Tide of tackiness dents village charm

Christmas came to Ayios Dhometios early this year. Strings of plastic evergreen, punctuated with lights and mounted with shimmering golden bows and lopsided wreaths, have been hung across the main road into the village since the first week of November.

As the temperature hovered between 27 and 28 Celsius, barechested young men performed the task, raised high by a mechanical lift used for pruning trees. Ladders are passe. No one does by manual effort anything that can be managed by machines.

Taking his cue from the municipality, the local purveyor of artificial flowers and greenery installed a grove of phoney pines on the sidewalk in front of his shop beneath the decorations. Europe arrived in Ayios Dhometios well before Cyprus will enter Europe.

When we settled here 20 years ago, it was still a middle-class village - although it had long been fused to the Cypriot capital by ribbons of road and blocks of residential neighbourhood. When villagers had business in town they spoke of "going down to Nicosia". Some old-timers still do.

Then Christmas was celebrated with the traditional Greek Orthodox Mass; New Year's Eve was for feasting and the giving of gifts. But globalisation gradually put an end to tradition. Christmas with all the trimmings - trees, presents, turkeys, municipal extravagances - has taken over from the New Year; only the elderly go to Mass on Christmas Eve and morning.

About 10 years ago, our Communist-dominated municipality began to decorate the principal streets with greens and site manger scenes or Santas at crossings. But never, never before St Nicholas Day on December 6th did the Christmas commercial spirit invade our village-suburb.

Today, Ayios Dhometios - named after an obscure Greek Orthodox saint - is more suburb than village, although it retains its municipal independence. The municipality, which used to govern from a small house located on an obscure street near the new church, now inhabits a huge $6 million building, a hideous blue cement edifice whose architect was clearly under the influence of the style known in the Middle East as "Kuwaiti modern".

We can still sit on our flat rooftop at day's end and watch the sunset flowing molten red over the roofs of the tightly-packed nodal village, the sun's rosy fingers illuminating the thin, triangular blades of the windmill, two streets over. But the tiled dome of the squat new church is obstructed by a three-storey block of flats and the wide-angle panorama of the Kyrenia range to the north has been broken into segments by buildings finished and unfinished. Rare households still display bright circlets of flowers on their doors on May Day and a few families hold open house on the saints' days of their inhabitants. Dropping round without warning on friends and relatives is no longer standard practice. Phoned invitations are in vogue.

While honking hawkers still ply the streets in pick-ups filled with home-grown tomatoes, cucumbers or watermelons, we now have supermarkets stocked with cheeses from France and Ireland, fruit from Germany and vegetables from Spain and Holland. Twenty years ago there was one supermarket in our area, "Pharos", "The Lighthouse", located just across the boundary on the road to the Venetian walled city. The supermarket was run by Cypriot returnees from Egypt - hence the reference to the ancient lamp on the harbour of Alexandria.

John and Mary were much more sophisticated than local folk. One could always buy a haunch of kid for baking savoury, thyme-flavoured kleftiko in the clay oven in one's back garden, English cheddar was available and Scotch whisky usually graced the shelves alongside Cyprus brandy.

But this summer, Pharos went out of business. Its premises were taken over by an island-wide chain. We pre-empted the chain by shifting our custom to Odesseos (Ulysses) whose fruiteria is aptly named "Ithaca".

While most villagers pay a weekly visit to the vast hypermarket in the next borough to buy basics in bulk, they shop daily at the corner store for fresh fruit and vegetables, picking carefully over bins of potatoes and apples, sampling grapes and sniffing guavas. Pre-packaged produce does not satisfy the senses, nor a checkout counter attendant the need for a mid-morning chat.

Without trying, Ayios Dhom etios defies globalisation in many small ways. Its citizens are generally conservative and quiet. Most are asleep by 10 at night - unless there is a big football match on television. They rise by 6.30 in the morning. All mind their neighbours' business and gossip. Secrets do not remain secret for long: there is no urban indifference here. We live in a global village, incorporated into the wide world.

But still a village reluctant to change its ways. Though the decorations have been hung, the tight-fisted village council has yet to switch on the lights.