The post -74 generations need a threshold moment
By Argyro Nicolaou
Despite the growing impression that we can
get on with our lives without being affected by it, the Cyprus problem leaves
no aspect of our existence untouched. The case of those born after the events
of 1974 illustrates the paradox. For the post-1974 generations, the Cyprus
issue is both spectre and reality; ghost and materiality.
Let me illustrate what I mean. For a
27-year-old born in the south of the island, the north – its towns, villages
and landmarks – are less like real
places and more like ideas or abstracted concepts. They have been defined more
in terms of nationalist propaganda (think elementary school textbooks) and as
settings of violent conflict than sites of personally lived experience. At
best, the places in northern Cyprus are constructed solely in one’s
imagination, with the help of parents’ or grandparents’ stories and memories,
some fond, others bitter. At worst, they become catalysts of hate and bigotry,
hollowed-out nationalist symbols that ignore the status of the sites in
question as real-life geographic locations with a complex history spanning
centuries.
Despite the opening of the checkpoints in
2003, a surprisingly large part of the population born after 1974 continues to
have only a spectral, or abstract, understanding of the occupied north as
place. I respect the choice of people not wanting to cross through to ‘the
other side’. The side effect of this refusal on our collective capacity to
grasp the island as a whole, however, is all too real, whether it is justified
or not, and it inevitably affects the extent of our openness to a potential
solution.
At the same time, for people born after
1974, the fact of occupation has always been in a very real way experienced on
a daily basis: the TRNC flag on the Pentadaktylos mountain range visible day
and night; the NO ENTRY signs of the buffer zone; the walls of barrels and
sandbags next to cafes in the walled city of Nicosia; the sight of the blue
berets of UN soldiers and their trucks; the annual student demonstrations on
the anniversary of the north’s unilateral declaration of independence, and the
trite language in the archbishop’s Easter message wishing for Cyprus’ own
‘resurrection’ year after year after year.
The result of this double but concurrent
vision of the island is that our image of the ‘other side’ coincides with a
lived, felt, seen experience of one’s ‘own side’ that could not have emerged in
the absence of the Cyprus problem. This is our reality and its materiality: ‘our part’
is perceived as a whole.
The symbols and symptoms of occupation that
pervade our everyday life have become banal. They are a matter of fact. No
amount of political rhetoric (on the left or right) can shake the lulling
effect of a comfortable life lived despite
these symptoms and in the
midst of them. With this banality comes an eerie certainty of the
permanence of the only configuration of the island we have known: that of
division.
Our certainty of this permanence is
aggravated by the fact that we have had to endure 40 plus years of political
tension and failed negotiations, which take a heavy toll on the public and
critical discourse as well as on our collective psychology.
For the most part, this is the source of our
hopelessness. This peculiar, inimitable condition of growing up on an island
where the agreed upon remedy of our political plights, a solution, is
constantly pursued but always deferred. Despite the mouths that keep uttering
the desire of reunification and peace on TV, in cafes, at dinner tables, on the
radio, in the House of Representatives and on the street, four decades of
failed attempts and nationalist politics have convinced us that a solution is
impossible. That every new negotiation is doomed to end in failure. ‘I hope
they solve it’ is almost always accompanied by ‘No way’ or ‘There’s no chance.’
Deep in our guts it seems that we have
decided that we are bound to live and die on an island that looks, sounds,
feels exactly the same way as it did when we were born: divided, afraid and
stunted. Deep in our guts is a hopelessness meticulously planted there by a
political stalemate that benefits a few but ultimately hurts most of us.
#UnitedByHope has been embraced by some as
the slogan of support for the most recent round of negotiations, which
culminated this week in Geneva. Some have written about its inefficacy,
outlining that hope is not enough, that we kid ourselves by using a hashtag
that glosses over the thousands of procedural, legal and social obstacles to a
solution that exist on the ground.
A hashtag is never enough, that much is
true. But is hope as dispensable as the detractors of #UnitedByHope make it out
to be? Is it as useless, as trivial, as stupid as they claim?
No matter how radical or ‘out of touch’ it may
seem, hope is an essential component of change. For a lot of us born after
1974, hope of a future in which our government is finally free to focus on
education, technology, culture and social welfare is one of the few things that
keeps us around. Without any memories of homes and villages to return to, hope
of a future that we do not know, but are thirsty to find out, is the impetus
that keeps us active and sane, even at times when everything around us seem
absurd.
The unpredictability of change is not a certain catastrophe, as
the rejectionist camp tries very hard to convince us on a daily basis. That
goes against the term’s definition. Unpredictability and risk can also be a
positive force, if they are a result of a well-planned, bona fide agreement for
Cyprus that has the best interests of the island’s people at heart.
The post-1974 generations need a threshold
moment, an opening that will offer a glimpse of a better life, if we are to
keep the island we love alive. Here’s to shamelessly and defiantly hoping that
the progress achieved this week in Geneva will finally lead to that.
Argyro Nicolaou is a Cypriot writer and
filmmaker currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature and Critical Media
Practice at Harvard University
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