A life through a friend's lens.

Byline: Anna Hassapi

WHEN RAF pilot Ronnie Bencke took his stunning collection of photos of Yialousa in the early 1970s, he was recording far, far more than happy family holidays in a rural idyll.

Little did he know then that his shots of the deaf and dumb village barber cutting Ronnie's young son's hair, or those of the many leisurely meals at the Shiambellos hotel, whose owners became such close friends, were all glimpses of a way of life about to be destroyed forever.

For, after spending the best part of three years regularly staying in the village, learning its ways, making friends and taking photos of all that they saw, the Bencke family left Cyprus in 1973, just months before the Turkish invasion left Yialousa in the occupied areas.

Ronnie and his wife Terry, who moved first to the UK and then to Australia, never forgot the Shiambellos family, but it was not until this year that they managed to track down, contact and now visit the family who had helped make their lives in Cyprus so memorable.

"Nicos and Andrianna Shiambellos were lovely people. Nicos was a charming, very friendly man. We became very close friends and would frequently go to Yialousa to see the Shiambellos family," said Ronnie.

Ronnie, who flew a Vulcan nuclear bomber, had come to Cyprus with Terry in 1969, when his squadron was stationed at Akrotiri. His first encounter with Yialousa and the Shiambellos family was quite by chance.

The couple had been visited by a recently widowed friend and her young daughter and they were on their way to visit the Karpass peninsula when their friend asked them to stop so she could feed her baby. They stopped in Yialousa where they found the Shiambellos hotel.

"We stayed, and very quickly we became very good friends with the family," said Ronny. Trips to Yialousa soon became an important part of their lives.

The Bencke's son, Tom, who was a toddler at the time soon became friends with the Shiambellos children: Flora, Demetris, Maria, Yiannis, Christos and Giorgos.

"The Shiambellos children would take care of Tom and he became a very loved little boy. Nicos used to call him 'Mr Thompson', which was rather special," said Terry.

Through their frequent visits to Yialousa village, Terry and Ronnie soon got to know all the village characters, and experienced the serene pace of its daily life. Quite a few villagers, including Nicos, spoke good English from years spent in England in the 1950s and 60s.

"They were lovely people who were living lives very different to ours. It was a different world," said Ronnie.

An avid photographer, Ronnie captured the village and its people through his Pentax camera and has brought with him his valuable record of pictures. "I never forgot the Shiambellos family because we had these photos that reminded us of them. I kept thinking that I should do something to find them," said Ronnie.

When Ronnie and Terry heard about the invasion their first concern was for their friends. "We knew we could not contact them, because in those days it was not easy to make contact," he said.

On two occasions over the years, however, the Benckes went to the Cyprus High Commission in Canberra in a bid to track down the Shiambellos family, but without success. "This year I decided that now I've retired I would put more effort into finding the family," he said.

In the end it was a simple Google search that provided the answer they had sought for so long. "I typed in 'Shiambellos' on Google and two things came up: one was Christos Shambellos on Facebook and the other was the site of the Shambellos restaurant in Pano Polemidia. I was over the moon!" said Ronnie.

The Benckes e-mailed Christos, who was one year-old when they had left Cyprus and sent him some pictures of his family in Yialousa. Although Nicos and Andrianna, the couple's friends have passed away, his older children remembered the RAF pilot who used to visit them, and invited him to come to Cyprus.

"When Ronny sent us the pictures we realised who he was. We told him it would be our pleasure to have him with us and take him to Yialousa. We appreciate these people who still remember our family," said Christos Shiambellos.

In October the Benckes returned to Cyprus after 36 years. The promised trip back to Yialousa was inevitably sad, both because of what they saw and what they learned about the Shiambellos' last days in their village.

"It was hard for us to go back there. We had to go through Customs and Passport check; it was as if we were going into another country. It wasn't the town that we knew. All buildings look ramshackled, and not looked after, and particularly Shiambellos hotel. I could have cried," said Ronnie.

The hotel is now occupied by a German woman, and the family house by a Turkish family. "The German lady told us 'This is my house' and walked back upstairs quickly. She didn't want to talk to us. We were a bit puzzled. The house has not been looked after."

After the invasion the Shiambellos family managed to remain in Yialousa for a few years and even operated their hotel. "During that time our customers were UN staff, doctors, and officials. Rauf Denktash's father, who was a lawyer, had also stayed with us then," said Christos.

Eventually, however, the Shiambellos family was forced to leave and came to Limassol as refugees, leaving behind the family hotel that their grandfather had opened in 1920. "We did not want to leave, but one night Turkish soldiers came to our house and arrested my father. They brought him back 18 days later. Things got very strained in Yialousa. We left in 1976 and the whole village left with us, except for a fisherman," he said.

"They were putting pressure on us to leave Yialousa because they wanted to settle people there from Kokkina village. As soon as we left a truck full of people came. There was no future for us there, the school had closed, everything had closed."

The Shiambellos family, however, like so many refugees attempted to keep alive some semblance of their past lives when they opened their restaurant, called 'Shiambellos', in their present home of Pano Polemidia.

For the Shiambellos family, the emotional trip back to the shared past of the two families has had an added poignancy that Ronnie could not have foreseen when he typed 'Shiambellos' into his search engine. Like so many villagers of the time, refugees in particular, the family owns only a few photographs of those days. They didn't have a single one of all the family together.

Ronnie's vast collection not just of family baptisms and other celebrations, but also of their everyday village life, has brought back to life a family history.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2009

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