Diary

I went to see the Voice of Blood II documentary at north Nicosia’s Ataturk Cultural Centre.

It is an account of the mass killing of Turkish Cypriots in the villages of Aloa, Maratha and Sandalari in Famagusta district in 1974.

Greek Cypriot director of the film Tony Angastiniotis is, according to his own words, “a former Eoka-B supporter who used to say a good Turk is a dead Turk” and meeting him was my main reason for attending. To be honest, I wondered if he was in full command of his mental faculties. I don’t want anybody to get me wrong, so let me explain: although producing such a documentary doesn’t automatically prove anybody’s madness, the fact that Angastiniotis did it in the north and is at present more or less, staying there, is, to put it mildly, quite unique for a Greek Cypriot. Plus I read in the Turkish Cypriot press that he has taken part in some controversial meetings so I wanted to be able to judge it all for myself.

The film is very touching and includes some spine-chilling footage. An interview with the man who, as 14-year-old boy, discovered the bodies of his missing neighbours, including his schoolmates, is one of the most moving I have ever seen, and believe me, as a Pole, I know what I am saying. As for Angastiniotis, OK, he is an eccentric but what he said after the screening made a lot of sense.

“Do you remember Wily Brandt?” he said. “Do you remember how he went to Poland, knelt down in front of the Auschwitz monument and said he was sorry? I want Papadopoulos to do the same. I want my president to go to Sandalari, bow before the monument dedicated to the massacred Turkish Cypriots and say ‘sorry’. And I want your (Turkish Cypriot) leaders to do the same.”

I asked him when the documentary would be shown in the south. He said that, at least for the time being, it was highly unlikely.

I had a ‘business lunch’ with a foreigner living on the island and after covering all the important subjects he went on to express his confusion over the relation that had developed between him, his cleaner and his landlord. Apparently his cleaner, a Sri Lankan ‘imported’ to Cyprus as a maid by his Greek Cypriot landlord, comes to his flat every day to clean it for two hours. For this, the foreigner pays his landlord an additional £150 pounds a month. The money, he thought until recently, was supposed to go straight into the woman’s pocket. But a recent conversation with the cleaner revealed she had never seen even a penny. Her entire monthly salary is £150 pounds and this is for both the two-hour daily work in the foreigner’s apartment and all the rest she does for the landlord.

The foreigner was shocked and shared his feelings with the local staff in his office. They didn’t understand.

My dog Zuza has been losing hair quite dramatically over a prolonged period of time. She has been gradually looking balder and balder and I have started to worry about her. I have already taken her to four vets but it seems nobody, except me, is really concerned. The vets usually say it is an allergy, give tablets and forget about it. One has even chased me around his examination table claiming that I was Romanian and should pay for his consultations in kind. Another got very happy over the fact I spoke Russian and asked me to translate a love letter to his girlfriend. He wanted to pay for the service with vitamins.

As part of larger research, a friend did some interviews with foreigners living in Nicosia’s old town. A Filipino woman expressed her concerns over the fact that Cypriots now prefer to employ Eastern Europeans.
“We need this work,” she said. “We take care of all these old people that nobody really cares about any more and we don’t mind doing it. We don’t mind cleaning their kaka. In fact, we clean the whole kaka of Cyprus.”

I missed the opening of the Madonna/Theotokos exhibition organised by the Italian embassy at Nicosia’s Hellenic Bank headquarters, the last concert of the season by Cyprus State Orchestra and the whole Bellapais International Music Festival. I will miss most of the International Ancient Greek Drama Festival in Paphos. I am busy cleaning “the kaka”.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.