Israel is again accused of killing and otherwise abusing innocent civilians in its attempt to control the Gaza strip. Israeli commanders, according to today's New York Times, admit that people have been shot and houses destroyed unjustifiably, but claim that overall they have been judicious in their use of force.
Israel's posture in its conflict with the Palestinians calls to mind a book I just finished re-reading: Bitter Lemons, by Lawrence Durell. Durell is best known as the author of the Alexandria Quartet, a series of sensuous, dream-like books about life just before World War II in that coastal Egyptian city. But he also wrote a number of books that can be found in the "Travel" section of your favorite bookstore, as well as a body of poetry.
Bitter Lemons is an account of Durrell's life on Cyprus in the early 1950's, while the Mediterranean island was still a British crown colony. The first part of the book is a hymn to the beauty of the island, where he bought and remodeled a house in the remote village of Bellapaix, as well as a celebration -- both humorous and moving -- of the idiosyncratic villagers, both Greek and Turkish ethnically, whom he met and dealt with daily. The book thus starts off as a mid-twentieth century version of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, another British writer's account of adapting to life in a different and more laid-back culture.
But unlike Mayes, by the 1950's, Durell was a well-known writer, and a man with wartime experience working for the British government. And in 1953, when Durrell moves to Cyprus, the local demands for Enosis, or union with Greece, are becoming increasingly strident. Durrell is politically conservative, and a supporter of the British Empire -- an empire still largely intact in 1953, despite the recent loss of India. He ultimately becomes the colonial government's Press Adviser, as the demands for Enosis become more violent and the rest of the world watches with increased concern.
He views the increasingly violent campaign for Enosis from a different perspective, perhaps, than would most Americans today. His love for the Cypriot people is clear, but he firmly views them as a rural, somewhat childlike people who are far happier under British rule than they would be under union with an increasingly dynamic and urban Greek nation. Cypriot self-government apart from Greece does not even occur to him as an option. He perceives the Cypriot desire for Enosis as a vague goal the residents love to ponder and discuss, but one stirred into violent ferver only by agitation and arms from political zealots in Greece. He notes, in addition, the strong opposition to Enosis by the island's significant Turkish minority population -- a fault line between the ethnic Greeks and Turks that continues to this day.
And so, the second half of the book becomes increasingly political, as he observes the rise in influence of EOKA, a local terrorist organization whose tactics and goals were similar to those of the IRA in Northern Ireland. Step by step, the people become radicalized in their opposition to the colonial government of Cyprus -- first the students and urban residents, and then the general population, including, ultimately, the friends Durrell had formed in Bellapaix. Meanwhile, the colonial government dreams on, the dreamy inertia of bureaucracy, throwing away its opportunities to defuse the crisis politically by promising to hold an eventual plebiscite on the question ... at some vague future date. The government instead persists in treating the movement as merely the obsession of a few isolated hotheads -- first to be ignored and then, to be put down with force.
When I read today about the Israeli army's resort to killing and destruction in order to control the Palestinians, or our own efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I recall Durrell's acute observation that the goal of terrorism is to incur these very reprisals:
The slender chain of trust upon which all human relations are based is broken -- and this the terrorist knows and sharpens his claws precisely here; for his primary objective is not battle. It is to bring down upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that the fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits.
Durrell found a great, almost incomprehensible love for the British among Greek Cypriots, who, as did mainland Greeks, viewed the English as the people who had supported the Greek struggle for independence against the Ottomans. Greek Cypriots repeatedly assured him of this love, assured him that their struggle for Enosis in no way represented a hatred of the British. But by the end of Durrell's stay in Cyprus, in 1956, these old bonds between the two peoples were being broken -- tragically and unnecessarily broken in Durrell's opinion.
In that year, the British began a "war on terrorism" -- and lost the traditional affection of the people they governed -- by hanging a quiet, seemingly well behaved young man who had worked in the colonial government's tax department. It was time for Durrell to leave this warm and beautiful land; his neighbors and close friends could no longer look him in the eye.
The eyes which avoided mine, flickering shyly away from my glance "like vernal butterflies" -- I cannot say that they were full of hate. No. It was simply that the sight of me pained them. The sight of an Englishman had become an obscenity on that clear honey-gold spring air.
