8. THE LAMP

THE EPICENTER of the training camp was a vast plaza roughly the size of a football pitch where all parades and ceremonies took place.  The paved plaza was empty save for two buildings. On the far end, overlooking the Mediterranean, was the training camp headquarters building.  And in the middle of the plaza, rising up out of the center of this vast concrete plain, was the church.  It was one-fifth the size of the headquarters building and was essentially no more than an altar and sanctum designed for outdoor services, but its focal location sent the clear message that the activities of the training camp were dedicated and beholden to the house of God, who was after all the best general the army had ever known since He was the only superior who commanded the respect of almost all the soldiers.  He was so effective at infusing discipline and elevating morale among army ranks that no other officer had ever raised the tender and controversial matter of His beard, although a few officers did secretly nurse the hope that He might one day be reconceived as a clean-shaven Lord, or at least a mustached one.   

The officers marched us from our barracks down to the plaza, where we all lined up before the church.  A priest soon arrived with briefcase in hand and, after lighting the candles, proceeded with the chants and service.  There were no interruptions, although the presence of a curvy black-haired female officer who was normally hidden away from the conscripts’ view in the headquarters building did disrupt the atmosphere of ecclesiastical solemnity by sending the congregation into a nerve-jangling, tooth-gritting ecstatic torment of a most unspiritual variety.   

After sprinkling us with holy tapwater, the priest then lectured us on our Hellenic roots and on how we were unraveling as a people because we had begun to embrace the dissolute culture and customs of the West.  However, it was not the materialism or consumerism that the church was opposed to but rather the erosion of its cherished millennia-old tradition of sexual repression and patriarchy. These admonitions and diagnoses had already been given to us on our first day in the KEN via a four-page Orthodox pamphlet titled The Lamp.  There had in fact even been a section in the pamphlet dedicated to “The Western Way of Life” warning us about the “phenomena of anarchism, crime, drugs, lewd sex, and homosexuality observed in the communities of the West.” 

The Lamp also urged abstinence until marriage and quoted the “wise professor of psychiatry” at Zurich University A. Forel who according to the pamphlet claimed that “chastity and abstinence until marriage not only does not hurt a youth but actually helps tremendously with his health.”  All ‘prophylactics’ (the word was always in quotes) were “half-measures and a dangerous temptation.”  It then condemned those “unscrupulous doctors and antichrist hawkers of sexuality who recommend the use of ‘prophylactics’ for illegal relationships.”

The pamphlet would highlight in bold certain lines or phrases that it considered particularly valuable, like the following metaphor to describe those who promote the use of condoms: “It is like telling thieves that they can freely commit the injustice of theft and robbery, but should take all the necessary protective measures to avoid arrest from the police. Hey, people, wake up!!!”

There was distinctive advice for the youth of each gender.  Under the subheading “Man or Rascal?” The Lamp informed that a “man can never be that wild long-haired hippie with the varicolored shirts, the tight pants and the earring. With his comic appearance he plays the stud, the man, and he boasts about his sexual conquests. In fact he is not a man but a squirt, not a person but a shrimp.”

“The Future Mothers,” meanwhile, offered concrete dos and don’ts in the hope that all female readers might live long oppressive lives:  “Girls need to prepare appropriately so that they can responsibly and worthily take on the role of the mother.  They must learn to be modest and obedient so that they can be good wives and affectionate mothers… [The young woman] does not go to discos, dances, or to parties and sinful entertainments. She does not drink alcohol. She does not smoke and she does not play cards… and she maintains the principle of chastity as the apple of her eye.”

The priest had no time to delve upon subjects of deeper philosophical and spiritual complexity like Christian love since we still had to go get our assault rifles, and so he concluded his sermon with a tribute to the glories of Hellenism. The blessing was now complete.  The officers lined up before the priest, one by one bowing down to kiss his hand, and then marched us off to the firearms storage room. 

9. THE ZASTAVA

The Yugoslavian-made Zastava semi-automatic assault rifles that were assigned to us had wooden stocks and without the cartridge clipped in place looked more like jacked-up BB guns than army weapons. But the gun was surprisingly capable.  It had a maximum effective range of 600 meters and a maximum range of 3,500.  Nevertheless, the arphades treated it like a water gun.  The procedure began in an orderly manner: seated in rows by platoon, we went up one by one as our names were called to receive our issued rifle and then returned to our seated positions.  But it was not long before everyone was up, milling about, fiddling with the new toys. The harsh metallic sound of sliding bolts and clicking hammers filled the air as conscripts cocked their guns and depressed the triggers with a ceaseless repetitive zest.  No matter where you stood, the end of a barrel was pointed at you. Guns were deliberately turned upon one another. Mock executions were performed.  One grinning arphas put his mouth over the end of the barrel and pulled the trigger.  Another jabbed the muzzle of his Zastava into the stomach of his unperturbed friend, who was aiming his own gun at a truck driving by while puffing on an unsupported cigarette.

