Post by monabonejakoff on Dec 22, 2011 6:29:03 GMT -5
Most people would undoubtedly agree, that early life is the foundation of the present man. It's a truism, we almost all unquestioningly believe that, what we were is somehow knitted into the present fabric of what and who we have become, that somehow somewhere deep within us there is the same child looking out, still living , still breathing and making choices. That the now man puts into action. Our early experiences somehow find a way of manifesting themselves in choices we later make in life but perhaps its not what we have but what we don't have that can be as influential making us reach out to ideals that have been denied us by our parents life choices.
For me Yusuf's father is a fascinating character because from a unknown village in Cyprus he undertook to join the Cypriot diaspora and begin a roundabout journey that was to end up in London just like my own father's and like many many Cypriots before and after .
Stavros so it seems took the boat to Alexandria , a city in Egypt a country which at the time was a British protectorate rather than a colony like Cyprus. This is as important to the psychology of the soon to be Yusuf as any early experience he may have had in early 50's London because for the first time Stavros would have realised the the deference Cypriots showed the British was not written in stone and the large Coptic and Greek population of Alex' were a free independent and dynamic population of entrepreneurs, artists and thinkers. Stavros would have felt the burden and humiliation of colonial fore-lock tugging disappear and the weight of being a second class citizen in his own country go with it. Stavros as a young man would finally have begun to mature, make decisions, break away from all expectations, both the stifling cultural expectations of an almost tribal island and the unspoken domination of a imperial power that had occupied his land for almost 80 years.
There in Alex he would have heard of the great Constantine Kavafi, a leading intellectual and artistic old Ptolemaic remnant of Greece's own ancient colonial aspirations, he would have circulated amongst the incredibly rich Greek populace who had almost 2200 years of history behind them , he would have walked the streets of a city founded by one of the greatest of all Greeks , Alexander the great, breathing the air of history and culture. For the first time in his life Stavros would have been free and the equal of any popinjay British soldier or bureaucrat who had a few months earlier been a surly and arrogant bully and though he was probably in some way working for them , the air of freedom and independence of thought was blowing through his mind.
The defeat of Britain in the second world war may not have been a fact to most people in a historical sense but on the ground it was a reality. Britain had been battered by the Nazis in to a pulp, she had lost 450,000 men and countless civilians back home, here in Egypt the independence movement was strong and the country was about to become free from the oppression of the white man, the same white man who back home still held the reigns of power and would do for the next 12 years. return to Cyprus was not a choice ( there were probably only 100 private cars on the island at the time) Economically Cyprus was no more than an agricultural backwater, exporting a little carob juice, some wine and perhaps some bricks , going back to that was for a young dynamic Stavros - no choice. So he probably boarded a tramp or a steamer of sorts and found himself in Marseilles, where again like thousands of young desperate Cypriots he made his way to London ( I suspect just after the war) when man power was short and job opportunities common.
London at the time was an incredible place, busy, bombed, broken but elated that the Nazis had never made it over to occupy and destroy the British way of life but it was also an incredibly positive city. The coalition of the war had been voted out, Churchill was in the political wilderness and the early intimations of a socialist culture were springing from the bomb damage. The N.H.S was being founded, the city being rebuilt, the theaters reopening and the commercial heart of the city pounding harder than ever. Wages were rising and money flowing even though food rations were still on, cafe culture was beginning to take hold. City center London was awash with thousands of people from all over the world and Stavros was in the middle of it and crucially - he was anonymous.
Stavros Georgiou was just another exotic face and yet to be burdened by the legacy many other Cypriots were to carry for two decades after the early fifties and well into the early seventies, E.O.K.A, the Cypriot liberation movement had yet to kill a British soldier and so Stavros was as yet to feel the FULL force of British racism and antipathy.
Now forgive the speculation here but I can only presume that somehow at this relatively late in his life Stavros had already established himself and even though there was a Cypriot community in London , it was small and as yet unconsolidated, the mainland Greek community is not a natural attraction to Cypriots and though he would have known of it he would have shied from the interaction . he was more than likely just another face, just another man, a free experienced older man ready to settle down and start a family - this were Ingrid turns up .
