The Lives of Others

By Theo Panayides

“For the past 10 years, since February 2009, I’ve been writing the Sunday profiles for the Cyprus Mail newspaper…” 

Theo Panayides tells the stories of 60 very different people, taken from the many hundreds he’s interviewed over the years. All human life is here – from a humble street sweeper to a former President, from a pig farmer to a millionaire businessman, from a lifelong drifter to a pastry chef turned Iraqi refugee, from an LGBTI activist to a mystic who claims to have spoken to Jesus.

World-champion freediver William Trubridge is here. Bestselling British novelist Victoria Hislop is here too. Some lives have been successful, others tragic. One man lost his family in the Rwandan genocide, another in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. 

Some of the stories are emotional; many are feelgood. Most relate in some way to Cyprus, the Mediterranean island where Panayides is based. With a smart, highly readable style and a deep compassion, he reveals the personalities of his very diverse subjects – though also finds himself returning often to the same questions of Time passing and life turning out unexpectedly, finding many of the same hopes and fears in these very different lives. Are they – and we – really so different, after all?

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Panayides is such a terrific writer and interviewer that I still remember profiles he wrote from 10 years ago. His characters jump off the page. Most are Cypriots, including visitors from the diaspora. And they’re from all walks of life… Entertaining, intelligent, highly recommended.

Mike Theodoulou former Middle East correspondent for The Times (London)

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Theo Panayides has compiled a unique reading experience:  introducing readers to sixty different lives from the rich and famous to the lowly and dispossessed, capturing not only their unique story but more importantly their essence. 

Richard Romanus Actor and Author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Armida Publications
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9789925573073

Book preview

ARMIDA

CREDIT PAGE

Copyright © 2019 by Theo Panayides

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www.armidabooks.com | Great Literature. One Book At A Time.

Summary:

For the past 10 years, since February 2009, I’ve been writing the Sunday profiles for the Cyprus Mail newspaper…

Theo Panayides tells the stories of 60 very different people, taken from the many hundreds he’s interviewed over the years. All human life is here – from a humble street sweeper to a former President, from a pig farmer to a millionaire businessman, from a lifelong drifter to a pastry chef turned Iraqi refugee, from an LGBTI activist to a mystic who claims to have spoken to Jesus.

World-champion freediver William Trubridge is here. Bestselling British novelist Victoria Hislop is here too. Some lives have been successful, others tragic. One man lost his family in the Rwandan genocide, another in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

Some of the stories are emotional; many are feelgood. Most relate in some way to Cyprus, the Mediterranean island where Panayides is based. With a smart, highly readable style and a deep compassion, he reveals the personalities of his very diverse subjects – though also finds himself returning often to the same questions of Time passing and life turning out unexpectedly, finding many of the same hopes and fears in these very different lives.

Are they – and we – really so different, after all?

[ 1. SOCIAL SCIENCE / Essays, 2. REFERENCE / Biographical Dictionaries, 3. LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Interviews ]

Ebook cover image by:

© Mike Kiev | Confrontation between two groups of people| istockphoto

Photographs by

Christos Theodorides and Theo Panayides

1st paperback edition: August 2019

ISBN-13 (paperback): 978-9925-573-06-6

Table of Contents

CREDIT PAGE

Preface

A Note on Cyprus

Latif Yahia, double for Saddam Hussein’s son (2009 - May 24)

Arie Zeev Raskin, chief rabbi of Cyprus (2009 - October 11)

Mike Togni, circus clown (2010 - January 10)

Evie Michael Katsiola, street sweeper (2010 - October 24)

Klaus Kenneth, the man who spoke to Jesus (2011 - May 15)

Photos Photiades, business mogul (2011 - October 16)

Andreas Artemiou, animal doctor (2012 - February 19)

Dinos Tellalis, 60s hippy (2012 - July 8)

Petros Souppouris, childhood victim of the Turkish invasion (2012 - July 15)

Dr. Naasson Munyandamutsa, survivor of the Rwandan genocide (2012 - October 14)

Tim Hunt, Nobel Prize-winning scientist (2012 - October 21)

George Vasiliou, former President of the Republic (2013 - February 17)

Yolanda Lang, an interesting life (2013 - April 7)

Eleni Meleagrou, the Cypriot terrorist (2013 - May 26)

Hermes Angeloudis, meetings with glamorous people (2013 - June 23)

Deniz Birinci, frustrated high achiever (2013 - August 11)

Christodoulos Angastiniotis, small businessman and patriot (2013 - August 25)

