Log: Cyprus

Yesterday we visited Paphos for the first time.

As we drove up to the city, it gleamed under the noon sun, all clad in white and spread out along the deep blue Mediterranean coast. It’s smaller than Limassol, also hillier, and a bit perplexing. A challenging place, I realize it now.

There are angular buildings from the 90s or early 2000s, there are others that look newer and are all resorts, and it all lies on top of ruins and limestone. There are hills, elevators, and an old town populated with cotton candy-colored shops, freshly painted, on some streets, on others the buildings feel almost abandoned. I turned a corner and encountered a huge image of the Eiffel Tower inside a courtyard that is labeled “Ibrahim’s Khan.” The grey-stoned mosque is nearby. Some tavernas are lively and full, but the streets still feel somehow hollow and empty, it’s Saturday. On the roads, cars fight for space around rotundas, and it seems suddenly like that’s where everyone is, in their cars, going somewhere, if not in a taverna.

Our visit to Paphos was motivated by the Tombs of the Kings, a major archaeological site and necropolis for the wealthy and powerful of the late BCs. Stone cut niches once filled with Hellenistic or Ptolemaic sarcophagi and treasure now house pigeons, which are native to Western Asian stone, along with the recently arrived Asian hornets. They house a damp and dusty darkness too, it’s an emptiness that feels dense. Uncanny in its weight, as if the dark voids that were carved into the earth were not empty at all.

And it’s because they aren’t, there’s always something floating around us that we can’t see—oxygen, carbon dioxide, dust, UV rays, PM2.5.

What fascinates me that most about visiting archaeological sites is how the experience deconstructs a sense of normalcy; something that can also happen in a classroom, especially when studying history, astronomy, literature. But at a site, it happens in a very physical way. Suddenly, I am standing at the edge of this hole in the ground, and I see doric columns below me, rising up as if holding up the rock and ground that I stand on.

To borrow a cliché, my perspective is shifted, literally. The usual rules of the game, on how to interact with a building or a space, are challenged. As much as the exposure to different narratives through books and film and conversations serves to challenge our preconceptions, there is something about movement—moving through a space and experiencing distances, heights, depths differently—that hits home differently. It’s a very visceral reminder of the vastness of pretty much everything: the planet, history, culture, microbiology, outer space, which is fun to encounter on what is a “small” island like Cyprus.

Ever since I took a history class on Salsa music and dance a few years back, I’ve been noticing how the concept of “embodiment” pops up from time to time. And if I really think about it, my undergraduate capstone course on Cervantes' short stories also had these body-centered themes, it's what I wrote my paper on for that class. For context, I grew up very "mind" centered, which has gradually changed throughout my early adulthood. So it's interesting to think very deliberatively about what it means to be "in" a body or to be a body (and that's a whole discussion in it of itself), especially in thinking about how movement can be an act of knowledge-making or knowledge-sharing (something we usually associate exclusively with "the mind"). And what about storytelling? I also find it interesting how controlling movement can be a powerful tool in the hands of authorities, and how encouraging certain types of movements can also foster collective myths—thinking of Youth Groups in Nazi Germany or cults that have their members do physical labor or specific types of sport. And well, there is a reason that movement is also social, cultural, political, like the labor or the feminist movement.

Moving around Cyprus has been very interesting (especially without owning a car). Yesterday, we ended our latest mini-trip, daylight fading fast, at a curving pebbly beach, which myths tell is the birthplace of Aphrodite.

- Andrea

There are more birds in Paramytha now than when we first arrived. They sing from a scenery that is greener now due to the rains that have arrived with them and with the end of summer. The days are still warm, but the nights are fresh, now populated by new scents, awakened by the humidity that has set in.

When it rains, it pours, and that’s exactly what has happened in Limassol, where even a tornado was spotted during a recent, sudden thunderstorm. All the while, the air was heavy with dust and particles swept up from the Sahara. Coughing, cold, soaked, it was hard to not feel like Cyprus delivers new low after low. That every time I try to crawl out of sickness, weariness, stress, there is a new test.

But this post is not about that. Not directly. It is about the next day, when I headed out to the local taverna for a Halloumi wrap—a dinner staple in the many times when cooking felt unachievable. Milos Taverna was a bit emptier than usual, the lights dimmer. The two men who seem to run the place were hard at work in back room. It turned out that the thunderstorm and wind had produced leaks, and they had to clean everything up. The taverna was closed. And even so, there was a bit of dry charcoal leftover, and they insisted on making me something.

