He chose to stay, and did not run

This Sunday, 19 July, the church of Agios Andreas in the Oroklini refugee settlement will hold the annual memorial service for Themis Dimitriadis, a familiar, much-loved face from my childhood in occupied Kato Deryneia, who was killed fighting during the Turkish invasion of 1974. He was a little older than me, born in 1956, and was finally laid to rest ten years ago, in 2016.

But he wasn’t 60. He was 18. Just as he was that terrible July, when he found himself with his comrades of the 181st...