Of course, we had not been issued any cartridges yet and the chambers of the guns had assumedly all been checked, but a small oversight would have sufficed to create a big mess. Just one overlooked bullet, one 7.62mm that had jammed in the barrel, one numbskull prank, and we would be attending another sort of service. 

I had handled guns before but had never seen them treated so casually.  I would step aside anytime I found myself in the trajectory of a rifle’s line of fire only to find myself staring down the mouth of another barrel.  It was just something to get used to.  The conscript officers occasionally barked that we should not cock the guns or turn them upon one another, but they never did anything about it.  Later that day our company commander threatened punishment and delivered a stern warning that goofing around with firearms had cost the lives of many soldiers.  The words had no impact.  It was only when the guns had lost their novelty that the sound of sliding bolts and the sight of mock killings came to an end.

The next few days were spent on the Zastava, memorizing its specifications and range, disassembling and reassembling it, maintaining it, and learning to respond to commands like Shoulder Arms, Present Arms, Port Arms and Order Arms.  It would be another two weeks until we fired them, and even then we would only shoot a total of twenty bullets: ten during daytime target practice and ten at night.  The targets were situated 100 meters away against the carved out wall of a mountain and considering the puffs of raised dust and shattered earth that exploded upon the rock face as high as ten or fifteen meters over the targets every time the command to fire was given, the results may well have been comparable if the target practice had also involved blindfolds.  The training, as our daily rest periods were called, consisted of workshops on anything from rocket launchers to compasses to fire and movement.  These sometimes included hands-on schooling, which once even became head-on during the camouflage-cover-and-concealment exercise when three conscripts rushing with their guns for shelter under imaginary enemy fire collided into one another, with the result that one three-monther had to go to the hospital for x-rays.

Now and then we would hike up to the shelters after dark for nighttime seminars, like how to crawl on one one’s belly and ambush sentries.  The highlight was a ten-minute seminar on how to silently kill an enemy guard by sneaking up behind him and cupping a hand over his mouth while sinking a knife to the hilt into his second rib and then driving the blade upwards.  The cadet officer demonstrated on an accommodating friend who pretended to be murdered with little fuss.  We all watched with great interest, confident that after this brief demonstration we would have no problems getting ourselves killed if we ever attempted to silently knife a sentry.

The other memorable moment in the shelters was when one of the National Guard helicopters came flying low overhead one afternoon.  One of the conscripts (known simply as Brains) ran out of his shelter and, aiming his Zastava at the helicopter, followed its path while making the tat-a-tat stuttering sound that boys make when imitating machine-gun fire.  There was no conscript officer there at the time, but Chewbacca suddenly rounded the corner of the shelter and blasted Brains with a bellow that the helicopter pilot may well have heard over the chopping roar of the blades.    

The shelters were in the rolling foothills of the Troodos mountain range and made a fine place to idle away a morning or afternoon.  With a few exceptions like Chewbacca, the conscript officers who led the training were highly unmotivated, so often we just loafed and napped in the sunshine until someone spotted one of the permanent officers coming to inspect the training.  Even the most unabashed softies and whiners had to admit that as far as boot camps went, we had it good.

“If you could screw now and then, it wouldn’t be bad,” said one three-monther as we lounged on the grass with our backs against the outer wall of the shelter.   

“Well they screw you, you can’t have everything,” another replied.

“I hear if you get raped in here you’re discharged.”

“Yeah, and the guy who porks you gets all your months on top of whatever he’s got left.”

There was a brief pause.  “Boys, I’m a good-lucking guy.  What’s another three months on top of twenty-five?  What do you say?”

Later that week we were told that if we behaved well, we would get a two-night leave over the weekend.  As Friday approached there was an undeniable improvement of behavior and we went from atrocious to merely awful. On Friday morning Grivas delivered a Don’t Drink and Drive and Just Say No to Drugs lecture (“Don’t accept offerings from strangers, because whoever offers you grass today, will be selling you cocaine or heroine tomorrow”) and then let us go after we satisfactorily chanted for him where we were going to have coffee, where we were going to light a candle, and where we were going for a swim.