That small act of kindness despite the headache they were dealing with really touched me. I felt guilty too, after all, running a business is tough. I didn’t want to put them through more trouble, and I wondered how I could tip them as a thank you. But when it came time to pay, he handed me the pita and told me it was on the house.

It seems like these past few days after the rain, I notice glints and glimmers of this sort of kindness all around. A kind word from an old professor, genuine curiosity about my work from a stranger, a joke from the barista at the usual café.

In spite of winds, dust storms, viruses, and the terrible weight of a day like today, glimmers of kindness persist and remind me of what is worth nurturing and protecting.

- Andrea

Today we are in Lofou, a small village located 20 minutes north from Paramytha. It is another dreamy place that has preserved its beautiful stone architecture. In the café-restaurant that we sit at, a calm and cool atmosphere gives peace. We are surrounded by books, ceramics, dried plants, wood, art, the blue sky and a green garden.

I have Javier Darío Restrepo’s Pensamientos: Discursos de ética y periodismo with me, which I read from a beautifully and simply designed armchair. Pensamientos reminds me of home. Life feels joyful.

And yet, whenever I pull up a map, I am reminded that we are now just off the coast of Lebanon. Perhaps an hour-long flight from Gaza. If I zoom out, I notice that we are on the same longitude as Ukraine, we share the same time zone.

I was born surrounded by violence, but in Bogotá, you are always on your guard, even if the city is safer now than what it used to be, and a lot safer than what other parts of Colombia are still like today. Here, in this idyllic village, however, the contrast feels starker, somehow.

During a brief period in my early adulthood, (outright) war between nations went from feeling unthinkable to almost inevitable. I know this isn’t true, violence and injustice have been and continue to be ever-present. The turn of the century was incredibly bloody for Colombia with the "war on drugs." But it does feel that now there has been a broader mental shift: that before war and violence were somehow more unacceptable globally, and so different actors undertook violence in slyer and stealthier ways. Political discourse around military attacks and violent action was not so forthright. Some people may say, as has been said about Trump, “at least they’re being honest now, showing their true colors.”

However, I don’t agree. I think that the fact that a full-scale war was “unthinkable” for many people was a good thing. The fact that we have mental red lines is important, even if humanity does not always live up to these standards. To me, the goal should be to denounce and expose the ways governments, businesses, and individuals get around what is deemed right and the ways in which they have been hypocritical. We should hold them accountable for that lofty discourse on peace and tolerance, make them meet the standard, instead of giving in and making war and violence an “acceptable” and “inevitable” part of our everyday in the name of "honesty".

For a long time, I’ve felt a natural pull towards pacifism. However, I understood well the people who critiqued it, we need to defend ourselves from those who commit harm after all, don’t we? We need to be able to fight back, right? What’s the alternative?

While I don’t have any answers, I have realized I need to listen to that instinct that protests against violence, conflict, and war. It is an instinct that has been coupled with a life-long interest in literature and art that expresses and describes the ravages of violence, systematized: from Primo Levi, Tim O’Brien and Harper Lee to Maryse Condé, Alain Resnais, and Isabel Allende. It was first the memoirs from Holocaust survivors followed by the accounts of the military dictatorships in South America and then the testimony of the brutality of slavery in the Caribbean that have over time constructed my conviction for justice and accountability, but also at the same time, for nunca más.

“Never again” is always associated with World War II, but in Colombia, never again continues to be called for even as Colombians continue to suffer and die every day due to ongoing violence. Our “armed conflict” is unique in the way that the categories of victims and victimizer are not always so neatly separated. As the writer Rodolfo Celis Serrano describes in his autobiographic shorts on life in the Usme neighborhood of Bogotá: the things that he did while living under the threat of violence bring him shame and guilt. Celis was displaced from his home, a victim of the armed groups that took over the territory, and yet he himself complicates the category of “victim” by highlighting his own guilt. In Colombia, we have to reckon with reintegrating combatants and civilians of all types into peaceful communal living, while at the same time trying to balance this with the pursuit of justice and accountability.

And there are so many Colombian thinkers and artists and activists that have been working through the inherent paradoxes of prolonged and systemic violence for years.

One of them was Javier Darío Restrepo, who I am currently reading. For my next log entry, the “September Reads” entry. I want to reflect on Restrepo’s writing along with the work of Jean Giono, another author who I also read and rediscovered this month.

Their writing has given much to think about what peace means, as real action and not just a “utopian” concept. In their writing, I’ve found that same visceral rejection to war and violence—that it is senseless at its core, even with all the justifications that we try to dress it up with. In their writing, I’ve also confirmed that this rejection of war does not entail sacrificing strong convictions about rights and wrongs, it doesn’t equal apathy or “neutrality” in the face of cruelty, injustice, and inhumanity.

