THE WAY THINGS ARE

As Donald Trump’s vision of a Gazan Riviera landed like a fart bomb, Vladimir Putin must have been crying ‘Da! Da! Da! Trump has lost his marbles and I’m a dictator!’, China startled the tech world with its AI advances in its Year of the Snake. This old Goat, neither Communist nor Capitalist, has multi-ethnic friends.

Our countries’ cultural gifts enrich our friendships; we may not share but respect the others’ political stances. When I was young, America embodied cinema, music and a wealth of writers I loved, politics didn’t enter the frame. Russia contributed powerful literature, immortal music and the beauty of the ballet. China’s New Year celebrated its amazing diversity of arts and crafts honed by centuries. Its traditional instruments encompass and mimic human emotions, delicate art transforms paper, strength and grace energise its martial arts. China’s snake is symbolically wise.

St Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint, is said to have rid Ireland of snakes (there are still some around), in Cyprus they range from harmless to deadly. In all lands there are snakes in human form, the derogative inference taken from the proximity of the snake’s belly to the earth – low.

Knowing people through their culture rather than their countries’ politics is healthy. We brand races en masse with certain characteristics if we don’t know individuals. Some Brits will tell you Germans are cold. While living in Germany, I found warmth. Or perhaps, back in the 60s, my being Irish, made a difference. Closer then to post-war Europe’s past, Ireland, given it’s not too distant divorce from Britain’s empiric clasp, had remained neutral during WWII. Germans said, when I told them I had lived in the UK, ‘Brits are very cold.’ (Cypriots have said the same.) I replied (in both cases) I hadn’t found that to be true, but then maybe people react to you the way you face them.

I admire how Brits can laugh at themselves, and the fearless sense of absolute freedom that allows comedians to make fun of their politicians, its interviewers persist on an answer to a direct question of even the highest wriggler. The Irish have learned to laugh at themselves having been the butt of pejorative jokes for decades. The philosophy being, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at anyone else, and we should all be able to speak truth to power freely.

Free speech itself has become a divisive subject depending on whether it is obtained from reliable, unbiased input, or unreliable sources made up to facilitate a particular viewpoint prodding receptive extremists into illegality. The terrifying thing now evident is the ability of people who can bend group thinkers to their will, being able to get away with obvious lies dressed as information readily accepted and acted upon.

Trust in our public services should be a given; phones and emails are often ignored here. On several occasions I received mail from Ireland that has been interfered with, one sliced cleanly with a knife. Some came in the afternoon when there is no service. Recently, I opened an envelope of newspapers from Ireland to find them still damp, posted two weeks previously, in a plastic bag stating it had been found ‘damaged and secured by the Cyprus Post’. They came all that way wide open? An airline baggage hold might cause patches of condensation but someone had obviously tried and failed to steam it (not a first, the stain is always in the same place at the seal, I’d warned my friend, who selotapes openings) then roughly opened at the top.

If customs want to open mail that’s OK, but shouldn’t the bag state that? A person answering my enquiry passed it off as ‘only newspapers’, missing the point that mail is private, seemingly blasé about someone tampering with my personal property. Are there scanners for suspicious items, if not, why not? ‘Does the government open post?’ I asked, ‘Of course not!’ Then, I suggested, you have a thief riffling through mail you need to find.