Mutually Assured Masturbation

It happened while Marios and I were again on sentry duty. I looked over and saw him pacing on the roof above his post, talking on his phone. An officer on patrol would have punished him twice over—phone use and unauthorized roof access—but Marios didn’t seem concerned. Ten minutes passed. I’d turned my attention to a kestrel on a nearby treetop when I heard shouting.

Marios had pocketed his phone and was now cursing at the Turkish sentries. He grabbed a length of rubber hose, clutched it between his legs, and began jerking it off toward them.

“Pezevengi!” the Turkish sentries yelled (“pimp”). Endearing among friends, but less so across front lines.

“Come eat my cock!” Marios yelled.

“Pezevengi! Fuck your mother!”

“And my balls too!”

“Come over here, why don’t you!”

The volley went on for several minutes. Near Marios was a flagpole flying both the Greek and Cypriot flags. He lowered the Cypriot flag—surprisingly not the Greek one—unclipped it, and began shaking it at them while yelling.

After a while, he rehoisted the flag and climbed back down to his post. The shouting continued. I couldn’t see Marios, but the Turkish conscripts grew increasingly agitated, gesticulating angrily. Then came a shout—and they ducked. One popped back up with his rifle aimed at Marios.

I was standing on the exposed northeast corner of the rooftop—the best view, but not the safest. It’s easy to forget conflict is possible along the Green Line. You remember, though, when someone points a gun your way. I darted back to the guardhouse for cover.

Nothing more happened. Eventually the Turks lowered their rifles and the noise subsided.

Later that evening, I found Marios in the kitchen, calmly eating souvlakia. I asked why they’d aimed at him.

“Because I loaded mine and aimed it at them,” he said nonchalantly between bites.

He then started teasing another conscript who’d been at the post with him. Apparently, the other conscript had ducked when the Turkish sentry raised his rifle.

“You hid like a girl,” Marios said through a mouthful of kebab.

“I didn’t want to get shot.”

Marios swallowed and slammed his pita down. “So what if you were shot? It’s not up to you. If God wants you to die, you’ll die. So why worry?”

The craziest part was that he meant it. Greek Cypriots are especially devout. Much of the public Orthodoxy is performative, but the inward faith runs deep. In boot camp, the only time conscripts behaved was during prayers, and every time our truck passed a church you’d see them silently crossing themselves. On Easter morning, when I relieved a sentry at two a.m., he greeted me with “Christ has risen.”

Marios aside, statistically speaking, Green Line duty isn’t dangerous. The last fatality was in August 1996, when a Greek Cypriot was shot while climbing a Turkish flagpole to pull down the flag. His death came days after his cousin was clubbed to death by the Turkish ultranationalist group Grey Wolves during a demonstration in the buffer zone. That was a bad year: a few months earlier another Greek Cypriot sentry was shot after crossing to talk with a Turkish Cypriot soldier.

There were older stories too: soldiers who’d befriended their counterparts and crossed no man’s land to deliver brandy or cigarettes, only to be gunned down by others less trusting. One sign in our outpost displayed photos of seven sentries killed in the Green Zone or at their posts, beneath the warning: Don’t be deceived by friendly gestures. The Turks have evil intentions.

The risk of another fatal incident always lingered, but the days of real violence seemed over. Now it was all hot air and noise—daily volleys of curses that mostly just irritated those living nearby.

I felt sorry for those residents, though I was once tempted to disturb the peace myself. The Turkish army maintained another post thirty yards from ours, though it was always unmanned. One afternoon, I saw four Turkish soldiers climb onto its roof and start tugging at the flag post halyards: their flag had tangled in the wind. After some effort, they pushed the whole flagpole over to free it by hand.

I doubt they thought much of it. But watching them topple their own flag, I was overcome by an urge to applaud.

I restrained myself, partly out of respect for the old man down the road—he’d stormed over the day before, furious that the shouting from the posts had woken him from his nap—but mostly out of concern that the Turks might take any disrespect of their flag as an act of war. Which sounds dumb, but by this point I’d seen far dumber.

Still, it’s a shame I was too prudent to at least shout Bravo! It’s not every day a Cypriot gets to cheer Turkish soldiers for toppling their own flag.

TO BE CONTINUED

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