“El carácter del conflicto, su prolongación en el tiempo, la complejidad y multitud de los elementos en juego, el constante juego de la desinformación—que no es accidental sino parte de la táctica guerrera—, crean una atmósfera de confusión tal que la gente muere todos los días sin saber por qué muere”. – Javier Darío Restrepo, Pensamientos (p. 221)

« Il faut sinon se moquer, en tout cas se méfier des bâtisseurs d’avenir. Surtout quand pour battre l’avenir des hommes à naître, ils ont besoin de faire mourir des hommes vivants ». – Jean Giono, Refus d’obéissance (p. 14)

- Andrea

Only 24 hours ago we were there: tucked away in the tight valleys of the Troodos (Τρόοδος) mountains, traversing twists and turns under a brilliant blue sky and the gaze of tall pines. Villages hung from the mountainside, and one of these was Kalopanagiotis (Καλοπαναγιώτης).

Of the high highs and low lows that have characterized my first few days on Cyprus, Kalopanagiotis is literally and figuratively a very high high. The drive up from the southern coast into the mountains offers views that words do little justice to. Near Mount Olympus, the highest peak of the island, the view of the northern coast appears, and Cyprus feels suddenly small again, like when seen on a map for the first time. It is a unique feeling to reach a mountain peak and to be able see the physical constraints that the sea places on land.

It’s so different from the huge, continental places I grew up in that felt boundless.

I first discovered this feeling of "boundedness" in Guadeloupe, which despite its very small size on the map felt bigger than Cyprus. I think it probably is, maps do distort, after all. And still, I remember going to Terre-de-Haut in Les Saintes, going to the highest peak and realizing that I could see the entire island from there, all around me. Even stronger was the feeling of going up to Saint Cloud and looking out and down onto the coast on which I lived, walked, worked, everyday. While the sea was breathtaking and gave that familiar sense of vastness, seeing the long but limited coast so perfectly drawn out, made the feeling of boundary visceral.

But back to Kalopanagiotis, which is to dive back down into the earth. It hugs a small creek with lush vegetation, giving the village a very intimate feeling. Instead of just looking down, I found myself looking up a lot, at the peaks, the sky, the buildings and streets above us. Despite the smallness of the village, it felt like there were not enough hours in the day to stroll through its narrow roads and river paths, once, twice, thrice. Kalopanagiotis is also penetrated by history, with its Byzantine artwork and archaeological remains of monasteries, baths, and water mills. At the same time, local businesses are vibrant and include a winery, artisanal stores, fusion restaurants and more. Nature, archaeology, art, artisanat, and the culinary arts—I couldn’t ask for more.

But when I try to capture the wonderment that I felt, I am reminded how insufficient words often are. There is no list of its attraction detailed enough to really capture that feeling.

I would have to resort to art, rather than a log entry (What’s the difference? Can’t anything be art? But there is a difference, I can feel that there is.), to piece together that joy of discovering someplace beautiful, new, and already nostalgic.

- Andrea

We arrived in Cyprus almost exactly one week ago. Today I sit at a café in Limassol, looking at out the lively and sunny street near the center of town, and I feel as if I had only just arrived. As if newly landed.

Like any change, moving always requires effort, usually new and unusual sorts of effort. After a lifetime of moving from here to there, I like to think that I have strategies in place to help me in these moments of transition. And yet, it can be hard, and it has been hard.

The countryside of a new country has special surprises, especially for city people, and I realize more and more that I am city person—despite my love for hiking and nature. Encountering sand flies for the first time, a drought for the third time this year, and challenges in transportation, all while coming down with a cold, is not too much fun. Even if we expected some challenges (like the transportation one), there's no way to sugarcoat the truth, it’s been tough.

I also realize how much I cherish my self-sufficiency, which is to say my independence. Not being able to address challenges from the get-go due to feeling unwell and not knowing how things worked made me feel trapped, and helpless.

And yet, things have slowly fallen into place, with some patience and initiatives to put things in order. Now, it feels like life is ready to begin again.

This experience made me reflect on some other challenging moves I've gone through, two of which were even more challenging, not to say distressing. Moving to Paris, for one, and also Vieux-Fort in Guadeloupe (another island) tested me in more ways than one. Stockholm was also tough in the first three days, but overall, less tough than the first week of Paramytha. Even with those rough starts, I've yet to regret moving someplace new, it has always ended up being enriching and marvelous (even with new challenges that appear, like the COVID-19 pandemic while I was in Gwada) and I hope this holds true for Paramytha, Limassol, and Cyprus generally.

- Andrea