Cyprus Mail
CyprusLife & Style

The wonder that was Cyprus past

feature3 main

A new memoir draws an accurate picture of a Cyprus long gone, of a hard yet simple life. ALIX NORMAN discovers the things we never knew about life on the island in the 1940s and 50s

 “When I was a young girl, Cyprus was a place of secrets and contradictions, sincerely held religious beliefs co-existing with superstition and a lingering hint of witchcraft. Education and freedom were for boys,” says Maro. “Duty, chastity and obedience for girls…”

There have been many books written about the Cyprus of the 1940s and 50s. Many are scholarly tomes, driven by a political agenda. Some are more balanced, an effort to present both sides of the story. Others are fictional efforts, narratives that often centre on the troubles of the time. Maro: A Childhood in Cyprus and a Life Beyond is none of these. Rather, it’s a vividly detailed picture of what life was really like for our parents and grandparents: the stories we’ve never heard, the things we never knew…

feature3 the author
the author

Penned by Maria Norwell (née Maro Kyprianou) this fascinating memoir immerses the reader in the daily life of a young Cypriot growing up in the 1940s and 50s.

“When I think back over my life, my mind always travels to the little girl I was – to little Maro,” says the now octogenarian author. “She swims in the bright blue waters of her youth, she climbs the hills of her village, she runs and plays and is welcomed by everyone who meets her. She is a child of freedom and pleasure.”

These are tales we often hear from our more elderly relatives: the wonder that was Cyprus past. Yet all was not quite that rosy – and the author reveals the good and the bad in equal measure…

Born in the early 1940s in the beautiful village of Karavas, Maro was the second of six surviving children – a strong-willed tearaway by all accounts. “I was a very wild sort of child,” she writes of a youth spent escaping endless church services to run on the beach, splashing in the local well, and defying her teachers. Even worse, she wasn’t the hoped-for son.

“At that time, sons were little emperors,” she writes. “When my longed-for brother Andreas was finally born, he was carried about as if he was a prince on a throne. My father was over the moon at the birth of his third son after the death of two boys. He only had eyes for Andreas.”

But, in these snapshots from the past, we can find valuable lessons for the present, the author suggests. “I grew up with a life that was school, work, church. Lemons, olives, carobs and almonds were gathered from the fields, the yards were swept daily, the chickens and silkworms tended to. And yet,” she adds, “these are all such beautiful memories. When you are encouraged to work almost from the moment you can walk, it provides a resolve within you which can be drawn on in later times when the world sets you many challenges.”

feature3 maro gathering flower for her mother in the village
Maro gathering flowers for her mother in the village

Today’s readers will find the tales of life in 1950s Cyprus both heart-warming and horrifying. Death was omnipresent – Maro writes of those who died falling from cliffs, toppling into wells, or from diseases that are now eminently curable. Physical deformity was not tolerated – her own sister, whose arm had been malformed from birth, was frequently abjured to ‘stand straight’. And mental illness (Maro mentions that those who suffered from schizophrenia or similar conditions were locked in basements) was treated with “profound ignorance.”

Racism, classism and sexism crop up again and again. Superstition was rife. “If you heard an owl hooting near the house, someone would be likely to die. If you saw a barking dog, that meant you had an enemy. A snake signified someone who was lurking, ready to attack. Rivers were avoided at night because they were infested with spirits from the other side.

“It must all seem so silly to anyone reading now. But, after my baby brother died, my mother and her friend lifted me into the family oven, stuffed the opening with kindling, and lit a fire. ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ I cried, as the flames jumped up. ‘Are you going to stop eating your brothers?’ my mother’s friend screamed at me. ‘Yes! Yes!’ I cried, even though I didn’t understand what was happening. If I hadn’t given the correct reply, I don’t know what might have happened!”

It’s such authentic instances that are lacking in other historical texts, that have been glossed over in our own relatives’ stories. Here, in Maro, is a true-to-life picture of a Cyprus long gone: a hard yet simple life; an existence that was gradually made more challenging by the coming troubles…

By the time she was in her teens, “the treatment of Cyprus by the UK government had led to massive resentment,” writes the author. “My school had become a breeding ground for nationalism – Enosis was always in the background. My father’s position became very difficult as politics became more intense: many of his regular clients were high-profile British politicians. This was not safe; and it was not going unnoticed.”

On January 30, 1957, Maro’s father was shot dead in a restaurant. “Just another story in a newspaper, but a story which had so much behind the headline,” she writes. “A couple of years ago, my brother came across a former high-ranking EOKA leader who divulged to him that my father was unjustifiably wronged.”

Almost 70 years on, this admission comes too late to help the 14-year-old girl of the past. With the death of her father, Maro and her sister were sent to the UK, to a cold country, a foreign school, and an alien way of life. The final chapters detail the author’s new life in Britain. But it’s the first part of the book that will most resonate with readers.

“My story is a bridge between two different worlds, what was expected of the generation before me and the start of the new one I would inhabit. There are many generations yet to come. And I want to tell them, this is what you came from, this is what runs through your blood. Be proud of it.”

 

Maro: A Childhood in Cyprus and a Life Beyond is available from amazon in Kindle, hard cover and paperback

 

Follow the Cyprus Mail on Google News

Related Posts

MPs demand urgent action on liver transplant patient care

Nikolaos Prakas

Traffic fines: same penalties, longer payment period

Elias Hazou

Festival explores experimental music scene

Eleni Philippou

Mixed-marriage Turkish Cypriot loses appeal for citizenship

Tom Cleaver

Two years in jail for killer driver

Jonathan Shkurko

‘Feverish pace’ over monk scandal investigations

Andria Kades