Troulloi woman’s execution and decades-long search for remains

‘Panicking, we hid in the bathroom’

By Emilia Christofi

It was a Saturday morning, August 24, 1974, ten days after the second wave of the Turkish invasion.

Charalambos Zenou and Paraskevoula Charalambous from Troulloi village in the Larnaca district were the only two people from their immediate family who decided not to seek refuge in Larnaca and remained at their home.

Although the Turks did not occupy Troulloi, they harassed the remaining villagers and often looted their houses.

On that fateful Saturday, Paraskevoula, 58, got up at dawn as usual to clean her house while her husband tended their herd of animals.

She was making soup and needed help so she went to her cousin Christina’s. The two women were chatting outside when a truck loaded with Turkish soldiers noticed them.

Panicking, the women did not know where to hide and went back in the house, locking themselves in the bathroom. The soldiers stormed into the house and knocked down the door, arrested them and loaded them onto a truck with two couples.

Witnesses said they were taken outside the village and all executed with a single bullet to the head and then tossed into a well.

They remained buried there for decades while their families looked for them, their names ending up on the list of missing persons.

Paraskevoula was born in 1916 in Troulloi. She married Charalambos Zenou and they had three children, two daughters who emigrated at a young age to England and a son, George.

Her daughter, Chrysanthi Georgiou, was recently in Cyprus.

She said her mother was eventually laid to rest at Troulloi cemetery following the discovery of her remains.

“My mother would get up as soon as the sun came up, to knead, fire up the oven, bake bread, sweep and go to the fields,” Chrysanthi said, while she would take care of her siblings.

Chrysanthi emigrated when she was 23, following her 19-year-old sister who had already been in the UK for two years.

“I think of her during the time she came to see me at my home in England. She was restless but also happy, she would take the kids in her arms and was very happy yet so sad that we left, and left her…”

Paraskevoula is also well remembered by her daughter-in-law, Georgia Charalambous.

The first time the family heard about the arrest was from another woman who was also abducted but subsequently released.

“When they released the woman from Afania, she told my husband that his mother was captured by the Turks and was taken to Ayia,” said Georgia.

“My husband rushed to the Ledra Palace where the prisoners of war were usually released. He went to see if he could get any other information. That was the last time we heard anything.”

Georgia recalled the efforts she, her husband and her father-in-law made to find Paraskevoula and attended all of the events and gatherings for the missing.

“They kept telling us that they would be found.” The pain that George felt was immense, and he could not talk about it, she added.

As time passed both the son and the father began to lose hope. “In 1986, my father-in-law passed away without knowing the fate of his missing wife,” Georgia said.

In the end, a Turkish journalist discovered that Paraskevoula’s 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,” she added.

Thirty-eight years after the invasion and with the information from the journalist, following an on-site inspection, the Committee for Missing Persons decided to start excavations.

There, multiple graves with the remains of six people was uncovered and the process of identification began.

In 2016, George was notified about the discovery of his mother’s remains.

The remains of four of her fellow villagers were also identified. Together with his daughters, George went to the anthropological laboratory, and saw Paraskevoula’s identified remains.

On another table were the personal belongings of the six individuals (jewellery, boots, slippers, socks).

“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. Specifically, it was a well that had been covered with soil. Then my father was asked if any of the jewellery belonged to his mother. My father replied, ‘No, my mother was poor.’ However, he recognised her boots,” George’s daughter Irene said.

Their funeral was held with heroes’ honours on February 11, 2017, at the church in Troulloi.