Nick Panteli
Inventory

a monologue for Cyprus

Take stock, dear friends! Dear friends, take stock, this island will be yours again. "What is this 'we'-ness you speak of?" "What stock?" Perhaps not the Obsidian from Anatolia or the Syriac Oils. Just as the Lionheart gave it to the Templars, the Knights to the men from Gaul, some guy, Guy de Lusignan, lost it again.

And as Mark Anthony offered his amours to Kleopatra VII, today they take the source of light from the East, in revenues, and keep the world order. Don't they keep the world order? But, oh, they are the hostage to history, aren't they? They haven't anything to grace their lives but the Oligarchs' villas, and the fading mosaics, and the Johnson from the West pose for photos in Akrotiri. All this for an island that was just-just good for corn, and timber, and wine, and copper, and cotton, and hairy men, too heat-stroked to move. And package-holidays. Holy Myron, who's the real moron? What vistas, what a location. They do have it all. Don't they hold some key?

You. You have a Turkmen, maybe a Khan's eyes. The heart and mind of a Macedonian, the masterful intrigue of a revolting Maccabee, and the learning of an Alexandrian. What does it matter? You are a beautiful one. Why, not even the ethno-chauvinists among will not fail to attempt possession of you. We share this symbiosis, don't we? Well don't we, or do we? What does it matter? And yet, antagonising the eugenicist's purity in what are now borders does not kill border. True, I'm a neophyte to the last 11,000, watching in. So, is nationalism, when all is finally over, the anomaly? Nationalism extends: three, maybe four centuries longer? Okay. What makes me think that? I won't bake this on clay: it's not worth it. I'm not outside of history. And you can't fuck your way to a harmonised territorial union of the East either.

Why does all this matter you ask? Perhaps the Cypriot knows imperialism better than anybody else. No, that's not true-that's self-exonerating. The Cypriot knows syncretism better than anybody else. They should do. And yet, they don't know it. My dad doesn't know it. My mother does know it. My Grandparents, they don't know it.

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Nick Panteli is a young Brit of Cypriot heritage. He studied English at the University of London, and was a long-time contributor to London Student. Find him online at nickpanwriter.com and on Twitter as @panspipes3030.

>> Back to Issue 21, 2018