Very recently, I saw in a dream — more a nightmare, really — that I was trying to sell the month of July, as though it were merchandise, at an animal fair in the pine grove of Saint George Kontos, opposite the cemetery in Larnaca. It was the place where my grandfather used to take me when I was little, every time it was the feast of Saint George of the Seeds, to look at the animals taken there to be sold.
I woke up drenched in sweat. But it was as if that sweat were a cleansing rain: it had completely cleared my mind. I was now certain of my next steps.
Every day I must carry out a coup. An overthrow. If you prefer the language of the Left, a revolution.
Why? Simply because, in this wretched country, the same shameful triple combination still prevails: the absence of accountability, impunity and lawlessness. The combination that leads to chaos. The combination that covers you in the blackness of anger over the lack of meritocracy surrounding us, over the mire of corruption keeping us in a dead end, and the stench that mortgages the spring our children deserve.
That dream was prompted by an event at my school, the American Academy Larnaca, on 28.03.2026, where I had been invited to speak. Its title was “From the footsteps of yesterday to the vision of tomorrow”, and it had been organised by teachers of the school — young people.
Because I was going to speak about perhaps the most tragic class in the history of our school in 1974, since among us there were also 11 Turkish Cypriot male classmates and two Turkish Cypriot female classmates, and we had lived through the experiences of a heavily wounded adolescence, I took with me my dear classmate Ahmet Kiani Erguven, who at the time lived in Piale Pasha in Larnaca and today lives in Kyrenia.
Fifty-two whole years later, and every time the calendar shows 15 and 20 July — what a thing the mind is! — all those shockingly tragic moments gather together and overwhelm the senses. I had, too, an extremely traumatic experience on 15 July, since during the coup I went, together with other democratic citizens, to defend Larnaca police station, and as we were leaving we fell victim to a murderous attack in which four young men were killed, three of whom were with me in the back of a small pickup truck with watermelons.
Ever since then, a corner of my heart has burned so fiercely that it resembles an orchard set alight by a malicious fire. Why? Because although we know the killers, no one was arrested, no one was tried and no one was ever called to account for the crime. The smell of blood drying on my clothes and on my skin, giving off a foul odour of death, still makes me feel sick even today, because it remained like a hideous mural on my soul.
Not even a week had passed when eight of my Turkish Cypriot classmates found themselves prisoners in the Turkish Gymnasium, today’s Drosia Gymnasium. As I was passing outside the Gymnasium, I heard them calling me by my name. They were my classmates, prisoners, behind barbed wire. When I went closer, the older prisoners threw me banknotes, with which I went and bought milk and biscuits because the EOKA B men who were “responsible” for their “detention” were giving them nothing to eat.
Indeed, when we met for the first time in Pyla in 2003, our Turkish Cypriot classmates told us that at Drosia Gymnasium they were also subjected to mock executions at night. I had thought that I was the only one helping with food for my Turkish Cypriot classmates in July 1974. But when Ahmet began unravelling the thread of his tragic memories, I realised that the motto of our school, “To grow and to serve”, has been rooted in the DNA of its students from 1908 until today.
Passing through Drosia Gymnasium in those days were the teachers Pampos Pavlas, Panayiotis Pieris, Maro Pampou, the elderly American teacher Mr Huchinson, and our classmates then, Nikos Anastasiou from Aradippou and Yiannos Kleitou from Assia, who is none other than today’s abbot of Stavrovouni, Dionysios.
From the footsteps of yesterday, then, to the vision of tomorrow — and that can be nothing other than the reunification of Cyprus.
Happy Easter!
