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"Would you like to see Mr.
Goult pull his ear?" Daskalos chuckled as he stood over my
desk and looked at Herman Goult in the office opposite. As
Goult, editor of the Cyprus Mail, put his pen down and
started to pull his right ear, I tried to hold back a laugh,
but the temptation was irresistible.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, I suggested. "O.K., how would you
like to see him rub his nose?" he asked. Within seconds,
this was also being done.
There was no doubt that Stelios Atteshlis had the power to
do things like that - and a lot more. Some people treated
him like a god, a miracle man. Others doubted his claim of
being a healer and insisted he was a charlatan. But
"Daskalos" (teacher) as most people called him, was
definitely a most interesting and fascinating man.
He told me that Makarios used to call him to his office
regularly for consultations. When he worked as proofreader
at the newspaper, dozens of people would come every night to
talk to him about their problems. It was no wonder, then,
that the publisher called him to his office one night to
reprimand him. "Mr. Atteshlis, we are getting too many
mistakes in the newspaper these days!"
On another occasion I answered a long-distance call from
Athens. The woman on the telephone wanted to speak to Mr.
Atteshlis. A few minutes later he came over to my office and
said, "Do you know who was calling? It was from the royal
court in Athens. King Constantine's daughter Alexia has been
crying for three days and the doctors could not tell what
was wrong with her, so they decided to call me and ask for
my advice. I told them the baby is going to be alright".
The last time I visited him in his house at Strovolos, about
three years ago, the wife of a European ambassador was
sitting next to him, listening intently to what he was
saying. I apologized for interrupting them. He looked up
over his dark glasses and joked, "The last time we met you
had a lot more hair on your head". He then got up and said,
"She comes here almost every day, so let’s go into the hall
and you can tell me what it is that you want".
Atteshlis was born in Nicosia in December 1912 and went to
school at the American Academy, Larnaca and the English
School, Nicosia. He also studied at Saint Andrews (London)
and Bennett College (Sheffield), receiving a Master’s degree
in Metaphysical Science, a Doctorate in Divinity (DD) and a
Ph.D. He became a senior printer at the government Printing
Office, while in his free time he liked to paint and to look
after his beloved cacti.
He had two daughters and he used to joke with his fellow
printers, "Don’t have sex too often - you enjoy it more if
you do it at greater intervals". He believed strongly in
reincarnation and insisted in private talks that in his
previous life he had been Saint Spyridon. One day, I read in
a school book that St. Spyridon had walked on the waves of
the sea just as Christ had done.
I had to challenge him on that. I took the book to his
office, he read it and then said, "They are crazy. I just
happened to be walking along the beach, paddling in the
shallow water sometimes; and they thought I was walking on
the waves!"
I never attended any of his classes, but I respected him and
when we joked he used to tell me AI know you don’t believe,
so let’s hope you don’t really need my powers one day".
When I did, I realized that he was indeed an exceptional
man.
A close relative had been seriously injured in a road
accident and she was in a coma at Nicosia General Hospital.
The doctors were unable to help. When Atteshlis came to the
office in the evening, I told him about it. He said, "Bring
me her picture".
I rushed home and found a photograph of the girl. He touched
it and felt it with his fingers. As I looked at his face, it
appeared to change and take on an almost superhuman, divine
appearance. This was not the man I had been joking with
before.
He half closed his eyes and said, I am with her now, don’t
worry. She is going to recover. She has a crack over her
right eye, which will affect her eyesight for a few months,
but she is going to be all right.
He then related to me exactly how the accident occurred,
including what she had been thinking at the time her car
crashed. It was almost unbelievable, but it turned out to be
true all the way. She spent two months in the hospital and
came out with a serious problem with her right eye, which
disappeared after some months.
He could certainly do extraordinary things, but I liked him
more for the simple, human aspect of his character. When a
woman sought his help because her husband had abandoned her
for the pretty looks of a younger girl, Atteshlis looked at
the picture of the husband and bluntly told the woman, "You
know what...Your husband is a fine man. It’s your big mouth
that is driving him away".
Many people will miss him a lot. - Andreas Hadjipapas
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