But the living mugs are hidden behind the view-slits of the tanks.
THERE WILL BE NO PARADISE
Straight off the plane, they push me into a car and set off, racing along a winding road, not telling me where we are going. The Greek next to me finally says that we are on our way to a refugee camp, a rally, and we might be late. He checks his watch and scolds the driver. This is my first trip to Cyprus, and the beauty of the island has already gone to my head. We are speeding over hill after hill; cypress trees line the road; there are endless vineyards; the villages are of white limestone; the sea beyond them — always the sea.
A quarter of an hour and we turn into a space, flat, big, covered with tents, and a large crowd is standing at one end of it. Someone is on the platform waving his hands, the loudspeakers reverberating with a speech that I cannot understand. The people with me (I don’t know their names) start pushing through the crowd, pulling me along; in the crush I smell that stuffy, peasant smell, milk, wool, something else; and then I see their faces, silent, intense, rocky, sallow. The Greek who is pulling me through the crowd by my hand says these are all refugees from the north, poor people without — he adds, clearing the way now with his elbow — houses or possessions. But these are hardly the conditions for a longer conversation, if only because, before I can grasp what is going on, I have been pushed on to the platform and handed a microphone by a young man.
Speak, says someone else. I’ll translate.
I am sure that there has been a mistake, that they have taken me for someone else — a dignitary, a minister, an international figure who is meant to tell these unfortunate people about their fate and about who will improve their lot.
The sun is intense and I am soaked with sweat.
I want to get down off the platform and clear up the misunderstanding with the organizers. I am not going to speak; public speaking is torture for me. I know nothing about Cyprus; I have only been here half an hour. I do not know these people and I have nothing to say — at least nothing they couldn’t live without.
There is no organizer in sight. There is nobody to whom I can explain the misunderstanding. There are children clinging all around the edge of the platform, like bees on a honeycomb, making it impossible to get down. The crowd is waiting, silently. I stand in this silence; thousands of people are watching me, stupid, lost, trapped. I wipe my face with my handkerchief, playing for time, trying to collect my thoughts. The one who handed me the microphone and the other one who offered to translate are both starting to look impatient. The chidren are staring at me with particular attention.
I have the presence of mind to look around me. The men stand close to the rostrum. Powerful, massively built peasants with angular heads and black, closely-cropped hair. They are unemployed. The war has cut them off from work and deprived them of their fields, their orchards. What could this man have been yesterday? A sower in the spring, a harvester in the fall, the lord of himself all year round. And today? A refugee, with a bowl in his hand, queueing for soup. What a waste of human energy, I think, an abasement of dignity. The peasants on the outskirts of Lima and Bogota, or the ones in India and Thailand, or the young people in Nigeria and Kenya: a billion people capable of work with nothing or almost nothing to do for the duration of their lives. Nobody needs them or wants them in a world where there is already so much to be done. If they could be given worthwhile occupations, humanity could make dizzying progress. The world’s wealth would be doubled. Pyramids of merchandise would rise in even the poorest countries. Granaries would overflow. Water would flood the largest deserts. And here, on Cyprus (I want to tell them), couldn’t we perform miracles and make your island — a paradise of nature — into a paradise of affluence and plenty? But the war has destroyed everything you had. It has cut down the trees in your orchards and trampled your fields, torn off the roofs of your houses and scattered your sheep. And now the war has sentenced you to be idle spectators of your own misfortune.
Behind the dense mass of peasant men stand the crowd of women, dressed in black, with black scarves on their heads. They are all old.
At the edge of the field there are tents upon tents — the refugee camp. I have seen camps of this kind. The most terrible were outside Calcutta, filled by Hindi shadows that had fled East Pakistan. I say ‘shadows’ because that throng of skeletons, even while still moving, no longer belonged to the human world. There are Palestinian camps in Jordan, there are the camps of starved nomads in Africa, who having lost their pastures and their cattle — the basis of their existence — are now listless, desolate, waiting for death. Around the cities of Latin America the camps are human hills of poverty. These people have fled the hunger and animal drudgery of the villages, hoping that somewhere, anywhere, even in a refugee camp, it will be better, that they will salvage their lives and find their place.
Dear friends, I say, I have seen much misfortune in my life and here I see more. Our world does not smile on everyone and when it is good in one place, it is bad in another. The trouble is that we do not know how to get off the see-saw. There is no sense in going on about it. There are always dark clouds and we can never know where and when these clouds will produce a deluge. You are this time victims of the deluge. The deluge on Cyprus has taken the form of an armed invasion; a foreign army has seized your villages. I understand your despair, because I come from a country that has known many invasions. The roads of my country have been trod upon by millions of refugees, and in every great war my country has lost everything. I myself have been a refugee, and I know what it means to have nothing, to wander into the unknown and wait for history to utter a kind word. I know that what you care about most right now can be reduced to the questions: when will we recover our homes? when will we return to our land? I want to tell you honestly that I do not know. It may be in a month; it may be never. Your fates are entangled in a great political game, and I cannot foresee how that game will turn out. That is why I am standing here, on this platform, uselessly. I did not come here to promise anything. I came here to get to know you and I hope you will tell me what happened. I propose that we end this rally, and perhaps one of you will invite me to your tent.
I express my thanks, but I have made for a commotion, because the programme calls for many more speakers. An activist of some kind calls on the people to stay and announces the remaining events. I go to those old women dressed all in black. One of them leads me to her tent, and several others follow. They sit me in a chair, although they remain standing. I ask the interpreter why they are standing and am told that they will sit down once a man tells them to. They give me coffee and water. They are Greek peasants from the northern province of Cyprus. Hard-working, worn down by housekeeping and bearing children. Tactlessly, I begin asking about their ages. They are forty or fifty years old, but they look like elderly women. People live long here but spend half of their lives being old. Youth, prolonged endlessly in western Europe, seems not to exist here. First there is a little girl in school, and then immediately a dignified mother surrounded by a pack of children with big, beautiful eyes and their thumbs in their mouths, and a moment later there is this kind of old lady, dressed in black.
I ask these women what hurt them most. They say nothing and cover their faces in their black scarves.