The Cyprus I Came to Know: In Colors and Notes

The Cyprus I Came to Know: Colors and Notes

In recent days, Cyprus has gained attention for the wrong reasons. This Cyprus is not our Cyprus. It is not my Cyprus. Yes, there is another Cyprus that does not fit into filters and postcards. It is not gray and monochrome, but light broken into mosaics, into colors, like a rainbow that appears only if you stand in the right place. It is the other Cyprus, our Cyprus, which does not impose itself but slowly reveals itself to anyone who tries to see it. It does not shout for attention, but if you give it that attention, it rewards you. This Cyprus is not simply an image, it is a feeling. It is the small moments that seem insignificant, but together form something deep and resilient. It is a place that does not ask to be explained, only to be observed. And then you understand that here History and culture are not chapters in a book, but colors that fall one upon the other and are never stained.

The first color is in the soil. Warm, red, dusty, present. You see it in the villages, in the low houses, in the hands of the people. It is the color of memory, the one that carries the weight of time without breaking. In the walls that have seen generations pass, in the courtyards where children grew up, in the bread kneaded slowly, just as History has kneaded our people for centuries. The soil of Cyprus is not heavy, it is steady. Beside it stands the green of Troodos, of the vineyards, of the lemon and orange trees that stretch across Mesaoria, Famagusta, Karpasia, mountainous Limassol. Small cultivations, few trees, enough to remind us that life here was built with patience and labor. Every root has something to say, not loudly, but always honestly. The most beautiful stories are told by our olive trees. Symbols of a democratic tradition of struggle and Philosophy, spanning centuries.

Then comes, naturally, the blue. Not only the blue of the sea, but also the blue of the gaze of the personified Cypriot woman. It is the blue of the horizon that opens the mind, the blue of afternoons in fishing villages where time loosens. From the small harbor of Kyrenia to the last shoreline. The sea is not a tourist attraction for us, it is companionship. Beside it, stories were born, songs, silences, loves. And within this blue you hear sounds. The splash of the waves marries with violin, lute, voices that sing without microphones. Music here has color, it changes from note to note. Sometimes it is deep and dark, sometimes bright and playful. “Cursed voice,” “Paphian voice,” “Avgoritis voice.” It does not remain the same because it does not need to. It is like the people who create it, genuine, without trying to resemble anything else. People who sometimes sing their sorrows and sometimes their longing for Arodafnousa.