04 PROFILE
Living on the edge
What have you done? Roberto Sciffo Photo: Christos Theodorides
I
t’s the time of year when John Lennon’s words come to mind: “So this is Christmas / And what have you done? / Another year over / And a new one just begun”. Lennon meant well, but those words strike an uncomfortable chord with some people – like Roberto Sciffo for instance, who admits that sometimes a little voice pipes up inside his head, casting doubt on his life choices. “Sometimes I do question what the heck I’m doing,” he tells me, sitting in the showroom of Global Green Guard Ltd in Nicosia, “because I’m not where everyone else is, or should be, at this point in time”. His parents, he’s aware, “would like a grandchild, or wedding bells or whatever it is”, and sometimes the little voice agrees with them: “In comparison to all your other friends,” it needles, “who have now been married and are on their first kid, or second kid or whatnot – where is your stability?” By the time you read this, Roberto will have turned 40 (he was just days away when we spoke) – an age when mid-life crisis starts to loom, and one clutches at stability like a drowning man at a life-preserver. Then again, stability is overrated – and Roberto,
THEO PANAYIDES meets a dreamer who has raced formula cars, is involved in New Age therapies and is looking for stability to answer John Lennon, has done quite a lot with his years so far. He’s raced cars as a Formula Ford mechanic in Quebec. He’s sailed across the Pacific on a three-man yacht, from San Diego to New Zealand – a journey that took eight months, including an enforced four-month layover in the Kingdom of Tonga. He’s a freediver, and can hold his breath for just under five minutes. He’s worked with Tim Ray, the son of a Hollywood director (Nicholas Ray, who made Rebel Without a Cause) and an Oscar-winning actress. Above all, he’s consistently explored new ideas, from the eco-friendly ion heaters and copper-based pool cleaners he’s currently selling to self-actualisation, probiotics, “heavy metals”, and healing techniques so out-there he prefers not to talk about them. Not that Roberto doesn’t like to talk. If anything he talks too unstop-
pably, his verbal tangents punctuated by a loud, high-pitched laugh. In 1969 his dad proposed to his mother, he recalls: “Took her out into the lake, so she wouldn’t have a choice!” – and he laughs loudly. “She accepted. Wisely!” – and he laughs again. His style is boyishly enthusiastic, his fair, ruddy face crowned by shoulder-length blond hair above a pair of green eyes and thick square glasses. He was born and grew up in Cyprus, but his ethnic background (as implied by his features) is more complicated: Mum is Swiss but born in Hungary and raised partly in Brazil, Dad is Italian but born and raised in Egypt. “He’s a bit like me, he’s quite an adventurer as well,” says his son fondly. Roberto himself was a shy boy, partly because he was born shortsighted but wasn’t issued with glasses till he was five, so his first impressions of the world were “foggy”. He was “somewhat lost as a child,” he recalls; “I used to be very introverted, I wouldn’t go out and make friends very easily”. School was a chore, and he may have been mildly dyslexic. His life seemed to lack direction; all that really stirred him were racecars and motorbikes. He seems to have been slightly in the shadow of
his older brother Raffaello, whom he describes as “quite magnificent. He was very jolly, got on with everybody, very intelligent, very good brain, remembered things”. Raffaello went off to study in the US and Roberto followed, mostly so they could be on the same continent. “We were very close, my brother and I. He passed away in 2003. We had a really good –” he pauses: “You know, with him I felt really safe.” He seems to have the kind of personality that craves a mentor, someone – or something – to attach to, yet he also loves adventure and living on the edge. That’s why he cherished motor-racing, because it hinges on teamwork (“I’m the type of person that likes to connect well with people”) yet is also a case of “being on my own and not being told what to do”. It’s the kind of personality that’s naturally drawn to extreme experience; he might’ve joined a cult, or become a monk, in another life – yet he’s also keenly aware of the kind of reaction his ideas might provoke, and much too nice to give offence. At times he seems almost embarrassed by the things he’s seen and experienced. “This is where it gets a bit… ‘woowoo’, shall we say,” he explains, and
SUNDAY MAIL• December 23, 2012