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56
M
ember of the Greek Cypriot diaspora Petros
Hadjitofi Makris presented his first book,
The Apostate
, on 25 November 2014 at the Barry
Library in the UK.
A mystery thriller about greed, religion and sex,
all interwoven in murder and retribution about
contemporaryissues,theexpatriatedCypriotdescribes
his accomplishment as themost fulfilling yet.
Here, Petros Hadjitofi Makris takes us through the
long journey that brought him here.
Ashort biography
By Petros Hadjitofi Makris
Whenever I tell the story of how a
small donkey changed my life, nobody
believes me. I was born in 1935, in
Akaki, a small farming village west of
Nicosia; that’s where it happened.
Life was really hard then. There were
no tractors, combine harvesters, cars,
vans, or lorries, and because there was
no electricity, there were no mod cons
either. Consequently, all the domestic,
andfarmworkhad tobedonemanually.
Adults, and children after the age of
twelve, when they finished the elementary school,
worked in the fields from dawn to dusk to scrape a
living. Compulsory schooling ended at the age of
12 and hardly anybody went to a secondary school.
Apart from going to church on Sundays, there was
no time for hobbies, relaxation, and entertainment.
Toys, presents, birthday parties and pocket money
were unheard of. Most of the people were poor, very
poor. All their produce was for family consumption,
and those who had a little extra couldn’t sell it for
cash; barter was still widespread.
It didn’t take me long, at an early age, to realise that
that was a miserable existence, and I didn’t hesitate
to make my thoughts known to my parents. The
worst jobs on the farm were the harvesting of the
wheat and barley. Mind you, other manual farm
work was almost as bad; there was the picking of
the cotton from the plants, the gathering of beans
(broad beans, haricot beans and black eyed beans);
not forgetting the lentils, chick peas, sesame seeds,
cumin and coriander seeds. All these were done in
the soaring heat, the wind, and dust. My endurance
was often pushed to the limit, which was reflected
in my outbursts of verbal monologues, such as “I
hate this work”, “When I grow up I am going to go
to Australia (people used to immigrate to Australia
then) and never come back” or “This is the hell
the bible talks about.” To which my mother, who
was a devout Christian, bless her soul, would say,
“You mustn’t say that Petros; it is
blasphemy.”
Adifficult start in life
After the elementary school, I became,
not by choice, an apprentice to a
farmers’ carpenter (
aletraris
) in the
village.My father thought it was a good
job, because the farmers will always
want ploughs, donkey saddles to carry
the crops, and the like. After about a
year themaster carpenter toldmy father
that I didn’t have it in me to become a
carpenter, so I had to go. Other trades or professions
were unheard of then, so I ended up working in the
fields with my parents, brothers and sisters; that was
when things got worse for me.
Actually, when I think back aboutmy early life in the
village, I instantly recall three occasions in particular,
which overwhelmme with dread.
The first one was when I was about six and had to
do a man’s job, literally. At the time my village was
involved in a project of getting running water for
irrigation from a series of wells/shafts which were
linked at the bottomwith a tunnel. This is an ancient
system known as
qanats
. The wells are spaced
in a line about 20 to 30 metres apart in an easterly
direction and get progressively deeper. The soil
from the wells and tunnel is lifted up in a bucket and
The Apostate
A book by Petros Hadjitofi Makris
dumped around the well. The tunnel, which starts at
surface level as a trench (where the water is planned
to come out), is small; just big enough for the man
who is digging it. As I was small and not heavy, I
was lowered in a bucket into the last and deepest
well; I guess it was about 100 meters deep. Once at
the bottom of the well I had to unhook the bucket
and drag it along the tunnel to where the man was
digging and pushing the soil behind him, in order to
extend the tunnel. My job was to fill the bucket with
the excavated soil and drag it back to the well. I then
had to unhook the empty bucket, which would have
been lowered in the meantime, and hook the filled
one, which was then pulled up, and so on. Even for
a small child the working area was claustrophobic,
and it was dark, and wet; not a nice place to be and
work, and that’s putting it mildly!
Beware of the ‘asproyaouri’!
The second onewaswhen I was about thirteen. I had
to take our three laden donkeys with bales of wheat
from our field, which was a few miles away from
the village to our ‘
alonny
’ (threshing field), which
was near the house. We had a very large field there,
which incidentally is now occupied by the Turks,
and because it was far away, we had to sleep there
in the night in order to save the travelling time. Part
of my journey back to the field was at night, and as
there was no moonlight I could not see anything. So
I just sat on the donkey and let it carry on walking
with the other two following behind. As I was late
arriving, my fathermust have thought that I was lost;
led astray by the
‘asproyaoury’
– literally, thismeans
‘white donkey’. There was a myth in my village
about this; apparently, as I understood it, it was some
kind of spirit. According to my older brother you
could see it sometimes. It was a white shimmering
light which appeared suddenly on the tip of the
donkey’s ears and led you astray. Now thinking
about it, it must have been caused by static, if it did
exist. I must have been a mile or so from our field,
when I heard my father calling me; in the still of the
night sounds carry and you can hear for miles. I was
relieved; I was not led astray by the ‘
asproyaoury
’!
The third episode was when I went with my father
and our three donkeys to another field, some
distance from the village to bring back the dried up
broad bean stalks. Bundles of stalks were tied on
“Of all my
achievements,
whether they
were professional,
academic, or career
advancement, the
most fulfilling has
been the writing and
publication of
The Apostate
”
Dr Petros Hadjitofi Makris and Mrs Beryl Makris at the signing of his first book, The Apostate
