Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island (17 page)

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 majority 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.

Things were no different in Cyprus; the long persecution of the Orthodox Church by the Latin culminated in the famous Bulla Cypria in 1260 which made the Latin Archbishop the supreme ecclesiastical power in the island over all clergy; the Orthodox bishops were mere dependants of the Latin bishops and at ordination were forced to take an oath of obedience to the Holy See. Paradoxically enough the powers of the Orthodox clergy were only restored in 1575—by the Turks themselves. Presumably they had seen the patient unobtrusive struggle of the Orthodox against the Latins, and wished to make common cause with them. At any rate when they came they were welcomed
by many of the Cypriot peasants who had groaned under the harsh military dictatorship of Venice, and under their rule serfdom disappeared and a fair measure of local autonomy was enjoyed by the people of the island. And later?

The unexpected phenomenon was now seen of the supreme power and authority over Cyprus passing into the hands of the Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus after about 1670, he being now regarded as the ethnarch or leader of the Greek-speaking section of the inhabitants. The original cause which brought the Orthodox prelates out of their previous obscurity was the desire of the central government in Constantinople to devise some local check upon its extortionate and not always submissive local officials; but by the beginning of the nineteenth century the influence acquired by them had become so paramount that the Turks became alarmed. In 1804 a rising against the Archbishop was quelled. In 1821, however, a more serious disturbance occurred and the authorities arrested and executed the Archbishop, bishops and leading personages of the Orthodox communion on the charge of conspiring with the insurgents in Greece, then struggling for their independence.
*

From this one could see just how deeply hidden, and in what depths of unconscious historical process, the roots of Enosis lay hidden. Could it be extirpated if it could not be satisfied? I could not find it in my heart to believe such a thing possible. But it might be accommodated and even turned to our advantage; accommodated, that is to say, psychologically.… How could this best be done?

The absence of a political life of any sort in the island was a major weakness, and the current political scene divided itself neatly into two panels—Right and Left. It was significant, indeed very significant, that even the flourishing Communist party dared not ignore popular sentiment on the ethnic issue, and was forced to keep the Enosis plank as its foundation. This seemed irrationality bordering on lunacy when one considered what short shrift the Athens Government would have to give to the party and its adherents should Enosis come. Was the national call so powerful a vote-gatherer that even Marxists must respect it or see their party founder? It seemed so.

And then a constitution? The Greeks feared it, for as Panos said:

We fear that any delay would spell the death of Union. We could easily be led away by political differences. Our unity would be impaired by a long period of waiting. If we accepted any interim state of things we would founder in apathy and self-division. This is
where the English could be so strong, if they produced a constitution so liberal as to be unexceptionable.

But there lay the rub. Unless Enosis itself were a reserved subject (which no Greek would accept) the legislature would always be overturned by the folly and exaggeration of the Unionists, who would clamor for immediate secession to Greece and dissolve the chamber. That explained the narrowness of the constitutions which Britain offered—they could not be broader and workable. An unsatisfactory hedge of thorns for us to climb through!

These conclusions did not come altogether, but singly and from many sources; the picture I formed was a composite made up of many fragments of gossip and thought, of many stray meetings in coffee-houses or along the hospitable seashore. I tried to condense them simply for the sake of clearness so that my essay for the bulletin should have the balance and perspective of a real document—not an ephemeral production. But even in this I did not feel directly concerned; my angle of vision was a selfish one.

