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.