Michalis Paraskevas, fiery lawyer (2013 - September 29)

Rasul Yagudin, Russian fugitive (2013 - October 13)

Nikos Lygeros, genius (2013 - December 1)

Nadir Yousif, refugee and former pastry chef (2013 - December 8)

Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, enthusiastic volcanologist (2014 - February 2)

Patrick Byrne, 49-year-old busker (2014 - February 16)

Stephane Fissentzides, nostalgic architect (2014 - May 18)

Stelana Kliris, committed Cypriot filmmaker (2014 - May 25)

Victoria Hislop, a rogue streak of southern European (2014 - August 24)

Sergio Canavero, maverick scientist (2014 - November 2)

Pambos Ioannou, kebab-shop owner (2015 - January 18)

Costas Schiniou, actor and children’s entertainer (2015 - February 8)

Sean O’Neill, wandering restaurateur (2015 - July 19)

Marios Kittiras, former junkie (2015 - August 2)

Kim Longinotto, documentary filmmaker (2015 - August 23)

William Trubridge, world-champion freediver (2015 - September 13)

‘Fidel’, disruptive influence (2015 - December 20)

Janet Zenonos, soldier, lawyer, cancer survivor (2016 - April 24)

Kyriacos Kyriacou, tetraplegic ‘mouth painter (2016 - July 10)

James Ker-Lindsay, academic and friend of Cyprus (2015 - August 21)

Mrs. Santa, the force behind Christmas (2016 - December 25)

Anna Aristotelous, prison chief (2017 - March 5)

Gloria Kassianides, art-gallery owner (2015 - March 12)

Christakis Neophytou, pig farmer (2017 - March 12)

Maroulla Violari-Iacovidou, the first female journalist (2017 - July 2)

Michele Valley, cult film actress (2017 - July 9)

Albert Kagalksi, Krav Maga expert (2017 - July 16)

Edie Meidav, American author, intrigued by islands (2017 - July 30)

Kyriakos Philippides, 97-year-old juice seller (2017 - September 17)

Marios Ioannou, a sense of drama (2017 - September 24)

George Tardios, working-class poet (2017 - October 15)

Dean Psaras, lifelong drifter (2017 - November 19)

Sener Levent, persecuted newspaper owner (2018 - February 4 )

Robin Chater, a strange fish (2018 - March 4)

Marios Georgiou, Olympic gymnast (2018 - May 13)

John Zacharias Theophanous, LGBTI activist (2018 - June 10)

Demetrios Pierides, culture maven and local aristocrat (2018 - July 8)

Avgoustinos Papadopoulos, lifeguard (2018 - August 12)

Haig Indjirdjian, angry antiques dealer (2018 - August 26)

Maria Hassabi, Bessie-winning dancer/choreographer (2018 - October 7)

Christopher Morris, BBC reporter and war correspondent (2019 - March 24)

Father Panaretos (Samuel Kimani), Kenyan-born Orthodox priest (2019 - March 31)

Helen Christofi, Comic Con organiser (2019 - April 14)

Appendix: Annual Round-Ups

Profiles 2013, 2013 - December 29

Profiles 2016, 2017 - January 1

Profiles 2017, 2017 - December 31

About the author

Preface

For the past 10 years, since February 2009 – and, before that, from 1997-2001, though none of those interviews ended up in this book – I’ve been writing the Sunday profiles for the Cyprus Mail newspaper.

The concept is both very simple and a little slippery: a long article, around 2,000 words (pages 4 and 5 in ‘Living’, our Sunday supplement), devoted to the life of one person. The choice of subject is dictated mainly by the fact that the profile is a weekly feature, which is another way of saying that almost every week is a mad rush to find someone – in between all the other things I do at the paper – who’s (a) interested, and (b) available to meet face-to-face for at least 30 minutes, usually an hour or more. (The longest interview I’ve done was with American transwoman Jessica Lynn, who spoke for over three hours. She too, alas, is missing from this book, though you can find the profile at www.cyprus-mail.com.)

Initially there was also a (c), viz. that the person should be famous or well-known – but it soon became clear that finding a celebrity every week, at short notice, was unrealistic. More importantly, it became clear that celebrities offered name recognition and not much else. They were always on-message, seldom answered questions directly, and often fell back on answers they’d given in previous interviews. Talking to more unsung subjects often yielded much better stories – and the story, in the end, is the point of the exercise. If I had to describe a profile, I’d say it’s a thumbnail sketch with a story attached.

