It’s been 30 years now, but Eleni Theodorou, 65-years-old, can still hear the war siren which woke her up on July 20, 1974. At first she thought she was having a bad dream, but a few seconds later she felt her husband jumping out of bed and turning the radio on. She screamed as she listened to the news and ran to wake her kids up. An hour later, the Theodorou family got in the car and drove away from their house.

“I was looking back at my neighborhood, my well-locked house, which seemed mad at me for leaving it behind,” said Theodorou. “A scream inside kept saying ‘I’ll be back.’”

It was Easter of 2003 when Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots could visit their respective opposite sides of the island for the first time after the Turkish invasion. Thousands refugees had been living for the day that they could return to their villages. Theodorou was among them.

She had visited the green line at Ledra Street often, but this time she was not angry or desperate, but rather nervous and fragile. She had never felt weirder in her life. “I could finally see the places I was raised in, feel the fresh air of the village on my face, and smell the wet from the morning humidity land,” she said.

Her whole family was in the car. Her kids have grown up, married and started their own families. But as they got closer to their village, more and more memories came back to them.

Soon after, Theodorou could see her house and recognize small changes in it. She got out of the car and cut a blossom from the big orange tree outside the house. She weeped as she saw the place where her name had been scratched into the trunk of the tree. She couldn’t believe it was still there.

The lady of the house was looking at them from the window. She could tell who these people were. Her husband came outside and invited them in.

“We were two families trapped in this political situation,” said Nickos, Theodorou’s husband. “I didn’t know whether I should feel mad at these people who live in my house, or be grateful for their hospitality.”

On the other side of the island, a Turkish-Cypriot man went back to his village. Costas Shoukiouroglou, 67-years-old, used to live in Pano Arhodes in Paphos, the west coast of Cyprus. His house was taken by a Greek-Cypriot family. He didn’t want to disturb anyone and so decided to take a walk instead. The alley took him to the church square where the small traditional coffee house was. He went inside.

“Despite all those years I could still recognize some people,” said Shoukiouroglou. “Time had left its marks on their faces, but so it did on mine.” He sat down and started talking to his old friends about how their lives changed after the war.

It was already night time and everyone had to go back. Theodorou didn’t look back at the house as her son was driving away. It was somebody else’s house now. She was grateful, though, to have gone back for a visit, for now she knows that nothing could be the same again.