What is a camp?

What is a camp?

Through the lines of the diary notes of a Cypriot journalist, the drama of the detention of Jewish Holocaust survivors in filtration camps (camps, kambos), created by the British authorities on the island of Cyprus with the aim of preventing the growth of Jewish communities in Palestine and strengthening the anti-British struggle of Jewish settlers, emerges. The reflective tone of the notes is interrupted by several stories of the relationship of Cypriots with foreigners, with whom they, being themselves the object of colonization, have many things in common, as well as stories of Jews who seek to shed their status as eternal exiles and, perhaps, put down roots on this piece of land surrounded by the sea. The pages of the novella bring to life the ancient technique of tragic ignorance, when the Cypriots, observing and sympathizing with the prisoners of the camps, do not know (unlike the readers) that in a few years they themselves will find themselves in the same situation: they will lose their homeland, which will turn from a flourishing land into the ghost town of Famagusta, and the return to their native places will become a path across an endless field, in which the only reliable guide against hatred, deceit, and despair will be humanity.