IS IT OVER?

Is the wedding and the funeral over?
In the same house…
On the same day…

Then can we slowly go back to ‘normal’?
The abnormal that is our normal!

***

If the dose of national fairy tales has been adjusted…
If those who were asleep have slept, and those who were awake have awakened…
If uncertainty, ambiguity, and insecurity are hidden behind marches, speeches, and flags…

If lies, plunder, and deceit have vanished under the tracks of tanks and the barrels of guns…
If the crescent has lost the star on the roulette table…
If the nail has eaten the flesh…
If the island has been divided into pieces and handed over to the rich nearby…

If culture, identity, and memory have been eroded…
We can become ordinary again.

If the wedding is over…
If the funeral has been held…
In the same house, on the same day.

***

Look!
The election campaign has already begun.
Smiles are retouched, glances are artificial…
Allegiance is once again on the posters…
Sovereignty is the ability of a state, or an authority, to make and enforce its own decisions without being subject to any other power.

How hollow the rhetoric of ‘sovereignty’ sounds…
While experiencing the exact opposite…

Is there a bigger lie than this in Cyprus?
Perhaps there is.
History will tell that story one day, for sure…

***

I haven’t written for a week…
And we started from square one, once again.

One feels suffocated under such heavy jingoism.
A political language imposed, artificial heroism performed on stage, and a reckless attitude that ignores the will of the people…
An overwhelming buzz.

Nevertheless…
A few days ago, I was walking on the beach with my child.
His words were hopeful, his dreams alive…

Then I got worried…
When I read that a journalist, a mother of two with twenty-five years of experience, was working for the minimum wage…
After all these years…
They also terminated her employment.
In the hands of foreign capital…

Then…
A man larger than life, who always spoke loudly of peace…
Brother Asaf…
On the brink of a mad illness…
‘He’s fallen, he is about to fall,’ they said…

***

Is the wedding and the funeral over?
On the same day…
In the same house…

In 1974, this island was divided in two.
It’s real.
The north is under Turkish control…
It’s real.
Barricades, alienation, division…
It’s real.
The vision which tells us to ‘neither submit, nor fight’ is real.

Hypocrisy, nationalism, profiteering on both sides loved the status quo,…
Fears are real, worries are real…
The uncertainty of the future…
It’s real.

Those who gained land lost their homeland…
Those who gained the state lost a society…

Our wounds…
Our pains…
Our worries…
Insecurity…
They are all real.

Our children…
The struggle to make ends meet…
Death…

Reality wears people down the most.

Are the weddings and funerals over?
In the same house…
On the same day…

 Is the house still standing?

This article was originally published on 21.07.2025

 Source: IS IT OVER?