Papadaniel

Daniel (Papadaniel) Hadjiantonis (Παπά Δανιήλ Χατζιαντώνη) was born in Tala, Paphos in 1865 towards the end of the Ottoman era in Cyprus. He was the eldest of four children born to Hadjiantonis and Hadjikalliopi. His younger siblings were Socratis, Thekla and Areti.

Daniel’s father Hadjiantonis cultivated cannabis in the late nineteenth century when Cyprus was under Ottoman rule. The cannabis was cultivated in the small village of Tala and the stalks of the plant were used for the construction of ropes. Apart from growing the cannabis, Hadjiantonis was also a skilled rope maker and trader. He often travelled to Larnaca (which was then the main port of Cyprus) and with his small fleet of boats he would travel to neighbouring Anatolia (modern day Turkey) to sell his hemp rope.

Being a traveling man and merchant, Hadjiantonis wanted his young son Daniel to be educated so that he could help him with his rope trade activities.

It is estimated that in 1870, the village of Tala had a population of only a few dozen inhabitants and no school. The Ottoman rulers of Cyprus at the time were not interested in educating the population. Their primarily interest was in the collection of taxes from the mainly impoverished peasants. The few schools that existed in Cyprus at that time were privately run and maintained by a few loyal community members.

In the absence of any school in Tala, Hadjiantonis sent little Daniel to the nearby monastery of Agios Neophytos where he received a basic education in reading and writing as well as studying Byzantine music. The teacher monks at the monastery found Daniel to be an astute pupil and extremely polite with an amazing singing voice.

As a teenager, Daniel’s father encouraged him to plant his own hemp crop and to make his own ropes, which he sold separately at the markets in Larnaca. Soon Daniel was able to earn his own money, which he kept in a jar on a shelf in his house. Daniel believed that his money was safe from thieves because most of the inhabitants of Tala were relatives. Besides, there were no great differences in their financial situation for them to envy one another’s riches.

One day, Daniel’s father Hadjiantonis decided to take his son’s money from the jar on the shelf without asking. Perhaps he needed the money to build his two daughters a house each as part of their ‘prika’ (dowry). It is not clear if Hadjiantonis had any intentions to return the money but when Daniel discovered that his money was gone, he did not complain or accuse his father. Instead, he kept saving his money in the same jar until he was able to save enough money to purchase a few properties in and around Tala.

Around 1880, the unscrupulous practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest was flourishing in Cyprus (including in Tala). It was very common for Cypriot peasant farmers at the time to lose their fortunes from either gambling or as a result of drought and plague. The villagers would be forced to borrow money from the moneylenders so that their families could survive. Many borrowers would use their land as collateral but if they were unable to pay back the high interest owing, the unscrupulous moneylenders would take their property as payment for the debt owing. More often than not, the value of the property far outweighed the debt owing but the poor farmers had no choice but to accept their fate.

The property that Daniel bought with his savings in and around Tala included around thirty acres of carob orchards. Carob trees needed little care and the demand for carobs was (then) insatiable. Every year, in August, thousands of farmers would go out into the orchards to pick the ‘black gold of Cyprus’ as the carob pod came to be known. Baskets of pods would be transported to specially built warehouses near the port where they were stored and eventually exported overseas.

Daniel met Panayiotou Hadjimartis at the feast of Saint Neophytos on the 28th of September in 1891. The sixteen-year-old Panagiotou was from the nearby village of Tsada and went to the monastery with her mother Hadjialisavou, to celebrate the Holy Day, as did thousands of other pious Christians.

Although Daniel did not exchange a word with the young brunette he was already smitten by her. After the church service he tried in vain to see her again but the large crowds that gathered in the courtyard blocked his view and access.

When Daniel returned home later that day, he was surprised to find Panagiotou with her mother and older sister Eleni having coffee with his mother Hadjikalliopi. As it turned out, Eleni was married to a man from Tala and was good friends with Daniel’s mother.

Daniel was glad to see Panagiotou sitting in his home. Overcome by shyness perhaps, the young couple sat quietly in the room and did not exchange any words. Hadjikalliopi on the other hand, who was aware of her son’s feelings towards Panayiotou set up a meeting in Tsada between the two families to arrange their marriage.

Everyone was present at the meeting except for Panayiotou. Her mother had sent her next door to a neighbour’s house. According to Cypriot custom, a prospective bride was not permitted to be present or involved in the arrangement of her own marriage. Panagiotou tried in vain to listen to the conversation that was taking place through an adjoining wall that separated the two houses.