In this story I have made some assumptions firstly that Stavros arrived in post war London because to remain in London as a immigrant during the blitz was probably not a good idea, secondly that his relationship with Ingrid was a tour de force, a whirlwind of attraction and perhaps need. Ingrid herself was without her community, a self made outsider, a brave soul who had left her native Sweden, itself untouched by the war to venture into what must have seemed like a hell on earth, especially after the war - I can't see her here during it- considering the hardships a strange accent and rationing would have put on her young head. Her arrival in London would have been as an adult in her thirties, with enough time behind her to have accumulated a past. A past that none of us know , but we can speculate on and being in a nunnery is not one of them. Was her arrival before the war? Were Stavros and Ingrid an item, married and procreating during the war In London? It seems incredible to me that two people who had the choice to be out of the blitz would have remained there and had children, but if that is true then Yusuf had two incredibly brave parents who for me embody the nature of courage and self determination. These two fine people really did love each other and fought tooth and nail to be together and their divorce can only signify a catastrophic breakdown because if the Nazi bombs could not do it then that catastrophe must have been seismic.
It is in this world that Steven Georgiou arrived, post cataclysmic London, living above a typical greasy cafe, part of an international family, speaking three languages and in the early days of fragmentation. It was into the arms of an incredibly independent pair of parents that he fell into in 1948 and it was into a world of optimistic humanism that he arrived. Growing up to the sound of a hot water geyser pumping out thousands of cups of tea, the clatter of cheap plates and the feel of hot soapy water on his young hands as he stood washing up and listening to the cockney twang of "cock sparra's" during busy lunchtimes in central London, by 1955 the Cypriot liberation movement had established it's murderous history and perhaps burdened him and certainly his father with the title Cypriot.
It may seem to many that he thrived but in fact like many children of the post war years he carried a different burden, one hat he had bequeathed to him by his under nourished mother and restrictive post war diet, his light frame was permeated by almost daily smogs, that wracked and weakened his lungs making them ready to accept ( if they not already harbored) the tuberculosis bacillus that was to have an almost Shamanic effect on his young mind just a few years later. The modern incarnation of Cat Stevens, was not long in the making in fact we all know that by the time he 17 he had been discovered and was on the road to somewhere but crucially he was already well formed by the time he changed his name from Steven Georgiou, he had 1960's London embedded in his soul, a city that has has made great men and women that have contributed to our collective culture since the year 1000 A.D .
For me Yusuf's father is a fascinating character because from a unknown village in Cyprus he undertook to join the Cypriot diaspora and begin a roundabout journey that was to end up in London just like my own father's and like many many Cypriots before and after .
Stavros so it seems took the boat to Alexandria , a city in Egypt a country which at the time was a British protectorate rather than a colony like Cyprus. This is as important to the psychology of the soon to be Yusuf as any early experience he may have had in early 50's London because for the first time Stavros would have realised the the deference Cypriots showed the British was not written in stone and the large Coptic and Greek population of Alex' were a free independent and dynamic population of entrepreneurs, artists and thinkers. Stavros would have felt the burden and humiliation of colonial fore-lock tugging disappear and the weight of being a second class citizen in his own country go with it. Stavros as a young man would finally have begun to mature, make decisions, break away from all expectations, both the stifling cultural expectations of an almost tribal island and the unspoken domination of a imperial power that had occupied his land for almost 80 years.
There in Alex he would have heard of the great Constantine Kavafi, a leading intellectual and artistic old Ptolemaic remnant of Greece's own ancient colonial aspirations, he would have circulated amongst the incredibly rich Greek populace who had almost 2200 years of history behind them , he would have walked the streets of a city founded by one of the greatest of all Greeks , Alexander the great, breathing the air of history and culture. For the first time in his life Stavros would have been free and the equal of any popinjay British soldier or bureaucrat who had a few months earlier been a surly and arrogant bully and though he was probably in some way working for them , the air of freedom and independence of thought was blowing through his mind.
