Diary

Nothing to deny

I have been writing this column for about five months now and have collected quite an impressive amount of comments about myself. According to the most extreme of them: 1) I am a lesbian; 2) I am in an urgent need of sex; 3) everything I write is against Greek Cypriots and pro-Turkish Cypriots therefore I must have a Turkish Cypriot boyfriend; 4) I hate Cyprus altogether therefore I should leave immediately; and 5) I have something against Germans.

I sat down yesterday with a friend and debated for an hour whether I should start a denial campaign. “Never deny anything,” he said finally, which, in a way, supports my mother’s golden rule: “if they don’t gossip about you it means you are dead”. So OK, I am not going to deny any of these accusations but I feel like adding a bit more detail. Here it is: 1) it is true that I believe there are more interesting women on this island than men. I also think they have more guts; 2) the amount of sex I have been offered here is much higher than anywhere else I have ever been. And it has nothing to do with me being attractive, this is just the way the place is. After all, just in the south there are apparently at least 10,000 prostitutes. For a place of this size, this is quite impressive and statistically makes something like one prostitute per thirty men. What more can I say?; 3) it doesn’t matter if your boyfriend is a Greek or Turkish Cypriot – believe me, neither option is the best in the world. I have a friend who goes to such an extreme as saying that finding a normal Cypriot man is as possible as dating an Inuit in the Sahara desert but I am a bit more moderate; 4) there are some other places in the world that are not perfect either; 5) Americans have a joke about Polish people which goes: ‘Why do Polish people always have sad faces?’ ‘If you had Germans as your neighbour you would have sad face too.’ But no, actually, the last one is not true. I really truly and deeply have nothing against Germans.

For the record and posterity I also sleep with my dog (I can see some men saying yuck), I am not a virgin (it would be very strange if I was) and I don’t do ‘it’ with goats, donkeys or chickens (have you seen a recent report about a man in the Karpas arrested for having sex with a goat that belonged to his neighbour?).

Having said all the above I would like to move on to the main subject of this column, which is that for the last two weeks or so there has been a circus in town. Of course, I am aware that some of you will cry “we know”, but this one is real and very good indeed. Circuses are usually not my cup of tea as the last one I saw as a child included a lion attempting to eat his tamer (I shouldn’t have been that surprised as I would also try to kill somebody using a whip in order to make me jump), but on the other hand when I hear the word ‘circus’ I think Giulletta Massina in La Strada, Burt Lancaster in The Greatest Show In The World and the fire eater in Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Neither of them is present at the performance I am trying to recommend, but it is one of the most successful imported productions that I have seen in Cyprus recently.

Medrano is authentic, unpretentious and at a very good pace. It has an orchestra, acrobats, huge Bengali tigers straight from Roussou’s paintings, and an unusual motor bike number that I have never seen before, neither in reality nor on TV. Your children will love it, even though it will have to involve a trip to Limassol, where the circus has now moved.

On more sober note, please don’t take your kids to any free zivania tasting event. I went last Sunday hoping for some sophisticated explanation on how and with what one should drink the local spirit. Alas, to little avail. It was all straight, uncomplicated and boring. Mind you, it was better attended than the circus. And no, sorry, I am not a single female alcoholic.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.