Europe

Nicosia Letter: Ochi an enduring symbol of Cyprus’s rich complexity

Long a rainbow country, Cyprus is the EU member with the highest number of refugees and migrants per capita

A customer picks vegetables at the popular Ochi farmers' market in the old walled city of the Cypriot capital Nicosia. Photograph: Christina Assi/AFP/Getty Images

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Michael Jansen in Nicosia
Mon Jul 18 2022 - 21:11

Every Wednesday and Saturday cars crawl bumper-to-bumper along the narrow street leading to the farmers’ market at Ochi square below the Constanza bastion in old Nicosia’s 16th century walls.

To seduce customers, enterprising farmers from the Nicosia district and further afield fill boxes with luscious apricots, peaches, apples, cherries and watermelons. The gorgeous array is accompanied by mundane carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, braids of garlic, bunches of herbs, bread, cheese, yogurt and sausages.

Ochi is not, however, a humble parking lot but a site rich in the island’s history, both modern and medieval. “Ochi” means “no” in Greek and celebrates the second World War rejection by Greek prime minister Ioannis Metaxas of an Italian ultimatum to surrender.

The Greeks marshalled their forces and routed the Italians but were soon overwhelmed by a vengeful Germany.

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Ochi not only commemorates heroic Greek resistance in 1940 but also memorialises the blood and tears of hapless Greek Cypriots crushed in the war between rival empires of the Middle Ages.

Poised above a corner of the square on the bastion is the small, golden stone 19th century Ottoman Bayraktar mosque commemorating the spot where the Ottoman banner was raised when Nicosia was captured from the repressive Venetians in September 1570.

After a 45-day siege, the attackers slew both Venetian defenders and most of the city’s 20,000 inhabitants. Although taught in Greek Cypriot schools, the brutal conquest does not cast a shadow over Ochi on cheerful market days.

On a recent Saturday, July 9th, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice marking the prophet Abraham’s sacrifice of a lamb rather than that of his son, Ochi was invaded by scores of celebrating African, Asian and Arab men.

They came from services at the Baraktar mosque and the large Omariyeh mosque, a repurposed 14th century Gothic church which is the main house of worship for Muslims on this side of Nicosia, a city divided since 1963 when clashes erupted between Greek and Turkish Cypriots during a constitutional crisis.

Some of the men wore national dress, others jeans and t-shirts. A few carried rolled prayer rugs. A tall African man attired in an elegant long grey silk shirt and trousers was the most striking. Wearing and gifting new clothes is traditional on this holiday. The rare multinational visitation mirrored gatherings in a Damascene souk or on the streets of Mecca during the annual Hajj.

After gaining entry to Ochi, my friend and neighbour Xanthi eased her car into a vacated slot, nosing a bulky, bearded, bemused Greek Cypriot out of the way. Grabbing our bags and adjusting our Covid masks, we entered the melee.

At a sprawling stall an Arab father and two boys of nine or 10 hovered over a box of courgettes while he taught them the art of selecting marrows. A bulky African woman with head covered and cloaked in black tried to squeeze her child’s pushchair into the narrow aisle between displays but gave up and left him outside the stall toying with a bag of tiny oval tomatoes while she paid for her purchases.

Xanthi and I surveyed the fruit and vegetables on offer and filled our bags with produce. We paused to see what the woman from the mountain village of Agros had to offer and to greet the cheeky vendor from Paphos and examine his avocados. We have become Saturday regulars, arriving at 7am to escape the summer heat.

The scores of white, brown and black men from the mosques shopped purposefully, speaking in fluent or halting Greek to sellers. This was a farmers’ market like no other we had attended.

Cyprus has become a rainbow country since the Jansens took refuge on the island along with thousands of Lebanese neighbours fleeing their country’s civil war. Most Lebanese left and those who stayed merged with the local folk.

The transformation began with an influx of temporary household and agricultural workers from Sri Lanka and the Philippines after the island had recovered economically from the 1974 Turkish occupation of the north, which divided the island between the Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north.

Colleges and universities on both sides have attracted African and Asian students who want to stay on. Boat people and overland migrants escaping wars in Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia and Congo have come via Turkey to the north and crossed illegally through the buffer zone into the south.

They aim to travel to western Europe and settle. Unfortunately, Cyprus and Greece have become Eastern Mediterranean dead-ends for these people due to the rule that they have to apply for asylum in the EU country where they first land.

Cyprus is the bloc member with the highest number of refugees and migrants per capita.

The government struggles to separate genuine refugees from economic migrants and deal with the back-log of 24,000 applications for asylum and 7,300 cases before the international protections court.

During the first half of 2022, there were 12,000 arrivals, the total for all of 2021. Cyprus also hosts 25,000 Ukrainian refugees, most of whom want to go home.

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