A minute with: Iakovos HadjipierisWriter
Where do you live?
I live on asteroid B612 with a small prince.
What did you have for breakfast?
I had traditional warm Athienou bread, dipped in butter, with halloumi.
Describe your perfect day.
A perfect day is the morning scent of the rose, which follows you all day long.
Best book ever read?
My favourite book is Zorba the Greek for being open-hearted, with the right and wrong, just being human.
Best childhood memory?
In the afternoon when I flew my kite next to the demarcation line and I wrote ‘PEACE’ on it to cut the string and let the message go to another child in the north.
What is always in your fridge?
Seasonal fruit and of course a permanent feature is shrivelling tomatoes.
What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
Vasilis, only Vasilis Papaconstantinou!
What’s your spirit animal?
The scorpion! Misunderstood, but I like it… it is also my star sign.
What are you most proud of?
I’m proud that I haven’t achieved something with stereotypical moves.
What movie scene has really stayed with you?
I remember the movie The Hairdresser’s Husband when they locked themselves in the salon to live their love, even drinking cologne as a substitute for alcohol.
If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
I would definitely want to meet Karl Marx to tell him that the class struggle is still going on in whatever murky political environment prevails.
If you could time travel when/where would you go?
I’d go a few years back, to the time of solidarity, when we built our homes and the whole neighbourhood gladly came to help.
What is your greatest fear?
My greatest fear is religion and religious people.
What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
I would try to convince my 18-year-old self not to join the army of officers and officials, who are plundering homelands.
Name the one thing that would stop you dating someone.
I wouldn’t date anyone who didn’t want someone hungry at the table.
If the world is ending in 24 hours, what would you do?
Nothing! Simply sex and nothing else!
Turkologist Iakovos Hadjipieris is the co-author of the Joint Dictionary of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Dialect and has translated three books into the Cypriot dialect – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Aesop’s fable The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox