It's time for Euro...

With Sweden's 'Euphoria' still swimming in our heads after the great Eurovision party we are now embraced with Euro 2012. Countries are competing with professionalism for the great trophy presenting their best and most talented players and even those not usually interested in football will be transfixed to their screens.

In Cyprus the Euro is eagerly awaited and pubs and cafeterias decorated with multi-coloured flags will gain the money they lost in the dead winter season, beer, dishes and dips being consumed with delight. Since Cyprus didn't qualify, all our eyes will be turned to Greece which has attracted more than its fair share of world attention in the past year. Last night's game between Greece and Poland was an eventful and promising one which could have ended in a mini celebration. It was unlucky.

Flashback. Euro 2004. Eight years ago. It was a great year for Greece as she won the Euro 2004 and was preparing to host the Olympic Games. Cyprus was taken along in the excitement. After Greece winning the Euro 2004, in a patriotic gesture Cypriots lined the streets and waved the Greek flag with pride. Truck drivers honked their loud horns down the coastal road in Limassol brimming with people in a state of delirium. I remember because I was in the centre of it all and took part in the celebrating.

The Euro 2012 now comes at a pivotal time for Greece.On the brink of disaster, Greece faces a long and dark road which may also be a very lonely one.Elections are to be held next Sunday. What will be the outcome? Nobody truly knows, but everyone is bracing themselves for the worst, a possible return to the drahma. In this time of turmoil, there is no mood left for patriotic flag waving as we saw back in Euro 2004 confidences being deflated. It is so strange how things change, how a nation can go from greatness and glory to rock bottom. Many throughout history have tasted that bitter defeat, Germany being one.

Greece.Our histories, struggles and our joys have always been so closely intertwined and the hot and stultifying breeze of discontent and economic upheaval has already reached our shores. In the midst of football celebration and expectant flag waving all with good intention, Greece goes to vote once again and faces cumbersome decision making where it must choose whether it really is time for Euro.

Britain...From Colonialism to Friendship

 On obtaining Cyprus in 1878 Queen Victoria received the news with delight exclaiming, "Oh Dizzy, you are so full of surprises!" Dizzy referring to Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister at the time. The news it could be argued was received with as much delight by the locals, being a welcome break from the stifling oppression of Ottoman rule.

The British found the island in disarray and tried in their traditional fashion to restore some semblance of order, creating roads and buildings and an infrastructure which we can be grateful for today. It was a generally peaceful time, only until civil unrest broke out when Cypriots began to demand their independence. 

A group of freedom fighters sprang up named EOKA, made up of intellectuals and also common men who wished for union with Greece. It got ugly and some of these men died heroically in their struggle to free their island from what they called their oppressors. It shouldn't have cost lives and in fact there were many Cypriots who wanted it to be done peacefully, as is characterized so beautifully in Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, his award-winning book about that troublesome time when despite the conflicts he made so many good friends. Forced to leave the island at the end and some of the locals turning against him, he finds a ray of hope in the words of 60 year old Andreas whose son won a scholarship to study in London and did not join EOKA. Quoting a village proverb which reflects hope for the future, old Andreas says  "Next year's wine is the sweetest." With a heavy heart Durrell leaves the island yet chooses to add the words of the taxi driver who takes him to the airport, who tells him "even Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them."

Durrell's words run deep and after the years which followed the Turkish invasion in 1974 the British became our friends again, offering homes to the thousands who left the island for Britain. I recall a story my father used to tell when there was anyone who condemned the Brits. He would say his friend who left after the invasion for Britain was given a house "but also furniture and a TV. The Greeks only gave my brother-in-law coupons.What does that tell you?!" It just comes to show that those you perceive as your enemies may become your closest friends and allies and vice versa.

 Today the British come to Cyprus not as colonizers but as eager tourists. They sit and enjoy a full English breakfast at a reasonable price at the many English style pubs dotted in towns across the island. The beer too is just as good and all under the sun. For a Brit you can't get better than that. I've always admired the ease and simplicity of the Briton when on holiday and their delight in the simplest of pleasures.

Since English is the second official language, there is no problem in communicating, road signs are in English, we drive on the same side, a lot is in fact English which makes it a popular place to move to. You can find many British living in Paphos but also in Limassol and the surrounding villages.

 The United Kingdom still boasts sovereign bases on the island where those living there generally keep to themselves. Pompous politicians who want to spill out cheap nationalistic garbage make their infrequent complaints about this foreign presence but are secretly glad to have a safety net of bases on the island. Who else do you turn to when there is a forest fire you can't control? It's always been the British.

