A man died on Christmas Eve from burns sustained while trying to keep warm in an abandoned house where he had found refuge with two others. The news report was brief. It only mentioned his age: 52.
Such events don’t need lengthy descriptions, unlike how G and X spent their holidays. In one case, we must see all the glitter of the moments. The other case we must pass by, or if we wish (but why would we wish?), imagine the circumstances.
The tale of “The Little Match Girl” once moved us deeply. Later it was deemed too sad, macabre. No modern parent would want to read it to their child for fear of causing trauma.
These days, we prefer Trivizas’s wordplay, beautiful illustrations, stories with subtle morals, educational but pleasant. We shouldn’t be wounded from an early age, there’s enough darkness awaiting us later, let’s extend the rose-tinted period of our lives as long as we can.
So on Christmas Eve, the Fire Brigade was called to extinguish a fire in a building in Pallouriotissa. The firefighters found a person with severe burns near the exit, while neighbours reported that two others had fled the scene, apparently having been living in an abandoned flat where they had lit a fire to keep warm. The man was taken to hospital where he was intubated, and two days later he succumbed to his injuries.
In other countries, you see the homeless. They sleep outside shops and on main streets where people pass by, hoping someone will give them something.
In Cyprus, the homeless are invisible. You can maintain the illusion that they don’t exist. Until someone is found dead in an abandoned building, from hunger, cold, drugs, fire…
And then you wonder: “Are there homeless people in Cyprus?” The irony is that there are many shelters. Empty, uninhabited houses, shops, apartment blocks…
For some reason – economic, social, legal – there’s an abundance of vacant spaces (yet we keep building more). In some of these, people who have nowhere else to go find refuge.
This particular man was 52 and from Greece. Why he came to Cyprus without accommodation, perhaps even without work, nobody can know, just as we didn’t know of his existence until his death, the existence of people living in uninhabited houses, lighting whatever they can find to keep warm.
Perhaps we should accept that there are homeless people in our cities and build a shelter, as happens in other cities where there are homeless people?