A TURKISH Cypriot friend was to come to the south and have lunch with me. We fixed the meeting for 12.30pm. He called at eleven and said, “I can’t come. It is July 15.” “Yes,” I answered. “I know.”
“I can’t come,” he repeated. “I am scared.”
That reminded me of another friend of mine, a Greek Cypriot, when he crossed to the north for the first time. We went to Kyrenia.
“Strange,” he said when we walked through the harbour. “I really feel as if somebody is just about to put a bullet into my back.”
Both men are more or less in their late 50s. Fear Eats Soul is a great German film by Rainer Maria Fassbinder that has a very suitable title.
On the same day, around 6pm I was sitting at Hamur restaurant in the north, resting after some interviews and watching the world passing by. Hamur is just next to the Turkish Cypriot checkpoint and specialises in various kinds of dumplings. I was waiting for a friend of mine with whom I decided to have a beer. She was late, I was thirsty. I was just about to order EFES when it suddenly dawned on me. You see, in Cyprus, “good women” don’t do such things. They don’t sit alone next to the street sipping alcohol. I ordered ayran and started thinking again about fear and social pressure.
Because of its location, Hamur is an excellent place for a journalist. It reminds me of a conveyor-belt sushi bar. You just sit there and the food keeps coming…
At Hamur, the same happens with people. First, it was my friend, then a famous Greek Cypriot academic, then an ambassador who usually really looks the part but somehow that day didn’t. By the time, I saw my Italian neighbour I understood that if I wanted to know Cyprus better I should constantly be sitting in this place. And precisely at that moment an English lady from the next table decided to ask us whether we came there for a demonstration.
“What demonstration?” we asked cautiously as we just read in a paper about protest taking place next to the Ledra Palace.
The demonstration came and went, and an Iranian photographer who lives in the north joined the table. My Italian neighbour asked her whether she ever visited the south.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “About five years ago, when I came first time to Cyprus it was for holiday on the Greek Cypriot side. And I am so happy that I saw it then. Otherwise I would be constantly wondering what it is like over there.”
Another friend called and asked where I was. Her boyfriend was on a business trip in Athens so she wanted to meet up for some gossip. As the boyfriend doesn’t allow her to cross over I decided to go for it and invited her.
“I can’t do something like that. He would kill me,” was the answer.
“But darling, we are going to Sabor for dinner,” I tried to reason. “It has a clear Ottoman title deed. You don’t have to worry.”
“No, no. I can’t. He would never forgive me. Sorry, I know you can’t understand it.”
So we went for dinner without her. And not to Sabor but to Konak which is next to it. It has also an Ottoman title deed as it is located in the mansion of the old governor of the island but is owned by a settler. But he came a long time ago. But he still is a settler. And after all, the Ottomans were just other invaders. Just like the Venetians, and the Brits, and even we Poles with Napoleon in Spain.
