It was Saturday morning, August 24, 1974, during a summer that marked Cyprus from the coup d'état engineered in Greece and the Turkish invasion that followed. The routine at the house of Charalambos Zenou and Paraskevoula Charalambous from Trouloi village in the Larnaca district, continued as best as possible. The two were the only ones from the family that stayed behind and did not find refuge in nearby Larnaca. The flock that Charalambos was taking care of was the reason why his wife returned to the village after a brief stay in Larnaca during the first phase of the invasion. Despite her family's pleas, Paraskevoula was adamant in returning home. In any case, one marries for better or for worse. And during this time, she had to be near her spouse. Although the Turks did not occupy Troulloi village, they harassed the remaining villagers and often looted. On that fateful Saturday, Paraskevoula got up at dawn, as she used to, cleaned her house while her husband went to the herd. She had just made trahana, a C ypriot fermented mixture of grain and yogurt and needed help in shaping the mixture. Her cousin Christina was in the village. So she decided to pay her a visit. She set off but beforehand went to the church of Agios Mamas to light a candle and pray. Without thinking too much of it, the two women were chatting outside Christina's home just like they used to, when a truck loaded with Turkish soldiers noticed them. Panicking, the women did not know where to hide and went back in the house and locked themselves in the bathroom. The soldiers stormed into the house and knocked down the door, arrested them and loaded them onto a truck where two couples were inside. As witnesses said, they took them outside the village, in an area up on a hill. They were executed with a single bullet each to the head and tossed into a well, like they meant nothing to anyone. They remained buried for decades with their families desperately looking for them. They were added to the long list of missing persons since the 1974 Turkish inv asion and occupation of the island's northern third. Paraskevoula was born in 1916 in Troulloi. She was married to Charalambos Zenou and they had three children, two daughters who emigrated at a young age to England and a son, George. A woman, worthy and strong, bearing the scars of a difficult life, she was only 58 years old when she was kidnapped. On her face you could see the struggle for survival, the work in the fields under the sizzling Cyprus sun, a stoutness which revealed she did not compromise, a dedicated, selfless mother who would do anything for her family, a greatly respected woman amongst her community. Her daughter, Chrysanthi Georgiou, was recently in Cyprus from London where she lives and we arranged to meet at the Troulloi cemetery where her mother was eventually laid to rest following the discovery of her remains. "I was the first, then it was my sister, then my other sister died, and finally my brother, I was 20 years older than him," she said. She remembers her mum like it was yesterd ay, she says. "My mother would get up as soon as the light came out, to knead, fire up the oven, bake bread, sweep and go reaping," while Chrysanthi stayed home to look after her siblings. At the age of 23 she emigrated herself, following her 19 year old sister who was already there for to years. "My mother was a very fast woman and it's like she was a prophet too. She took care of her mother-in-law. Once they were arguing and Grandma said, "When you grow old, they will do the same to you. And Paraskevoula replied, 'I won't need anyone". Like she knew what the future had in store for her. "She liked people, she took me everywhere, to Nicosia, the grocery store, to Apostolos Andreas, to Myrtou, there was no place we did not go to during the big war (World War II)". I asked her what memories she has of her mother. "I think of her during the time she came to see me at my home in England. Believe me, she was restless but also happy, she would put the kids in her arms and was very happy yet so sad that we left a nd left her, we left my brother..." Paraskevoula is also well remembered by her daughter-in-law, Georgia Charalambous, who experienced the agony of her husband George who had been looking for his mother for so many years. "We knew before that she was arrested. My husband secretly came to the village every day with Anastasia Neophytou, his cousin. In the first invasion they all left the village. After things calmed down a bit, the grandmother insisted on coming to the village because she was worried about her husband, despite the fact that we told her that the Turks are very close, she insisted on returning to her home". "The day the Turks arrested her, Paraskevou was making trahana, and she wanted help in shaping it. And she went down to the village square to ask her cousin Christina, who was arrested with her, to help her. My father-in-law knew this, while the villagers saw her going to Agios Mamas before arriving at Christina's. According to witnesses, "while she was outside her cousin's door, the Turks came with a Land Rover, saw them outside the house, they heard them, the women hid in the bathroom but the Turks, because they saw them entering, broke down the doors and arrested them. A neighbour also hid behind a large prickly pear bush when the soldiers were seen at the house. He saw what happened, but they (soldiers) did not see him", said Georgia Charalambous. However, the first time the family heard about the arrest was from another woman who was also missing but was subsequently released. The woman, from Afania was close to the family, a koumera. She said the Turks were taking the women to Ashia, together with another two couples, one of them her parents-in- law. She asked the soldiers to let them come along with them but they refused. When they released the woman from Afania, "she told my husband that his mother was captured by the Turks and was taken to Agia. My husband rushed to Ledra Palace where the prisoners of war who were released arrived at to see if he could get any other information. That was the last time we heard anything. Then we started looking for her". Mrs. Charalambous recalls the efforts she, her husband and her father-in-law made to find Paraskevoula and remembers attending events and gatherings at the Presidential Palace where they honored the missing persons. 'They kept telling us that they would be found". The pain that George felt was immense, and he could not talk about the matter, she recalled. Time passed by and both the son and the father began to lose hope. 'In 1986, my father-in-law passed away without knowing anything about the fate of his missing wife', she said. In the end, a Turkish journalist discovered that the grave was in Arsos. This Turkish woman knew our koumera and told her that the remains of the elderly from Troulloi were found in a well in Arsos. Thirty-eight years after the invasion and the information from the journalist, an on-site inspection by specialists observed a difference in the appearance of the ground. The Committee for Missing Persons decided t o start excavation there, followed by identification processes. Thus, in 2012, it was decided to excavate the site. There, a mass grave of six missing persons was discovered, and the process of identification began at the Anthropological Laboratory of the Committee on Missing Persons, located in the UN Protected Area in Nicosia. In 2016, Georgios Charalambous was notified by a committee psychologist responsible for the missing persons about the discovery of his mother's remains. Along with her, the remains of four of her fellow villagers were also identified. Together with his daughters, George went to the anthropological laboratory, and in a highly charged atmosphere, they saw Paraskevoula's bones neatly arranged on a table. On another table were the personal belongings of the six murdered individuals (jewelry, boots, slippers, socks). As Irini, George's daughter, said, "we were informed that grandmother was shot in the head in cold blood. The murder took place at the site where the remains were found. Spec ifically, it was a well that had been covered with soil. Then my father was asked if any of the jewelry belonged to his mother. My father replied, 'No, my mother was poor.' However, he recognized her boots, which she was wearing even though she was abducted in August, as she was in the fields all day." The boots and the socks that Paraskevoula wore remained intact. They were placed in the small coffin which stored her remains. 'We decided not to open it. The day they were captured was August 24, 1974. The identification was completed in 2017; they simply waited until everyone was identified before announcing it to us. However, we had information that her bones had been found', said Mrs. Georgia. The funeral of the five villagers was held with honors befitting heroes on February 11, 2017, at the church in Troulloi. Christina's funeral took place much later when her remains were identified by distant relatives. When asked what she remembers about her mother-in-law, Mrs. Georgia says, "She was always working, never stopped. She would knead dough, make baskets until the end, she was famous for making baskets. She went to the fields, helped anyone in the village who needed her, especially during childbirth, washed clothes, always doing something extra for money because she was a poor woman". Visibly moved, Mrs. Georgia said "I am always moved when I remember her, because I knew her, not for many years. She was happy because we gave her name to our daughter, Paraskevoula." Source: Cyprus News Agency