When Oedipus was exiled, his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices agreed to rule Thebes on alternate years. But Eteocles, at the end of his first year of rule, reneged on the agreement and refused to step down. Polynices then raised an army of traditional enemies of Thebes and led them against his city. The battle ended with the defeat of the invading army, both Eteocles and Polynices perishing by each otherís hand.
Creon, Oedipusí uncle/brother-in-law then assumed power in Thebes, declaring that Eteoclesí body would be properly buried, and Polynices, because he had attacked the city, would be left to the crows on the battlefield.
But Antigone illegally performed a ceremonial burial of her brother, Polynices, was apprehended by the guards and taken before Creon, who decreed that she would herself be sealed in a cave. Creonís son, Haemon, betrothed to Antigone, protested her sentence and lectured his father on wise leadership.
Creon refused to change his mind until the blind sage Tiresias informed him that the gods were angry with his pronouncement concerning Polynices. When the cave was opened, Antigone was found to have already hung herself. Haemon, in his grief and anger, then tried to kill Creon. He failed, and then killed himself.
Upon Creonís return to the palace, he learned that his wife, Eurydice, on hearing what had happened at the cave, had also killed herself, her action heralding the demise of the House of Thebes.
Oh, for compromise and reconciliation you cry!
President Christofias rightly insists that ëperousiakoí (property) and governance are major stumbling blocks in this present round of talks. Yet an equally important issue is the one of reconciliation between ethnicities, and this he rarely mentions.
What hope is there, after nearly half a century (absolute separation of the two ethnicities began in earnest during the 1963 unrest) for reconciliation, when we, here in the south, stubbornly claim to be Greek, forcing our brothers in the north to cling for security to their ëfatherlandí across the water?
All that was pure Cypriot and untainted, acquired from centuries of cohabitation has been slowly and irrevocably washed from our memories and off the face of the island.
Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of those EOKA and TMT propaganda merchants who implanted doubtful evidence of origins to maintain a division ruled by mutual hate and distrust ñ seemingly irreversible lies perpetrated in the sole interests of the three guarantor powers, who themselves were lapdogs of the US and its then obsession with the communist worldwide threat.
When Archbishop Makarios III was duped into reneging on power sharing in 1963, he set the wheels in motion for those three powers to divide the island. The archbishop watched powerless as brother murdered brother and the island sank into a state of mindless chaos, eventually succumbing to a US-backed Greek junta coup to remove him, followed by Turkeyís military intervention to ërestore orderí.
When I came to live in Cyprus in 2003, rarely did I hear a bad word spoken against Greece from our side, or Turkey from the other. Now dissent is commonplace. I increasingly meet Cypriots from both sides who claim they were not duped by a lifetime of indoctrination – that they had read other history books – not just those stuck under their noses at island schools ñ and had learnt to quietly reject those ëdivisive teachingsí of both Athens and Ankara.
Given the recent noisy TC demonstrations against Turkeyís economic cuts in the north, and those of both sides increasingly calling for demilitarisation and re-integration, is that past indoctrination slowly wearing off? Are we becoming simply Cypriots again, prepared to share the island democratically?
Had Eteocles shared power fairly with Polynices, the slaughtering of the innocent followed by those infamous individual tragedies would have been avoided.
Until the majority on both sides clearly demonstrate that they have outgrown Enosis and Turkunionensis, both banners now sounding like deadly viruses, there can be no change in the present status quo. Instruction on how to love our brothers is paramount to solving the Cyprob. And Cypriots who scream that we are not brothers (nowhere in the Bible or Koran is it written that we are not) are betraying their patrida.
Cyprus for Cypriots only will, in any case, be overtaken by the relentless march of international commerce. The worldís nations are fast becoming one; what else is globalisation?
The islandís population now comprises innumerable foreign nationals (and their children). Cyprus could become the Monaco of the Middle East, and there ainít many Frenchmen living in Monaco. The last remaining bulwark of Cypriots is their civil service ñ EOKA and the TMT wearing slippers. Breaching these vulnerable to disease monocultures will take time, perhaps another generation or so, but it will come.
I have just read Echoes from the Dead Zone (I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd. 2005) by Yiannis Papadakis, Asst. Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Nicosia. This book delves into the two communities to explore their common humanity and understand what divided them. Some will claim that, by reading it, Iíd also been brainwashed. Probably so, but then, unlike Creon, I choose to live in hope, not despairÖ
Hermes Solomonís book, Cyprus on the Rocks, a collection of his favourite 50 articles published between 2006 – 2010, is now on sale at bookshops, priced 10 euros
