Mediterranean Meanderings

26^th April 2010

This week, due to my mother still being here, I have been making like a tourist – as dear Lord Peter Wimsey would say. Unfortunately I have in the process made her quite ill. I got back from my stint at the charity shop on Friday and she looked like death warmed up. A warning to anyone who spends more than a few hours in my company! She is feeling a bit brighter today and is sitting with her book on the balcony.

As my mother hired a car for the first part of her holiday I have seen more of Cyprus in the last week than I have in the last five months. I have got to shops off the bus route and I have even been able to buy a water dispenser, which is great because: a) I couldn’t have carried it home across the fields and b) I would never have been able to get to the shop in the first place. I am very pleased with my water dispenser as I now have cold water all the time and it is good for the environment as I don’t have to deal in hundreds of plastic bottles any more. So thank you mummy!

I don’t want this blog to turn into a giant postcard, so I will not bore you with all the places we saw, just a few impressions of them – in a Monet sense, rather than a Mike Yarwood sense obviously! It is impossible to ever give a definitive account of anything, as I can only ever see it from my own perspective. I am sure my mother would give you an entirely different account, and the other people who we met along the way still more variations – but this is my blog, so they can go off and do their own if they want their opinions aired!

Last Tuesday we went on a coach trip to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. I was very keen to do this for a number of reasons. Firstly, that I look into this part of Cyprus every day and am unable to get there. Secondly, because the slant I get on the situation only comes from the perspective of the people around me and I want to hear all the information. I would like to make it clear at this point that I am not pro/anti Greek or pro/anti Turk. The only people I care about are the Cypriots as a whole and the beautiful country of Cyprus – whatever their political or religious affiliation. What I write about in this blog is just what I observe and hear around me, such as the comment a few weeks ago of ‘the Turks are invading’. That is an accurate rendition of what I hear, but not necessarily what I believe myself. The local people who live in my area are very anti-Turkish, which is understandable given their recent history, but this is not my stance. I am not anti any group of people. I love each and every person for who they are as individuals, not for what they represent by accident of birth. So Tuesday was a very interesting day for me.

We began in the Old Town of Famagusta. This is next to the barbed wire that encloses the couple of kilometres of bombed-out buildings left from the 1974 invasion. The coach drove past the barbed wire and you could glimpse in and see what people had lost. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the tour guide had spieled out so much anti-Turkish propaganda (albeit in a very subtle way) that I was beginning to lose all sympathy for the current situation. If this amount of bitterness is in the hearts of each and every Cypriot in Southern Cyprus then the situation will never be resolved. From the sound of it they do not want to move forward, only dwell in the pain of the past. Once again all hope will be on the shoulders of the children to sort out the mess the generation before has got them in – not least because they will have the luxury of separation from the actual events. As an aside, a friend of mine, whose children are half-Cypriot, was telling me that her five year old came home from school recently telling her that all Turks have horns and are evil. Luckily this lady has great presence of mind and on the following weekend took her to the North, where she let her play in a playground with Turkish-Cypriot children. On the drive back she asked her whether she thought the other children were any different from her and whether she had a nice time. The child replied that she had had a lovely time and wanted to go again. So my friend told her to tell the other children at school that the children in the North are just as nice as they are, and that they are no different. Good for her – after all what hope is there for peace if the children are drinking in hatred along with their mother’s milk.

We got talking to a waiter in Kyrenia, which incidentally is a beautiful harbour. He was telling us that the majority of the Cypriots in the North wanted peace, whereas those in the South only want peace if it means that they get their property back and can throw out all the people who are now living there. He was very eloquent on the subject and much more balanced in his opinions than the carefully-disguised vitriol that was being spouted by the tour guide. This said I do not know who is right and who is wrong. I am not one of the people who suffered personally in this dispute and it is always easier to see things from an objective point of view. However, as Einstein said: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." So, until the Cypriots are able to look at the situation from a different angle it is difficult to see how it will be solved. If only it were possible for them to stop thinking of themselves as ‘Greek-Cypriots’ or ‘Turkish-Cypriots’ and just see themselves as ‘Cypriots’, but how this will be achieved I do not know.

It was lovely being in Bellapais and Kyrenia because they are situated behind the range of hills that I look at every day. So, to get to these towns we had to drive along the valley at the foot of the hills and I got to see them up close, although the actual hills I look at are along the panhandle, whereas Kyrenia is behind me to the West. It was strange being on the other side of the hills and looking up at them from another angle.