Meeting around 40 people a year, for 10 years, makes approximately 400 profiles. From that total, I selected 60 for this collection, trying above all to strike a balance. Some subjects are well-known, others decidedly not. We have a bestselling author and a former President of the Republic – but we also have a circus clown, a pig farmer, a street sweeper, a volcanologist. There are refugees, businessmen, two victims of war, one former drug addict, and quite a few mavericks and unconventional types. Free spirits may indeed be a little over-represented in this book. Then again, they have the best stories.

I’m sorry to have left out most of the celebs: people like actress Vicky Krieps (whom I interviewed two years before she starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread), singer Demis Roussos, rapper Ms. Dynamite, several MPs and a couple of MEPs, cult actor Udo Kier, film director Abel Ferrara, Michael Dukakis in 2000 and his cousin Olympia in 2012. Then again, I also know that the celebs weren’t the most memorable profiles – and, at the end of the day, I’m collecting these stories for my own benefit as much as the reader’s.

Profiles are journalism, not literature – and journalism is notoriously ephemeral; the old saw about today’s newspaper being tomorrow’s kitty litter is sadly accurate. The internet now offers the illusion of greater permanence – but websites get restructured, older work disappears. The impulse to collect my interviews came from a wish to see them preserved – not out of vanity, but because I hope that something of value can potentially emerge from these haphazard ‘lives of others’, especially in book form when they’re all together, in conversation with each other. A cumulative sense of diverse experience – all human life, as they say – underpinned by the things we all share.

The question, of course, is whether the people on display are the ‘real’ people, or merely a whitewashed version. The truth vouchsafed to a journalist is never the whole truth. Writing for a small audience in a small country also implies a certain discretion; it’s hard to be blunt, or sarcastic, or overly critical. The acerbic style of my heroine Lynn Barber (whose no-punches-pulled celebrity profiles were an inspiration in the 90s and 00s) wouldn’t really fly here. I’m honest about my impressions, but also try to avoid disparaging subjects – if only because it seems presumptuous to pass judgment on someone, especially on a mere hour’s acquaintance. That said, I do include some authorial voice; the profiles aren’t intended as puff pieces, nor are the subjects always happy with the result. On three occasions, people I’ve written about have complained to the paper (two of them also called for me to be fired, in the spirit of the social-media age) and demanded that the piece be taken down, one woman calling her profile incredibly invalidating and my tone twisted and judgmental. As they say, you can’t please everyone.

Ups and downs notwithstanding, I’ve enjoyed this decade of writing profiles. I’ve become adept at meeting people (never my biggest strength in the past!), I’m forever learning new things – and I’ve tried, above all, to stay curious, always looking forward to the thrill of connecting with another’s life and gaining a sense of their energy. Thanks go to my colleagues at the Mail (especially Katy Turner, the editor of ‘Living’) – and, above all, to the hundreds of people who gave me of their time over the past 10 years and agreed to answer my prying questions, even when their answers didn’t end up in this book. Most of them, at least from 2013 onwards, may be found at https://cyprus-mail.com/category/life-style/people/profile/.

All articles are reproduced by permission of the Cyprus Mail, where they originally appeared on the date shown on the front page of each profile.

Theo Panayides

June 2019

A Note on Cyprus

Almost all the people in this book are either Cypriots or connected to Cyprus – a smallish, sunny, rather troubled, rather conservative Mediterranean island with an eventful recent history. Most readers of this book will be familiar in some way with Cyprus. For those who aren’t, however, here’s a brief glossary of the main points in that recent history:

Eoka. This was the armed guerrilla struggle against colonial British rule. It lasted from 1955 to 1959 and was not a struggle for independence per se, being waged under the banner of ‘enosis’, or union with Greece. The Eoka struggle – or just the struggle – appears in several interviews with subjects in their 60s and 70s, most prominently those with Pambos Ioannou and Maroula Violari-Iacovidou.

The Turkish invasion of 1974. Cyprus became independent in 1960, with Archbishop Makarios as its president. Its population was ethnically divided, with Greek Cypriots making up around 78% and Turkish Cypriots around 17%. After a decade of tension between the two communities, including all-out fighting in 1963, Turkey invaded the island on July 20, 1974, followed by a ‘second invasion’ – extending its occupied territory – on August 14.

