Filenews 15 February 2026 - by Andreas Tzionis
Death is an end. You can mourn him. Out of the ashes of destruction you can rebuild. But you can't put the uncertainty of absence to sleep. So in Cyprus in 1974, time stopped. It did not stop at the trenches, on the battlefield, in the destroyed houses, in the deaths and in the rapes. It stopped in the lives of those who are missing, and of their loved ones who continue to search for them. Pain and waiting created a distorted year, like a dry, but immortal stream. Time in the light of eternity.
On July 20, 1974, in a Turkish prison, Billy Hayes, a young American, was counting the days of his own captivity for an illegal drug trip. His own story had an end. He escaped, crossed the Greek border and from there returned to his homeland. His experience became a book and eventually a movie, 1978's Midnight Express. The film was a huge success, won an Oscar and engraved a harsh image of Turkish prisons in the collective memory.
Cyprus, on the other hand, had no respite. For the families of the missing, there was no "after". There were only rumours, testimonies, whispers about camps, cities and prisons. Among them is Adana. Nothing certain. Just the need to believe that your man lives somewhere. Whatever he expects. That it can be saved.
In 1979, five years after the invasion, despair reached Hollywood. In the archive of Andros Nikolaidis, then a member of the diplomatic mission in Washington, a document is preserved. An attempt to locate Billy Hayes, in the hope that the man who had experienced the cruelty of Turkish prisons would know something about the missing persons of Cyprus.
The document reveals a lot. Hayes was even hiding in his own country, fearing that the Turks would track him down. He had heard about Cypriot prisoners who had been transferred to Adana, but he did not know their fate. Nevertheless, he gave three names of American lifers held there, trying to offer what he could.
The film Midnight Express was criticized for exaggeration and dramatization, in a climate of strong Turkish pressure on the writer and director Oliver Stone. They themselves later spoke of the fear they experienced for decades after the screening.
For the Cypriot government, however, these were not just a narrative or a cinematic exaggeration. It was a thread of hope. A small thread that they could hold onto. A thread that might have given information, maybe brought comfort. And this need, anxiety and faith were stronger than reason.
Half a century later, this document stood before me. I had seen the film as a child and it had shocked me. I never dared to see her again. And yet, even the memory of her was enough to shake me.
The document does not shout. He doesn't blame. It only reminds us that, at a certain moment in 1979, some people refused to stop looking.
The story of Billy Hayes was made into a movie. His narration is complete. The global community saw the prison and the escape, but the missing people of Cyprus never escaped from the prison of silence. Because where the film ends, Cyprus remains frozen in the past, in the waiting room. No end credits.
The archive of Andros Nikolaidis is kept at the Tassos Papadopoulos Research Center (K.M.T.P.).
*Researcher at the K.M.T.P.
