THE LAST half of January may prove to have been the most significant period in terms of the ‘Cyprus Problem’ since the 2004 referendum. Not because of any ‘renewed talks’ (lavish luncheons for the pampered) between bureaucrats on each side of the Green Line; nor because of any new initiatives or interventions from the US, UK or UN; but because an unseeded 20-year old Cypriot tennis player named Marcos Baghdatis advanced to the Australian Open Finals.
It may seem implausible that the affable 20-year old Baghdatis, who has the facial malleability and expressiveness of a stand-up comic, who chastises himself after bad shots with haunted heavenward gazes and who routinely dives after impossible balls, has much to do with the Cyprus Problem – that decades-long bog of barbed wire and army camps, displaced properties and security fears.
But he does. Though the military occupation of the north is the outward symptom of the Cyprus Problem, the underlying disease is an identity crisis: Cyprus suffers from a dearth of Cypriot pride and an excess of Greek and Turkish nationalism.
The bulk of the violence Cyprus has experienced in recent history is rooted in an insecurity complex (akin to the Napoleonic one) fomented by devout generals and halitotic parliamentarians. The only true Cypriot is the donkey, to use the words of former Turkish Cypriot strongman Rauf Denktash, and so it follows that the supreme ecstasy in this mortal coil is to be diffused into the great motherland of Greece or Turkey, depending on which side of the Green Line you fall.
For decades Cypriots have faithfully obeyed their BMW-driving shepherds by waving the foreign flags, parroting the tedious slogans being spray painted onto crumbling walls for the past half century, and of course gingerly avoiding any associations with the word ‘Cypriot’ so as not to be frowned upon.
Now enter young Baghdatis. Open a late January 2006 Cypriot newspaper and you will read something like: “Hero Baghdatis has achieved what no Cypriot has ever achieved before!”. They are referring, of course, to his riveting Aussie Finals advance in which he usurped three of the world’s top-ten ranked players along the way.
But he is also heroic for another equally titanic achievement: Baghdatis speaks of his love for his home country, Cyprus, without then qualifying that love by subsuming it within a mother nation. It is rare to find Cyprus-pride. The more common sentiment is reflected by the decision last month of ‘Cypriot’ singer Anna Vissi to represent Greece instead of Cyprus at the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.
His love of Cyprus is no recent phenomenon. Four years ago, when 16-year old Baghdatis won the Junior US Open Semifinals, delighted fans tossed Greek flags down onto the court at his feet. But Baghdatis instead went to the stands, took a Cyprus flag from a fan and, draping it around himself, began jogging around the court.
He later turned down a request to play for the French tennis federation and another to play for Greece during the Athens Olympics out of loyalty to Cyprus. And when he could no longer wear the Cyprus flag on the front of his shirt due to a new Adidas sponsorship, he made sure that the shirt he wore was always in the white and orange-gold colours of the Cyprus flag.
Those who live outside of Cyprus for a period, or those who migrate to Cyprus, often feel more Cypriot-in-the-bones than many of those who grew up on the island, a strange fact that may indicate the thoroughness with which Greek and Turkish nationalism engulf the island. Baghdatis’ father moved from Lebanon to Cyprus in 1973 to work at a cement factory – later marrying a Greek Cypriot and being christened Christos – his son Marcos left Cyprus when he was 14 to train at a tennis academy in France.
Baghdatis created a furore in the tennis world after he knocked out world number three Andy Roddick from the Australian Open (it didn’t miss the media’s attention that with the Iraq war still on, an unseeded player named “Baghdatis” beat the top US player). Suddenly the words “Cypriot” and “Cyprus” were on the back page of newspapers all over the world and “flamboyant Baghdatis” as they refer to him was being broadcasted on televisions the world round.
With such press, perhaps Cypriots will no longer have to gently explain that, no, Cyprus bears no relation to the tree or to the Florida theme park.
