The Swirling Sky and Earth: Cyprus and What Makes Us Hindus, Muslims or Christians.
Twenty-five years ago, I travelled to Nicosia in the Turkish part of Cyprus and was mesmerised by the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea, its warm, saline waters and the white, rocky hills scattered around it. In March this year, my family and I flew to the Greek part of Cyprus for a holiday. In the eighties, Cyprus was split into two, after its north parted ways with the south. Both sides held on to Nicosia, the common capital city.
I wanted to see Nicosia again, but before we went there, we visited Paphos, a seaside city in the southern part of Cyprus, bustling with tourists. It was a sunny day, and the sea was a deep blue. On a gently sloping hill by the sea, were reminders of a time when Roman religion had thrived on the island. This was 1,800 years ago. The crumbling, sprawling House of Dionysus had beautiful, preserved floor mosaics with dogs, deers, bulls, lions, tigers, and peacocks in them. Men and women expressing love, anger, vanity, courage, fear and jealousy. Tiny little pieces of coloured stones had preserved their emotions for hundreds of years. Outside in the sun, I saw a small poppy, red and bright, growing out of the rocky ground. It would be gone in a day or two, I thought, with no traces left of it. The sea around the ruins sparkled as the sun shone down. A warm breeze lifted its waves into a string of surfs.
By the seashore was a small café where we sat down to eat food, light breeze blowing on our faces. The owner, Georges, served us fresh fish and salad with feta cheese, and said that he was born in Morphou, which was in the northern part of Cyprus. He had left Morphou long back and migrated down south. As he served us sticky baklava for dessert, I asked him, “Don’t you want to go back to your hometown, and live there again?”
“I go sometimes. My father lies there. In fact, I want to move his grave in Morphou to Paphos, where I live now," he said.
I became quiet. He sensed my discomfort, and said, “So that I can take care of him.”
I was reminded of the House of Dionysus, with its men and women preserved in stone for 18 centuries. It made me think how we hold on to things that are dear to us. Notions, religions, faiths, and people that we love, alive or dead.
Mosaics at the House of Dionysus Mosaics, Paphos. Photo: Sandeep Raina.
House of Dionysus Mosaics, Paphos. Photo: Sandeep Raina.
It was a few days after Holi, the Hindu festival of colours in India. On social media, I saw a photo of a white mosque in India covered with a blue tarpaulin. Then I read that several mosques had been covered to protect them from Holi revellers during Ramadan. I wondered why one man’s festivity would become another man’s fear? I imagined walking down our town in England on Easter and worrying if someone would hurl a chocolate egg at me. I brushed the thought aside.
In Nicosia, we walked down a busy street named after the city’s ancient Greek name, Ledra. There was a border check point, where Greek Cypriot police checked our passports and after a short gap, the Turkish Cypriot police checked our passports. The handover was smooth, the distance about twenty metres between the two parts. On the other side, Nicosia had a different name, Lefkoşa. Not just the name, everything else began to change around us. Colourful baklavas appeared on food stalls, an old Turkish Hamam was tucked into a street corner, and a large mosque that had the facade of a gothic church with carved arches, loomed in front of us. Bright red bougainvillaea creepers tumbled off the walls around it. A board said: Cathedral of Saint Sophia/Selimiye Mosque.
It was unclear to me whether the building was a cathedral or a mosque. We could not enter as it was being renovated. A sign of a Whirling Dervish show stood on a pavement nearby. I wanted to see the dance show, but we didn’t see anyone around to guide us. The houses and shops around the church/mosque had shuttered windows, and the streets were desolated. It was the day of Eid.
The Buyuk Han next door, an ancient caravanserai, looked welcoming, so we went inside it. Within its stone arches and corridors were a few open shops, selling trinkets made of wood and beads, lace and glass, stone and ceramic. A young, pleasant girl served us food in a restaurant inside the Buyuk Han. When we asked her where she was from, she said, “From Sindh in Pakistan.” I said I was from Kashmir, and she promptly opened her phone and showed us photos of friends from Jammu.
“Jammu is not Kashmir,” I said. That the language, religion and culture of Jammu was quite different from that of Kashmir. She said she did not know this. Like I didn’t know how different the north and south of Cyprus were.
As she spoke about her life in Cyprus, I was transported to the deserts of Sindh, another land and people split by a border and religion. I thought of my Sindhi friends in India who have never seen the land of their forefathers, the earth and the sky where they had lived and died. Georges, the café owner’s voice rang in my ears, “It is almost impossible for me to move my father’s grave closer home, but I will not give up.”
The Pakistani girl checked with the cook, and recommended the dishes that did not have beef in them, since my family did not eat beef. The chicken kebabs that she served were delicious and soft, as was the spongy, syrupy kadaifi that we ate for dessert.
The nine days of Navratri, the Hindu festival, began on that day of Eid. My friends were sending good wishes to each other on WhatsApp groups for both Eid and Navratri. What used to be a festival in a village, a town or a country now spills into other parts of the world in an instant. Good wishes are sent from one end of the world to another. Views travel faster than a blink.
We said, “Eid Mubarak!” to the girl, when we left the restaurant, wishing her a good future.
