Redux
Every journey circles home
Everything happens too fast now. In the span of one week Cyprus took on the EU presidency, Trump “got” Venezuela, a Cypriot MP tipped as a future leader was accused of domestic violence, then the complaint was withdrawn, and the Epstein files landed with all the opacity of a document dump designed not to reveal but to exhaust. Volodymyr Zelenskyy came, left, and the president assured him of our support cause Cyprus understands occupation, sovereignty, and what is at stake.
And then: Bang!
A video dropped. Not metaphorically. It fell straight from the screen onto the collective head of the village, Asterix-style. Circulating on X, allegedly showing a secret cash network supporting President Nikos Christodoulides, the footage claims campaign spending limits were bypassed and political favors exchanged for money. If we were feeling sophisticated, we’d say it “sparked a political storm.” Respecting our very low standards, let’s just say it went viral. By the time I reached the hairdresser, every woman there knew the plot.
The video, posted by an account named “Emily Thompson,” appears to show a former minister, a presidential relative and officer and a major businessman in private conversations, allegedly recorded via hidden camera. The shadow it casts is all over, presidential campaigns, access, proximity, and the good old question of who gets to whisper into power’s ear.
I struggled to find the right angle until friends did what friends do best: rescued me. One said, “Amazing how they all speak the same way.” Another, wiser and more sceptical, shrugged: “Do you know how many men I know who talk like this?” The body language. The name‑dropping. We were all women, noticing the same thing.
So I asked someone younger, fluent in the new corporate-political dialect. What is that confident smile? That relaxed certainty? He didn’t hesitate. “It’s the look of the untouchables.”
Like something out of a mafia film: men, always men, talking in half-sentences, congratulating each other for nothing, mistaking proximity to power for intelligence. Conversations that sound important. “We’ll see.” “It’s handled.” “You know how these things work.” Said with a nod, a grin, a shared understanding that no one else is meant to be in the room.
It goes deep. It’s a system, a network, and every network has a support system. No one is ever punished, remember? Well, they do. It’s the look of someone who thinks they own Cyprus, and that, for some reason, we are all in debt to them.
It’s a way of being: the audacity, the mafia-style charm, the certainty that the rules don’t apply. We recognise it because it’s everywhere. And we watch them on the screen, ashamed, but we watch.