Lawrence Durrell left his house and village behind -- and his book ends -- in 1956. In 1960, Britain surrendered sovereignty over Cyprus. Fighting between Greeks and Turks broke out in 1974, when a military junta tried to force union with Greece, and the island was effectively partitioned between the two groups. The government to this day has no control over the Turkish area. Enosis never occurred. Instead, Cyprus eventually joined Greece as another EC member, and adopted the Euro as its currency.
So were the events described in Bitter Lemons actually tragic? In the long run, things have more or less worked out. Cyprus, although still ethnically divided, is prosperous -- at least in the ethnically Greek southern portion. I suspect that Bellapaix is still a friendly, sleepy village, and that Lawrence Durrell's hillside home with the wonderful views still exists. The medieval ruins still dot the landscape, the flowers still flower, and the dazzling sun still shines over the cerulean sea.
But, for Durrell, of course, the idyll had ended. He left Cyprus and died in 1990 without returning to Bellapaix. In the "long run," we are all dead.
6 comments:
I think you are somewhat mistaken about Israeli 'war crimes'. See this and judge for yourself.
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/War_Crimes_and_Shoddy_Journalism.asp
Things have 'more or less worked out', but pretty much as Durrell feared. Cyprus was not an ethnically divided island; the Turks and Greeks were mixed everywhere, not divided and separated as they are now. With a significant Turkish minority and Turkey within sight off Cyprus' northern shore, it was never realistic to think that Cyprus could unite (enosis) with Greece - not if Turkey objected, and Turkey did object. Durrell did indeed contemplate an independent Cyprus, which as he states in Bittler Lemons he envisioned happening in about twenty years after his time. What in fact happened twenty years later was yet another attempt by force to unite Cyprus with Greece, and this time, with the British off the scene, the Turks walked in. Greeks in the northern half of the island were killed or driven out, and they lost their land and homes. You say Cyprus is now part of the EU, but only the southern Greek part is, not the northern Turkish part which is a rump state incapable of supporting itself and entirely dependent on Turkish subsidies. It has a huge and unnecessary Turkish military presence. The truth is that EOKA did great harm to Cyprus, to both Greeks and Turks alike. The southern part, the Greek part, is indeed prosperous and is in fact a better run place, with a better infrastructure and far less corruption, than Greece, thanks in no small part to the British. But Cyprus would today be united, would be a happier place for all, and a more prosperous place for all, had Durrell's vision won out over the damage done to the island's people and future by the EOKA terrorists.
The story in today's New York Times makes exactly the opposite point to the one you claim it makes. It exposes as urban myth the rumours that the Israelis commited war crimes in Gaza. Reread the article please by following this link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/world/middleeast/28israel.html?_r=1&ref=world
Thanks to the writer of the second comment for fleshing out some of the political and historical aspects of the situation in Cyprus. As for Durrell's hopes for the future, I'd have to go back and read the book -- my understanding was that the future plebiscite was to be on the issue of union with Greece. I may be mistaken, but I don't believe there was any sentiment for independence among the population at that time, at least insofar as what was related in the book.
I hope I didn't leave the impression that I felt EOKA had been good for Cyprus. It's clear from the book that EOKA's activities were a disaster for the country. And it never achieved its goal.
I agree with your conclusion, although I'm relying primarily on Durrell's account, which is clearly paternalistic and pro-imperialistic -- although with far more sensitivity to the welfare, feelings and psychology of the people of Cyprus than those words might suggest.
Well written and thoughtful comment -- thanks.
From the Anonymous of the second comment:
Durrell's proposal for a referendum can be found eight pages or so in from the beginning of the chapter called Point of No Return (p175f Faber edition), where Durrell reports to the Government his conclusions on what might best be done. He mentions fifteen or twenty years. A bit further on he says fifteen years. The implication is that the referendum would be on enosis, yes or no, not on independence. But as you yourself observe, and Durrell makes clear, enosis not independence was the issue in the minds of Greek Cypriots, and therefore it is not fair to say that Cypriot self-government never occurred to Durrell as an option.