The ostensible reason for the invasion (which Turkey continues to call a ‘peace operation’) was to protect the Turkish Cypriots after a coup on July 15, ordered by the military junta in Greece, which deposed Makarios and installed a nationalist government. The invasion has always been condemned by the international community, and the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, declared in 1983, is recognised by no other country but Turkey. Nonetheless, the effect has been a physical division of the island for the past 45 years, with Greek and Turkish Cypriots largely confined to the south and occupied north, respectively.

The separation between the two communities – despite a few checkpoints being opened in 2003 – is mentioned most explicitly in the profile of Deniz Birinci. The events of 1974 appear in many profiles, most obviously that of Petros Souppouris who lost most of his family in the invasion.

The Annan Plan. A plan to reunify the island, named after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, which was put to the people in a referendum in 2004. It was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots, but rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots.

The ‘haircut’ of 2013. In March 2013, with the local economy in crisis, the Eurogroup imposed an unprecedented solution on Cyprus: a €10 billion rescue package which involved a ‘haircut’, or ‘bail-in’. All deposits over €100,000 at Laiki Bank, and around half such deposits at Bank of Cyprus – the two biggest banks on the island – were either lost altogether or seized in exchange for shares. (Laiki was also wound down, though Bank of Cyprus survived.) In effect, ordinary depositors lost their savings in order to pay for the money owed by the banks. This remains the only time such a measure has ever been taken by the EU and IMF.

The haircut – which also affected many foreign investors – is mentioned in the profile of Christodoulos Angastiniotis . The long-term effects on those who lost their savings are evident in the profile of Haig Indjirdjian.

Latif Yahia,

double for Saddam Hussein’s son (2009 - May 24)

On the left: Uday Hussein. Right: Latif Yahia

If I were an Iraqi of a certain age, coming face-to-face with Latif Yahia might be quite traumatic. Finding him sitting in the Babylonian, the ‘Arabic café’ he owns in Larnaca – a rugged, imposing figure with close-cropped hair, narrow eyes, a bulging nose and a scar down the right side of his forehead – I might gasp in horror, clutch my chest and tumble to the floor, like I’d seen a ghost. Since I’m not Iraqi, however – much less an Iraqi who’s lived under Saddam Hussein’s regime – I can only take it on trust that Latif looks exactly like Uday Hussein, Saddam’s violent, unstable son who was killed by American troops in 2003.

This is not just an idle observation. Latif’s books include I Was Saddam’s Son and The Devil’s Double, which have sold over a million copies and been translated into 20 languages. From 1987 to 1991 – when he fled Iraq – he was a fiday, a body double for Uday, constantly living in fear and surviving 11 assassination attempts. That in itself would make his life remarkable (a film about his years as a doppelganger, directed by Lee Tamahori of Die Another Day fame, is due to start shooting in September)[1]; yet in fact that’s only part of his story.

It begins in Baghdad 45 years ago, where Latif was born to a wealthy family – his father, he says, was the third-richest man in Iraq – though it’s taken so many twists and turns (most of them tragic) even the most innocuous question tends to invoke unhappy memories. So he must’ve grown up in a big house, I ask (making small talk more than anything). Yes indeed, he replies – and not only was the house big, it was also bombed by the Americans during the war because Ahmed Chalabi [later Deputy PM during the US occupation] told me he wants the house for himself, and Latif refused so Chalabi told America the house belonged to one of Saddam’s people, and they bombed it, and I lost my sister-in-law, and I had to raise my brother’s kids with me in Ireland for four-and-a-half years. So much for innocuous questions.

Latif went to secondary school with Uday Hussein (they were born only four days apart). They weren’t friends, because even then I didn’t like his behaviour – he brought his girlfriend into class with him (a teacher who reprimanded him about this later disappeared) and swanned around in a yellow Porsche as a 16-year-old – but the physical resemblance was obvious. A few years later Latif was a Captain in the Iraqi commandos, fighting in the war against Iran, when a letter arrived telling him to report to the Presidential Palace in 72 hours. There, he found Uday, who greeted him warmly and got right to the point.

How would you like to be Saddam’s son?

We are all Saddam’s sons, replied Latif cannily.

Uday explained he had something special in mind – the job of fiday, which of course was really a bullet-catcher. He could refuse, of course, claimed Uday; We are in a democratic country – so Latif refused, and immediately found himself thrown in jail, stuck in a tiny cell where he stayed a week in solitary confinement. After seven days, Uday paid him another visit: You got to do it, he said, or I’ll bring your sisters here [to be raped]. Latif said yes, and soon learned exactly how to talk, walk and move like Iraq’s crown prince, wearing special shoes to make up for a slight height difference, his teeth surgically altered to make him look more like Uday.