The defeat of Britain in the second world war may not have been a fact to most people in a historical sense but on the ground it was a reality. Britain had been battered by the Nazis in to a pulp, she had lost 450,000 men and countless civilians back home, here in Egypt the independence movement was strong and the country was about to become free from the oppression of the white man, the same white man who back home still held the reigns of power and would do for the next 12 years. return to Cyprus was not a choice ( there were probably only 100 private cars on the island at the time) Economically Cyprus was no more than an agricultural backwater, exporting a little carob juice, some wine and perhaps some bricks , going back to that was for a young dynamic Stavros - no choice. So he probably boarded a tramp or a steamer of sorts and found himself in Marseilles, where again like thousands of young desperate Cypriots he made his way to London ( I suspect just after the war) when man power was short and job opportunities common.
London at the time was an incredible place, busy, bombed, broken but elated that the Nazis had never made it over to occupy and destroy the British way of life but it was also an incredibly positive city. The coalition of the war had been voted out, Churchill was in the political wilderness and the early intimations of a socialist culture were springing from the bomb damage. The N.H.S was being founded, the city being rebuilt, the theaters reopening and the commercial heart of the city pounding harder than ever. Wages were rising and money flowing even though food rations were still on, cafe culture was beginning to take hold. City center London was awash with thousands of people from all over the world and Stavros was in the middle of it and crucially - he was anonymous.
Stavros Georgiou was just another exotic face and yet to be burdened by the legacy many other Cypriots were to carry for two decades after the early fifties and well into the early seventies, E.O.K.A, the Cypriot liberation movement had yet to kill a British soldier and so Stavros was as yet to feel the FULL force of British racism and antipathy.
Now forgive the speculation here but I can only presume that somehow at this relatively late in his life Stavros had already established himself and even though there was a Cypriot community in London , it was small and as yet unconsolidated, the mainland Greek community is not a natural attraction to Cypriots and though he would have known of it he would have shied from the interaction . he was more than likely just another face, just another man, a free experienced older man ready to settle down and start a family - this were Ingrid turns up .
In this story I have made some assumptions firstly that Stavros arrived in post war London because to remain in London as a immigrant during the blitz was probably not a good idea, secondly that his relationship with Ingrid was a tour de force, a whirlwind of attraction and perhaps need. Ingrid herself was without her community, a self made outsider, a brave soul who had left her native Sweden, itself untouched by the war to venture into what must have seemed like a hell on earth, especially after the war - I can't see her here during it- considering the hardships a strange accent and rationing would have put on her young head. Her arrival in London would have been as an adult in her thirties, with enough time behind her to have accumulated a past. A past that none of us know , but we can speculate on and being in a nunnery is not one of them. Was her arrival before the war? Were Stavros and Ingrid an item, married and procreating during the war In London? It seems incredible to me that two people who had the choice to be out of the blitz would have remained there and had children, but if that is true then Yusuf had two incredibly brave parents who for me embody the nature of courage and self determination. These two fine people really did love each other and fought tooth and nail to be together and their divorce can only signify a catastrophic breakdown because if the Nazi bombs could not do it then that catastrophe must have been seismic.
It is in this world that Steven Georgiou arrived, post cataclysmic London, living above a typical greasy cafe, part of an international family, speaking three languages and in the early days of fragmentation. It was into the arms of an incredibly independent pair of parents that he fell into in 1948 and it was into a world of optimistic humanism that he arrived. Growing up to the sound of a hot water geyser pumping out thousands of cups of tea, the clatter of cheap plates and the feel of hot soapy water on his young hands as he stood washing up and listening to the cockney twang of "cock sparra's" during busy lunchtimes in central London, by 1955 the Cypriot liberation movement had established it's murderous history and perhaps burdened him and certainly his father with the title Cypriot.
It may seem to many that he thrived but in fact like many children of the post war years he carried a different burden, one hat he had bequeathed to him by his under nourished mother and restrictive post war diet, his light frame was permeated by almost daily smogs, that wracked and weakened his lungs making them ready to accept ( if they not already harbored) the tuberculosis bacillus that was to have an almost Shamanic effect on his young mind just a few years later. The modern incarnation of Cat Stevens, was not long in the making in fact we all know that by the time he 17 he had been discovered and was on the road to somewhere but crucially he was already well formed by the time he changed his name from Steven Georgiou, he had 1960's London embedded in his soul, a city that has has made great men and women that have contributed to our collective culture since the year 1000 A.D .