After we fled south ‘they treated us like kilindjiri’

A family’s vivid memories of the first phase of invasion

The jets, the bombing, the perilous passage to safety with nothing more than what they were wearing, the pain of being separated from loved ones and torn from their homes and then a new kind of ordeal – being treated like a kilindjiro or ‘filth’ “just because we came over with nothing”.

The Cyprus Mail listened as a family’s women relived the events of the first phase of the Turkish invasion, on July 20, 1974.

At the time, Costas Yiannaki was 44, his wife Androulla was 35 and their children Maria, Soulla, Stavros and Charis were 13, 12, ten and six respectively.

They lived in Karavas, 12 km west of Kyrenia.

Their home today, reminiscent of the one they lost 50 years ago, is a small ‘museum’ of framed photos from before the invasion on the bookshelf, prints of Kyrenia on the walls, and throughout the house embroidered and crocheted mats and doilies in Karavas’ fervolites style – an art now part of Unesco’s intangible heritage.

I met Androulla and her daughters in their house looking through old albums in anticipation of my arrival. The faded photographs, many of them crumpled and torn, were among the very few salvaged and given to them after the invasion by relatives and friends.

Costas, a policeman at the time, was stationed in Myrtou, 30 km west of Kyrenia.

“It was a Saturday. At 5am I was awoken by the sound of planes. Costas was at work,” Androulla remembers.

Her eldest daughter Maria was staying with relatives in Bellapais, 6 km east of Kyrenia.

Androulla recalls a cousin across the road saying “the Turks have come”, so they all gathered in the nearby orchard. Androulla’s house was on the main road which was a major target.

The heat was overwhelming.

“There were about 20 of us. We tried to go to another part of the orchard and we were spotted. The planes dropped a napalm bomb just a few metres away from us.”

After that they took cover in a house.

“They were not hitting houses, but people.”

Androulla wiped away tears. “That night was hell,” she sobbed.

“The sweat was pouring off me. We didn’t have electricity. The fridges weren’t working. We didn’t have any water to drink. […] I couldn’t breathe.”

And then there was “the whistling of shells every second”.

At daybreak, Androulla went home to get food for the children. That is when the phone rang. It was Costas telling her to take the children on foot through the orchards to her sister’s house just a few hundred metres away where the Turks were not targeting. 

“I was worried about my eldest daughter,” she said, lips trembling.

Exhausted and dehydrated, Androulla took “a basket with a transistor, some underwear for the children, a pair of trousers for the youngest boy and a dress for me to take a shower and change,” she recalls as if it were yesterday.

“We had been through so much since the day before and here everything seemed normal,” she said and explained that no planes overflew that area.

It was a short respite and then, they were on the road, dodging bombs.

“Whenever a plane passed, my brother-in-law, who had three sons in the army, parked under a tree for cover. Those who knew their way around the area managed to get out. The rest, those stationed there from other places, didn’t get out. That is why we have so many missing people and dead,” she said.

Androulla’s family had only one missing person who was identified and buried in recent years.

They reached Argaki and stayed there for three nights. From there, they could see the smoke from the fires in Kyrenia.

“I couldn’t stop crying. My eyes were so swollen I couldn’t see.”

“We went to Amiantos. Costas [then still stationed in Myrtou] would come and see us. He told me Maria was in Palaichori [30 km away from Amiantos] and afterwards he went and got her,” Androulla said.

At that time, there were already 20 people in the house. “It was not easy,” she said.

Androulla’s father was still in Karavas and Costas visited him every day trying to convince him to leave. He eventually did.

Every night, Costas brought something back from Karavas before the village was taken on August 6, 1974.

Androulla recounts that on the last night Costas managed to get into Karavas, he was loading the TV into the car, when he heard heavy boots and thought it was the Turks. “Someone called out his rank tsaousis and begged Costas to take him with him to his family. So, he dropped the TV and took the man. We have remained friends all these years,” Androulla said.

From Amiantos, they all sought houses to rent in Limassol.

Just before a place for Androulla’s family was finalised, Costas was transferred to Nicosia.

At first, they couldn’t find a place to rent.

“We stayed with a cousin for a fortnight. Then we found a half-built house and stayed there for a year – the whole family and my father. Then we found a bigger house to rent and stayed there for four years,” she said.

Costas stayed with the police force and Androulla worked for the first time, making handbags during the day and picture frames in the evening, before being hired in Cyprus Airways’ catering department.

With the money they saved, they bought half a plot of land and got a loan to build a house.

“This is the house we still live in.”

Maria remembers things were very different before the invasion and she dearly hangs on to the memories of a childhood cut short.

On the day of the invasion Maria was in Bellapais.

“We looked out the window overlooking Kyrenia bay and the sea was full of warships. They were shooting towards the mountain,” Maria said.

Maria recalls people gathered to look out of that window but they were spotted and shot at. They all crammed into a Rover and left.

“There were at least ten of us in the car […] Planes spotted us and dropped bombs.”

They reached Kythrea, 24 km east of Kyrenia, and “we went to my dad’s relatives.”

“The Turks were bombing and we were praying that they wouldn’t hit us. Then the parachuters came.” And then Maria went to Palaichori before joining her parents.

Life in the south was never easy. If it wasn’t for starting from scratch, it would be prejudice.

“Some people in the south didn’t accept the refugees. We had so much in the north. They thought we were kilindjiri or ‘filth’ because we came over with nothing. It was only later that we were accepted,” Androulla, and Maria agreed.

After the checkpoints opened in 2003, Androulla and Maria visited their house in Karavas on several occasions. Unlike her mother, who drank mandarin juice from her own trees offered by the new residents, Maria refused to even knock on the door.

“We all hoped we would go back and we still hope we will,” they both said in one voice.

Costas passed away two years ago. He never lost hope.