“My father was missing in Cyprus”

On the program “Studio 4” on Tuesday afternoon (27/02) the well-known singer was hosted Constantine (Constantinou)She talked about her career and life, while a large part of the interview was devoted to her Cypriot origin and the great wound to her homeland. Turkish invasion.

Speaking about what was “engraved” in it and how she and her family lived through the events of the war, she said at the beginning: “For a child to live through war… To have a missing father, to have two brothers who were arrested… I went with my brother to the second invasion of our uncle's village, which was close to Famagusta, to escape the bombing. We went there because there was no danger, supposedly. The Turks entered and we came out under bullets and tank fire. This is engraved in me.”

Description: “What shocked me happened two weeks before the invasion, when the coup happened. A truce was reached, and we went to the supermarket.”. Suddenly they set up a barricade in front of the supermarket. A jeep stopped, and those inside the car started running to escape, and they were shooting at them with firearms. They took one of them, put him on the sidewalk across the street, and two of them were holding him and two of them came with a machine gun and… they left him there and left. They happened before our eyes. These are very difficult images, and I would say you carry them within you. I can't watch Famagusta because I feel it will scratch my wounds, so I want to protect myself“.

At another point, Constantine said: “As long as my mother was alive we didn't talk about all this. But then when we wanted to know the details… One of the brothers wanted to recall and tell some events, my sister wanted to erase it completely. You cannot get into the psychology of people who lived in captivity. I'm confused, I don't know if I want to talk about it or not. I find that when I refer to them, I don't feel well, and it bothers me when I talk about the events in Cyprus. But we have to mention it, as much as we feel like it, because it tends to be forgotten. After 50 years, we see that the new generations do not understand what happened and that these places belong to us.”

Her mother, as the singer stated, until her death in 2007, believed that her husband was alive. “Since 2003, I stopped hoping for my father's return. I remember that my mother was alive, I gave an interview and said that years have passed and if we find my father, we will find him in some grave. My mother said to me: How did you lure my daughter and say this? Your father lives.“He believed it.”

“Cyprus has been left to its own devices. We are very much part of Hellenism. Fifty years have passed, and the missing have not returned. Even now they are trying to find where they were taken.” Constantine concluded.