The 1821 bungled uprising.
Byline: Hermes SolomonKYRIACOS IS 76, squat, plump and sad as he sits alone under a tired looking beach umbrella awaiting customers to hire sunbeds; it is Monday and there aren't any.
Tourism is not what it was, he tells me. And what do we expect when restaurants charge e1/420 for a salad worth five, he asks, adding he saw it on RIK news the other night.
He has a younger brother in AustraliaC* What a country, he says, clean, tidy, organised and beautiful. He also has a sister in Canada and another in England -- all having quit this impoverished island (as it was back then) just ahead of the EOKA uprising in the mid-50s.
He visits them regularly and claims almost everything is cheaper elsewhere nowadays. We've turned into a race of greedy grabbers, he reckons, allowing ourselves to be overrun by immigrant workers with most Cypriots too lazy to get off their arse. Just look at the state of the beach, filthy! "Sit down," he insists, "Keep me company for half an hour and I'll tell you why EOKA was the cause of us losing half the island."
I do but ask if he can instead tell me why we massacred TCs after independence.
"That sad part of our history depends on who wrote it and from which point of view you read it."
"Then let's hear your version."
It's dawn, and in the heat of a July sunrise, a small sailboat at half-mast anchors offshore near the town of Polis Chrysochou, apparently lifeless and waiting, bobbing about in a slight swell at a distance beyond musket shot.
From a deserted inlet, a battered rowing boat is dragged into the water by two young men dressed in customary coarse cottons (loose, open-neck blouson, embroidered waistcoat, a cummerbund holding up baggy calico pantaloons tucked into knee high boots). When the boat is safely afloat, the men hoist themselves astern and with an oar each, row out silently towards the sailboat.
A Maronite janissary, a regular at the local fishermen's cafE[umlaut], arrives much earlier than usual. He greets the kaffetji who, along with a group of customers gathered in the courtyard, is looking out to sea. The group hastily disperses, several depart on foot to work in nearby fields and the remainder disappear inside the cafE[umlaut].
The janissary (regarded as an outsider by all but the rulers of the island) sits alone and dreamily, hunched at a table in the shade of a large carob tree cooled by an onshore breeze.
Cicadas have yet to begin their deafening choral chatter -- the sea barely laps upon the shore when suddenly, its soporific melodiousness is interrupted by the sound of distant voices. The janissary, aroused from his dreams, scans the horizon. He sees the boat draw alongside the sailboat as one of the two men on deck catches the line and the other shouts (what were to become) fateful katharevousa in exchange for demotic greetings. Long, rectangular wooden boxes are then hastily offloaded over the side of the sailboat into the rowing boat.
When the boxes are stacked waist high, the rowing boat, sunken bow deep in the water, castes off and heads back slowly to the shore. At that moment the kaffetji delivers a circular tray to the small table set beside the janissary.
Together, the two watch the sailboat weigh anchor, hoist the mainsail and glide effortlessly out to sea. The janissary then inquires as to the identity of the men in the rowing boat. He is told that they are 'locals' taking delivery of farm implements. The kaffetji returns to his cafE[umlaut] as the janissary slurps down his frothy coffee followed by a glass of water, forgetting to leave his usual few piaster on the table as he hurries off.
The kaffetji notices the man's hasty departure and decides to follow him at an unremarkable distance across the village square, he to the mukhtar's house and the janissary to the nearby military outpost, where he reports to his commanding officer what his keen eyes had just witnessed.
Armed and several in number, a squad of janissaries led by their commanding officer march back across the square and down the stony road leading to the inlet, where they conceal themselves behind a mound of rocks awaiting the rowing boat's laborious return.
Having caught sight of the squad, the kaffetji and mukhtar rally the local women from their homes. In their flowing blacks, the women rush down en masse to the inlet wailing liturgical verse in unison with the cicadas, who have just begun their cacophonous chorus in the low trees and many coastal shrubs peculiar to the region.
Halfway back, and on seeing and hearing the women competing with the cicadas, the 'locals' change course and head the rowing boat parallel to the coast. The janissaries reveal themselves, commanding the men to row the boat ashore.
They ignore the command and head with an impassioned fervour towards an inaccessible promontory. The janissaries open fire, shots plopping short until, at the promontory, the exhausted rowers are confronted by a large fishing vessel, white sail and crescent moon flag flapping and speeding towards them from the opposite direction.
The half dozen or so fishermen aboard see and hear the janissaries shooting and shouting. The 'locals' resign themselves to capture and the rowing boat is towed ashore, where the commanding officer immediately orders the opening of the long rectangular boxes.
Tightly packed in straw are muskets, pistols, shot and the like.
The men are clamped in irons and over the next four days marched on foot to the capital, where they are questioned then tortured into revealing the source of the arms and their purpose, which was to assist in a planned uprising by Christian Orthodox islanders against their Ottoman Muslim rulers -- rebellion. The 'locals' are then summarily executed.
This unexpected discovery of an illegal shipment of arms was the excuse Kuchuk Mehmet, the ruling Pasha of the island, had been waiting for. He praises Allah, then immediately orders the arrest of all six district bishops.
Janissaries are despatched on Arab stallions but bad news travels a league ahead and the two bishops directly involved in the rebellion escape into the hills.
No sooner had the remaining four been dragged to the Seray did the fury of Mehmet erupt. He calls a meeting with the Archbishop, His Beatitude Kyprianos, who arrives in full regalia proclaiming the Church's innocence. But the ruling Pasha, knowing full well that little of consequence occurs on this island without the Archbishop's blessing, accuses His Beatitude of being the ringleader and has him dragged behind a donkey around the Venetian column, stoned and then hung from the tree in the square alongside the beheaded and quartered bodies of the four bishops, leaving their corpses to the flies for days. And as if that in itself wasn't adequate retribution, he gives the order to his janissaries to arrest 400 noblemen, clerics, landowners and men of influence and has them beheaded as well.
Kuchuk expropriated the property of his victims and drove thousands of families from the island, leaving it to become a desert peopled by the wretched and ignorant. Some converted to Islam to save their lives, yet there is no record of any from our family having done so.
"Now do you understand why we massacred TCs after independence?" concludes Kyriacos.
Naturally, I've coloured his account of the bungled 1821 uprising somewhat, although history does not depend on who writes it and from which point of view you read it, since it is, like indigestion and gastritis, forever repeating on itself.
For those of you interested, the locals were marched on stony roads, in a July heat, an average of 20 miles a day.
There was no Green Line to contend with back then and their janissary guard took the much shorter northern coastal route from Polis Chrysochou via Limnitis to the capital.
On Sunday, July 5, a memorial service wasAaconducted by His Beatitude, Archbishop Chrysostomos at Phaneromeni Church, Nicosia in memory of the 1821 massacre, and in particular, in memory of his confrere, Archbishop Kyprianos.
I attended the service along with several cousins, since the beheaded Archbishop was a first cousin ofAaour great, great grandfather, Hadjisavvas who, asAaa man of influence, met the same fate.
Copyright Cyprus Mail 2009
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| Publication: | Cyprus Mail (Cyprus) |
|---|---|
| Date: | Jul 12, 2009 |
| Words: | 1403 |
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