 Cypriots take delight in sending their children to the best British universities, a symbol of success and affluence. Over the years there has grown a strong bond of friendship between Britain and Cyprus and which still continues today.

After reading Lawrence Durrell's book I had a strong desire to ask him what he thought of present Cyprus.Would he feel saddened at what we have become? Would he like many, long for the carefree times and authenticity of the past? In his brief time in Cyprus he grew to love the island very much and this is reflected in his writing. He writes and descibes the natural beauty which doesn't change despite the troubled, dark times and which is intermingled with human interraction and feeling. I end with a piece taken from his book, describing a scene near Bellapaix Abbey, Kyrenia:

"And the Abbey itself was there, fading in the last magnetic flush from the horizon, with its quiet groups of coffee-drinkers and card-players under the Tree of Idleness. At full moon we dined there, barefooted on the dark grass, to watch the lights winking away along the fretted coast...Here in the striped darkness, dotted with pools of luminous moonlight, we walked and talked, the smell of roses and wine and cigars mingling with the humbler scent of the limes, or the whiffs of bruised sage coming to us from the face of the mountain behind where Buffavento rose slowly to meet the moon, like a mailed fist." His words illustrate an Englishman's love and admiration for an island, seeing beyond the harsh politics.

Reflections...Waiting for the Future...

When the borders opened in the North back in 2003, I was curious like many to go and have a look. I remember the queues of cars waiting to be "checked-in" as such. Occupied Cyprus was altogether unknown to me in reality. It was always a mythical place from the stories I had heard in my childhood by my grandparents, uncles and aunts and parents of course. It was a land faraway, a land of the past, a past better than the present where people were younger, happier and healthier, where there were only celebrations, great friendships and a better, more genuine life. In none of the stories did I get a sense of bitterness and conflict, only of nostalgia, nostalgia which was accompanied by a deep and mournful sigh at the end of each story for something that was dearly missed.

On a hot day in May my grandparents, parents and I packed ourselves in the car on a journey that would change us. Morphou was our first destination. I'll never forget my mother's grief-stricken tears when she saw her house, lying alone and abandoned, although there were people living in it at the time. My mother's tears were tears which someone sheds when meeting a long lost friend after many years. The house represented her childhood, the hours spent in the garden, the good times and the laughter. One could only imagine it. The jasmine had gone, the white concrete pillars of the front porch had disappeared only left with harsh metal poles to keep it standing. 

Inside only little improvements had been made.The young couple who occupied the house at the time were quite poor, the husband living on pittance by working in one of many casinos which had mushroomed up from nowhere in Kyrenia and the wife sold clothes. I remember they had a young son. They welcomed us nevertheless into the house and offered us refreshment. We sat and had a chat but my grandparents couldn't bear to stay long, the sight of their old home was too painful.

My most memorable experience of that day remains the visit to my mother's old primary school. Parking outside to eat our sandwiches, we were approached by a group of school children attending their afternoon lessons. They came running up to us, enthusiastically introducing themselves. They suddenly took my mother's hand and led her to her old playground. That moment  I witnessed my mother's beaming face of surprise as she was led by the children and transported to the childhood innocence of her school years. I keep a photograph of that moment, me surrounded by those young smiling faces, faces bright and intelligent, willing to learn and to embrace the future. I was reluctant to leave them.

We left Morphou and headed off to see Kyrenia, the only developed part of occupied Cyprus. We sat at the harbour watching the crowded yachts bobbing up and down and the lazy waiters trying to communicate in English. We all sat there in deep thought. The day had brought anticipation, shock and then a sort of relief in finally seeing the reality of it all. Those young smiling faces had been the only pleasure. The future, that flitting grey future.

A lot has happened since that day, nine years have passed and those young faces staring back at me now in the photograph have reached young adulthood. What has become of them I wonder? What shape have their young minds taken? They are the new generation of Turkish -Cypriots now, just like the new generation of Greek- Cypriots prodding along, fighting to be heard trying to survive. Cyprus lives like everyone else in an era of economic unrest and unemployment, of political upheaval where nothing is certain, of i-phones and Facebook and mediocre politicians with their bombast pleads and demands. Yet one thing remains, cut up and knotted up and put into little neat agendas, but still glaringly obvious: The Cyprus Problem.

It seems it will be a legacy left to be solved by this younger generation and what a heavy burden of a legacy that will be. I still have an inkling of hope however, like many among me and as they say, hope is always the last thing to die.