Evacuated from Cyprus following the war in 1974, I remember looking out the window of the helicopter and gasping at the sight of scattered, charred remains of a place I had known and loved. I wept. My heart ached.
For years following the war, I marveled, bewildered, at how a tranquil place—which seemed like paradise—could simply go away. Unravel, disintegrate, and become a living hell in the space of a few days.
The Lullaby Illusion, my memoir, tells my struggle to find answers, to fit together pieces of a life shattered by the coup in Cyprus on 15 July 1974, followed five days later by the Turkish invasion on 20 July 1974. Thousands of lives were drastically changed forever by the atrocities, including foreigners who happened to live there. Of which I was one.
Knowing today, almost forty years later, that more than 2,000 of the country’s one million population are still missing I mourn and am reminded that in war there are no winners—only survivors.