ADULTS BOOK LAND OF MOTHER DOLOROSA (#30125)

THODORIS PAPATHEODOROU - LAND OF MOTHER DOLOROSA

I open and close my eyelids hastily as I recover from the blow. The first thing I feel beside me, my three boys, my whole life.
"Mom..." "Mama..."
Twice. Two voices. I'm mistaken. My God, I'm mistaken. My life is not whole. It's incomplete. One voice less. One life less.
"Where?" I scream, and my soul tears apart. "Where is my other son?"
Cyprus, kissed by the sea and the sun. Toiled, however, under colonizers. When the time comes, its people stand upright, alone, against an empire. They fight and hope. They hurt and bleed.
First under the gallows of the English. And then, against the Turk. The invader who drowned the island in blood that black summer of '74. The summer of the dead, the prisoners, the uprooted, the thousands missing.
Maritsa left with an empty, orphaned embrace. Eleni who refuses to mourn because they didn't give her a body to lament. Vagorakis standing all day with a photograph of a lost father hanging on his young chest. Nikos, Andreas, Markos, black and white images in front of burning candles.
Men, women, children, our siblings in Cyprus. This is their justice and their tears. This is their struggle.