The Conscription Officer

The Way of the Arpha: 1 of 12

fellow arphades of the 1^st company

arphas (ärf'äs) (pl. arphades)

1. a Cypriot male who conscripts in the January “alpha” series of National Guard basic training

2. (derogatory) a jackass

THE WAY OF THE ARPHA

1. THE CONSCRIPTION OFFICER

The conscription officer didn’t look up when I entered his office. Nor did he look up when I handed him the copy of my birth certificate verifying I was over the age of 26 or the consul’s letter from a Cyprus Embassy in the U.S. confirming I’d spent most of my life outside of Cyprus. 

He glanced at the consul’s document. “Why isn’t this in Greek!” he muttered, his Greek lacking any trace of Cypriot dialect. “They want to make us all Amerikanakia!” He shook his head in disgust at this diplomatic betrayal of the ethnic struggle. It was deplorable because the National Guard had been trying for close to a half century to make all of us Cypriots into Greeks.

He then looked at my birth certificate, frowned, and handed back both documents. I’d have to return on Monday after I got them translated at the Press and Information Office.

It was clear the conscription officer was a man infused with the spirit of non-discrimination. Why should a Cypriot born in, say, Lithuania have to get his birth certificate translated into Greek just because the relevant officials can’t read Lithuanian while a Cypriot born in the U.S. doesn’t have to translate it just because the officials can read English? It was far more democratic when the bureaucratic proceeding was equally laborious for all barbarians of foreign tongues. 

He maintained a severe expression throughout the encounter and didn’t once look up at me from his papers. But I took no offense. I’d observed earlier from the waiting room that he was considerate enough to be equally dismissive towards everyone. He was a tall gangly man with glasses and carefully combed hair parted down the middle of his head, and he carried himself with equal measures of detachment and disdain. His egalitarian indifference to those under him was not only admirable but also forgivable because had he not been a stern army officer he would have been a geek.

I was frustrated no one had informed me my documents needed to be in Greek. But then I tried to put myself in their boots and my resentment subsided as I recognized how stressful and challenging it must be having to unnecessarily complicate life for others.

With the translated, officially stamped documents in hand, I returned on Monday morning to the office and was given my conscription papers. On Tuesday night I buzzed my hair off, and on Wednesday at noon I walked through the main gate of the Paphos KEN, the Recruit Training Camp, for my first day at Cypriot boot camp.

Say HALLOUMI! My aunt and uncle dropping me off at first day of boot camp

Any expectations I’d had of thick-necked red-faced sergeants bellowing at trembling conscripts soon vanished. Two teenagers with ponytails halfway down their backs were jeering at two sergeants, claiming they were going to get deferment. Another group of conscripts jabbered and hooted through a ten-minute National Guard video (“Ah, come on, put a porno on!”), which was meant to inspire recruits for their forthcoming training by depicting tanks and helicopters firing missiles to a soundtrack of military drumming

Army men and politicians in Cyprus cite lack of manpower for why compulsory service must be 25 months long. It’s estimated that close to a third of recruits defer their 25-month conscription term by claiming mental instability. Were conscription shortened to twelve or fourteen months, most recruits likely wouldn’t try to evade it. The army would then have the extra forces it claims to need. But reducing the military term would be a seditious betrayal of the high-ranking patriots whose redundant jobs depend on a bloated military budget. It would also potentially lead to a loss of that martial spirit for which Cypriots are so unrenowned. By instead making it easy to claim mental instability, the National Guard remains safely hard-pressed for those essential force numbers that are no longer necessary under present day political conditions.

Some doctors even accommodate the more resistant recruits by asking them to choose a desired mental illness from a list. Nonetheless, even with mental illness definitively misdiagnosed, deferment isn’t always granted immediately. One conscript who looked like he was fourteen threw a tantrum when he wasn’t given instant deferment:

“Wait till you see what I do tonight!” he yelped at the cadet officers. “No one will sleep!”

He was a yapping Chihuahua with dangling knobby limbs and seemed unconcerned that anyone there could have smeared his face across the pavement. No one touched him. He stayed a few days and then was released. The idea was to put on a show that you were unhinged and a danger to others. One of the conscripts threw a rock through the window of the psychologist’s office and another pulled a pocketknife on her. They were both awarded deferment for their criminal efforts while those who behaved well were punished with two-year terms.  

After handing over our conscription forms in a building strung with innumerable small Greek and Cypriot flags, we were directed to a row of tables and told to remove the belongings from our duffle bags. A corporal searched my bag’s side pocket and found my micro recorder.

“What, you want to record us?” he asked. Before I could answer in the affirmative, he laughed and returned it to my bag.

We then each had to strip to our underwear and stand before a panel of moribund health professionals with dark sagging pouches under their eyes who rated us on our physical well-being. Everything involved hours of waiting, so it was twilight by the time we finally arrived at the equipment distribution room for our army gear.

After dropping off our new possessions at the barracks we went straight to the mess hall. We were served trays of fried squid rings, boiled potatoes, and salad, along with baskets of bread, bowls of oranges, and bottles of olive oil and vinegar. Due to unfounded rumors, I’d prepared myself for meals more like diced lizard or stewed goat hooves. But except for breakfast, which was usually just tea and bread, the meals were consistently good, and so over the following weeks everyone consistently complained about them, many instead smuggling in inferior take-away or curbing their appetite with packaged chocolate-crème-filled pastries from the canteen. It was considerate of them to be so ungrateful for such quality meals, and I nodded in agreement that the food was unacceptable as I helped myself to their untouched trays.

I was in the 1st company barracks, a two-story cream peach building with rooms of ten bunk beds and twenty lockers. On the vast concrete lot there were two other buildings—the 2nd and 3rd companies. The mountain loomed to our sides and behind us in a semicircle; the entire concrete expanse had been carved out of the mountain slope and then paved over. The three barracks were identical in rectangular shape and equidistant and differed only in their pastel coloring. Leading up to the main entrance of each building was a series of steps that were perpetually littered with cigarette butts and stained with vending machine hot chocolate despite diligent daily efforts of the assigned soldiers to sweep and mop them as infrequently as possible. 

That night we all lined up outside our respective buildings. To my right was the 2^nd company barracks and, beyond that, the 3^rd. At the top of the steps of each building stood an officer illuminated in ghastly white fluorescence by a single overhead light. A row of tall streetlamps flanked the lot, each casting a pale pinkish fluorescent cone-shaped glow upon the concrete. Conscripts would still be arriving for two more days but to even just look through one’s billowing plumes of breath at the 200 or so recruits who were already there, lined up in three clusters, each cluster made up of eight ordered rows of conscripts standing in front of a giant oppressive edifice where a single illuminated officer addressed them from his perch, all this in a vast concrete lot that was empty but for some sinister streetlamps, the carved walls of a mountain rising along the perimeter and ringed overhead by barbed wire… to look through your breath at all this you couldn’t help but think of prison or concentration camp. It would prove to have more in common with a nursery school, but it did make a forbidding impression during that first chilly January night.

At one point a vehicle pulled up and an officer emerged to inform us that this was a “different environment” and that we best therefore do our utmost to acclimatize to it. “There’s no Filipinas or blacks here so you’ll have to do the cleaning up,” he said and then returned to his vehicle and drove off to his home, which was probably kept spotless thanks to the conscientious efforts of his wife or Sri Lankan maid.

Moments later we were told to turn to the east and remove our caps. The Lord’s Prayer was recited. Then we were ordered to bed.

*To be continued Saturday with The Equipment Officer

Why I Enlisted in the Cyprus Army