How to decode the Cypriot attachment with signs of wealth?
Last night I went to the opening of the exhibition on Cyprus and Venice at Nicosia’s Leventis Museum. Usually, as the museum is in the Old Town, I would go there by bike but yesterday I was wearing high heels so I decided to drive. As a result I was delayed by my search for a parking space. By the way, can anybody please tell me when Cypriots will stop dumping their cars across the white line?
Finally, after least ten minutes of cruising, I managed to squeeze my car inbetween a BMW and Mercedes somewhere close to the Eleftheria Square, walked through Laiki Yitonia to the wolf whistles of some sleazy looking guys standing in front of its touristy taverns, and sneaked into the courtyard of the museum just in time for the Presidential speech.
I looked around. The place was full – foreign diplomats, honorary consuls, members of well-known Cypriot families, bodyguards. Everybody was present. A lady was walking around distributing an English version of the speech. Several photographers were taking pictures. The President was talking.
I navigated through the crowd and placed myself close to the wine table, remembering all my previous openings at the museum and the fact that its temporary exhibition space was on the top floor, very narrow and not very spacious.
“There is no way I will be able to see anything tonight,” I thought. “It is just going to be just too crowded.”
The President finished his speech and moved upstairs. The crowd followed. A friend came up to me and persuaded me to join the rest.
“This used to be a house of my grandmother’s doctor,” he said while we slowly ascended the staircase. “And he was a mayor of Nicosia as well.”
Upstairs, it was more or less what I had expected – a crowd of people queuing from one exhibit to the other. Somewhere in between beautifully handwritten letters of Katerina Cornaro and the Machaeras Chronicle there was a lot of networking.
We cut through the room, aiming straight at the Attar Map at the opposite end, and looked at it above the heads of the crowd buzzing in front of us.
“A map like a map,” I said defiantly. “I can’t see any difference in the shape of the island.”
“But there are more rivers there than at present,” remarked a charming lady. “I wonder if it was done in order to attract commercial attention.”
Just at the moment the President passed next to us on his way to the exit, stopping here and there and exchanging greetings.
“Ha, it is true he likes blondes,” I thought after the third such specimen managed to extract a smile from him. Then I corrected myself. After all, what choice did the man have? The room was full of blondes. Tall and short, old and young, beautiful and ugly. After all, in Cyprus this colour is permanently in vogue, together with a certain hair cut, dress style and even nail shape.
“Actually,” I thought, “I wish somebody would write a book about all the ins and outs of being a trendy, successful Cypriot, male or female. It would be quite a useful code breaker.”
And this is more or less the outcome of the evening since as far as the exhibition goes I will have to go back to see it properly – an idea for local sociologists and anthropologists.
I know those guys concentrate mainly on serious issues such as the Cyprus problem, whether Greek and Turkish Cypriots can live together, and how we foreigners are badly treated, but couldn’t someone do an in-depth study of all these materialistic signs of success present on the surface of modern Cypriot society?
In Russia, for example, there is a book on the subject called Multimillionaires, described last Sunday by the Independent as the ultimate guide to the lifestyle of the Russian rich. It states: “Male, Russian, 40 years old, self-made, on his second marriage, has two children, maintains at least one mistress and spends £4.3 million every year on everyday ‘running costs’. He owns a minimum of seven cars (preferable cars are chauffer-driven Mercedes, BMWs and Audis), employs a staff of 16, owns a yacht of at least 170 foot in length, and a private jet that costs a minimum of £19 million. His favourite mistress is given a sports car (preferably Audi TT) and a £200,000 pied-a-terre in central Moscow. Second-string lovers do less well, having only £2,700 a month spent on them.”
I dream of having this sort of information available in bookstores on the island.