On that day, I heard that butchers were restricted from selling meat during Navratri in a northern Indian state. Hindus usually do not eat meat during Navratri and many fast for nine days. Muslims usually celebrate Eid with meat dishes, after fasting for 30 days. We cook spicy Indian food every day in England, and the strong spicy aroma drifts into our street. I wondered if my English neighbours were offended by what we ate.
A signboard at Famagusta. Photo: Sandeep Raina.
I lost myself in the fragmented, broken beauty of southern Cyprus for the next few days, brushing aside these dark thoughts.
On a day trip in a coach, winding through the pine studded hills of Troodos in the southern part, we visited a rose factory. Here, rose water and rose oil were made from pink Damask roses that grow on the hills. 4,000 kilos of roses produce a litre of rose oil. It’s said that the Ottoman Turks made rose oil popular in Cyprus hundreds of years ago, when they ruled the island. The girl on the counter passed around a tiny bottle of expensive rose oil, for all to smell it. The bottle passed between hands, the aroma was breathed in and the bottle passed back to the girl. The perfume was sweet and strong, everyone smiled. In another shop, a burly young man showed us how to make Halloumi cheese at home. Everyone ate the soft and warm cheese that he had just made. Until then, I had thought that Halloumi was an Arabic cheese. “Aphrodite and Halloumi, both Cypriot,” he said.
For lunch, the trip organiser, a Greek woman, took us to a Greek Cypriot Taverna and all our fellow travellers sat on the same table. I sat next to a Jewish man from Jerusalem, who sat next to a Lebanese Christian from Beirut and his wife. A young German couple from Hamburg sat opposite us. A Saudi Muslim family sat nearby. Some of us did not eat beef, some did not eat pork, the Jewish man could only eat Kosher, and the Germans were vegetarian. Some of the group drank alcohol, and some did not. The trip organiser was fasting for Lent and could eat only certain things.
The waiter and the cook came to our table a few times to find out who could eat what, or not. To clarify that the vine leaves were stuffed with rice and meat, not just rice. That it was a pork and potatoes stew, not chicken and potatoes. That there was no meat in the salads or in the beans. There were smiles around the table, as the back and forth continued for some time. In the end, we all ate what we wanted, off the same table.
Famagusta is a medieval walled city in the Turkish part. We went there, after crossing another border between the south and the north. A large stone wall bounded the ancient city. A maze of cobbled streets led us down to the ruins of old churches. The woman at the information centre told us, “You should visit the Cathedral of St Nicholas. And the Church of St Peter and Paul.”
The front of St Nicholas Cathedral – the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, Famagusta. Photo: Sandeep Raina.
The beautifully architected Gothic churches were operating as mosques since the 1500s, when the Ottomans had converted them. I stood in front of a beautiful building which looked like a church on the outside and the sign said: Cathedral of St Nicholas/ Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. I was confused. This didn’t sit well in my head. I wondered what made it a church or a mosque? Was it the architecture, the colour of the stones, the shape of the arches, the spire or a minar, the symbol of a cross or a crescent, or was it the people who prayed inside it? Dark clouds gathered above, and sudden rain drenched me.
After an hour of heavy downpour, a brilliant rainbow appeared, arcing over the Cathedral of St Nicholas/ Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, lending a brilliant golden hue to its intricately carved ancient front. The clouds above me began to clear.
I still wanted to see the Dervish dance; the spiritual dance popularised by Rumi centuries ago. On our last day in Cyprus, we crossed over again to the Turkish part of Nicosia. I saw the Whirling Dervish sign again. A man called Fatih sat beside a table near the closed Cathedral of St Sofia/Selimiye mosque. We bought tickets from him, and he said, “I am the dervish.”
St Peter and St Paul Cathedral – Sinan Pasha Mosque, Famagusta. Photo: Sandeep Raina.
He led us to a small hall, where we sat with other tourists. Haunting music began to play, and Fatih appeared in costume. He whirled in an ankle length red skirt, an arm raised to the sky, and an arm pointing to the earth. As he danced, my thoughts swirled round and round. I did not understand the words of the song playing. I did not know the meaning of his motions, but something told me that this was what we were all in: a dance, a brief dance.
That it is not fasting that makes us Hindu, Muslim or Christian. Or eating meat or not eating meat. Or the mosque or the church. It is not the cemetery where we lie. It is the rainbow that arches high above us, the clouds that tear open, the rain that pours, the sun that shines, the waves that crash, the tears that flow, and the smile that lights up faces. It is the joys and sorrows of our heart that make us Hindus, Muslims or Christians.
Rest is all stones. Small, coloured stones stuck in mosaics, or large stones crumbling inside old walls. People preserve them, cover them, decorate them with symbols, deities, and carve them. But it’s the dance of the dervish, the feverish pitch of the swirling sky and the earth, the constant dance that keeps everything in harmony.
As the dervish went round and round, his long red skirt blooming into a swirling red poppy, his white tunic breaking into surfs, and his black cloak enveloping him like a calming night sky, I saw the spire of a church, the minar of a mosque and the shikhara of a temple, all in his tall cap. His head tilted to a side, a gentle calm washed over his face, as his eyes closed in divine bliss.
Sandeep Raina was born and brought up in Kashmir. He lives in London.
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