Uday appears to have been cruel, immature and destructively arrogant. He was sadist bastard! growls Latif. Even if I see him in Hell, I’m going to kill him. He refused to hire bodyguards or listen to Iraqi Intelligence, so of course he was always a target for Shia militias (why should he care, when he’d forced someone else to take the risks for him?); a desert ambush – one of the 11 assassination attempts – left Latif half-dead in hospital. Life was cheap; on one occasion, Uday ordered him to kill a man, recalls Latif, but I took the knife and cut myself here [on the arm], and I say ‘I am not murderer. My job for you is to be a double, not to kill people’. In 1995, as a reprisal for Latif having fled the country, Uday killed his father and confiscated the family fortune.

The money was restored by Saddam, who also sent a letter of apology and ordered all government Ministers to attend the funeral. Many in the West assume it was a case of ‘like father, like son’, but in fact the relationship between Saddam and Uday was stormy and dysfunctional, with Latif sometimes caught in the middle. Once, he recalls, Uday had him tortured, whipped with electric cables – but then, when Saddam saw the marks, he broke his son’s arm and had Uday thrown in prison. More than once, says Latif, Saddam told him I wish you were my son instead of Uday.

And what was he like, the much-demonised dictator? After all, Latif saw him every other day for four years. I liked him, he replies instantly. Believe it or not, he was funny. He was joking, he was laughing – a normal guy. Just when he’s angry with things, you should get out of his way. But he don’t get angry for no reason, must be very bad reason. Life was good in Iraq, claims Latif: Any person who was in Iraq was happy. If you are Christian and you are religious, there is a church for you. If you’re Muslim, there is a mosque. If you drink, there are pubs and nightclubs and everything is open for you. Life in Iraq was very safe, you can leave your door open 24 hours … Nobody say you are Shia or Sunni or Kurdish, or Jewish – even Jewish we have, we didn’t have a problem with them.

Rose-tinted glasses? Possibly. Latif’s account may be totally accurate, of course, but there are two reasons to take him with a pinch of salt. The first is that he was always part of the elite in Baghdad – first as a wealthy young man, then a member of Saddam’s inner circle – and may not recall what life was like for ordinary people, let alone dissidents. The second is that he has something of a chip on his shoulder, both against America and the new Iraqi government, whom he mostly dismisses as opportunistic lowlifes: To be a pimp and bring women, and now to be a Minister in Iraq with the title of ‘Doctor’ … No, it’s very heavy for me to accept this.

Partly, it’s because of the war. What the Americans did in Iraq is worse than what Saddam did in 35 years, says Latif passionately. They killed 145 members of my family, America. You want me to forgive America? No! I am anti-America till I die. Partly, too, it’s because of what happened after he left Iraq in 1991, and his 18-year fight against prejudice and discrimination.

Working for Uday became impossible, the turning-point being when they had an argument – about girls, the problem was always girls with this guy – and Latif ended up with a bullet in his right shoulder. Determined to flee, he struck a deal with the CIA, agreeing to provide them with information in exchange for safe passage to Austria, where he had a cousin. The deal was to provide half the info in Iraq, the other half after his escape – but Latif was guilt-ridden (he says) when his information led to innocent people being killed in bombing-raids, and once in Austria he refused to go through with it: a risky strategy, because America, they don’t like to hear ‘no’.

What happened next is detailed in his third book, The Black Hole: he was kidnapped, taken to an old Nazi prison outside Vienna, and tortured for 10-and-a-half months. He names names in the book, challenging his torturers to sue me if I am wrong. So far, they haven’t – though the book is banned in US bookshops (and in Ireland), in stark contrast to his first two books. At the time of the Iraq War, recalls Latif bitterly, the White House spokesman brandished his book about Uday and declared: This is why we’re going into Iraq!. That book was obviously suitable – but now he’s making accusations against the CIA he’s persona non grata, fuelling his growing disenchantment with Western hypocrisy.

I’m living in the jungle, complains Latif. Not Europe, not West – this is a jungle! West is called ‘democracy’ – democracy for what? To have sex in the street, drugs and kissing each other – this is the democracy. While living in Ireland (where he met his wife Karen), he crossed the Irish Sea and gave an interview to the Daily Mail, he recalls; in the interview, asked about Saddam’s prisons, he said there were two people missing from those prisons – Tony Blair and George Bush. Next day, I’m arrested and deported back to Ireland! That’s the democracy here.

