I went to Ayios Mamas for the Saint’s Day celebrations. Late afternoon so I didn’t see the main service. Five priests sang beautifully, a handful of Greek Cypriots were kissing icons. In the middle of the church a group of six to seven men were filming all of this with a small camera. Talking loudly. Security service. The Greek Cypriots could not tell them to shut up, obviously. Nor the priests. So I did. After all I am an alien. I can do crazy things.
A few days later, on Sunday, I drove to Kyrenia to attend the unveiling of a small Polish monument in the courtyard of a local Catholic church. Finding the church is a nightmare, by the way. The monument was erected there in 1941 by a group of Poles who lived in Cyprus at the time. A typical Polish never ending war story and a typical Polish prayer written on the monument asking for return of the free motherland. It has been recently restored by the Cypriot Polish community, hence the celebration. The only question I had was why almost nobody attended. Well, it was because people didn’t know. And they didn’t know because we are not supposed to advertise anything like that taking place in the north. Even if it is a totally Polish affair, having nothing to do with the Cyprus problem.
Very nice next weekend. First half of it I spent sleeping and thinking and the other half drinking beer in front of the TV. When I crawled out of my house on Monday morning neighbours were positively impressed with my unusual inactivity. They recommended more. I will try.
Actually, I did one more thing on Sunday afternoon. I killed lots of flies. Cyprus, as you have probably noticed, is a wonderful place for flies. They breed like rabbits. There is even an account of the eighteenth or nineteenth-century visitor to the island saying just that and adding that Cypriot women are ugly and all bitten by flies! Yuck. I would sue the bastard who wrote something like that about Polish women.
Anyway, the flies I disposed of were not on me, but on my dog and cats, and my animals fought a brave battle to save them. But I was merciless as I remembered one occasion when I had 13 kittens and decided to leave their tenants on them for a while because they were too small for all the poisonous sprays. The kittens were sleeping in my bedroom and I ended up jumping straight from the entrance onto the bed as it was the only place the flies could not get to. So this is my life in Cyprus… Watching silly soap operas and killing flies… My mother is right I should get out of the place ASAP.
Actually, the reason my mother thinks I should get out is that she does not believe in Cypriot men. She thinks that Cypriot men are incapable of understanding women, giving them real space and freedom, and relating to them properly. She says most men and women of Cyprus live in parallel universes meeting only occasionally to make children and drink coffee. No real communication there.
Maybe she is right. The two subjects that I have got the most responses to from people reading my column were the list of places where one can meet intelligent men and my accident in the north. Which means these are really burning issues. As to the list, I have got actually more responses from men than women (is it because women have given up?), with most of them complaining that the places I mentioned were not the places where I met them. It is actually true so just to be fair I need to add at least one more location to my list. The place, although not romantic is the Dead Zone and is known as a passage for some very clever guys.
The wife of another friend of mine after reading the list commented that he was a regular in at least two of the places. Well, this latest addition will make it three.
Re: the accident. I have asked a friend of mine (this time an intelligent woman) to check the regulations. Result? As you know, this is Cyprus and no matter if it is the north or south, nobody seems to know the final answer. My feeling is it is more convenient not to have a final answer as then the authorities can do whatever they want according to what is more convenient for them. Anyway, the Turkish Cypriot police claim they have the right to detain a ‘southerner’ in the north if there is an accident, unless a Turkish Cypriot citizen vouches for him. Turkish Cypriot lawyers, however, disagree. Their advice: if anything like that happens and the police demand money on the table, insist on talking to a lawyer who can explain to you their reasoning in details. So there you are, my friends.
