Redux
Every journey circles home
In this world ruled by algorithms, automatic translations, and European platforms that wake up in the morning and decide on their own what everything should be called, Cypriots pop up suddenly and annoyingly, like a zit as Tom would say, insisting that poor Mitsos in the Greek civil service and his computer should grasp every one of our national and metaphysical sensitivities. As if we understood theirs. As if we were born with a built-in GPS for every Flemish political quarrel.
I still remember my Belgian fellow student in 1990, back when I believed Cyprus was the centre of the world and all satellite signals revolved around Famagusta. At some point, fed up with my patriotic outbursts over the borders in Kyrenia, which others call Girne, she raised an eyebrow and asked, not calmly, “Do you know anything about Flanders and Wallonia, or do you simply assume 1974 has the same fame as Orwell's 1984?” No, I did not know. That day I learned about the Belgian federation but, more importantly, I realised that neither the universe, nor the European Union, nor that Belgian woman, whose name I can barely recall, gave a thought to the queue at the Agios Dometios checkpoint, let alone Metehan.
I remembered that story because of the woman of Cypriot origin, living in Greece, who was surprised to see that her place of birth in the north of Cyprus had been changed to the Turkish name Iskele on her renewed identity card issued by the Hellenic Police. Our brothers in our motherland had taken it straight from a European platform, of course they did. Europe, the continent that still argues over whether yogurt is Greek or Bulgarian, somehow has a crystal-clear view on how Trikomo must be spelled. Comedy. With a bit of drama. Comic-tragic? I will humbly agree.
And the civil servant? He looked at the ID, listened to the woman, and replied, It cannot be changed. He missed a lesson that day: sometimes before the regulations speak, a person must listen first. What do we call that rule? Ah yes, common sense. A rare species nowadays, almost extinct, like the Trikomo we once knew.
Lessons for everyone then, for the civil servant, for the lady from Trikomo, but also for us. Maybe it is time we finally update the software of our national battles. Time for an update. Not to stop the pain, the pain is there. But so we stop getting stuck on words while we lose half of Cyprus not on paper but in our consciences and our souls.
Because tell me, what was this week’s huge political victory for Cyprus? One MP, one minister, and one embassy, an entire state essentially, managed to win a battle with Greece no less for the correct naming of Trikomo.
Waiting for a European platform or for Greece to solve the Cyprus Problem? Might as well wait for the prophecies about The City, Constantinopolis, err Istanbul (called that by the U.S. State Department since 1930), which will probably only come true if a platform messes up.