Even his release from the Austrian secret prison was an accident: he might still be there (or dead) if his cell hadn’t inadvertently been opened during an inspection by a judge, who was quite surprised to find a battered, furious Iraqi screaming blue murder. The next 18 years are a catalogue of violence and unhappiness. Shot and wounded by hired assassins on the street in Vienna. Another assassination attempt in London, attacked by knife-wielding thugs while stuck in traffic on the Edgware Road (this was reported in the press, and led to John Major expelling several diplomats from the Iraqi Embassy). Another attempt in Norway, leaving him with 14 stitches in his stomach. Fleeing to Germany, Holland then Ireland under false names. A failed relationship in Ireland, his ex later taking up with a police sergeant who came after him with a broken glass (that explains the scar on his forehead). Repeated attempts to obtain Irish citizenship rebuffed, presumably because of US influence. And now finally – for the past eight months – life in Cyprus, which may indeed be the worst of all.

Suffice to say Latif isn’t happy here; he loves the people, but the System – he says – has cheated, humiliated and wronged him (a news story appeared in the Cyprus Mail a couple of days ago). Setting up the Babylonian has proved near-impossible. The bureaucracy is stifling – and racist. Everywhere I go ‘you are not Cypriot’. I say ‘so fucking what? This is Europe!’. No-one seems to be accountable, no-one listens if you try to complain. A court case is pending, accusing him of human trafficking, a charge he strenuously denies. I was in prison here for eight days, he recalls. I saw things, I can’t believe I am in a European country. [It’s like] I’m living in Iraq!.

Do I believe every word Latif Yahia says? Maybe not. He does seem to say things for effect, and once or twice contradicts himself – mentioning, for instance, that he’d move back to Iraq if America left, then asserting he’d be killed if he tried – but equally he’s not just some nutter spouting off. He’s got names, dates, places. These things really happened, even if he sometimes exaggerates to make his case.

What if he’d never got that letter from Uday, I wonder? What if he could somehow undo the accident of birth that marked him out as a double for the second-most powerful man in Iraq? Could his life have been different? Could it all have been ‘normal’? He shrugs, having come too far – and suffered too much – for idle speculation: Maybe my life would be different. Maybe I’d be killed in Iraq now…

I don’t have any good life, since I was born till now, admits Latif sadly. Honestly, I don’t have normal life – anywhere, inside Iraq, outside Iraq. I have a problem with my mouth, I can’t shut it. If I see something wrong, I can’t shut it.

I’m a fighter. I never surrendered, not for any government in this world.

[1]The Devil’s Double, starring Dominic Cooper in a double role as Latif Yahia and Uday Hussain, came out in 2011.

Arie Zeev Raskin,

chief rabbi of Cyprus (2009 - October 11)

Do you know the Torah? asks Arie Zeev Raskin, Chief Rabbi of Cyprus, sitting in a book-lined backroom of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Community Centre in Larnaca.

No, I reply. Can’t say that I do.

Do you study the Bible at all?

Well, I wouldn’t say ‘study’. I know the basics.

OK, the Creation of the world, you remember? How many days God created the world?

Seven days.

Wonderful! Why seven? I’m silent, befuddled. Why seven? he pursues. God is so big, He can do anything He wants. It says in the Secrets of the Torah that it’s enough that God has a thought of something, and it’s created right away. So why seven days? Why not 13? 13 is also a lucky number, no? How about 26? 26 is the name of God [in Hebrew]. Why not 26?

Nor is this the end of God-related questions he has to field on a daily basis. Take Adam and Eve, for instance. God was not smart enough to understand that Adam needed a female with him? asks the Rabbi, mock-disbelievingly. Did He really have to wait for Adam to get lonely, then realise He should’ve supplied him with a mate all along? And what is all of these tests? Now He’s testing Abraham, what does He want from the man? ‘Go sacrifice your son’? What’s up?

And this is just the beginning of what people are wondering and trying to understand, explains Rabbi Raskin. Does he deal with such questions all the time? Daily, daily! For hours! Even those who come on non-spiritual business – laymen often come for advice on secular matters – tend to switch halfway through and start to ask about the soul and the afterlife. All of a sudden, people who run big businesses – very nice people – they didn’t ask these questions before, or didn’t find the place for it. And we try to help them understand what is the meaning of life. Is there one? There is a meaning, for sure. There is no reason that our soul came to our bodies just – for what? Just for eating kleftiko and enjoying the halloumi cheese? That’s not the meaning of life.