We were supposed to leave in what was now referred to as civilian clothing but about a third of the conscripts nonetheless remained in army uniforms.  They crowded around the giant mirrors in the lobby of the barracks to adjust their berets before the buses arrived.  Now that they were leaving the army camp, they had transformed into proud soldiers. 

Even after a paltry ten days in the camp, one felt awash in a wave of liberation upon leaving those barbed wire gates and finally turning out onto the highway, the shimmering sea whizzing by to the right, the Eye of the Tiger playing over the bus speakers.  The sight of females when we rolled down the main avenue of Nicosia sent all the seventeen-year-olds into a whistling, window-knocking frenzy.  One teenager blew a lipsticked kiss back at the bus, prompting a rapturous cheering uproar so deafening that the bus driver threatened to kick us all off the bus.   

“So did you get a girl?” one of the younger conscripts, upon our return to the camp, asked one of the six-monthers who had been especially vocal about his plans for a different woman each night.   

“Two,” he replied, grinning.

“Two!”

He raised both hands. “Maria,” he says, nodding to his left hand, “and Ioanna,” he added, motioning to the right. 

10. THE GORILLA

The weekend furlough was continually dangled over our heads in hopes of bribing or threatening good behavior out of us and it consistently never worked.  Conscripts were denied upcoming leaves as punishment but on the night before the departure day our captain would say that the camp commander had granted a universal amnesty.   There would be no such reprieves again, he assured us on a weekly basis.

There was however one disciplinary measure that was upheld in the training camp—the jail cell.  It was a severe punishment, dramatically out of place in the lax environment of the training camp considering the absence of other disciplinary measures.  To get jail time you generally had to commit some serious infraction like beat someone up or spray paint insults on army property, although even then you might merely get a scolding.  In the jail you were stripped of all your belongings and locked into a three-by-five-meter cell containing a bed frame and a small barred window up by the ceiling. You stayed in there alone for as many days as they saw fit, usually three or four although it could be as many as ten.  Three times a day you were let out to an adjacent room where you had a half hour to eat and smoke a cigarette, again in solitude.   

The military police administered the prison.  The man in charge of the military police at the training camp was a big man close to two meters tall with long thick arms that on a man of average Cypriot height would have trailed along the ground behind him as he walked.  He came to be known simply as Gorilla.  Whenever there were troubles he would arrive in his Gorillamobile, the light flashing on the roof, and make the rounds of each company, roaring threats.

“No, and I mean NO favors to any recruits,” he bawled the day before they brought in the sniffer dogs for a random drug search. “I know there will be some who’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it…’ Well, my nutsac he didn’t!  The devil can take him!  I’ll step on his neck!  No, and I mean NO, favors to any recruits!” 

He was in fact a friendly hardworking man who under different conditions could have easily been a cheerful restaurant owner or a compassionate family doctor but he was the head of the military police at the training camp and so he had to act up to his size and play the chest-pounding gorilla. 

11. THE PARADE

Every day over the two weeks preceding the swearing-in ceremony we practiced marching for the parade.  It could have been learnt in a half hour but we spent hours on it each day.  We marched after breakfast; we marched at sunset; we marched in rain; we marched in icy winds; we marched until our shoulders throbbed and the heel of our left boot soles had worn away.

“I want to hear that left heel clip the ground!” Chewbacca would roar.  “I don’t hear anything!  That’s better!  One-two, hep-two, hep-two, One!  The elbows should be locked. The wrist locked down and the thumb pointed upwards! Your hand should swing up to eye level! One-two, hep-two, hep-two, One!”

After several days they positioned us in our parade formations, which were arranged by platoon and by height.  I was in the first platoon and, being the tallest conscript in my platoon, I was therefore in the first line.  I had hoped to be tucked away somewhere within the company formation as I was not keen on having thousands of people watch me march by like the Nutcracker.  But there was no escaping it.  It in fact turned out to be even worse than I expected because I also happened to be located in the row facing the audience during the swearing-in ceremony.  By a stroke of misfortune I happened to be the only conscript with the privilege of being perpetually in full view of the audience.   

