Once Upon a Time in a Place Called Cyprus....

[Birkibrisli]

[Birkibrisli]

Opposite the main gate of the main house and about 50 meters West towards the village of Melandra stood Auntie B's house...Auntie B. was Mum's eldest sister...At 16 she was married to a policeman some 15 years her seniour...They had travelled the entire island,going from posting to posting,Uncle H. rising to the rank of Sergeant in the process...I know little about his time as policeman,which is regettable...
I remember him as a very serious person with few words...He had retired aged around 55 with a geneous pension from the British...Grandpa gave them a block of land where they built their house,a smaller version of the main house opposite...

I mentioned earlier that my sister B. was the favourite of Grandma...Well,I was the favourite of Auntie B...I reminded her of her only child,a boy who was mostly away studying in Istanbul...When we were visiting the village I would always go and sleep at her house,in my cousin O's bed which was next to Auntie B's...Uncle H. slept on the other side of the room in his own little single bed.During the hot summer nights Auntie B. would come over to Grandma's house after dinner and we would all sit upstairs in the big room passsing away the hours till Uncle H. would return from the coffee house with Grandpa...by then I would have fallen asleep in Grandpa's bed listening to the chatter of the adults...What particularly helped me sleep was that the conversation was mostly in Greek,of which I understood little at the time...

Auntie B. would pick me up and carry me down the stairs and then across the little path which led to their house opposite...She would lay be down in cousin O's bed for a blissful night of sleep....Us kids were usually exhausted by the evening from running all day in the gardens,climbing our favourite wallnut,almond,carob or fig trees...Alternatively we would ask Uncle H. to saddle one or two of his donkeys,and my sister B. and I would ride them on the main road and over the hill to the vineyard,where we would while away the day eating grapes or watermelons in the neighbouring fields...I had a little folding knife I carried everywhere which came very handy when confronted with a huge watermelon on the ground...

At the end of such an exhausting day I had fallen asleep again and was carried to cousin O's bed by Auntie B...I had a wonderful sleep and woke early the next morning and rushed across to the main house for breakfast...Breakfast was always delightful...It consisted of boiled eggs and potatoes,hallumi,figs,grapes and huge plumbs,gobbled down with home made bread and olives from our own trees...It was for me the best meal of the day and I always looked forward to it... But that day everything seemed different...There was an unusual buzz in the kitchen...I could hear the laughter from the main entrance...When I entered the kitchen everybody fell silent for a few seconds...I felt all their eyes on me and looked behind me to see if there was anything unusual...
Next thing I know Grandma had fallen off her little stool by the fire holding her stomach with huge waves of laughter she was trying hard to supress...Aunti B and Mum were doubled over with laughter they had no intention of suppressing...and sister B. had this wide cheeky smile she had when we were caught doing something we were not supposed to...

I stood there totally bewildered and waited for some sanity to return to the kitchen...When it did I learnt I was the reason for all the merriment and hysteria...During the night I got up for a wee and headed for the chamber pot which was placed on the floor next to my bed...but I didn't stop there...I walked to Uncle H.'s bed, stood there and emptied the contents of my bludder on his shiny head...Before the unfortunate man woke up I was back in my own bed fast asleep...
"Your Uncle called out to me," said Aunti B. in between hysterical laughter..."I think we have rats in the celing,dear...look how wet I am...They must've pissed on my head..." I stood there wanting the ground to open up and swollow me..When she got her breath back Auntie b finished the story," I had no idea what had happened,but I didnt go back to sleep...I lay there waiting to see what would happen...After a while you got up and headed straight for his head again...This time I managed to pull you away in time..."

This story became a legend in the family...soon everyone knew about Uncle H.'s battle with the rats in the ceiling on a wet summer's night...
Uncle H. went to his grave cursing the big filed rats in his ceiling...

[repulsewarrior]

this is a good one Dr...

you reminded me of my life with my great uncle who allowed us the pleasure of playing with his jackass...

It has become a legend how on sundays i would go with him to sell watermelons from a cart...i would scream instead of shiso kai poulo, sheso kai poulo, which caused many to come out of their homes to see what a twelve year old was on about...

he was a very kind man, and whenever he was near there was laughter. practical jokes were easy with his help, and we sold a lot of watermelon...

