Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island

by Lawrence Durrell

  “He’s so thin,” said Andreas, “that if you wrapped him in a cigarette paper you couldn’t smoke him.” Apparently little solid food ever passed the gravedigger s lips; he concentrated on more combustible provender. “But he’s a fine digger,” said Michaelis, and indeed this was true, for the holes—”Honeyholes” my mother called them—were completely circular and smooth. It was a great feat when one considered that after six foot or so he was working always in complete darkness. “Peace be on him,” said Morais rather sententiously and with an air of disapproval, for he abhorred drunkenness.

  Morais had become a good friend now, and could even take a mild teasing about his nationalist convictions with good humor. He was helping Michaelis carry the heavy S-bend for the lavatory plumbing when the latter called out to me: “Hey, neighbor, look! Morais and I are bringing Enosis.” This was rather a good play on words for these great joints are called in Greek “unions.” Morais managed rather a sheepish laugh.

  I have one firm hold over my neighbors. I know more about Greece than they do. I am regarded with awe and respect because I have actually lived “over there,” among those paragons of democratic virtue. Their idea of Greece is of Paradise on earth—a paradise without defect. And I have lived there, have Greek friends.… Now if I wish to bring pressure to bear upon my neighbor I simply say to him: “My dear fellow, no Greek would do that, charge that, think that, etc. You astonish me.” And this phrase acts like a charm, for everyone is jealous of the good character of Greeks and tries to be as like them as possible. I am afraid I have become quite unscrupulous in my use of this weapon; when Pallis refused me water for my trees out of ill temper I brought him to his knees by comparing the Greek sense of “philoxenia” with the Cypriot. He melted like an ice. When I suspect that I am being overcharged I have only to say: “No Greek would try to profit from such stuff. They would give it away, particularly to a stranger.”

  When Panos visits me with his family to offer me a vine he has had sent specially from Paphos for me, he is most amused by this gambit. “I think if you told them no Greek wanted Enosis they would cease to want it too. Have you tried that?”

  Chapter Seven: A Telling of Omens

  Under Ottoman rule, the Cypriotes had a clear majority of votes. Under English rule, the Cypriotes—counting both Christians and Mohammedans—are a minority of two in seven.…

  Under Ottoman rule, the representatives of the peo ple had a majority of votes. Under English rule, repre sentatives of the people are altogether excluded from the board. Formerly the Cypriotes had as much con trol over their own affairs as English people; now they are as helpless as a multitude of Russian serfs.…

  Such changes must be judged by the results; but for the time they have an ugly look. One hardly likes to see a popular franchise filched away, even though we get a cleaner street and stronger pier in payment for the theft. No rights are prized so much as local rights to which a man is born. The story of our city wards is full of warnings on that point. More than one Irish king has started on his downward path by tampering with the rights of city wards. No race, however weak, prefers a stranger in the chair of state.

  —British Cyprus by W.HEPWORTH DIXON, 1887

  BUT SOME OF my visitors brought with them more troubling preoccupations which hardly seemed to find a place in that sunlit world of books and characters. One such was Alexis, an old Athenian friend—we had escaped together to Crete in ’41 by caique and had been intermittently in touch ever since, though our work had taken us far apart. He was now at the United Nations and was passing through to Palestine. We dined together by moonlight at Zephyros, under the thick net of vines, and exchanged gossip about our common friends in different parts of the world. It was he who first voiced real concern about the shape things were taking in Cyprus. “You see, the acceptance of the Greek case by Athens has altered the whole psychological picture here; it is a sort of moral endorsement for the right to Union which never existed before, and which if it isn’t taken seriously may lead anywhere. And the F. O. seems fast asleep in London. Eden’s failure to grasp the Greek offer is regarded by Athens as lunacy. After all, the only condition they asked was the change of one word in the statement: “The Cyprus case is closed’; had he agreed to substitute ‘postponed’ for ‘closed’ he would have evaded a hearing at UNO with all its possible secondary effects. Moreover Athens could then have refused to bow to Cypriot pressure and the thing would have simmered on here indefinitely.” It was distasteful in such scenery and over a wine which if it was not exactly vintage was at least of a good yeoman pedigree, to have to turn one’s mind to the shallow bickerings of nations. Besides, I had come to Cyprus as a private individual, and had no concern with policy. “How Greek is Cyprus, anyway?” I asked, thinking it of interest to hear an Athenian opinion. “How Italian is Sicily?” he replied quietly. “Have you had a look at the educational set-up and talked to the Cypriots? Language and religion—they are the determinants of national character, aren’t they?”