Grivas would occasionally emerge from the headquarters building to examine our progress.  He always stood in the same place, a mere arm’s length away from our marching line, with the look of beetle-browed engrossment common to professional coaches.  One of the enduring images from boot camp that has retained all of its vividness is the sight of my right arm swinging up and down like a windmill blade over a growing and nearing Grivas, who would be standing statue-like on the other side of the painted white line that I was marching along, his hands folded at his back, his sunglasses perched over his conspiratorial mustache, his impenetrable elevated face gazing motionlessly down upon us as the sun slid down behind him into the Mediterranean under a magnolia sky.  Grivas reveled in the marching.  The sight of all those young uniformed men in a regimented parade elevated his spirit with manly passion and sent coursing through his shuddering flesh all those Hellenic aspirations and yearnings that gave meaning to his life as a training camp commander.         

There was no slacking when it came to marching. Neither hail, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of Grivas’ sight stayed us from the dreary completion of our appointed rounds.  The crucial thing in this boot camp seemed to be that we learned to march well.  That was how you defended your country: you marched gloriously. We never did.  Either the arphades were trying to sabotage Grivas’ dreams or they simply didn’t give a damn.   

“You should be looking up when you march!” Grivas would lecture us.  “Only women look down! Your eyes should be looking up, where the eagles fly.”  The wind would often come whipping across the plaza and we would stand there shivering as he tried to inspire us.  “In hard times, you should raise your head and say ‘I will struggle.’  To win the medal.  Tomorrow it may be a small race.  The day after tomorrow a marathon.”

“Up yours,” the kid next to me said.

“Who said that?” he screamed. “Tramp!  Scumbag!  Who told you to talk?”  Grivas became increasingly unstable with the approach of the swearing-in ceremony.  “Lift your left knee high when I say attention or I’ll cut your legs off!” he bawled.  “And don’t scratch yourselves!”  His curses also grew increasingly obscene as boot camp progressed, filled with bizarre, often incomprehensible, references to genitalia.

On our last weekend furlough before the swearing-in ceremony Grivas made a round of the barracks rooms for an inspection.  As usual we had been threatened that if he was dissatisfied we would spend the weekend inside the camp. We spent most of Friday morning sweeping, mopping, scrubbing walls, washing windows, wiping the dust from the top of the ceiling fan blades, shining our boots, and stretching our blankets so tight that you could bounce a coin off the beds.

“He’s coming! He’s coming!” our barracks room captain cried, running into the room. We all stood at attention by our beds.  We could hear him ranting in the room next to us.  I later found out that he had opened a locker and found the words “Fuck the commander” scribbled all over the inside of the door.  He did not even glance at our room when he walked in.  He went straight to the lockers and opened the first one.  No one had expected he would check the lockers.  The conscript responsible for the locked stomped to attention and reported his name. 

“Magazines… food…” Grivas murmured with disgust, tossing the magazine and the packet of chips onto the bed next to him.

He went to the next locker. “Dirty socks,” he said, tossing them behind him.  He opened another locker and a soda tumbled out and spilled at his feet.  He then opened my locker and began rummaging through my folded underpants, under which lay a plastic water bottle filled with the clear Cypriot spirit zivania. “Look at this, a bottle of water amidst the underwear.  Couldn’t these be in a bag?”

“They’re clean,” I said.

He paused and then his eyes darted over at me as if I had no right to speak.  “If you come to my room in headquarters you’ll see I keep all of my underwear and socks in bags.”  He shut the locker door and moved on to the next one.

12. THE SWEARING-IN CEREMONY

 “Tomorrow will be your day,” Grivas told us the day before the swearing-in ceremony.  “Tomorrow is a day for your parents and siblings and girlfriends to admire you.  There is no other KEN training camp in operation right now so all the stations will be showing you.  You have a chance to be seen by the whole world.”

And so it was that the whole world--or at least friends and family--witnessed the making of these 350 or so recruits into hardened soldiers trained to defend the homeland and withstand the rigors of war.  During the ceremony a conscript fainted and had to be carried away on a stretcher.  As usual we were told that the National Guard Chief of Staff would grant us an additional day of honorary furlough if we marched well and as usual it was given to us despite our resemblance to circus performers specializing in military satire. 

And it may as well have been a circus.  It was a lucrative act, with ticket sales on a national scale.  The essential thing was to keep the applause going by giving the appearance of a disciplined, trained army.  Like circus showmen, we spent weeks practicing for several minutes of performance.  It was no different from the island’s political arena: all hot air and humbug.  We were too busy puffing our chests out and raising our chins for anything else.   

