I turned on the light bulb when the electricity suddenly went out. I am writing this article in its flickering light. The objects in the room were turned into shadows. The photos on the wall. Nazim Hikmet looks at me in the dark. We look. In the dark. It's cold. The room is cold. In the minus forty degrees of Moscow I had not been so cold. The snow that was freezing on the streets at that time was becoming like glass. But the rooms were warm. While in Cyprus the rooms are colder than the street. What reminded me of that clever Englishman now in this darkness? He described with a line this unfortunate homeland of ours: “It is impassable by the heat of summer, the mud of winter, the hug of the Turks and the tsalimia of the Greeks.” Then, what job did you have here, sir? What business did you have in Egypt with lice? In India with the flies? Between the feces of cows. You liked to go around the slopes and mountains of Cyprus with a mule. Lawrence Durrel also liked it. He loved Cypriot wines. I wish you would give Martin Packard a chance too. To reconcile us. Wasn't it all about peace? The man tried, he worked. You considered his efforts for peace very dangerous. The US Secretary of State, Mr. George Ball, came to the island. Packard turned him here. She explained to him what she was doing. Ball's supposedly appreciated them too. And he said to him: “But you have misunderstood everything, my son. Hasn't anyone told you yet that our goal is division? “
Where did Packard come from in the light of the lamp? What reminded me of him? Is it the fact that it has not been possible to understand all this even now? How many times have we written and said that this division is the work of the British and the Americans? But there are still some who doubt. We are bored, eh, we are bored. In the end, it is confusing to constantly repeat the same realities. Everything that belongs to yesterday must go with yesterday. New things have to be said. However, Cyprus does not allow it. He drowned us. It blocked our airway. He condemned us to constantly go around the same circle, like crazy. As if trying not to go crazy. Pills. Fortune telling. Mediations. In order not to completely lose our mind. We say a thousand times that “we are in the place where words end”. We say a thousand times “this country is ours”. “Unity, struggle, solidarity”. Our vocabulary grew old like an old religious book. Its leaves turned yellow. The jasmines we put between the leaves of our dictionary withered. I erased the inscription “division or death” on the wall and in its place I wrote “I love you”. They erased that too. They wrote “division or death” again.
The shadows dance on the wall from the light of the flickering lamp. Everyone on social media is shouting. They curse. They swear openly. May Allah give you his trouble. Dry your root. George Ball is dead. The children to whom he gave the division read mathematics by candlelight. The worst is not this darkness again. It is the transfer of darkness into man. The weight that fell on our shoulders when we returned home after burying a loved one dead. The “life goes on” whispers that can not comfort us. In the news there is no good reason that could penetrate the darkness that coils in our soul like a snake, absolutely nothing that causes joy. And pain for the fact that the situation will continue like this and absolutely nothing will change. Dreams that are not interpreted for good. I suddenly realize that I missed the excitement of the crazy crowd at a rock concert. Then I go down to “Livadi pou Dakryzei” by Theodoros Angelopoulos together with Anna Karantouri. I meet a Greek poet who wrote the epic of liberation, buying the words of a language he did not know. The ten thousand dead children in Yemen are turning around me like angels. I lift the little Eilan that washed his lifeless body to the shore like a dead fish and kiss him on the forehead. The shadows on the wall hold hands and dance. They all sing together. I am not writing a letter to Mr Guterres. I write to my favorite. After midnight, I will listen to the music playing on the radio for those who do not sleep…