But to catapult into tennis headlines Baghdatis had to defy plenty of other odds; he is one of those rare tennis players who rose, not only out of tennis backwater Cyprus, but also from a working-class background. Even after winning the world juniors title, he received practically no help from the government for his huge tennis academy debts. Their only award for him was a mandatory military term that would interrupt his tennis career. The government granted him a postponement only after the Cyprus Mail and Politis made an issue it.
Despite the lack of help, Baghdatis continued to wear his Cyprus colours and wave his Cyprus flag. Maybe he held no grudges against the Cyprus government, or maybe, unlike many of his fellow citizens, he can make the distinction between the state and the country, the bureaucrats and the populace.
When Baghdatis gave his runner-up speech after he lost the fourth and final set in the finals to world number one Roger Federer, Baghdatis said that he wanted to thank everyone in Cyprus who was watching him. He did not make a distinction as to what kind of Cypriots they were.
This seemingly minor point is important. There are Turkish Cypriots who wept when Baghdatis lost to Federer precisely because of his staunch Cypriotness. Baghdatis matters precisely because, in an island in which ethnic fervour has paved the way for troops and real estate developers to muscle their way about, we need more smiling proud Cypriots.
Baghdatis’ success may also help to break the stranglehold that parties currently yield over athletics, since unlike the football teams in Cyprus, there is no party affiliation with tennis players.
It would be a mistake to think that Baghdatis snubs Greece. Baghdatis has his blue-and-white Hellas fan club that attend his matches and infuriate his opponents with their football-style rowdiness, which include both weird chants like “Hey Marcos, you’re crazy, you’re crazy with your white t-shirt” and more political chants like “Greece OLE Cyprus OLE Enosis OLE Enosis OLE Enosis OLE.”
Baghdatis loves his entourage and reciprocates their support with free tickets, but that does not mean he shares the politics of every chant. Of course, there is a kinship between Greek Cypriots and Greeks, just as there is between Turkish Cypriots and Turks (and between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots for that matter), which has deep historical roots and can be seen in the language, culture, religion, etc. But though Baghdatis or any other Cypriot may clink beer mugs with his Greek friends and exult over Greece’s victory in the 2004 Euro, it does not mean that he must say he is a Greek first and second a Cypriot, or that ‘Greek Cypriot’ is just a synonym for ‘Greek’.
Nationalism is an ugly word and an even uglier thing, but Cyprus, which must surely be one of the most nationalistic places on earth, would not be harmed by a little more of it – just so long as it is not of the Turkish or Greek variety. A few more Cyprus Republic flags, a few more swellings of Cypriot pride, a few more patriotic ambassadors like Baghdatis and those massive knotted roots of the Cyprus Problem may finally begin to starve and shrivel.
Denktash is just one of many who would claim that the only true Cypriot is the donkey. But even if it were true, better a proud donkey than an ass trying to be a stallion.
For the complete essay, go to: www.fourthnight.org
Prominent Cypriots
ARCHBISHOP Maka
rios, Rauf Denktash, Cat Stevens, George Michael and Marcos Baghdatis are a few of the internationally recognisable Cypriots from the past few decades.
Of those five, at least, it seems that Marcos Baghdatis is as close as we come to a Cypriot patriot. Denktash said that the only true Cypriot is the donkey; Makarios was more of a Hellenist than a Cypriot; and Cat Stevens, who soon became Yusuf Islam, is more devoted to the Muslim nation than the Cypriot one.
George Michael was a proud Cypriot until he realised that Cypriots, like their cousins to the west, may rhapsodise about the greatness and glory of the ancient Greeks, but they do not approve of all of their practices, especially the pedagogical ones.
For the real luminaries, however, we have to travel back a few thousand years. There we find the philosophical and biblical heavyweights like stoic Zeno of Kitium and never-say-die Lazarus of Larnaca, whose descriptive title was to later pass down, albeit with a different meaning, to never-say-die Baghdatis.
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