On a warm July morning in 1974, 10-year-old Anastasia Di Loreto (née Karatzia) was jolted awake by the sound of bombs falling on Kyrenia.
“It was 5:30 am. I was sharing the bed with my mother. She jumped up and screamed, ‘It’s the Turks!’” Anastasia recalls. “We had no phone, no car. My father, a firefighter, was on night shift. Mum ran to the neighbours to call dad. Somehow, she got through. He said, ‘Leave now for Bellapais. I’ll find you.’”
That morning, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, triggered by a Greek-backed coup, marked the end of her childhood. The attack divided the island and displaced over 150,000 Greek Cypriots.
Anastasia remembers her early years in Kyrenia fondly. She was the third of four children in a house near the port. On clear days, she’d climb to the roof and spot Turkey’s shore.
“We had chickens, rabbits, a dog, vines with beautiful grapes. My mother boiled sheets in a backyard barrel; no washing machine. We walked to school, lined up for our free bread roll and milk (sisitio). Life was simple, but good,” she says.
Afternoons meant strolls for ice cream, visits to Archangelos Michael Church, and excursions to the Kyrenia castle. “I remember the cannons. We were told stories of past wars, but never imagined living through one.”
The week before the invasion, Anastasia and her mother saw a Turkish plane flying unusually low. “It felt wrong. Something was coming.”
When the bombs fell on July 20th, 1974, the Karatzias family fled; crammed into a neighbour’s car en route to Bellapais, a mountain village.
“We spent the night in a concrete room with glass walls. Around 60 people lying side by side. Some cried, others smoked, and people yelled at them to stop, terrified the Turkish planes would spot us,” Anastasia explains.
The next morning, as they walked through orchards, a Turkish fighter plane opened fire. “We dropped under the trees. A donkey was killed nearby. That’s when I realised they’re trying to kill us.”
From the hills, they saw Kyrenia’s harbour swarming with Turkish warships. Her father urged them inland to Kythrea. “There were two roads: left or right. Dad chose left to avoid the military barracks. We later heard that those who went right were killed.”
They eventually reached Strovolos in Nicosia, where her uncle lived. Though her father kept his government job, they weren’t classified as refugees. “They deducted money from his salary to help other refugees, but we weren’t eligible. With four kids and rent to pay, he was angry.”
During the second wave of attacks on August 15th, Anastasia watched bombs fall over Pentadaktylos from their apartment window.
“We had left everything. No toys, no photos, no jewellery. Just the clothes on our back. Mum had said, ‘We’ll return’,” she says,
By November 1975, the family migrated to Australia, sponsored by an aunt in Melbourne. “I didn’t want to leave. I loved school and my friends. My older brothers struggled even more.”
Decades later, in 2008, Anastasia returned to Kyrenia with her sons. Her childhood home was gone, six apartment blocks now in its place.
“The town was unrecognisable. The empty blocks I remembered were built on. The cemetery in my dad’s village was overgrown. The graves and church were vandalised. My grandmother’s grave had been desecrated,” she explains.
At Pentemilli (Five Mile) Beach, where she once swam with her father, she found a towering Turkish monument. “So much blood was shed there; where the Turkish army entered Kyrenia. Now it’s a symbol of their ‘glory.’”
At the fire station where her father once worked, Turkish firefighters welcomed her. But when she took a video, she was detained for two hours. “They asked why I was filming. I told them I wanted to show my sick father in Melbourne who used to work there. They checked our cameras, finally letting us go.”
Now, living in Melbourne, Anastasia reflects on the life she lost.
“I wonder who I’d be if the war hadn’t happened. I was just a child. What I lived through ended my childhood early. The images are still vivid. With what’s happening in the world today, it all comes back,” she says.
“You never get over it. Never.”
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