What are serious issues?
A man recently told me that my columns are good as long as I don’t touch any serious issues, which he hastened to add, I never do anyway. That set me wondering what he means by “the serious issues”.
OK, I don’t write too much about the Cyprus problem but then why should I? Any individual with a bit of intelligence can comprehend the issue after about a month on the island and then it is a mere repetition of the same factors. I know people who read Cypriot papers regularly and they all agree that they haven’t read anything new about it for last thirty years. Apparently, even the vocabulary hasn’t changed! So would my perspective add anything new and enlightening to this serious subject? And what is the point in wasting my time? The world is big and wonderful and has so much more to it than worrying about who said what about opening the Ledra Street crossing. After all, if they don’t want to open it they won’t, no matter what I say, and if they decide to open it I will be very happy because it will mean so much more fun and freedom on the street.
Also, according to this man, seven is a magazine for women (by the way, do all the men who read seven realise they are doing so?) and as such should concern itself mainly with nail polish and Christmas shopping. But girls, we are printing it for you full stop. So forget about any serious business. If you want to read anything more serious read the attached newspaper. Because a magazine is not supposed to be about anything serious.
Having said that, I wonder if the story that I read in the Cyprus Mail few days ago about a British woman who went to the police station to protest over the deportation of her Bangladeshi husband and apparently was “chased away with a chair” by a police officer is too serious for us? Just imagine this situation: a young woman walks into the police station and this moustached guy sits there throwing his prayer beads around.
“I came to complain about the way you treated my husband,” she says, and the guy looks at her and puts two and two together. Here we are, he thinks, not only we were colonised by them but now they are also trying to force us to accept more aliens from the third world countries into Europe. As if we didn’t have enough anyway. I will teach them a lesson! So he picks up his chair and rushes at the woman, probably imagining that he is some sort of toreador. Have you ever seen anything like it? Please tell me, because I have. It was in the movies. It is the stuff from the Police Academy!
Take another real life situation that I have recently read about in the book Because I am a Foreigner by Beryl Esembe. This one is straight from Charlie Chaplin. A Finnish woman, quite heavy, crosses the road, I think in Nicosia, with her Egyptian husband. Because she weights quite a lot, she moves slowly. A car is forced to stop and wait. A man in the car gets annoyed with the fact that he has to wait so he gets out, rushes to the woman and hits her. The woman protests. The man says that he is a policeman and arrests her (!).
I can see how that could appear funny. Imagine a Buster Keaton type running towards the fat woman, weaving his hands around and then hitting her on the belly. She falls down, he handcuffs her, and then drags her to the police station. Great slapstick, but hello, we don’t live in slapstick. We live in a European country. And if we don’t take this seriously, then we may have the same guys playing Rambo in the Buffer Zone and shooting at the UN soldiers. So which issues are really serious if you are a woman and you write for a magazine?
