Tony Angastiniotis. Trapped in the Green Line: the Story behind the documentary Voice of Blood.

Tony Angastiniotis. Trapped in the Green Line: the Story behind the documentary Voice of Blood (Lefkosa: Rustem Bookshop and Publishing LTD): ISBN 975-98959-9-4. 102 pp., VCD copy of the documentary. Paperback, YTL 20.

Freelance Greek Cypriot photojournalist Tony Angastiniotis, recently appointed as instructor at EMU Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, appeared like a ray of sunshine with his book Trapped in the Green Line, also published in Turkish as Kanyn Sesi--Yesil Hatta Sikisip Kalmak. The book has been published in Greek and follows on from Angastiniotis's documentary film, The Voice of Blood. At the turn of the century, the writer apparently decided to lay down his camera to work in marketing but was inspired to pick it up once more in an attempt to promote peace and understanding among the people of Cyprus, following the rising tension caused by the appearance of the Annan Plan (2004) and the subsequent referendum. It is worth noting that the writer himself is an ex-nationalist former EOKA supporter, who has come to realize through the years that killing produces only more killing and hatred, and that the only way to peace is through accepting the wrongdoings of each other and oneself, and learning to forgive, so that the same mistakes are not repeated. With this in mind, Angastiniotis has made a documentary about the massacres carried out by the Greek Cypriot army on the Turkish Cypriot villages of Muratada, Sandallar, and Atlylar (August 1974) where there are mass graves. The documentary centers around Selden, a 16-day-old baby victim, as the innocent spirit who reaches him one day and asks him to tell her story to the world--the story of a pre-maturely terminated life.

Trapped in the Green Line tells the story behind this documentary. Angastiniotis achieves an affective combination of historical facts, personal recollections, interviews with victims' families, and philosophical afterthoughts. The book includes correspondence with Selden's brother, the testimonials of survivors of the massacre, as well as newspaper articles about the documentary and interviews with Tony Angastiniotis. The writer provides contemporaneous newspaper articles attesting to the veracity of the events, and his own interviews with people affected by the atrocities. The interview with Selden's father is especially moving, as Tony shares the pain with him after so many years, providing an example in miniature of what should be happening all over Cyprus. Angastiniotis writes that he chose these massacres because of the way they were carried out, and the age and gender of the victims: all women, children and the elderly, in other words, people who could not fight. This meant that there could be no resistance. As a father himself, he sympathizes with all the fathers who came back from war or prisoner of war camps only to find their loved ones dead.

Angastiniotis includes appropriate quotes from various thinkers and politicians to enhance his message, centering around accepting the mistakes made by one's country without losing love for it, and seeing the truth, eye to eye. A quote from Winston Churchill at the beginning of Part II--"Searching for the Truth"--says: " Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." Angastiniotis is one of those who stumbled over the truth, but instead of hurrying off he decided to face it, accept it, and invite others to do the same. He stresses time and time again that the only way peace can be achieved with 'the other' is through first finding peace with oneself. The book is written to promote the aforementioned documentary to people of all nations and to make a statement about peace-building, but at the same time to call Turkish Cypriots to take the same steps towards admitting and accepting any wrongdoings that they themselves may have committed against the Greek Cypriots. Angastiniotis brings this message across clearly, changing the character of a book, which at first may have come across as a pro-Turkish statement. As Tony himself states, this is not something pro-Turkish or pro-Greek, but pro-Cypriot and pro-peace. According to him, "pro-Cypriot means there is no other side." (11)

Angastiniotis starts the book with his wartime experiences of 1974 as a child, following this with the picture painted by Greek propaganda for years, and his feelings and thoughts upon returning to his home village after 29 years in April 2003, when the barricades were opened and free passage of Greek and Turkish Cypriots was allowed. It was at this time that Angastiniotis, like many other Greek Cypriots, realized the extent to which he had been misled about the state of the North, and the character of the Turkish Cypriot people. He writes strongly about his actual relief and joy when he found out that he could actually relate to these people, whom for so long he had considered 'the enemy.' Although the documentary and the books which followed it caused Angastiniotis to be seen as anti-Greek by some circles, he rejects this, stating: "My intentions are not to accuse but look the community structure in the eyes and through honest analysis find the errors and deal with them. You can never change the counterfeit, only the authentic is alterable. We cannot change who we think we are; we can only change who we really are." (8) In a similar vein, he asks, "Isn't the silent witness to a crime equally guilty as the criminal?" (9) So one must accept and admit to sins, and speak out, whether it provides positive or negative information about one's country.

The most important message of the book is that one side's suffering is also the suffering of the other side, because both sides are Cypriots. Angastiniotis finds it hard to believe that the documentary was rejected not only by pro-Greek Greek Cypriots but also by pro-Greek Turkish Cypriots. He answers the question "Why did you prepare a documentary which presents the concerns of only one side?" with another question: "Which is the other side if we call Turkish-Cypriots brothers? When did the Greek side ever share the Turkish side's pain--or vice versa?" (25)

Angastiniotis has partially reached his goal as the documentary has been shown on the Turkish side, at a festival in Scotland, and recently for the first time on the Greek side, bringing in various forms of reactions from all over the world. After completing the documentary, Angastiniotis did not return to the South and now lives in the North, yet he feels trapped in the Green Line, similar to other Turkish and Greek Cypriots whose hearts he believes lie on both sides of the barbed wire fences. A reporter asks Tony what he would do if there were a war in Cyprus today, to which he simply replies "I would stand on the Green Line and get shot from both sides." (99) We can only hope that there will be no such event and that Tony's work starts a new era of understanding and reconciliation between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots, lifting the barricades so firmly established throughout the years on their brains, hearts and souls. If one asks where to look for Tony Angastiniotis, he tells them to go to the Green Line and look left and right; "You will see me there holding the injured sky of my small country" (86) to which I reply with one of my haiku poems:

The eagle soars high

Up above the troubled land Free but sorrowful 

Ash Giray

Eastern Mediterranean University