As you may have gathered, Rabbi Raskin – intimates would call him by his middle name, ‘Zeev’, rather than ‘Arie’ – is quite charismatic. Tall and imposing, with hairy arms and a bushy beard, he establishes an instant rapport. What is the name? he asks on first meeting, and rolls it round his tongue gently (Theo…) like he’s going to do tricks with it. He’s not like Greek Orthodox priests, who often behave in the impersonal manner of civil servants; then again, he’s not quite a priest – though Cypriots, he remarks, often kiss his hand as though he were – a rabbi being more of a teacher or wise man, one versed in the minutiae of the Torah. There’s a Jewish website called askMoses.com, he informs me (the Torah is said to derive directly from Moses himself), where the faithful can ask questions and receive answers from rabbis. There is an answer for everything! he asserts more than once in the course of our interview.

That certainty may derive from the fact that he’s always studied the Torah – always followed this spiritual path – even as a small child. Chabad Lubavitch is a Hasidic movement of Orthodox Jews, currently based in the Crown Heights neighbourhood of New York where Raskin did his Rabbinical studies – but he was born in Israel 33 years ago, to a Russian Jewish father and a family with a tradition of producing rabbis: all seven brothers are currently serving the Jewish nation as Chabad emissaries abroad (there’s also a sister, who is in Israel next to the parents). Unlike most rabbis, however, Raskin has had a life outside books: he’s travelled widely, and also spent seven years – before he came to Cyprus in 2003 – as manager of a large shopping centre in Israel. He married at 21, which seems young but apparently is the time to get married in his circles; he has five children – some born in Cyprus – and worries, like all parents, about what they might see and do on the Internet.

Actually, I’m sure he worries more than most parents – simply because Orthodox Judaism is such a closed community, and many of the family’s beliefs are so alien to what his kids might find online. It’s a tenet of his faith, for instance, that God created the world 5770 years ago (Jewish calendars available at the Centre are for the year 5770, not 2009). It’s part of his faith that a man shouldn’t touch, kiss or even shake hands with a woman other than his wife. It’s part of his faith to observe the Sabbath once a week, a day of total rest – just prayer and eating – whose dos and don’ts are so meticulously laid down that whole books have been written about them (you can’t pick up the phone, but you can answer a knock at the door; you’re allowed to read a book, but not to read the same book on the computer). All this is part of Raskin’s life, and always has been. In our schools, where I studied [as a child], he recalls, there was not really Mathematics or History or much of these studies. The main study all day was Torah. Torah, Torah, and Torah again – the Book of Moses again and again, from all sides.

Did he ever doubt? Not personally, he replies, though he had friends and classmates who strayed from the path and ended up becoming businessmen. His father was a great inspiration, a man who devoted himself to helping Russian Jews emigrate to the promised land; seeing him constantly jetting off to Siberia to retrieve some forgotten pocket of Jewry, Zeev and his brothers were deeply impressed, and we all chose to follow in this direction. Does he ever doubt today? After all, Science increasingly suggests that the universe may be random, even godless.

Come again? I didn’t understand the question.

Well … what we learn from Science, about the way the universe operates –

Science?

Yes. That the world may be without God. What does he think of this theory?

We don’t deal with this theory. We have our strong beliefs, and we go with that.

But what about the evidence?

When evidence comes, we look into the evidence. So far, the way I understand things, there is nothing there besides God who created the world. Evolution? All those piles of dinosaur bones? The dinosaurs are part of other worlds that were destroyed before our current one, he explains – but the real answer, I suspect, may be what he says as I try to mount an argument for Darwin and Co. It’s all good – but at the end of the day, me and you, we’re waking up in the morning, we have to support the family, we have to have good energies, good smile, and understand what’s the meaning of this world, why we’re here. Now if we want to sit all day and investigate, and try different things which are going to make kind of … a mess in our brain – well, that’s something we can choose. The greatest benefit of faith, in other words, is peace of mind.

Well, why not? It seems to work fine for Rabbi Raskin, whose daily routine is a gruelling round of prayers, Torah classes – travelling to all parts of the island except the occupied areas – and meetings with people seeking counsel. There are about 2,000 souls in the Jewish community here – mostly Russians, British and other foreigners; only a small minority were born in Cyprus – though many of those who come to him with problems are ordinary Cypriots, maybe because it’s always easier to confide in a stranger. How about the politics, though? Isn’t it true that most Greek Cypriots tend to side with the Palestinians in the Israeli Question, seeing them as a people under occupation? Raskin shrugs.