The day after returning from our furlough—one of the last days in boot camp—we went on a “mountain trek,” which amounted to a mild three-hour hike, rest stops included, through the surrounding hills. On the way back, we passed through a neighboring village. Before we entered it we were taught one last chant, with the opening line “we are tough and disciplined.”  We practiced it a few times and then set off stomping into the village, bellowing out the self-promotional chant.  Two octogenarians applauded us from their porches as we stomped through; a few squawking chickens raced in fright across the road in front of us; and a dozen schoolchildren rushed in our direction upon sighting us and threw themselves against the chain link fence of their playground, pointing at us and laughing. 

Constantine Markides

*The entry Manning the Dead Zone, about guard duty on the UN-monitored Green Line, picks up where this piece ends.*

arphas (ärf’äs) 1. a Cypriot male who conscripts in the January “alpha” series of National Guard basic training   2. (derogatory) a jackass (pl. arphades)

1 THE CONSCRIPTION OFFICER

THE CONSCRIPTION OFFICER did not look up from his desk when I entered his office. Nor did he look up when I handed him the copy of my birth certificate proving I was over the age of twenty-six or the consul’s letter from a Cyprus embassy in the U.S. confirming I had spent most of my life outside of Cyprus.

He glanced at the consul’s document. “Why isn’t this in Greek!” he muttered in a voice without a trace of Cypriot dialect. “They want to make us all Amerikanakia!” He slowly and disgustedly shook his head at this diplomatic betrayal of the ethnic struggle. It was deplorable because the National Guard had been trying for close to a half century to make us Cypriots all Greeks.

He then looked at my birth certificate, frowned, and handed back both documents, telling me to return on Monday after I had them translated at the Press and Information Office. It was clear the conscription officer was a man infused with the spirit of non-discrimination. Why should a Cypriot born in, say, Lithuania have to get his birth certificate translated into Greek just because the relevant officials can’t read Lithuanian while one born in the U.S. does not have to translate it just because the officials are able to read English? It was far more democratic when the bureaucratic proceeding was equally laborious for all barbarians of foreign tongues.

He maintained a severe expression throughout the encounter and did not once look up at me from his papers. But I took no offense: I had observed earlier from the waiting room that he was considerate enough to be equally dismissive and unsmiling towards everyone. He was a tall gangly man with glasses and carefully combed hair parted down the middle of his head, and he carried himself with equal measures of detachment and disdain. His egalitarian indifference to those under him was not only admirable but also forgivable because had he not been a stern army officer he would have risked being a geek.

It was however irritating that no one had told me my documents needed to be in Greek when I had called the office several months ago. But then I tried to put myself in their boots and my resentment subsided as I recognized how challenging it must be to unnecessarily complicate life for others. So with the translated, officially stamped documents in hand I returned on Monday morning to the office and was given my conscription papers; on Tuesday night I buzzed my hair off; and on Wednesday at noon I walked through the main gate of the Paphos KEN, the Recruit Training Camp, for my first day at boot camp.

Any expectations I had of thick-necked red-faced sergeants bellowing at trembling conscripts soon vanished. It was often the reverse. Two teenagers with ponytails halfway down their back were jeering rebelliously at two sergeants, claiming they were going to get deferment. Another group of conscripts jabbered and hooted through a ten-minute National Guard video (“Ah, come on, put a porno on!”) that was meant to inspire recruits for the forthcoming army training by depicting tanks and helicopters firing missiles to a soundtrack of military drumming

Army men and politicians in Cyprus cite lack of manpower as the reason why conscription must be twenty-five months. It is estimated close to a third of the recruits defer their twenty-five-month conscription term by claiming mental instability. Were conscription shortened to twelve or fourteen months, most of the recruits would not likely try to evade it since exemption often carries repercussions (exclusion from government jobs, denial of driver’s license, etc). The army would then have the extra forces that it claims to need.

But reducing the military term would be a seditious betrayal of the high-ranking patriots whose redundant jobs depend on a bloated military budget. It would potentially also lead to a loss of that martial spirit for which Cypriots are so unrenowned. By instead making it easy to allege mental instability, the National Guard remains safely hard-pressed for those essential force numbers that are no longer necessary under present day political conditions.

Some of the more accommodating doctors even oblige the recruit or soldier by asking him to choose his desired mental illness from a list. Nonetheless, deferment is not always granted right away. A conscript who looked like he was fourteen threw a tantrum when he was not given immediate deferment.

“Wait till you see what I’ll do when I’m in tonight!” he yelped at the cadet officers. “No one is going to sleep!” He was a yapping Chihuahua with dangling knobby limbs and seemed to have no concern that everyone there could have smeared his face across the pavement. No one touched him. He stayed a few days and then was released. The idea was to put on a show that you were unhinged and a danger to others. One of the conscripts threw a rock through the window of the psychologist’s office and another pulled a pocketknife on her. They were both awarded deferment for their striving efforts while the others who behaved well were punished with two-year terms.