In fact Durrell does introduce it a page or two earlier when he says that self-determination was an article of faith for the Commonwealth, and that if India and Sudan could claim it, why not Cyprus?
'Twenty years' is earlier raised on about the penultimate page (p.141, Faber edition) of the chapter called A Telling of Omens, when Andreas and Durrell talk about enosis vs British sovereignty over the island in the context of Britain's responsibilities in the Middle East. Andreas says that if that is what bothers the British then they should build bases in Cyprus and keep them 'for ever'. In the event that is what has happened; Britain has two sovereign bases in Cyprus. But as Durrell says in that conversation with Andreas, the worry was that 'for ever' might not be forever if, having agreed such a deal, the Greeks then changed their minds. You say that the British were attempting to prevent enosis with 'an increasingly dynamic and urban Greek nation', but you overlook that Greece had for five years, from 1944 to 1949, been fighting a vicious civil war, that had not the British and then the Americans intervened Greece would have gone Communist like Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, and that in the 1950s Greece was a worryingly unstable, volatile and unpredictable country.
Against that were the Turks, whose country was a major bulwark against the Soviet Union, a large country with a large and powerful army, and which served and continues to serve as a base for American aircraft and ships. Their views on Cyprus could not be dismissed.
As for the renewed attempt in 1974 to gain enosis by force, which was followed by the Turkish invasion and occupation of the north which lasts until this day, the Greeks of Greece and of Cyprus believe firmly that this was a well laid conspiracy between the Turks and the Americans. They will listen to no suggestion that it was their own actions which brought on the catastrophe.
As so often in recent history, where the British have gone before, the Americans find themselves following -- and trying to solve the same old problems.
Oh, and what about Durrell? He knew, just as the Greeks knew, that it was Britain which had made modern Greece a reality by backing its revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Durrell had also lived in Corfu, which together with the other Ionian Islands the British had voluntarily handed over in the nineteenth to the emergent Greek nation. And Durrell himself had been information officer in Rhodes immediately after the Second World War. Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese had been Ottoman, then Italian, and now Durrell was facilitating their handover to the Greek state. In short the British, and Durrell, had a track record of building modern Greece, and it did not seem unreasonable to Durrell that in the case of Cyprus the Greek Cypriots should be a little patient, should understand British strategic concerns in the Middle East, should appreciate the fundamental decency of British rule, and give the matter another fifteen or twenty years.
Instead ... Bitter Lemons.
Wow, I'm not sure my little post deserves this much analysis! I agree with most of what you say, although you seem to suspect that I don't.
Just a few remarks:
I didn't say that Britain wanted to avoid Cyprus's union with an increasingly dynamic and urban Greece, as opposed to a sleepy or unstable Greece -- Durrell's personal belief was that the Cypriots would be happier under British rule than uniting with mainland Greeks who were becoming more differentiated from them, because dynamic and urban. The British position was simply that Cyprus was theirs under international law, and they wanted to keep it. It was still part of their highway to the Orient. You're clearly right that communism was a serious concern of the British (and Americans) at the time, although I didn't get the feeling from the book that the colonial government was concerned about communism at that time.
Durrell does emphsize the geopolitical context of the struggle. He points out that the colonial office tended to see Cyprus as a local problem, whereas, by the time things spun out of control it had a major effect on NATO and on the fledgling alliance between Greece and Turkey, which was considered a bulwark against the further spread of communism.
Durrell may not have considered it unreasonable for the Cypriots to wait another 20 years for their ultimate status to be determined, but his primary point was that British bungling allowed Greek nationalists to stir up the normally laid back Cypriots to the point that such a reasonable approach no longer was possible. His bitterness was directed primarily at the British, secondarily at the Greeks and EOKA. My reaction was that he simply felt sorry for the Cypriots whose emotions were manipulated by others, and who were forced by terrorism to repress their normal friendliness toward the British.
I'm curious how you happened to run across my blog. And also, are you British yourself? You seem to have a good background in the history of the times.
My post really wasn't intended to be an analysis of the political situation in the Eastern Mediterranean of the 1950's, but just some thoughts about the book that might make it sound like attractive reading. But it's been fascinating to read your thoughts.
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