Once all matters related to marriage were settled, the groom and his family went back home to Tala. As they left, Hadjialisavou called out for her daughter to come quickly from the neighbour’s house to get a glance of the groom as he rode away on his donkey. She then told Panayiotou to get ready for the marriage that was scheduled to take place in two months.

Unlike many would-be grooms at the time, Daniel did not ask for houses or fields as part of the marriage agreement. He was already financially independent and owned his own home and fields as well as a thriving hemp-rope business in Tala. All he wanted was Panayiotou.

On the day of his wedding in Tsada, Daniel woke up early in the morning, saddled his donkey and wore his best clothes. Together with his ‘koumbari’ and a few other male inhabitants from Tala he took off towards Tsada.

Instead of taking the shortest route through the valley of Zambouti, the wedding party took a diverting route passing through the nearby village of Tremithousa. Daniel’s purpose was to avoid any of the traditional ceremonial skirmishes that were planned for him that day by the men in Tsada.

It was the custom in Tsada in those days for a foreign groom to enter the village on foot. This was seen as a ‘symbolic declaration of submission’ in honour of the host village. If Daniel and his party were caught riding into the village on their donkeys or mules they could be beaten and forced to dismount. Of course, the foreign groom’s objective was to reach the bride’s house any way he could without getting caught (and consequently beaten) by the village inhabitants. It is said that many grooms were known to recruit their own men (usually their koumbari) for protection when attempting to reach the house of a blushing bride. Sometimes, the ‘koumbari’ will enter the bride’s village flanking their groom on both sides of the path so he can pass without been hurt.

On the day of Daniel’s wedding, the villagers in Tsada waited anxiously at entrance of their village for the groom and his guests to arrive. Gathered amongst the horde were musicians playing the violin and lute and singing traditional wedding tunes at the top of their voices.

Daniel was in no mood to get a beating at the hands of the Tsakiotes (men from Tsada) that day. He arrived via Tremithousa, continued to Mesogi and from there, ascended the Tsada hills undetected until he reached the courtyard of Hadjimarti’s house just in time to see the local women dressing and decorating his bride.

After their wedding, Panagiotou followed her husband back to Tala. It took four long years for her to become pregnant. Somewhat superstitious, she remembered that the previous owner of their house had placed a curse that no baby will be born there. Panagiotou was so afraid that she tried to persuade her husband to leave Tala and go to live in Tsada. Daniel was reluctant to leave his village. Besides, he did not believe in such superstitions. The fears of his young wife grew along with her belly.

Panagiotou kept insisting to leave the ‘cursed house’ until Daniel finally agreed and set up a new residence in Tsada. It wasn’t long before the inhabitants in Tsada discovered that Daniel was highly-educated and could also chant and sing religious psalms. In no time, he was asked to use his knowledge to teach the children of Tsada to read and write. Apparently, his first student was a boy named Procopis of Orkantou. Soon other children began to arrive.

Daniel conducted his lessons at his home using the main room as a classroom. When the number of students increased and could not fit in his house, Daniel moved the ‘school’ outdoors, under a large fig tree in his yard.

For ten years, Daniel taught the children of Tsada. He used the religious books that belonged to the church as his textbooks. The impoverished people of Tsada could not afford to buy textbooks. As payment, Daniel only accepted an egg or a piece of halloumi cheese. He was not interested in taking money from the student’s parents as he earned enough to live a comfortable life from his own property income. In time, Daniel abandoned his rope trading business for the sake of his wife. Besides, he could not plant hemp on the Tsada heights.

In 1898, after some coercing from the resident priest in Tsada (Papakyriakos), Daniel agreed to join the priesthood. He was thirty-three years old. Daniel became known as Papadaniel after he joined the priesthood.

In 1905, Papadaniel arranged for the first professional teacher to come and teach the pupils in Tsada. The professional teacher was paid a small allowance by the parents of the students. It is estimated by some historians that at the start of the twentieth century, more than ninety percent of the population in Cyprus were illiterate.

Papadaniel and his wife had nine children. Evagoras (1895), Aphrodite (1898), Galatia (1901), Socratis (1904), Savvas (1908), Ellada (1914), Nefeli (1918) Kleopas (1921) and Antigoni (1924).

When Papadaniel’s daughter reached marriageable age, a local moneylender decided that his son should be the prospective groom. The priest however, refused the offer which angered the moneylender. In a brazen act of reprisal, the moneylender gathered together twelve of his henchmen and one dark night invaded Papadaniel’s carob orchards in Tala. They then set about to scrape the bark off the tree trunks thus destroying as many trees as they could. Although the names of the tree-hackers were known to Papadaniel and to other residents in Tsada, no one dared to hand over them over to the English authorities.