After handing over our conscription forms in a building strung with innumerable small Greek and Cypriot flags, we each had to strip to our underwear and stand before a panel of moribund health professionals with dark sagging pouches under their eyes who rated us on our physical well being. Anything we did involved hours of waiting so it was twilight by the time we finally arrived at the equipment distribution room where we were issued our army gear.

After dropping off our new possessions at the barracks we went straight to the mess hall. We were served trays of fried squid rings, boiled potatoes, and salad, along with baskets of bread, bowls of oranges and bottles of olive oil and vinegar. Due to unfounded rumors, I had prepared myself for meals more along the lines of diced lizard or stewed goat hooves. But in fact, except for breakfast, which was usually just tea and bread, all the meals were consistently very good, and over the following weeks everyone consistently complained about them, many instead smuggling in inferior take-away or curbing their appetite with packaged chocolate-crème-filled pastries from the canteen. It was very considerate of them to be so ungrateful for the quality meals and I nodded in agreement with them that the food was unacceptable as I helped myself to their untouched trays.

I was in the first company barracks, a two-story cream peach building with rooms of ten bunk beds and twenty lockers. On the vast concrete lot there were two other buildings—the second and third companies. All three equidistant barracks were on the same parallel. Hewn into unnatural cliffs, the mountain loomed to our sides and behind us in a semicircle; the entire concrete expanse had been carved out of the mountain slope and then paved over. The three buildings were identical in rectangular shape and differed only in their pastel coloring. Leading up to the main entrance of each building was a series of steps that were perpetually littered with cigarette butts and stained with vending machine hot chocolate despite diligent daily efforts of the assigned soldiers to sweep and mop them as infrequently as possible.

That night we all lined up outside our respective buildings. To my right was the second company barracks and, beyond that, the third. At the top of the steps of each building stood an officer, illuminated in ghastly white fluorescence by a single exterior light over the main entrance. The conscripts were all lined up before him. A row of tall streetlamps flanked the lot and each cast a pale pinkish fluorescent cone-shaped glow upon the concrete. Conscripts would still be arriving for two more days but to even just look through one’s billowing plumes of breath at the 200 or so recruits who were already there, lined up in three clusters, each cluster made up of eight ordered rows of conscripts standing in front of a giant oppressive edifice where a single illuminated officer addressed them from his perch, all this taking place in a vast concrete lot, empty but for some sinister streetlamps, the carved walls of a mountain rising along the perimeter and ringed above by barbed wire… to look through one’s breath at all this one could not help but think of prison or concentration camp. It would prove to have more in common with a nursery school, but it did make a forbidding impression during that first chilly January night.

At one point a vehicle drove up and an officer emerged to inform us that this was a “different environment” and that we best therefore do our utmost to acclimatize to it. “There’s no Filipinos or blacks here so you’ll have to do the cleaning up,” he said and then returned to his vehicle and drove off to his home, which probably could have served for us as an exemplar of spotless sanitation and domestic devotion thanks to the conscientious efforts of his wife or Sri Lankan maid. Moments later we were ordered to turn to the east and remove our caps. The Lord’s Prayer was recited. Then we were ordered to go to bed.

2 THE EQUIPMENT OFFICER

The next morning after a breakfast of frosted flakes, warm milk and group prayer, which came standard with every meal, a corporal pulled aside from our company all the three-monthers and six-monthers, as those of us with reduced conscription terms were referred to, and led us in a line of pairs to the equipment distribution room.

Our job would be to issue the army gear to the arriving conscripts. We were each assigned a position next to an article of clothing. I was on underwear duty and was to deliver to every conscript three olive tank tops and three tighty-greenies. The first group did not show up for several hours so we passed the morning lounging in the sun and playing foosball in the neighboring canteen.