  “Does Athens want trouble here?”

  “Of course not,” he exploded. “But the tide has been rising there. The Cypriots have been appealing to the public through the clergy. The moral case is beginning to be widely recognized and with a short spell of international limelighting real strong feeling may be aroused. It’s potentially most dangerous. The Greek Government could not go on for ever refusing to countenance the Cypriot case—because of the public. What they asked was a face-saver which would enable them to shut the Cypriots up. The formula they proposed carried no promises, no time-limit, nothing.”

  “And now?”

  “Now they’ll take it to UNO.”

  “With what result?”

  “Perhaps none; but the case will have swollen to international size—which it doesn’t merit; all sorts of new influences may emerge in the lobbying. I think you have got something potentially troublesome on your hands. The disposition both here and in Athens is for honorable settlement. A mere formula may do it. But you are letting it run on. Other factors lie in the background—Graeco Turkish relations, for example. Aren’t they of value? The Balkan Pact?”

  “How typically Greek you are, Alexis. If I let you run on you’d deduce a world war from this one incident. We are politically rather dilatory, but the old ties are pretty strong, even here you know. You’d be surprised how much we are beloved.”

  “Of course you are, you fool.”

  “I mean that while everyone wants Enosis theoretically, there is no sense of urgency about it. In my village they would take a quarter of a century.”

  “That’s what I mean. The odds will shorten and tempers will rise as time goes on.”

  “Perhaps. But people aren’t blind either to the defects of Enosis whatever they say about the Government. It would mean hardships.”

  “That is self-evident to us all. But you can’t measure nationalist situations by a logical yardstick. You have got something here which could be set fire to.”

  It sounded almost too preposterous, yet the logic of the thing was evident. But sitting there, over the sea, with a wedding-party at the next table but one singing Athenian songs and sending us an occasional bumper of wine, it seemed hardly worth an expenditure of thought and concern on the matter. “I am sure the F. O. has weighed it up. You’ll see. They will set a time-limit after a brisk haggle and we’ll all subside into sun-bemused tranquility.” Alexis smiled. “God, how I wish you were right,” he said. He was in the swim of great affairs and could judge them better; I was a private citizen and could not follow their ebb and flow. “Mine not to reason why,” I said. I turned the conversation in the direction of Michaelis and recounted some of my recent misadventures over the house. Alexis smiled, but his dark eyes remained thoughtful and I could see that I had not interrupted his train of thought, for no sooner had I finished than he resumed the thread of his political deliberations which even the magical moonlight breaking like surf upon the rocks below could not persuade him to abandon. It was di
squieting that he should take the affair so seriously, and later when we drove home I turned his conversation over in my mind, comparing it with that of a young Israeli journalist whom I had encountered in the Abbey one sunny morning, taking pictures and discussing Cyprus with Kollis. He had said: “The decision to take it to UNO was a grave error, though I suppose the Greeks had no alternative and were reacting to domestic pressure. I’m convinced they want to deflate the tire, not blow it up any more—because it could go off.” “Go off?” I echoed. “Yes, like Palestine. I don’t myself believe in Greek ill-intentions but they will need something stronger than the moral case if they are going to interest UNO which has so many other problems. You can’t just point to a perfectly tranquil little island and ask for Union without more ado. The world must be convinced that the problem merits international consideration.” “Are you suggesting they might start trouble here?” “I’m saying that serious trouble could arise. There must be twenty Cypriots capable of blowing up something; or perhaps ten Cretans might take it into their shaggy heads to come over one day and show them how. The bulk of the people, as yet quite passive, would be forced to choose. We loved the British but we were forced by sentiment to rally to the cause when the storm broke.” Kollis looked acutely uncomfortable as I said: “But you do not take into account Anglo-Greek amity.” “It could not stand the test of open insurrection.”