[Birkibrisli]

[Birkibrisli]

[Birkibrisli]

For some reason or other we were not really allowed to mix and play with the other children in the village...Mother tended to be a little bit overprotective,and we had more than enough cousins to keep us amused all summer through...Aunti B's son,cousin O. was at university in Istanbul most of the time,but he would sometimes come home for the summer holidays ...His homecoming was always a happy occasion...Because I was the only son and he was the only son,we had a special affinity...He called me Bidane,(The One-and-Only) and brought me comic books from Istanbul to encourage my love of reading which was already very notable...I loved and looked up to him...He could be very charming and attentive,but was also very easily bored and distracted...His mother treated him like a prince...And he often acted like one...He never stayed long in the village,almost certainly missing some special person in istanbul he could not wait to return to...His eating and his talking were like rapid fire...I was particularly delighted by his Turkish accent which he seemed to have acquired instantanously on arrival in Istanbul. He was the second person,after Uncle F. (Mum's younger brother) from Istinjo to have gone to Turkey for higher education...This was a particular cause for pride in the entire family...Uncle F.became a dentist and went on to serve as Mayor of the Turkish quarter of Nicosia between 1962-74...Cousin O. became a lawyer and went on to become chief Judge of the Famagusta District Court...Little,unassuming Istinco always punched above its weight...While Uncle F. had an easy passage through university,cousin O was amonst those unfortunate university students who were landed on the beach at Erenkoy (Kokkina)soon after 'Bloody Christmas' in 1963...More about that debarcle later on in this story....

[repulsewarrior]

[Birkibrisli]

[Birkibrisli]

Two significant events happened in the year 1955....The EOKA started their armed struggle against the British,and Father was posted to Yalia,a village in Paphos some 30 kms or so away from Istinco...both these events would play an important role in how my life turned out...

I said the EOKA started their struggle against the British,but that was not how the Turkish Cypriots saw it of course...As far as we were concerned the blood-thirsty Turkish-hating terrorists had at last made their intention clear...
They were going to dispose of the British before coming to dinner at our places...And we were going to be the dinner...Let there be no mistake in anybody's mind...This is what the 95% of the Turkish Cypriots believed sincerely...People would have different opinions on how this came about...
But a combination of historical animosity,rampant nationalism,cunning British tactics,and sheer brainwashing by the Turkish Cypriot leadership had a lot to do with it...

But take it from me,for as long as I remember there was never any doubt in our minds that we were now put on notice,we were fighting for our physical survival...Our lives would not be worth living once the British departed...If there was any life to live that is...It was that bad...

One of my earliest memories is playing with a handgrenade...It was in the teacher's house in Yalia where we were placed after Father's transfer...Yalia had a two-teacher school,and Father was promoted to Headmaster...He was also the local organiser of the fledgeling TMT,the underground movement formed to counter the preceived threat from the EOKA...I mentioned before that a couple of years earlier Father had visited Turkey on a teacher-exchange program...Although I never heard this from him,Mother believes he had recieved training while in Turkey in covert operations...He was now busy putting it into practice...
I must've found the handgrenade in Father's bedside drawer,and taken it to my bed...I remember Mother's panic when she found me. And I remember the fight she had with Father when he came home from school...I didn't know what it was at the time of course,but within a few years I would be instructed in the use of it...And in the use of a handgun...
Father must've been bonkers showing a 7-year-old how to use these deadly weapons,but they were desperate times which called for desperate measures...I was the only boy in the family,and it was my duty to protect my mother and sisters in Father's absence...But what a weight to place on such young shoulders...What a way to live your childhood...Sometimes when I watch my 9-year-old-son play with his Nintendo DS or jump with joy into one of the harbourside pools in Sydney,I can't help but feel a lump in my throat...I grieve for my stolen childhood...

[repulsewarrior]

...this era had its affects everywhere; i like to remind people that niggers, hung from trees then, in the USA.

but having passed this era too, in Cyprus, i will not forget we had a tradition of respect that came from living communally as cooperators also; i might add, at that point, the Greatest Cooperators in the World.

we, i think you'll agree, weren't born into the hatred that is so relevant to Greece and Turkey. thus, my life as a "Greek" was also affected by the fear, and EOKA was a threat to my life as well...

...my cousin and i were never allowed to go to the soccer club in our village those days, like so many children whose parents told them the same thing. but we knew why, (and we ourselves chose not to join them, although we also chose to remain silent)...if only they stuck to soccer.

we stayed close to the farms, and ourselves as a family. so too our neighbours, on the other side of the fence of our backyard, who were "Turkish"; in our village several hundred years old now called "mixed" by our British masters, and divided in so many different ways.

my uncle and my cousin and several other relations were made to disappear, in '74. just farners, but with an olive press, water, and a mill, they became targets of plunderers who had as their sheild a political will. one comfort is that our closest neighbour(s) grieve this loss, their lives, with us to this day.

but for a few, i think among Cypriots that are Grecophone or Turcophone, there is hope still, that people will desire the freedom we had as the dwellers of this island before the Modern Age failed us in this way. rather than remain an extension of a proxy war of our respective Nationalities, we can celebrate what Mankind gave us as a gift: an end to our sublugation, so that the diversity of our roots thrives again as a measure of our tolerance and grace.

[umit07]

Hi there Everyone. Birkibrisli I very much enjoyed reading about your childhood memories. I think you should compile it into a book.

[repulsewarrior]

welcome, umit.

[umit07]