His face and body were burnt by the sun, his eyes bloodshot with salt- water, gazing far away at the sea - they were the eyes of a seaman. He was taciturn, sturdy and agile.
His shop - at 94 Ellados Street - was full of sponges, scuba diving apparatus and spearguns. You would see him walking towards the sea, always in a hurry, sometimes alone, sometimes with strangers, with full diving gear, a real sea dog, always ready to fight with the elements of the deep. Every time he came back he was carrying enormous turtles, sponges and shells, constantly looking back, as if his ears heard the call of the sea. Arris's boat was very well known in Kyrenia harbour, always set to put to sea again, in the same sea that had bewitched his father, captain Mattheos Kariolou. He could never disown or give it up. It was like life that is given to you as a gift and you have to live it.
In order to be able to challenge it, as a youngster he used to sleep with a peg in his nose, an exercise which trained him to breathe through his mouth when he dived to the bottom of the sea.
He used to talk about the unique beauty of the marine world, which he discovered and got acquainted with when he dived. He knew about stormy weather, calm and fair winds, rocks and reefs, the coves and whirlpools of the Kyrenia sea and the one beyond it that reached out as far as the coast of Asia Minor, the sea of Cilicia.
He always knew about the sea, which came to be his destiny. He loved it so much that every time its unclouded view was threatened he fought like a councillor to prevent the construction of buildings that would blur it.
Such was his love for the sea that one day the gods were appeased and promised to unfold a secret to him. So one winter day the depths of the sea revealed to him the trails of a unique relic of antiquity.
It was a ship that was buried in the mud, flora and silence. There was a heap of amphorae and a decomposed wooden body... Little fish were slithering over the wreck. The diver's breath was the only sound to be heard. The bubbles of air signified the only motion. In the twilight of the deep the diver was lost in the magic of a dreamworld.
"It was the most stirring moment in my life," he later confided to friends and relatives. He left without leaving a sign of reconnaissance. It was not until he had dived repeatedly that, with Mount Pentadactylos and Kyrenia Castle as his guiding posts, he managed to locate it again. He talked about the discovery, he saw the authorities and, because he believed that the wreck belonged to Kyrenia, he wanted it to be studied by Cypriot specialists.
But things turned out differently. The ship was raised, reconstructed and eventually kept in the custody of the Castle. But, together with its invaluable cargo, it did not for long enjoy public admiration as an archaeological underwater find in its last refuge.
In the summer of 1974, after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, he was held hostage in the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia with 700 other civilians. He and his family were uprooted from their home and forced to seek refuge in the free areas of the south. They lived in Larnaca deprived of their home town and its ship until one day Andreas left his last breath in a rescue attempt to revive, at 100 ft. a Canadian diver whose life was in danger, by offering him his own air.
He was carried away by the same sea that surrounds Kyrenia. The cycle of his life began, unfolded and ended in the sea.
A seaman's fate binds up life and death with water knots until one day, in a moment of storm or calm, the mariner vanishes in the water, as a libation to Poseidon, god of the sea.


See also

The Great Man

who is no longer among us
by G.Sertis.

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Last Updated: Tuesday, May 28, 1996