I don’t really defend any countries or any politicians, he says. I represent an educational movement. To be sure, he’ll take part in conversations about Israel with local friends – though even there, because I do not like to be involved in politics, the subject doesn’t really go too far. Ironically, his yarmulke and Hasidic garb often make him a target for anti-Israel sentiment when he walks down the street, and rocks were thrown at the Centre during the war in Lebanon – all of which he blames on newcomers from different origins, i.e. Arabs (You walk down Finikoudes at night and you recognise the language, that it’s no longer Greek, he sighs). So he doesn’t see himself as a representative of Israel? Not at all. And he doesn’t feel he has an obligation to the Jewish state? I have an obligation to the Jewish people, as well as the Jewish nation. The Jewish state is a country. They have their politics people, who have to do what they have to do … It has nothing to do with us.

In a way, he’s more Cypriot than Israeli. I’d assumed he was like an ambassador, going from country to country, but in fact Cyprus is a lifetime post; he’ll be here as long as there are Jews to counsel (or till the Messiah comes, he adds with a twinkle), having established the mission in 2003. He loves bouzouki music – it has a lot of soul in it – and plays a bit, though not in public. He seems to like it here, though he shakes his head when I ask if he goes to the beach on Sundays. Unfortunately, Sundays at the beach here are not so healthy for the eyes, he replies.

The eyes?

There is people on the beach with not too much money for clothes, he explains coyly. Don’t have enough clothes, I think. One of the things in the Torah is to keep your eyes from seeing what you don’t have to see. Oh, okay. But surely there’s nothing unnatural about the human body?

Right. So I suggest you should put a big picture of a body in your child’s room, and in all the classrooms, and teach them every morning ‘This is a model. She’s naked’. Show them a clip. Let more joy in their studies! Raskin shakes his head: Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but it seems to me that when the eye sees, the heart feels, and when the heart feels, another part of the body works … So, to avoid this, just don’t go to those places. The only natural thing, you know, is yourself or the one you sleep with, which is the holy wife that lives with you according to the law.

Will the young rabbi be able to pass on these values to his own kids, surrounded as they are by online temptations and fast-changing Cyprus society? Hard to say – but I assume the emphasis on talk and argument must help (it’s not like Christianity, where the young often feel they have no say in their beliefs), ditto the close-knit, self-sufficient nature of Orthodox Judaism: on the Sabbath, says Raskin, meals go on for very long, the whole family sitting and talking together – since they’re not allowed to do anything else – till late at night. There’s a lot of joy in being a rabbi, "even though it takes a lot of effort from you, and it takes a lot of time from you and your family. But every minute when you’re doing, you’re doing."

‘So you’re a kind of combination priest, intellectual and counsellor?’ I ask half-jokingly. Wow, that’s a heavy one! he laughs. No, no – I’m a simple man who serves as the rabbi of an island called Cyprus, and in between [I do] any good deed that I can do. Anything. If it’s finding a house for a homeless dog, or giving support to somebody who needs medicine and doesn’t know how to buy it … That’s what keeps us going. He smiles, the books on the shelves behind him staring down unblinkingly. Torah, Torah, nothing but Torah.

Mike Togni,

circus clown (2010 - January 10)

The most significant thing Mike Togni does during our interview is something he doesn’t do. We’re at the circus, his place of business – the Circo di Barcelona, encamped in Lakatamia as part of its three-month Cyprus Tour – talking in a small office, which is already quite unusual for Mike. Mike doesn’t work in an office. Mike is a clown.

To be honest, the circus doesn’t look like much. Even Nicos Papadopoulos, head of NGP Capital Entertainment – the company responsible for bringing the Circo to Cyprus – admits it’s not the biggest circus (last year they brought the Circo Medrano, which is much bigger). Long-distance trucks have been parked end-to-end to create a perimeter, within which about 20 caravans sit in the mud. It’s late morning, and the atmosphere is desultory. A young man in T-shirt and sandals stands outside a caravan, hanging clothes out to dry. There are satellite dishes planted in the ground, portable toilets in a corner, a half-flat football abandoned where it rolled between two trailers. It all looks a bit neglected.

Still, a circus is a circus. There’s a Big Top, and I venture inside cautiously. A man is balancing an eight-foot pole on his forehead, constantly shifting his legs for balance, meanwhile talking tersely in what sounds like Romanian. I sense the businesslike tone of professionals at their daily practice, like musicians playing scales.

Later, I see a