  He was an interesting young man and spoke almost perfect English with a slight slur. We drank a glass of wine at Dmitri’s while he expatiated on his theme. He was obviously turning his ideas over in his mind before committing them to paper. “As for the Government here,” he said, “it is fast asleep. I had an interview with an official described as a Political Officer. Do you know what he said when I asked about Enosis? He said: ‘Well, old man, officially it doesn’t exist, though unofficially it’s a bit of a headache.’” He drained his glass and stood up. “There is nobody I have talked to who impressed me as having the faintest grasp of the situation. I wonder who does the Colonial Office reporting on it? There must be someone well briefed. There are two excellent Commissioners in the field, but both complained of neglect and lack of funds and backing. The general atmosphere is rather depressing, indeed I find it alarming. It’s too peaceful to be true.”

  My purely personal angle of vision, limited as it was by the horizon of my village, denied me such troubling reflections, yet I could not help but take them seriously since a disturbed island would mean a disturbed personal existence there. But here I consoled myself with the thought that, however dilatory we were, sooner or later we would find a frame of reference in which to contain the issue. Every factor was favorable to us. We were known and loved; belief in our fair-mindedness and political honesty was unshakable; and indeed it seemed to me that even a referendum held after an intervening period of self-government might result in something like a drawn match, particularly when one considered the Turkish vote of one in five. The situation as I saw it then seemed to me to offer us only a chance of getting closer to Greece and Turkey. The Turkish case, such as it was, was hardly formulated, and had achieved no telling mark upon world opinion. Of course the Turks would react sharply to the possibility of Greek administration and the substitution of the drachma for the pound, but with the moral sovereignty of the place conceded to the majority it might not even be necessary for Cyprus to leave the Commonwealth at all—so accommodating did the Athenians seem in their offer of bases in Crete. And I had ample evidence of the heavy qualifications under which the feeling for Enosis labored—particularly among the middle classes who could foresee short commons ahead of them. Indeed, as with Morais, I felt that some frank and generous statement was the best way of disarming the Enotists. It was a pity that we were missing a catch or two, but then we usually did with our ponderous parliamentary methods. “It will all come out right,” I said to the young man, feeling the buoyant warmth of the sunlight as it floated down through the leaves of the great Tree of Idleness, and he said nothing to dishearten me.

  But if these considerations could be idly dismissed for the time being, it was not long before they appeared again in one or another different guise. I met a senior government official at Pearce’s luncheon-table, for example, who addressed questions to me which rather took my breath away and followed them up with equally extraordinary assertions. He said, for example, that the Cypriots could claim no Greek heritage, since they didn’t speak Greek, that they were Anatolian hybrids. The Enosis feeling was whipped up by a few fanatical clergymen and had no genuine public support.… The sort of things which, on the face of it, might be open to argument, but which could certainly be tested in the field at first hand. These errors of judgment were the sort of things one always heard in the pubs frequented by the British community, and were perhaps not so important as I judged them to be. But what worried me was that officials in whom political power was vested should regard the whole problem as essentially a colonial rather than a European one, and apply the dusty yardstick of other colonies to it. However negligible the Cyprus issue might seem it was after all soon to emerge on the plateau of international relations; ignorance of the basic factors might prevent London using the tact, skill and brains which were needed to reach a settlement.

