My long health ordeal since early June has brought some good things, thanks to the good Lord. One of the best, if not the best, is plenty of books, always read to wonderful music, and a view of the Limassol sea at dawn and at dusk.
If anything spoils God’s creation for me, it’s the monster cars and the roaring motorbikes. I pray they all make it home safe and sound. And that they get hit with a crippling fine.
The first time I came to Cyprus, as a small boy, my parents brought me to meet family we had never known. What I fell in love with was that once the working day was over, everyone told stories: about people, about the neighbourhood. Our relatives lived in Nicosia, near the fire station. A little further down was the prison.
We couldn’t have cared less about the houses in Agios Pavlos. We lived for the ice cream at ‘Heraclis’, and for the newspapers from Athens: ‘Apogevmatini’ for the politics and ‘Athlitiki Icho’ for news of our beloved AEK!
When the sun went down and dusk fell, the city grew quiet. The cars on the streets thinned out…
… and that’s where I was going with this!
Now I’m in Limassol, plagued by cars and motorbikes. Limassol, the city that, as they used to say, was always the last to go to sleep. I adopted it for love, and because I came to know the living history of my own people who lived there.
They were happy with little. They spoke quietly. They shared their food. They looked after their sick. They celebrated their happy anniversaries, weddings and christenings with gusto.
There was no extravagance in any of it, even though the city’s business community was thriving. It never flaunted its wealth, let alone its houses, its cars, its restaurants or its clothes.
Things change, someone will say. Fair enough. We’re not going to take on the whole world. We’re not going to turn our city into Manhattan, either. Or its roads into Formula One tracks.
And yet, as the sky darkened, you could see the clouds glowing red, far off and high up. Was it lightning? Or a warning from God: “Go home.” Because all this to-ing and fro-ing at that time of night is out of place.
As my grandmother Eva used to say: “Brush your teeth, read your book for half an hour, and goodnight!”
PS: I’ve cut out most social media. It’s toxic. It wears a gold-embroidered cloak, speaks with arrogance and lectures from on high, even on subjects it barely understands. X especially. If you’re on there alongside friends and acquaintances from other countries, stick with them. They’re in a different league. None of the fishwife gossip.
