My grandfather’s head and body lay severed for seven months before he was found

Charalambos Stylianou, a recent addition to the Cyprus Mail’s newsroom, recounts the death of his grandfather amidst the horror of the Turkish invasion launched on July 20, 1974

July 20 marks 51 years since Turkish forces invaded Cyprus in 1974, dividing the island and leaving thousands dead, missing or displaced. For one family in the Limassol district, the trauma was particularly brutal.

Among the countless Cypriots caught in the violence was my grandfather, Christodoulos Menelaou, a 44-year-old father of ten from the village of Vouni, who vanished during the invasion.

My mother and Christodoulos’ daughter Patra was just four at the time.

“My father is a hero. His memory keeps us strong, even after all these years,” she told the Sunday Mail.

Seven months after Christodoulos vanished, in the chill of February 1975, a health worker named Agathocles Savva came upon a scene that would haunt him for life: a lifeless body, headless and largely decomposed, lay sprawled in a dry riverbed near Avdimou. The flesh had surrendered to the months of summer sun and winter rain. Some 20 metres away, lay his skull.

Savva ran to alert authorities. It later emerged that Christodoulos had likely been seized by Turkish soldiers in Paramali, a village inside the British base zone of Episkopi. He was believed to have been taken near a Turkish camp and executed.

By the time his remains were returned to Vouni, it was four in the afternoon. Church bells tolled as villagers gathered in silence.

Confirmation of his death shattered the family. His widow Despina was left to raise 10 children alone, aged between two and 17. Their home was a cramped ground-floor room, no more than 12 by eight metres, filled with straw, jars, baskets and two worn mattresses.

“The heart of every sensitive person broke at the sight,” a villager later said. “Without help, eleven mouths couldn’t survive.”

Now 90 years old, Despina still lives with the trauma. After a serious fall left her with a broken hip, she struggles to walk or speak, but her memories often return to the summer of 1974, and tears still come easily.

“She tries to mourn, but her illness makes her pain even sharper,” Patra said.

In the chaos that followed the Turkish invasion, Despina and six of her children were dragged from their home in Vouni by Turkish soldiers. Armed men stormed through villages, rounding up families without warning. During the shouting and gunfire, four-year-old Patra struggled to climb down from a wall where she had been sitting. One Turkish soldier paused, just for a moment, and gently lifted her into his arms, helping her rejoin her mother and siblings.

“I remember it clearly,” Patra said, her voice soft with memory.

“I was too small to get down on my own. That soldier picked me up. He didn’t say anything, he just helped us reach the others. That moment of kindness, it stayed with me all my life.”

But such kindness was rare. Patra still hears the gunfire in her mind. She and her siblings hid in animal pens, thinking it was all a game, too young to understand that people were being killed.

Her 17-year-old brother Melios tried to run but was shot in the chest, the bullet striking just inches from his heart. He collapsed, weak and bleeding. Nearby, a woman hiding inside a wood-fired bread oven waited in silence, fearing for her life. When the danger had passed, she cautiously emerged, gently lifted the wounded teenager onto a donkey, and made the slow journey to a nearby village. From there, he was rushed to hospital.

“Thankfully, my brother survived,” Patra said.

“But the scar and the hole from the bullet are still there.”

Christodoulos Menelaou is now listed as one of the fallen heroes of 1974. His grave in Vouni sits beneath fluttering flags, surrounded by Cypress trees. His name is included on the Vouni community council website.

Each year, on July 20, Cyprus marks the invasion with ceremonies and memorials. Church bells ring across the island. For families like the Menelaous’, the day is not just about history. It is personal.