  All this was given greater force and color for me when I was commissioned to write a series of articles on the issue for an American Institute of International Relations bulletin—a distasteful task, for I dislike writing about politics. Yet the money would buy me a door and a window for the balcony room, and I knew no better way of earning it. As my Israeli journalist had stepped into his car after shaking hands all round, a thought came to him. “You English,” he said, “seem to me to be completely under the spell of the Graeco-Roman period, and you judge everything without any reference to Byzantium. Nevertheless that is where you find the true source of Greek thinking, Greek moeurs. That is what you should all be made to study.” It was a prescient observation, and when I sat down to try to sort out my ideas about the Cypriot Greeks it came back to me with force. Certainly it explained much that I could not otherwise explain; it excused much. Even in a consideration of the Enosis problem the cultural heritage of Byzantium and its institutions illuminated everything. She was the true parent of Modern Greece.

  For Byzantine culture was something more than the sum of the elements it drew from languishing Hellenism and the influences of the Near East. It was an entity per se, not merely a colorful composite made up of assorted fragments of different cultures. The “Eastern Roman Empire” is in a sense a misnomer; for in 330 when Constantine the Great shifted the capital of the Roman world to Byzantium, he founded a spiritual empire quite unique in the style and resonance of its approach to problems, in its architecture, laws and literature. How is it that the West in its passionate romantic attachment to the Greek and the Graeco-Roman has ignored it so completely? It is difficult to say. For somewhat over eleven hundred years from its fateful founding to its fall in 1453, Greece was a part of that great octopus, whose tentacles touched Asia, Europe and Africa; and while the West was passing through the Dark Ages which followed the end of the Roman Empire, Constantinople sprang into exotic bloom and irradiated the world of science and politics with a new style of mind, a new vision. A true child of the Mediterranean, its spiritual temper was shown in its religious and artistic spirit. Politically it was characterized by a belief in the unbroken, indeed unbreakable, unity of Church and State—and the Greek Orthodox Church, its basic institution and mentor, has continued to flourish within the modern Greek state. Byzantine man could conceive of no political idea which did not assume the complete unification of Church and State; and the basic social unit of this great culture was expressed in a body of believers, composed not as a geographical entity, or on a racial pattern (for the Byzantine could belong to any one of a dozen), but purely as a sovereign consensus of Christian opinion. This opinion found its voice without any of the so-called democratic processes we know, without elections or the concept of ma
jority rule as a purely procedural construct—a means of locating and probing the people’s will. Assent or dissent was expressed at annual meetings in church whose object was to decide on both secular and religious affairs and transactions. A rare bloom, this; and the Greek churches and communities kept it alive through four centuries after Byzantium itself had gone down to dust and its children foundered deeper and deeper in the darkness which Turkey brought upon the world she inherited.

  Darkness? These things are relative. What does amaze one however is that the Turks, perhaps through lack of a definite cultural pattern of their own, or of one worth imposing on the Greeks, left them freedom of religion, language and even local government—and indeed vested in them a large part of the Imperial administration: a recognition perhaps of the enviable qualities of restlessness and imagination which they themselves lacked. When modern Greece, therefore, emerged once more into the light of day as a geographical entity in 1821, it was as a stepchild of Greek Byzance. For nearly four hundred years the Orthodox Church had served as a repository for the native genius or ethos of these latter-day Byzantines. Language had been carefully preserved so that apart from a few Turkish suffixes and a few score borrowed words Greek was still manifestly Greek, and the average Greek community emerged from the Turkish occupation less changed psychologically, say, than the British did from the Norman. Much that was Turkish in the way of manners, cookery, and so on was retained, but even this residue was soon infused with a liveliness quite foreign to the stately old-fashioned Turkish style with its contemplative and luxurious indolence. The clearest contrast offered us as a field for study is the Greek version of the Turkish shadow play which also emerged, live and kicking, in the person of Karaghiozi, from the Grand Turk’s ear.