Newsroom
On a quiet stretch of land in the occupied Famagusta district, a few former residents of this long-abandoned Greek Cypriot village have returned with shovels, notebooks and determination. What they are trying to recover is not only a cemetery, but a piece of their own history.
This week, volunteers from Prastio, refugees since the Turkish invasion of 1974, unearthed dozens of weathered grave crosses scattered across the eastern edge of the village burial ground. Each cross, many belonging to villagers who died before the war, had been displaced or buried under years of neglect.
Working without official funding, the group catalogued the crosses, gathered them for safekeeping, and began the painstaking process of identifying where each once stood. Their goal is to eventually restore the cemetery to its original state, cross by cross.
On Saturday, November 1, residents of Prastio are expected to make a rare visit to their occupied village. They will walk through the cemetery grounds, searching for family names among the recovered crosses and helping to recall the original locations of graves.
To guide the effort, organizers have prepared topographical maps of the site. Visitors will be asked to note any information they can remember about the layout of the graves. Each contribution will be documented and entered into a digital archive, part of a fragile, deeply personal attempt to reclaim a place that, for decades, existed only in memory.
With information from 24news.
