The Cypriot
Researching life in Cyprus in the 1950s to write a bicommunal love story proved cathartic for its author
Can Cyprus have its own Louis de Bernieres, whose books will do for the island what Captain Corelli’s Mandolin did for Cephalonia?
Andreas Koumi certainly thinks so. The 42-year-old London-born Cypriot doesn’t deny the fact that his novel has been inspired by de Bernieres, and actually hopes that the comparison will do both The Cypriot and Cyprus a favour.
“It was in 2000 and I was on holiday in Cephalonia,” he says. “I was reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin on the beach and realised that it had become very successful because people had done with it what I did. They had come on holiday to Greece, picked up this book at the airport, read it in situ, liked it and told their friends about it. And I thought that if de Bernieres could do it and become a success I could do it as well. I am a Cypriot and I can write a story about Cyprus and, to a certain extent, it can be more interesting than Mandolin . In Cephalonia there was an earthquake and German-Italian occupation but it is over now, in Cyprus the problems are not over yet and we still have this big scar.”
Koumi, who trained as an engineer but for several years worked for London’s Greek newspaper and at present runs Exposure, a charity that enables children and young people in North London to develop their media skills, went about the task of writing his book meticulously. An incurable romantic, he wanted to create a product that sells. “Love between a Turkish Cypriot girl and Greek Cypriot boy?” he says. “Yes, I admit it is a bit of clich?. But I thought that it was the best way to get the history of Cyprus across. The idea came from Titanic. Everybody dies but how do you get people really interested in it? In my book, Cyprus is a sinking ship and Antonis and Funda are Leonardo and Kate. But in the Titanic the love story is only a device used to get more publicity while in The Cypriot it isn’t. It is much more symbolic. It is love between the two people of Cyprus. Because I believe that on the human level, ordinary Greek and Turkish Cypriots have a lot in common, they have a bond.”
Secondly, although Koumi’s parents were from Cyprus and as a child he visited for holidays, the writer didn’t know enough about Cypriot life in the ’50s to write about it. He had to do a lot of research.
“I had to sit down and talk to the older generation of Cypriots, not only my mum and dad but others as well. And because if there is one thing that a Cypriot loves doing, especially an older Cypriot, it is talking about the old days, I found a lot of information. I also did a lot of research on the internet.”
Koumi admits that many characters in his book are based on real people and real experiences (for example, Antonis is a tailor like the author’s father while Funda’s dad is a barber like his grandfather). He also agrees that the image of Cyprus he gives in the book is perhaps coloured by what his own parents thought of the island when they left.
“My parents came to London in the early ’50s, around the time when the troubles started with the struggle for independence,” he says. “So they never experienced this sense of polarisation we have now. They remembered the time when people here lived together and got on. They shared each other’s joys and pains and went to each other’s weddings and funerals. Also the culture was different. Now when you look around in Nicosia, everywhere there is a Greek flag, and if you go a bit further, everywhere there is a Turkish flag. But in my parents’ time there wasn’t the same sense of nationalism. It had just only started kicking off before they left. So they left Cyprus effectively as Cypriots, not as Greeks.”
Koumi stops for a moment and then continues: “I think nowadays most Cypriots have an identity problem. Before I wrote this book I wasn’t comfortable about it either. I was born and raised in England, but I am not English. I went to a Greek school but didn’t really identify with what I was being taught there. On the other hand, the Cypriot culture I was being taught at home was always done down and described as inferior. When I spoke Kypriaka I was told that I didn’t speak properly, and that there was no such thing as a Cypriot, that the only real Cypriots were donkeys… All these things made it difficult for me to come to terms with myself. But spending time on researching the novel, talking to my parents and understanding about different cultures coming together helped. Writing the book was very cathartic for me. It helped me to understand who I was. It gave me a vision of Cyprus.”
So how has the book been received? “Amazingly well on both sides. I have had both Greek and Turkish Cypriots coming to me, independently, and saying that they really liked the story, that their mothers loved it, or that their fathers who had never read a book in their lives, read this one… These are the comments I am getting and they are wonderful. It is really nice to know that I created something that appeals to both sides. I am sure there are extremists who will dislike the book, to whom just the idea of a Christian and a Muslim falling in love can be offensive but I don’t care. I am not going to apologise to them, just like they haven’t apologised to me for what they have done to Cyprus.”
The Cypriot by Andreas Koumi. £10.50. Available from Moufflon Bookshops
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