Are we helpless?
Back to school. The weather has settled. Pomegranates are almost ready to eat. Carobs should have been eaten by now. Sure thing.
But let’s not deem summer over just yet. Specially considering that the Parliament will consider a new bill regarding the privatisation of our shores, our beaches, our places of retreat when the summer sun is high above us and depriving us of coolness.
A phone call earlier in the week left me relatively helpless. He spoke of the limited time we had on our hands to take action on the matter. How yet again decisions were being taken without potentially taking into consideration the long term impact of actions which, to say the least, are being envisioned on monetary interests.
That if the shores were to be privatised they would not only not belong to us anymore but that we may fear having to pay to use some of these natural, historical resources and that eventually these will be invested upon, somehow.
The shores of the island which once belonged to the British Bases are already being bought. I hate to think of the prospect of what is going to be erected there. But can you imagine if this became an island-wide phenomenon?
As a joke someone once asked me whether Cyprus would one-day sink sue to the weight of the concrete imposed upon it. At the time, we were also laughing at what was going on on the Spanish coasts, where eventually they began destroying what had been built on the shores and began to bring historical buildings back to life, even though, in many ways, it was too late.
Yet, even though gravity may not allow our little rock to sink any time soon, I cant seem to dismiss the image of Caretta-Caretta turtles trying to approach the sight of a coastline made of obstructive facades, reclaimed land and a man-made nature.
And as for us, we may as well become robots. Robots with an armour that has been specifically designed to drench us with salted water once in a while, just so that we feel we’re not being deprived of anything. Case closed.
Published in The Cyprus Weekly Newspaper, Friday 12 September 2014 under column entitled “Artichoke”
