A JOURNEY INTO THE PAST

FOREWARD

When the author first put the recollections of his Cypriot upbringing on paper the initial result was really nothing more than an amusing and informative collection of anecdotes and warm memories, though fascinating enough in themselves.  But the very notion of committing these thoughts to paper provoked a much greater desire to reveal the consciousness and reality of the Cypriot people through the villages closet to his heart, Leonarisso and Vasili, and the Karpas Peninsula in general.

However, the author found that condensing the history of these villages into an absorbing book was not so easy when the Island’s august legacy trailed back thousands of years; for every part of Cypriot life, even up until the 1950’s, still followed a fairly timeless pattern.  But during his research he found that this very timelessness was the entrée upon which he could frame the book and he used its ancient past to link with its recent present, a present that he, and every one of his contemporaries, can still vividly remember.

The end result is still what he initially set out to create; a warm and loving tribute to a time gone by, for the most part, sadly never to return, but it is also an expose of the tenacity and strength of character of the karpasian peoples through invasions, droughts, famine and other hardships.

Here, in these meticulously researched and informative pages, written in an elegant and flowing style, the characters one and all, take on a real life and live once again, as do the tavernas, feast days and weddings, most of which are lovingly captured in photos from the very earliest period up until the invasion of 1974.

In this book the author has created a gem, one that shines a prism of clarity on the life and times of the villages and villagers of Leonarisso and Vasili.