Barbarians!
02 Aug 2010Jonathan Franzen follows the people who covertly enforce Cyprus’s policy against trapping songbirds in a July 26 New Yorker feature. Apparently songbirds are the unofficial national delicacy of Cyprus, which I also did not know is a Communist state. The island is beginning to stand out as a bit backwards-looking in the cerebral and modern world of the E.U., hence the policy, which bans practices like using prepared sticks covered in sticky sap or electronic recordings of birds to lure others.
Looking at the picture of hundreds of tiny birds lined up ready to be eaten is pretty sickening. Listen, Cyprus, couldn’t you find a larger food animal, one you could trap without leaving it stuck to something and beating itself to death trying to escape? It’s really cruel. Everyone knows I have a natural affinity toward tiny island nations but you’re pushing it.
Franzen follows a couple of Cypriots who belong to an organization called CABS — the Committee Against Bird Slaughter. They get into some trouble when two locals assault the CABS members, and Franzen and another outsider run as fast as they can until Franzen has an absurdly lucky break:
no responsesHeyd continued to retreat, which seemed to me a good idea. When I saw him look back and go pale and break into a dead run, I panicked too. [...]
I saw Heyd running on up through a large garden, speaking to a middle-aged man, and then, looking frightened, continuing to run. I walked up to the garden’s owner and tried to explain the situation, but he spoke only Greek. Seeming at once concerned and suspicious, he fetched his daughter, who was able to tell me, in English, that I’d blundered into the yard of the district director of Greenpeace. She gave me water and two plates of cookies and told my story to her father, who responded with one angry word. “Barbarians!” the daughter translated.