We always have an indescribable love in our hearts for the land we were born in.
No matter what happens, we love unconditionally, it’s like the feelings a mother has for her child…
We press it to our chest with all its beauties and ugliness…
Especially when a person is in foreign lands, this love deepens, roots and blooms even more.
During the years I stayed in foreign lands, I want to share a memory with you that comes to my mind now and I think you’ll like too;
During those foreign years when every arrival was with joy and happiness, and every departure was with silence and tears, once one of my children begged me saying “mom, before we get on the plane, let’s fill a plastic bag with Cyprus air and tie its mouth…Let it come to Istanbul with us, please mom, let’s do it” – I remember it like yesterday.
This longing and separation always inevitably affects you. Cyprus was and still is my jasmine-scented darling that I don’t let dust settle on…
The political power games played on our island are like traps on a path whose emergence is uncertain…All of them dirty and endless…
I love the harvest season of Cyprus the most. First the plowing of the soil by tractors in wheat fields and then the wonderful smell of soil that emerges…
Then the smell of fertilizer mixed with the soil, but I confess I still haven’t gotten used to this smell…The rains that follow and the fields slowly turning green…Watching the wheat grow day by day every morning on the way to work, this being a harbinger of harvesters entering the field soon and harvest time…
Watching farmers working day and night on harvesters in the fields before summer comes…
These are parts of my late grandfather’s farming life that I never saw but always heard about.
I love Cyprus’s sea season the most. Swimming endlessly in the turquoise colored sea and surrendering to the deep navy blue beauty until you lose sight of the shore…Our lips swollen from swimming in the salty water of the Mediterranean and yet we love the salty taste of the sea…
I love Cyprus’s olive harvest time the most. In the olive harvest, boiled black-eyed peas and broad beans eaten at noon on the nylons spread under the trees, halloumi and bread baked in the village oven…
Fatigue and joys shared all together…
I actually love everything about Cyprus. Most of all our accent that belongs to us…Our speech that shouts loudly “I am Cypriot” in every emphasis….
Our faithful people who were born on these lands and try to keep our customs and traditions alive despite the power games played on the island…These are our mothers, grandfathers, aunts, ancestors, us and the generations that will come after us…
Our people who say “Napan ya guzum”…We will always stay like this How happy is the one who says I am Cypriot…