The luck of the Irish
For some inexplicable reason every time I visit Ireland something not very nice happens to me. Either my luggage is lost or the weather is the worst its has been in 100 years. This time, a tooth broke on the night of my arrival, while I demonstrating to friends how to chew through the small olives I brought for them from our lovely island of Aphrodite.
“They are not very urban,” I was telling Virpi and Iain just a minute before it happened. “They are rather peasant and not very attractive. But this is their real charm – they are authentic even if they lack flesh. These olives embody the real Mediterranean. Not the Harrods’ version of it.”
Obviously, the olives didn’t like my explanation and took a revenge. And it was just the beginning of a chain of misfortunes that took place. After the tooth, I had a problem with a garden lamp that my friends were unable to switch off at night. It kept me awake so I offered to throw stones at it to break the bulb. My friends, unfortunately, refused.
Yesterday, exhausted by this eternal brightness beaming directly into my window and almost equally eternal toothache, I overslept and instead of getting on a 7am train to Belfast, with great difficulty managed to arrive at the station at 11. Of course, had I been on holiday the time would not have mattered. But the journey up north meant business so by midday, all the people who I was to meet there became impatient, and my various mobiles, British, Irish and Cypriot, began receiving inquires about my whereabouts. I knew I would have to start calling back but hated the idea of paying Areeba or Vodafone money they didn’t deserve.
“Excuse me, have they cancelled roaming charges between Ireland and the UK?” I turned to an Irish lady sitting opposite me. “I have the impression they said they would.”
“No, they haven’t but they are not too high now,” she answered. “Only about 50 cents or pence per call or something like that.”
Fifty pence per call didn’t sound as bad as what the average Cypriot has to pay to make a call from Elefteria Square to Arab Ahmet but still, when multiplied by ten, it didn’t make any sense. It was like going back home: island, division, problems, irrational costs, conflict resolution attempts. Suddenly, I knew why I was there.
An hour later I arrived in Belfast and collected a bunch of “what’s on” leaflets from the counter next to the ticket office. Next to them, there was a colourful magazine in Polish. A big headline across its front page read: “Would you like to become a policeman in Northern Ireland?”.
“Sounds good to me,” I thought and started considering applying.” Good salary, insurance, pension scheme, plus hypothetically I am a Catholic so I have a good chance. Here it is, a community in progress. If I tried to get this job in Cyprus they would die of laughter.”
In front of the station, I was stopped by an enterprising black cab driver. “Fancy a political tour, love?” he said. “Falls Road, Shankill Road, murals? And I will tell you all about the killings.”
I told him where I wanted to go and twenty minutes later I was there: in the middle of Belfast’s ‘Green Line’ with its equivalent of Ledra Palace or Fulbright Centre’s “bi-communal meeting point”, where I was to talk with a man involved in just such activities.
And this is when my luck returned. The guy lacked two front teeth so bonding with him was a piece of cake. Over lunch I explained to him why at present I could only eat tuna sandwiches and soup, and afterwards felt OK to ask what happened to his eating devices, hoping he would tell me he had them knocked out by the IRA or Iain Paisley. The truth, however, was much more prosaic.
“Diabetes,” he said. “They fell out a year ago but I have to wait for the NHS to give me an appointment to get new ones and it is going to happen some time next month.”
Then we started talking about Poles in Northern Ireland and the fact that a lot of them lived in the Protestant areas, which in certain circles created the worry that during forthcoming elections, as Catholics, they would vote for Republicans and change the balance of power. “Republicans worry that too many Poles in the police will mean no space for local Catholics. Unionists worry that because Poles are Catholics they will vote for Republicans.” The man explained the details of Northern Ireland’s politics while I thought how lucky we Poles are in Cyprus, where nobody worries about us as long as we don’t start rickshaw business.