The equipment officer was a man of medium height who looked taller because of his long neck, which looked even longer because he buzzed the hair most of the way up the back of his narrow head, which looked even narrower because of the shape and position of the flat-billed army cap that sat high over his prominent forehead, which looked even more prominent when the veins stood out upon it. He ranted, hollered, and cursed at his temporary staff to keep himself in good spirits. The more he shouted, the more his blood-engorged vessels bulged out on his forehead, and the more he was at peace. After an especially cantankerous spew of invective he bore about him an aura of serene equanimity. But it was not solely for calmness of mind that he screamed like a madman. He also saw himself as the most recent manifestation of a long vibrant military tradition of officers berating and hollering at subordinates, a noble line of great screaming men that has throughout history ensured that the vitality of army life remains untainted by the energy-sapping soft-spoken niceties of the civilian world. It was hard work to yell all day long, especially as he was already burdened by the countless headaches of inventory counts, backorders, storage procedures, and requests for exchanges, but he selflessly took it upon himself to bitch at everyone without a murmur of complaint. He shrieked, fulminated and bellowed as if he despised all of us and we all took an instant liking to him.

Before the first group came in, he told us to stay calm and not to lose our tempers. “What the hell are you waiting for, the Holy Spirit?” he later hollered at one of the six-monthers who was lost in a reverie, causing a back-up in the delivery line. Another six-monther was shuffling through a box to find the right jacket size for the conscript. “Hurry up,” the equipment officer yelled at him. “We’re not choosing grooms here!”

“Didn’t I tell you not to smoke in here?” he roared at the far end of the room, chopping his hand in the air. “Hell, what do I have to do in here to keep some order?”

But he kept his fondest cursing for his long-term staff. When he wanted the attention of one of his helpers in the neighboring storage room, he would yell until the escalating decibels penetrated the building walls. “Christo! CHRISTO! CHRISTOOO! Fuck my race! Where in hell is he?”

“The socks!” he ranted when one of his assistants told him one of the boxes was missing. “Can you please tell me where in hell they went? I told you where the socks were and they went to anathema again. I’m gonna tear you apart! What kind of bullshit in this you’re telling me now? We’ll see when the devil comes to take you!” His helpers delighted in his abuse, often mimicking his words and tone to his face, and he would merely glower back at them wordlessly.

Several dozen conscripts returned in mass to the equipment room to exchange some of the gear, which had proven either too large or too small. The equipment officer seemed to relish such group returns because it gave him a chance to tower colossally above them with clipboard in hand and storm at them like a clean-shaven Ahab. He would have them all sit cross legged on the concrete in rows and then would rip through them one by one.

“You, what size? No, not the size you’re holding! Bring it up for the size you want! Over there, you keep quiet! Hurry up! What do you want? Fuck my history!”

There was often a great deal of confusion and the equipment officer would sometimes reassess how he might remedy this lack of communication between himself and the conscript, who was only growing more bewildered with every curse and question. As the equipment officer was an enthusiastic practitioner of the verbal arts, he always found imaginative ways around the problem.

“I have one simple question for you and I want one clear and lucid answer,” he once said in a strong rising voice that yearned to break loose into a passionate harangue. He paused to give the conscript time to prepare himself for the question. “What size are you?”

In between yelling bouts he either languidly chatted with whomever was around, freely dispensing the fruits of his reflection on the subject at hand, or he repeatedly sang the refrain “Se Birovolo” (“I shoot you”) with impassioned musicality.

Like the conscription officer, he too was a democratic man, and he swore with equal non-discriminatory vehemence at everyone of a lower rank than him. But he did not want to give the impression that superiors were untouchables. That’s why he gave us all a brief pep talk before the head of the National Guard visited the equipment room on his tour of the training camp.

“He’s a man, just like us, with feelings,” he noted philosophically. “But he deserves some respect of course.”

The National Guard Chief of Staff came in just long enough to say a few words of encouragement to us in front of the cameraman trailing him. He was in a buoyant mood and stopped to talk with one of the younger conscripts whom he congratulated and then expressed his approval of by delivering to the back of his neck a warm-hearted slap that rang throughout the equipment room.

At the end of the day the equipment officer had us all line up outside. The veins had all settled invisibly back into his forehead and his face, aglow with the warm light of the setting sun, emanated tranquility and self-possession. “Is there anyone who doesn’t want to do this tomorrow?” No one wanted to miss out on another day of rollicking verbal abuse and diatribe. “Okay good, then all of you return at the same time tomorrow. Nice job. The conscription couldn’t have taken place without you.”

He paused and then, as if he felt the compliment needed qualification to be strictly correct, added, “Though they would have found others to do the job, of course.”

*The Way of the Arpha is continued on June 4

PICK AT RANDOM a young man living in a nation that does not maintain conscription and, even if he is averse to violence and authoritarianism, chances are at some point he has entertained the thought of joining the military. There are any number of reasons: sheer curiosity and a desire to see something of the world outside of one’s hometown, a guaranteed income and future university funding, naïve reveries about the heroisms and glories of combat, and of course the desire to serve one’s country, which although much trumpeted is usually more bluster than patriotism, especially if the home team has a recent history of waging wars, not suffering them.

