Charita Mandoles...
a woman who suffered not only the loss of four members of her family (her husband, her father and her two brothers in law) during the Turkish Invasion in Cyprus the Summer of 1974, but also the misinformation of where their bodies lied. The search and struggle to find and bury her relative's bodies ended 34 years later, when just yesterday the burial of the bones of her relatives took place in St.Athanasios, Lemessos, Cyprus, after having found the bones in a common grave in the village "Elia Karava", in the occupied (still) by the Turkish army part of the island of Cyprus, and after having identified them with the DNA method.
Imagine that...
To be able to morn and burry your loved ones 34 years later...
34 years (!)...
408 months...
more than 12,000 days...
Charita Mandoles became a symbol and a voice for all the people who lost their loved ones during the invastion and who did not know if their people were alive or dead, where these people or their bodies rested...
As a child growing up in Cyprus, I remember her figure, her pain, her cry... The tone of her voice... A deep pain. Later on and as the time went by, growing strong friendships and falling in love, having to make a hard choice of dismissing people from my life, or even being the outcast of other people's lives, I've had my share of "loss". I know what this pain feels like... This pain that words have such limited power to even begin to describe. I guess we all have felt this kind of pain... Missing people who are away from us... Loved ones! People who we consider(ed) important to us, a big part of our lives.. a part of who we are or who we've become. We all know how "loss" feels like, how it "smells" differently every single time of our days... So, I though, if I 've had this taste before, imagine having it every morning with your morning coffee, for 34 years, not knowing if your people are alive, if they 're dead. Not knowing where these people are... Whether they still exist..
...
My mom called me to let me know she felt like going to the burial service, and so she did. The church was filled with people from all around the island. People who you could not tell if they were relatives or if they knew Charita in person. People in deep sorrow. People who felt they needed to be there anyway... Just like my mom.
Someone asked a crying man nearby:
- did you know these people? were they your closed ones? (...).
The man replied:
- they all are everyone's people...
kappa MYSTA
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