identity that was so divisive, it catalysed the war in the first place. When so many individuals lost their lives because of this segregation, it feels a disservice to them, and to those who survived, to be afflicted like this. I know it might be non-progressive, but my ‘Greekness’ is an intrinsic part of my character, however tainted it has been by the war. 

To an onlooker, this plight of identity may seem trivial. I once thought the same. But I am now actively pushing against that notion. Acknowledging that the shockwaves of war can reverberate through generations. My mother’s history is deeply embedded in my own. All moments, including the darkest ones, have accumulated into my existence. Detaching myself from any part of her story is like separating oil from water—however distinct, they are inseparable. 

Without complete clarity, I attempt to find comfort in the discomfort—to accept that identity is valid even when it is messy and unable to cleanly fit inside a box. In a country torn apart by Civil War, Greek and Turkish flags hang outside buildings in their respective regions. Ethnos is simultaneously celebrated and weaponised—it is a complicated affair. Rather than condemning the shape that my identity has taken, I choose to view it as a product of conflict—like so many children of Cypriot refugees. Not casualties, but collateral damage of an island’s tortured history. After all, the past paves the road that the future walks upon. 

Decades after the war, my mother’s teddy bear began to fall apart, held together by nothing more than a few, fraying threads. The woman tasked with the repair could never understand that the teddy bear was not something that needed correcting, but only required gentle care, so it could be felt and held. That its imperfections were evidence of its journey to my bed—expressing a part of its story that words simply cannot. Now, its fur is itchy, its body is rigid and unmalleable. My mother’s teddy bear was passed down to me, so I will carry it with me everywhere. If I should have children, I would like to share it with them so they too are reminded where they are from. In the years to come, I hope that I will be able to soften it, so it is easier for them to hold.

Photography by Doros Partassides published in Cyprus 1974  Days of Disaster pg 54-55.