I paused at a social media post from a user who, clearly furious and indignant, wrote about his mother “who’s ill and alone in the village, with psychological problems”. Even more angrily, he observed that no state service is doing the slightest thing to look after her financially or psychologically, “whilst the Cypriot government is throwing our taxpayers’ money at illegal immigrants and fake political refugees”. His post is accompanied by a doctored photograph denigrating this social group.
So here’s yet another irrelevant pretext where people of non-Cypriot origin living on the island—all the legal workers and residents in this country—find themselves targeted simply because they’re the easiest and most convenient target of all.
The “illegal immigrants” and “fake political refugees” are to blame because his mother is alone and abandoned in her village. And the “illegal immigrants” and “fake political refugees” will be to blame for every unpleasant thing that happens to him in life—for his failures, his defeats, his losses, his insecurities, and his own inability to shoulder his own responsibilities.
I don’t doubt he’s a son who cares about his lonely mother, so he could go to the village and possibly bring her down to the city to give her the love and care he himself judges she needs. Instead, he goes out and howls his bitterness at people who have absolutely no connection and no responsibility for his bad mood.
Certainly, the state has a role to play in improving the living conditions of elderly people in remote areas, but you’ve got a role to play too when the issue directly concerns you.
A fellow citizen of ours, in the same spirit, agreed with him by writing that “people are fed up with these foreigners who’ve been dumped on us and won’t bloody well clear off from Cyprus”. She’s a pleasant-looking young woman who even posted her own photograph alongside this comment, wearing a suitably furious and ominous expression that literally “obliterates” her attractive features.
I wish I could write something more vivid so you’d better understand how a lovely face transforms into something…less than that, how thoughtlessly the harshness and rigidity of negative, hostile thinking directed against another human being is laid bare. But I’m not sure I want to walk any further down that dark path today.
