Cyprus

through the printed word as prophetic. I was
not destined to meet him in person until three
years later. But the question he asked in one
of his poems written in July 1974 and belonging
to his collection “Achaeans’ Shore”
is still unanswered:
What were we doing, I ask, all these years?
[…]
We became old filled with obstinacy and
stupidity,
without responsibility, roots and wings.
And with our pouch of common sense empty.
A year later, when I started preparing a study
of the Cypriot literature chronicling the events
of the invasion, I discovered, much to my joy,
that Charalambides had gathered and chronicled
the first year’s poetic output on the subject.
He even suggested the possibility of an
anthology of the poetry inspired by the Turkish
invasion. He was already setting up camp
on his own patch of the past, trying to mend
a big deformity on the garment of Hellenism.
I had the rare and sad privilege in 1974 to
visit my village and ancestral home in occupied
Cyprus a few weeks after the invasion.
I expressed my thoughts generated by that
experience in an unpublished essay, “The
Long Road to Dhiorios.” Wartime conditions
did not allow us to follow the direct route
from Nicosia to the village on the northwestern
part of the island. Escorted by Turkish
officers, we had to go through Kyrenia and
the coastal villages toward Myrtou, villages
whose abundant lemon and orange groves
had already started to wilt and dry because
of lack of water. The process of transforming
the occupied part of the island in “Turkey’s
image” was already in full swing. The questions
raised by the poets and other thoughtful
Cypriots were with me every inch of the
way, as I visited the abandoned and looted
ancestral home, chatted with the few enclaved
villagers who had stayed behind and
who offered me the last fruit I tasted from my
36
village. They smiled sadly at my gesture of
taking the house key with me as I was leaving.
And when I returned to Nicosia that
evening, many of the refugees, displaced
from their homes and scattered throughout
the island who had heard that I had visited
the village, sought me out to ask, in agonized
voices, if a relative was still alive, or if their
houses were still standing. I revisited the village
thirty years later, in 2004, but this time I
was not allowed to enter the ancestral home
which was occupied by a family from Turkey.
I am almost grateful I was not allowed to set
foot in my parents’ home under these circumstances.
Seeing the abandoned old church of
Hagia Marina in ruins and the newer church
of Prophet Elias now turned into a military
hospital, and the village school now occupied
by a family, was enough exposure to the ruins
caused by fratricide and war. I make references
to these incidents of my visit to the village
on these two occasions because similar ones
are echoed in the poetry of Charalambides.
It never fails. Meeting a compatriot anywhere
in the world becomes tantamount to undertaking
a journey back to the homeland. And so
it was with me, when in November of 1977 I
met Kyriakos Charalambides for the first time