Opinion
By Gardener (Kypouros)
An untamed spirit, unbroken morale
I may not have previously shared with you this side of my character, the sensitive, easily moved one, having chosen instead to wear a tougher mask, like a holm oak clinging to the wind-beaten mountains of Sfakia in Crete, a mask that protects me from thorns, not of roses, but of life itself… Yet, truly, can a person who loves nature, let alone one who has cultivated that love into the vocation of a gardener, not be sensitive?
Forgive my self-referential tone, but I wish to confess the deep emotion that still overwhelms me following the recent patriotic re-emergence of Marios Matsakis. It may have borne little resemblance to the much-celebrated “commando operations” of his illustrious past, those that earned him feverish admiration from reporters of the then-emerging private television channels and elevated him to superhero status in the eyes of our authentic people, but it was marked by the same fighting spirit.
That is why it moved me so profoundly; that is why it succeeded in rekindling the anti-occupation resolve of the people of our long-suffering island. Yes, even so: now himself subject to new technologies and new forms of struggle, keyboard-based revolutions, yet still maintaining unbroken morale and an untamed spirit of resistance.
Shattering, like a cry in Rama
His outcry, “Go home, you Turk-loving clown,” directed in righteous indignation at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who “did not say a single word about Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus. He simply spoke of the invasion of Ukraine and repeatedly asked for the EU’s help,” echoed from one end of half the island to the other and struck the spine of every Greek Cypriot, refugee or otherwise.
And that is why I say: it does not matter that he did not strap on an emery belt and threaten to cut through the barbed wire of occupation; that he did not hide behind (even abandoned) guard posts and wave (even toward our side) the Cypriot flag; that he did not put on flippers, ready to confront the Turks off the coast of Famagusta; that he did not attempt to enter the occupied areas (even via points controlled by the Bases); that he did not try to tear down the cloth others dare to call a flag; that he did not go on a hunger strike (even for twenty-four hours) and risk death by dehydration. What matters is his unwavering commitment to I Do Not Forget and I Struggle.
Yes, I admit it. I would give anything to relive, through his own narration, something so cinematic and yet so genuinely courageous. “I removed the belt I was wearing and demanded my immediate release and that the helicopter land so I could disembark. They reacted. The so-called police of the Bases attacked me. One grabbed me by the neck while the others tried to restrain me with special handcuffs. After a brief struggle inside the helicopter, with the risk of it crashing, they managed to subdue me, because they were many and I was alone…”
Time passes, conditions change. Wars are now hybrid. They entrap you, expose you, undermine you. For a miserable €150 million they once promised you. What matters is not abandoning the struggle. And Marios Matsakis did not abandon it. How could he? He carries bitter memories. Memories that will accompany him forever. Lived memories. Memories from the enemy’s dungeons, into which he was dragged by the Attilas when, as a Member of the European Parliament, he attempted to enter the occupied areas and was arrested due to an earlier commando action, one that resulted in the removal of the Turkish flag from an abandoned outpost.
An act of bravery, even if it was dismissed as “theatrical” by the then President of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos.
Resourceful
What he endured, what permanently scarred his soul, his nights in Attila’s “dungeons,” in the “cold and damp cell” with the “concrete bed and three blankets,” while “Grey Wolves howled outside,” he later recounted himself after, like a modern-day Odysseus, he outwitted the Attilas and secured his release. How did he do it? No, no, he did not escape hidden beneath a sheep’s belly, like Odysseus of Penelope. Instead, as he revealed, he devised something far more ingenious. They had asked him, poor souls, to sign a “guarantee” from the so-called “Court” in order to be released. They did not know whom they were dealing with. He did not sign it. “I just put a… what do you call it? Not a signature, just a scribble,” he said the moment he crossed into the free areas of our unconquered homeland, before the television cameras that bowed to the superhero who survived the “cold and damp cell,” the “concrete bed,” and the “three blankets,” and who, despite the howling of wolves (the grey ones, not Aliferis’s), found the wit and courage to deceive the Turkish occupiers by giving them nothing more than a… scribble instead of a signature.
So how, with such memories, could he abandon the struggle? How could he not rage at the hypocrisy that now dominates this world? How could he not thunder, “Unfortunately, this behaviour by Zelensky allows me to state that he has elevated himself into a hypocrite and a clown of politics.”