Some of the villagers in Tala advised the priest to lay curses on the perpetrators that hacked down his carob trees saying to him, ‘you are a priest – your curses will stick to them.’ However, Papadaniel simply replied, “There is no need for me to curse them. They will be cursed by God.”

A few days after the malicious attack on the carob trees, the Muhktari (headman) of Tala summoned Papadaniel from his home in Tsada and told him that under the command of the British administration, he had collected seventy-five pounds from the local villagers as compensation for the ruined carobs on the territorial limits of Tala. Apparently, there was a law that if malicious damage had occurred within the boundaries of a certain village (and there was no evidence to convict the culprits), then all the inhabitants of the particular village had to pay for the damage. The amount gathered was very large considering that some thirty years later you could build a large house in Tsada for only twenty-five pounds. Papadaniel refused to take the money and asked the Muhktari to return it back to the Tala villagers who were blameless and therefore, should not be made to pay for the wicked actions of others.

Six of Papadaniel’s children eventually migrated to South Africa; namely, Evagoras, Socratis, Savvas, Ellada, Kleopas and Antigoni.

Savvas and Kleopas never returned to Cyprus, not even for a holiday.

Only Papadaniel’s daughter, Nefeli remained in Tsada, to whom we owe this information.

Nefeli was particularly fond of embroidery and sewing from a young age. When she finished primary school in 1930, her older sister Aphrodite asked their father permission to allow Nefeli to go and live with her. Aphrodite’s husband Miltis (Miltiadis) was a police officer and was frequently away from home. Aphrodite’s son Lefteris, (who was one year younger than Nefeli), was also away from home attending a boarding school in Lapithos, on the other side of the island. This meant that Aphrodite was at home alone particularly at nights when her police officer husband was working.

Twelve year old Nefeli was happy to go and live with her sister. She was especially glad that Aphrodite had a sewing machine. She started to teach herself how to sew by unstitching and restitching an old pair of her nephew’s school pants. In no time, she was able to master sewing and dressmaking.

Apart from embroidery and sewing, Nefeli became the guardian of Aphrodite’s four younger children who were born after she had moved in. One of the children was Evagoras Pallikaridis. Born in 1938, Evagoras would eventually adopt an anti-British ideology and fight for Cyprus liberation from colonial rule. When he was captured and subsequently hung by the British forces in 1957, he gained instant fame across the island and joined the pantheon of Cypriot martyrs and heroes who had died for their patriotic and nationalistic desires.

In 1940, Nefeli met her future husband Karageorgis (a cousin of Miltis) whilst she was living permanently with her sister. The young blacksmith was crisscrossing Cyprus selling his handmade knifes, sickles and other related blacksmith products when he arrived in Tsada and met Nefeli.

Karageorgis was born in Lapithos on the 23rd April in 1910. Like most Cypriots at that time, he grew up in abject poverty and had to perform a multitude of laborious tasks from a very young age. Through his hard work, he managed to repay all his family debts, saving them from certain bankruptcy and losing their family home.

In the 1930s, machine-made products began to arrive in Cyprus following the industrial revolution. Karageorgis realised that his traditional handmade products where not so sought after and business began to decline. In 1936, he decided to migrate to England to try to earn a living. He became a sailor and spent time onboard a commercial steamship shovelling coal into the steam furnaces. As a sailor, Karageorgis travelled far and wide (including Argentina, Spain, France and the Black Sea) but eventually he returned to Cyprus and to Tsada to be with his wife Nefeli.

Nefeli and Karageorgis had nine children together including Daniel Karageorgis. Sadly, two of their children had died at a young age. The remaining children graduated from high school and university and went on to successful careers as primary and secondary school teachers and government officials.

Karageorgis died on the 26th November in 1989 and Nefeli died on the 10th February 2002.

I would like to thank Mr Daniel Karageorgis for allowing me to publish his grandfather’s life story and for his permission to reproduce his family photographs for Tales of Cyprus. It is largely thanks to his mother Nefeli that Mr Karageorgis was able to provide so much information about Papadaniel. Special thanks to my friend John Michaelides in Nicosia for helping to scan Nefeli’s special family photos.

All photographs have been scanned and reproduced with the kind permission from Mr Daniel Karageorgis for Tales of Cyprus.