A matter of life and death

For a former football referee personal tragedy became a humanitarian triumph with the creation of the Karaiskakio Foundation. THEO PANAYIDES talks to him

The late Bill Shankly, manager of Liverpool in the 1960s, famously opined that football isn’t a matter of life and death, “it’s more important than that” – but Michalis Karaiskakis knows that isn’t true, because he knows about football and he knows about matters of life and death. For 17 years he was one of the top referees on the island, trying to keep an even keel in the turbulent world of Cyprus football – but his mettle had already been tested in a more profound way, and he’d lent his name to something more enduring than a match-day programme. In the early 90s, Michalis lost his son to leukaemia – and later, spurred by that tragic experience, he co-founded the Karaiskakio Foundation, a “bone-marrow donor registry” that’s already helped hundreds of leukaemia sufferers, both in Cyprus and abroad.

Michalis is 49 but looks younger: he has penetrating green-blue eyes, a full head of hair, and an angular face with a prominent nose and chin. He was born in Nicosia, the son of a taxi driver – though not just a taxi driver but a man with his own taxi office (Ermis Taxi, once located on Griva Digeni), “one of the old taxi drivers in Nicosia, if you remember them, with their suit and tie”. In those days, he explains, taxi drivers catered mainly to the well-to-do, those with the cash to pay for such luxuries, so his dad had the dignified bearing of an upper-class chauffeur – and he also had high moral values, a strong humanistic philosophy that made a deep impression on young Michalis.

What was he like as a young man? Much the same as now, he shrugs: “I’d characterise myself as a patient person, a low-key person. The rest is for others to say – but what does distinguish me is a love of solitude. I like to be alone, to read and study and be with my family. I’m low-key, and rather detached from social life”. As a youngster he was also quite restless, a restlessness he’s now channelled into reading and research (he’s currently doing an Open University course on European Culture). Initially, he wanted to be a sailor; “I was a man who wanted to explore, to go overseas”. He did a course in Marine Radio to become a wireless operator, then changed his mind and applied for a job as an air-traffic controller. Nothing came of either plan – and, like most Cypriots, he ended up working for the government, a job in the Water Board that took him to Limassol, where he met his wife. The couple have lived in Limassol since 1989.

Around the same time, Michalis got his referee’s diploma and began overseeing football matches, working his way up the Divisions (he’d dabbled in football as an amateur player, till forced out by injury). Seems an odd occupation for someone so low-key, I point out – but Michalis replies that a certain “detachment” is necessary in a ref, especially in Cyprus. I’m surprised to learn (though I shouldn’t really be surprised) that football clubs know everything about referees. Small societies being what they are, “clubs know for every referee what family he comes from, what his politics are” and of course which team he supports, or used to support – a knowledge they use to exert psychological pressure. A ref has to live “like a judge,” insists Michalis, “meaning he has to watch what he does off the pitch, in his social life. Because everything can be misunderstood”. That’s why it helps to be something of a loner, like he is.

What kind of pressure was exerted? Never bribery, he says, nor attempted bribery – just mind-games, people calling up before a game “to say that we know you support such and such a team so watch out for us, because we know who you are”. Any threats? “There were always threats, yes,” he replies with surprising equanimity. He had his run-ins and “unfortunate” moments, notably an infamous Salamina-Apollon game where a player completely lost his head and attacked Michalis, dragging him by the hair (the player was banned for a year, but Michalis refused to press assault charges). And of course there were the hooligans, a less acute problem in his refereeing days – he retired four years ago – but still a stain on the ‘beautiful game’. Everyone bears a share of responsibility, says Michalis diplomatically, calling on all parties to co-operate and form a “master plan”: club presidents stirring things up on TV, managers making inflammatory statements, supporters’ associations tainted by shady quasi-underworld types – all are to blame, and of course referees themselves should also watch their step and avoid causing trouble. He himself was never attacked, he insists, but often saw his games blighted by “incidents”.

It must’ve been odd, in a way. He might even have felt a twinge of wry amusement watching the blind hateful passion of hooligans baying for their team, as if in grotesque simulation of Shankly’s comment about football being more important than life and death – because already, in the early years of his refereeing career, Michalis Karaiskakis had been through a much worse experience than last-minute goals or relegation worries. He’d been through hell, and come out the other side.

18 years ago, Michalis had a four-year-old son, Andreas, and his wife was pregnant with a second child. Andreas suddenly fell sick, however – first a virus that wouldn’t go away, then blood-filled pustules appearing all over his body. Doctors diagnosed acute myeloid leukaemia, the pustules being evidence of bleeding in the boy’s skin tissue. The problem lay in his bone marrow, the body’s factory for producing blood cells; when it’s not working properly, explains Michalis, “immature cells come out in the blood which create an imbalance, and have consequences on the patient’s health”.

