FOURTH NIGHT

ANYONE who regularly reads an English-language newspaper in a former British colony-where there are inevitably large numbers of English expats and tourists-will on occasion encounter the phrase ‘whinging Brit’ in the Letters to the Editor section.  Since ‘whinging’ is a British variant on ‘whining,’ the phrase is invariably used, often with ironic self-disparagement, by the British about the British: generally from expats mortified at those compatriots of theirs who seem to spend their entire vacation abroad complaining about the host country and making unfavorable, imperious comparisons with the motherland.  Of course, this notion begets another sub-category of those who do little else but whinge about whinging Brits.  In short, there is plenty of complaining to go around, some justified, most of it tedious banter.  Keep reading…

LAST SEPTEMBER I found myself in the bizarre situation of once again being—and I still can’t say it without an unsettling jolt of bewilderment—a student.   Months earlier, while I was still in the army, I learned that I had received a Chevening scholarship for Cypriots through the British Council.  The award entitled me to a fully funded one-year Masters in the U.K.  Twelve months, all expenses paid, a kind of unexpected manna from heaven.

I’d been out of school for almost a decade and so it was inevitable for me to initially suffer from a minor identity crisis that comes from the déjà vu feeling of being caught up—albeit in this lifetime—in a Nietzschean cycle of eternal recurrence.  It was impossible to not feel that I had regressed in some fundamental way.  But phobias and flashbacks aside, I soon found that study in the U.K.—where instructors neither hold hands nor wield whips—was especially well-suited to us older sorts who are referred to, despite the lack of evidence, as ‘mature students.’
Continue reading

To read the first part of this piece about guard duty on the Green Line click here

AN ANTI-TANK gun exercise took place six weeks into my sentry duty.  There was some form of firing practice every month or two.  One might imagine conscripts would look forward to these trainings, if only for a change of scenery, but the only one interested in my outpost was me, and I was not even scheduled to go, since the military only trained three-month conscripts on rifles.  But my camp commander accepted my request to participate in the firing exercise, and so on the scheduled morning—a cold overcast one that prompted even more grumbling among those required to attend—I found myself jam-packed along with twenty-five other conscripts in the back of an army truck heading south-west of the capital.   
Continue reading

Part I of this piece is the August 4 entry

One of my outposts on the Nicosia Green Line

CONSECUTIVE DAYS of sentry duty took their toll, especially when the shifts were every four hours.  For days on end you might not get much more than three hours of continuous sleep.  You were also punished if you were caught sleeping before ten pm or after six am.  Although there was a designated midday “rest period” between one and four, it was generally only good for a short nap: unless you had the ten-to-noon shift, both lunch and sentry duty fell within those hours.  This restrictive sleeping schedule combined with the many hours of being on foot all day ensured you were never fully rested.  I assume the idea was to accustom soldiers to the sleep deprivation conditions of war, but the only thing the soldiers acclimatized to was the capacity to sleep through anything.  I am sure that if a grenade had exploded outside our window, only half of us would have awoken; the other half would have required a direct strike. 
Continue reading

The first part of this piece is the August 4 entry

My rooftop outpost on the Nicosia Green Line

THE OTHER CONSCRIPTS in my outpost, many of whom had been stationed on the Green Line months before I arrived and who would be there months after I left, were understandably blasé about the pristine surroundings. 

“When I first came I was always staring out there, moving the spotlight around every time I heard a sound,” one of the conscripts told me as he motioned towards the Buffer Zone.  “Now I don’t even look over there anymore.  There’s nothing there.  That’s why it’s called the Dead Zone.” 
Continue reading

(see Three Months in the Life of the Cypriot National Guard for a preface to this piece)

IN THE CYPRIOT National Guard, all of the conscripts except those serving a reduced three-month term undergo a one-month training after boot camp known as ‘combat school.’  Combat school is where, as my training camp company commander put it, “you learn what it means to be a soldier—to run from morning to night, to go on treks, to go shooting.”  Since their service time is so short, three-monthers bypass combat school and are instead sent directly to their assigned army camps after basic training. 

Few of the conscripts in my boot camp actually wanted to attend combat school.  It is only natural that conscripted soldiers—who are compelled to enlist by law not choice—will generally be averse to training of any kind.  Eastern Mediterranean peoples also as a rule avoid physical exercise as much as possible, possibly a genetic leaning that evolved out of the draining heat.  Continue reading