Northern Cyprus is also more rustic than the area in which I live. It still retains its old world charm and is not so Western. This is also true of the villages situated in the Troodos Mountains (back in the South). On another occasion we drove to the lace-making village at Lefkara. This is split into Upper (Pano) Lefkara and Lower (Kato) Lefkara. I loved Kato Lefkara. It is exactly how I imagined Cyprus to be. It is small and the streets meander in and out around the houses. These are built of the local limestone and are a warm yellow. Flowers cascade out of pots and window boxes and the view down to the coast is magnificent. If I could drive this is an area I would love to live in. I was not so keen on Pano Lefkara, even to the point where I did not want to get out of the car when we got there – before I had even seen the village. It is still very pretty, but I was not comfortable there and then the ladies sitting outside making lace started asking us if we were English and, if we were, we would definitely want to know that their shops were twinned with Liverpool/Glasgow/Yorkshire (delete as appropriate when you pass their particular shop) and indeed this was what was proudly displayed in their shop titles. One woman accosted my mother and said that she would unquestionably want to speak to her husband as he was from Glasgow, and hurried her in the shop. You will know him, she said, he ran the – here she said a name that neither of us had ever heard of – in the 80s. All my mother’s protests that she had only ever been to Glasgow on a day trip, and that she lives on the south coast of England about as far from Glasgow as it is possible to get, were in vain. I, being of a more truculent nature, said ‘thank you but I would rather look at the view’ and wandered off down the hill leaving my poor mother to extricate herself. I am afraid I have a real attitude problem with being hassled. As soon as someone starts to push something on me I walk away whether I want it or not. Something else I need to work on I think – will the list never end! Anyway, women of Lefkara aside, it was a glorious drive through the villages of the southern slopes of the mountains.

Saturday, we had booked in to do another coach trip – which was a bit of a worry as my mum had been quite poorly the day before, but she insisted she was well enough and off we went. This trip was called ‘Discover the Island’ and contained a lot of the propaganda that we had heard on the way to Northern Cyprus. It was a lovely trip, however, and we spent some time in Nicosia, in the Troodos Mountains and in Limassol. Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t really feeling well enough to walk very far and was sick on the way home, so couldn’t appreciate it as much as she would have liked.

It being the start of the season (and quiet because 20,000 tourists who should have come to Cyprus this week didn’t make it because of that pesky volcano!) the trip contained about 20 Reps, who were supposed to be learning about the tours to be able to sell them to the people in the resorts. They were late for the bus, because one of them was trying to straighten her hair and others had only just got in from partying the night before. They then spent most of the trip asking around for paracetamol and talking in loud voices about varying things which made the father of three young girls blush a great deal, especially when they asked him to explain them!These Reps were meant to be taking notes but spoke over the poor tour guide, and then proceeded to play ‘I went shopping with grandma’ in strident tones, ignoring everything we were passing. We then stopped at a beautiful 11^th Century chapel, which contained frescos from the 12^th -14^th Centuries and some of the Reps were upset at not being allowed in because they had barely any clothes on. Despite being Reps they did not know that this was a requirement in Orthodox churches – and did not even have the nous to know that whatever your religion, or lack of it, you show respect for that of other people. At this point the tour guide lost it with them and there were lots of loudly whispered remarks such as ‘you should know better’ and they seemed to behave with a bit more decorum for the rest of the trip.

All my moaning aside I have seen some beautiful things in the last week and I am very fortunate to be living here. I just get so frustrated that such beauty is interspersed with such bitterness, but then that is the way of the world I suppose, although I am convinced that it does not need to be.

My mother only has two days of her holiday left and I hope she will feel well enough to have a bit of a wander again before she goes back, although I am sure sitting on the balcony in the sunshine with a book is not doing her any harm. We have both coped surprisingly well over the last fortnight. We are both used to living alone and it is a bit of a shock to the system to be suddenly living with another person in a one bedroom apartment, when you are used to your own space – although it has to be said that she is better at this than I am. Luckily, my mother is a wise enough woman not to take it personally when I need my own space. She knows that I love her, but that essentially at heart I am a loner and that I struggle being in any company constantly. I need the peace and space of isolation for at least a short period every day or I cannot function. A great many people assume that because I live alone I must be desperately looking for someone to spend my life with. They cannot grasp that anyone may actually enjoy being alone. That said, if someone turned up I would not cut off my nose to spite my face, but I am not looking; and if such a person did turn up I do not think that I could ever live permanently with another person again. My space and my independence are too dear to me. So, all credit to my mother for surviving in my company for so long – even if I did make her ill!

My quote this week is one that I think on a lot and it came to mind very often this week as I was trying to look at the mess that is the Cyprus Split. It is from the peace activist Dick Sheppard, who died in 1937. He was an amazing and inspiring man. Something he often said as he addressed the crowds was that what we should remember is that: ‘it is not peace at any price, but love at all costs’. I don’t think a truer phrase has ever been said, and I will continue to try and love everyone equally, even those who try and force me to buy lace!