Most of those young men will not sign up. Those who do are probably either so fired up about being soldiers or so short on other career options that they will tolerate more discipline and hardship than will their peers in other countries who face mandatory military service. Assuming a country is large enough to be able to supply enough recruits, a volunteer army – which usually amounts to a mercenary army of the poor – is more reliable than a conscript army. Drafted soldiers are less tolerant of privation and more prone to desertion than volunteers because their ranks also include the middle class and, though less so, the upper class.

The insubordination among American troops in Vietnam was in part due to the privileged economic position, at least when compared to volunteer soldiers, of many of the draftees. It is no surprise then that, despite overstretched forces in Iraq, there is barely any support by high-ranking U.S. military or political leaders to reinstate the draft. Conscripts are even more unruly when they feel that there is no justifiable reason for their service, or at least for its length. In this regard, the Cypriot National Guard makes for a particularly interesting case study.

The 1960 Constitution established a Cypriot army consisting of both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot contingents. But as the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were not integrated from the start, the army soon split on ethnic lines into two separate forces. After the 1963 hostilities between the two ethnic groups, the Cypriot National Guard – a purely Greek Cypriot military – was formed.

Conscription in the Cypriot National Guard currently stands at 25 months, among the longest in the world along with countries like Iran, Egypt, Singapore, South Korea and Israel (North Korea is in a league of its own). Though the island presently remains under occupation, there has been no resumption of hostilities, aside from infrequent and isolated killings on the Green Line, since the summer of 1974 when Turkey invaded after the Greek coup.

Though I had spent five years of my boyhood in Cyprus, I was living in New York City when I turned of enlistment age (anyone with a Greek Cypriot father is obliged to serve). I visited Cyprus several times over the following decade but it was not until I moved to the island two summers ago that I was required by law to enlist within a two-year period. As I had spent most of my life in the U.S. and was over the age of 26, I would only have to serve for three months instead of 25. In comparison to other Greek Cypriot conscripts my army term would be a weekend jaunt.

I enlisted on January 10, 2007. As of this writing I have one week left before I receive my discharge papers. I then return to that undisciplined state of dissolution known as civilian life where one need not shave every morning, shine one’s boots, sleep according to a timetable, stomp to attention, or report in a “brisk and vivacious manner” to one’s superiors, as those who have been making a life out of stomping and saluting are referred to. But then again, the whole point of conscription is that military duty does not end with your discharge papers (and in fact despite widespread use of “discharge papers,” the release documents you receive at the end of your conscription term are actually more like marching orders because you remain a reservist). Until the age of 50 you are called up several times a year to button yourself back into uniform and go to firing practice or to sentry duty on the Green Line or to training on cover and concealment, which might include a nap under an olive tree somewhere.

This piece cannot by any stretch be considered an essay; nonetheless, I am letting it stand on its own for this month’s posting as a brief preface to the following months’ essays on boot camp and on guard duty on the Green Line, both of which will draw upon my three-month conscription. I have decided to do so for three reasons:

One, I am by nature a lazy essayist and always have an eye out for good procrastination excuses, especially ones that invoke noble-sounding military obligations (“It is with great regret that I cannot post this month’s essay, but I am presently serving in the line of duty…”). Two, I have received a number of complaints from readers who do not or cannot print the Fourth Night essays that my postings are often too long for online reading. This one sets a new record in brevity. And three, I am taking the advice of several concerned friends and family members who urged that I wait until I have my release papers in hand before writing anything army-related. I originally dismissed the idea but the colorful – for lack of a better adjective – experiences of the last three months have led me to change my mind.

Many repatriated Cypriots evade their military duty, and I could have done so myself. It is easy enough due to the absence of any bureaucratic coordination in the National Guard Headquarters: just play dumb, don’t ever sign up, and if an official ever asks say that you only recently arrived. But I saw no good reason to avoid enlistment. I had no ethical qualms about it; Cyprus may technically still be at a state of war (and in one of the longest ceasefires in modern history) but I was sure I had better odds of killing somebody or getting killed on a weekend drive to the beach than while in the army. As for willingly subjecting myself to the commands and whims of any halfwit with a few stars and bars on his collar, as Melville’s Ishmael said, “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”

And finally I would have missed out on all the fun, to take a broad interpretation of the word. A life without occasional degradation is a life not worth living.

Constantine Markides