The only way to save his son, the doctors told him, was a bone-marrow transplant – but where to do it, and how to find a donor? “In Cyprus, at the time, there was nothing.” A hospital in Boston was located where the transplant could be performed (at a cost of ?200,000), but Boston was no place to find a donor. In bone-marrow cases, the probability of success decreases sharply as you move away from the patient’s genetic environment – so there’s a 1 in 4 chance of finding a compatible donor among family members (especially siblings), 1 in 25,000 among the same nationality, and 1 in 1,000,000 globally. Their best chance, they decided, was to wait for the new baby to be born – so for four months, Michalis and his wife waited by their child’s bedside.

“I used to sleep on a chair in the hospital,” he recalls. “The whole treatment took about nine to 10 months, and I slept on a chair – because we had to be near the child – then set off every morning from Nicosia, came to Limassol for work, and I refereed all my football games too. Because I had this terrible energy, which had to be channelled somewhere. I’d never smoked before, but in that period I started smoking. I just had to find a way out. With everyone it works differently, with me it worked in that way”.

The baby was born – Michalis’ second son, George – and proved to be compatible. Jubilant friends organised an appeal to raise money for the trip to Boston, trusting what Michalis calls “the altruism of the Cypriot citizen”. Before the ?200,000 could be raised, however, Andreas suffered a relapse and died – leaving his father with about ?60,000 and no clear way of knowing who to give it back to.

Others might’ve slumped in defeat, exhausted by the 10-month ordeal, and just donated the money to some worthy cause; Michalis, however – as implied by his youthful restlessness – was different. “When I’m in a difficult situation, I feel hyperactive,” he explains. “I need to be active, and work towards specific goals. I can’t just sit around and cry about my fate”. In the course of his troubles he’d met Evanthis Theodorides, president of the UK Leukaemia Society, and they now teamed up with Christos Andreou, a dynamic Nicosia publisher who was also president of the Platelet Donor Association of Cyprus. Together, the three men decided “to create something which could provide help in the future to those searching for a donor,” as Michalis himself had been. “You could say,” he adds quietly, “that it was a memorial for Andreas.”

Thus was born the Karaiskakio Foundation, a major database holding details (renewed every year) of thousands of potential donors. Michalis and his co-founders launched it as a kind of joint venture with the government, which agreed to pay for reagent – the expensive stuff used to carry out blood tests – if they bought equipment and paid for the running costs. The Foundation gets by on donations and fund-raising events but it’s managed to thrive in the 15 years since its launch, now boasting a dedicated lab – one of the few in Europe – for leukaemia testing and a new building that’ll carry out research as well as tests. Michalis, who’s still on the Board, speaks of it almost with awe: “Andreas was lost,” he says, “but so far he’s saved around 500 people.”

How to explain this kind of twist, a personal tragedy turned into a small humanitarian triumph? How does Michalis feel about it? “I believe that everything is pre-determined in our lives,” he replies. “If you consider that everything depends on tiny, tiny details – the existence of Life itself depends on tiny details, infinitesimal really. So I believe that everything is pre-determined… Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I believe”. Maybe – but it wasn’t just Fate. His specific personality played a role as well, because most other grief-stricken dads wouldn’t have done what he did. He recalls the jocular comment by Manolis Christofides, then Minister of Health, when Michalis and his friends brought their project to him: “Couldn’t you have just gone out and bought a Mercedes [with the ?60,000], instead of coming here and putting us through all this hassle?”

Michalis Karaiskakis still lives in Limassol, still works for the Water Board. He has two children: Andrea is 15, George – the baby who almost became a donor for his older brother – is 17. George is a passionate environmentalist, and wants to be a scientist; he’s not too interested in the usual teenage things (maybe taking after his not-very-sociable father), nor does he often ask about his brother. In a way, “George is unlucky,” admits Michalis: he spent his first year on Earth with parents who were either too busy to look after him, or else deep in mourning. Still, Michalis knows his son is proud of what took place – and proud of the Foundation that bears the family name.

And what about Michalis himself? Can he reconcile the various parts of his life? Surprisingly, he can. A football referee is “a man who must administer justice,” he explains, “and my involvement with the Foundation is similar. I believe we must administer justice to those who are suffering”. Like football teams, desperate parents come to the Karaiskakio looking for an answer. Like a referee, the Foundation supplies it. Bringing order to chaos? Exactly, says Michalis Karaiskakis, and beams with pleasure.