I had also at this time begun to teach English to the students of the Nicosia Gymnasium—a task which though arduous was most interesting, since here one could feel the true temperature of nationalist feeling among the older students, who hardly a year later were to be among the terrorist groups. They could not foresee this, as yet, however, and their vociferous
enthusiasms led them no farther than public demonstrations of faith in UNO. The thought of violence in Cyprus was far from everybody’s mind. The Archbishop was a man of peace and everything would be settled peacefully. In answer to the question: “What will you do if UNO rejects the appeal?” there was at that time only one answer: “We will take it back. We will have peaceful demonstrations and strikes. We will mobilize world opinion.” Nobody ever replied “We will fight,” and if one suggested it oneself as a question a look of deep pain would appear on the nationalist countenance, the voice would fall reproachfully as it replied:
“Fight?
Against Britain whom we love? Never!” Despite the mounting tide of feeling the mouthpieces of the movement never ceased to underline the phrase: “Enosis contains no anti-British barb. We love them and want them to stay as friends. But we want to be our own masters.” But there were warnings, too, which bade us hurry if we were to contain the high spirits of the people and canalize them productively.

The Nicosia Gymnasium was a large rambling building inside the old Venetian walls; together with the Archbishop’s palace it formed the spiritual nerve-center of the Greek community. With its rococo-Doric portals it looked, as all Greek gymnasia do, like a loosely adapted design based on an early illustration of a Doric temple by Schliemann. But it was a handsome place with its broad roadway and feathery green pepper
trees, and the little Church of Saint John opposite was a delightful example of Byzantine architecture.

By electing to live in my own village rather than in the capital (which might have been more practicable) I retained a link with the rural community, even though my hours were such that I had to leave the house at about half past four. I rose, therefore, with the shepherds and scrambled down to the Abbey with the first wave of sheep or cows to where my little car stood, white with dew, under the Tree of Idleness. Light would just be breaking up out of the sea, and against it the rosy spars of the Abbey ruins outlined themselves in sulphurous streaks of bronze and scarlet. The dawns and the sunsets in Cyprus are unforgettable—better even than those of Rhodes which I always believed were unique in their slow Tiberian magnificence. As I
breasted the last rise where the road falls like a swallow towards Kyrenia I paused for a minute to watch the sun burst through the surface mists of the sea and splash the mountain behind me with light. Usually I had someone with me—a shepherd cadging a lift to some distant holding, or the sleepy postmaster hurrying to Kyrenia for the first sorting. We smoked in silence and watched the slow conflagration of the world from this little tableland before humming down the breathtaking declivity into Kyrenia. A quick loading of oil and petrol and I would start to climb the range, the sun climbing with me, balcony by balcony, ridge by ridge; until as I breasted the last loop of the pass the whole Mesaoria would spread out under the soft buttery dawn-light, languid and green as a lover’s wish; or else shimmer through a cobweb of mist like the mirage of a Chinese water-print. And always, far away, at the end of the great plain rose the two steep fingers of Santa Sophia which marked the capital.

My links with my village were also fortuitously preserved in another way—for some of my villagers had sons and daughters studying at the Gymnasium, and there were at least three or four of them waiting for me when I arrived, ready to carry my books and claim friendship with me because their fathers were my friends.

This indeed was the perfect laboratory in which to study national sentiment in its embryonic state—indeed a Greek island within Cyprus, with its spiritual and political aspirations condensed around the person of the Ethnarch (who was often visible, pacing the old-fashioned balconies of the Palace with an air of gentle reserve) and embodied in Greek language and Greek institutions. Here, too, bloomed that extraordinary flower of chance, the quixotic irrational love of England which no other nation seems to have, and in a fantastic sort of way it flowered in blissful co-existence with the haunting dream of Union. It was almost impossible to believe one’s ears at times, so contradictory and so paradoxical did the whole thing seem. The portrait of Byron, for example, in the great hall, at the head of the whiskered team of shepherds and farmers
whose efforts brought freedom to Greece. On the headmaster’s desk stood a portrait of Churchill gravely listening to his fervent denunciations of British policy and its injustices to the Cypriot people. “We will never flag, never give in,” he assured me, glancing at the portrait as if to draw moral strength from the grave toby-jug face with its sulky reproving glare.

Modern Greek history can hardly explain the fantastic romance which the Greek mind has built up around the story of the 1821 Revolution; England sent her greatest poet to help them raise the flag. He died for Greece and England—they are both not countries, but symbols of liberty incarnate.” (This from a school essay.)