Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island

by Lawrence Durrell

  The village was no less deceptive in its complete smiling calm—the flowering cyclamen and the rows of glorious roses which Kollis tended so carefully; once more, as the engine died and the silence swelled up round me, my friends detached themselves one by one from the knots of coffee-drinkers under the great tree, to bring me messages whose familiarity restored in a moment the pattern in things which already Nicosia was slowly breaking down and dispersing; talk of carob-wood, lemon trees, silkworms, a new wine. Of the crisis hardly a word was said, save by the muktar whose responsibilities weighed so heavily upon him that he felt permitted to ignore the laws of tact. “Aren’t you afraid to come up here?” he said. “Why should I be?” “Are you armed?” “No.” He sighed. “I will lend you a gun.” “Against who—Andreas or Mr. Honey?” He laughed heartily at this. “No. None of us would harm you. But people come here sometimes from outside, at night, in cars. Look!” On the wall under the Tree of Idleness was written in blue paint: SLAVES BREAK YOUR CHAINS: LIBERTY OR DEATH. It seemed a poor place to choose for a recruiting center, to judge by the statuesque devotees of indolence who sat there quietly enjoying a professional idleness. “They came up in a car and painted it under the headlights. I heard them. Michaelis’s son saw them and said they were masked.”

  Up at the house everything was quiet save for the puffing and blowing of Xenu who was clearing up after my family’s departure. At the spring, filling his water-bottle, stood old Morais, who catching sight of me, took a step down and shook my hand with warm agitation. “Before God,” he said hoarsely, “I do not want all these things to happen.” “Nor I.” He stood for a long moment in deep perplexity, at a loss for words—but he had said everything; nobody wanted these things to happen, but they were happening. They prejudiced everything that could have been built out of the firm rough clasp of the old man’s hand. He turned abruptly, almost angrily and stamped up the hill to his little house, muttering under his breath.

  As week followed week I returned to the village less frequently, though I would have been glad to live out there if I had been able to persuade the authorities to install a telephone in Dmitri’s wine-shop—but I am forgetting. To the normal hours of a standard office routine I was now forced to add hours of alertness at night, dealing with the routine questions of the press which poured in from every side. But though the corps had swollen and multiplied the work there were compensations in the form of friends whom I had not seen for some time; and my dinner-table such as it was always had a face or two I was glad to remember: Ralph Izzard, with his gentle and civilized air, Stephen Barber, boisterous and serious at once, Richard Williams whose companionable laughter and sly wit made time pass delightfully. And young Richard Lumley, who came for a weekend and stayed nearly six months, sharing the house and everything that went with it—sudden invasions of friends or visitors: telephone calls: alarms in the night: and blessed laughter (Shan Sedgwick borne through the door on gales of his own laughter with a live turkey under his arm). The crisis brought me people I might never have met again for many years.

  The worlds I lived in now were like three separate ice floes gradually drifting apart on the Gulf Stream; the world of Government House or the Colonial Secretary’s lodge—a world of fairy lights gleaming on well-tended flowerbeds under the great stone lion and unicorn; a world where groups of well-groomed men and women tasted the rational enjoyments life had to offer to slow music, pacing upon freshly laundered grass as green as any England can show, outside time. Then the world of the office with its stereotyped routines and worries. Lastly the village, composed around the Abbey as around the echo of a quotation from Virgil, in which an amputated present was enough and the future nobody’s direct concern. Once or twice I thought I remarked a trifling frigidity among the villagers which might have indicated a change of tone; but I was wrong. If anything they had become less rather than more critical of foreigners. There was something else underneath it, too, like the pressure of a wound, a pain which they carried about with them like a load. If the situation met with any response here it met only with a sad reproach from the dark eyes of the old men. They had stopped saying, “Hey, Englishman,” in the old jaunty cocky way, but they had not yet abandoned the word “neighbor”—only it was beginning to feel weighty, impregnated with sadness. These things are hard to analyze.

  In the midst of this deepening sense of crisis there came a welcome relief in the form of a policy statement from London, convoking a Three-Power Conference to study the “political and defense questions affecting the Eastern Mediterranean,” a means of offering the issues of Cyprus at least a safety-valve if not a solution. In my usual optimistic way I thought I saw in it a possible solution to things which might halt the deathward drift of affairs in the island. Alas! it was to prove only a brief respite. By now, of course, we had become inured to the nightly gauntlet of grenades and the running fire of telephone calls; nevertheless the news was welcome, and events seemed to be smiling upon us after so long a time of waiting.

  The mosquito raids went on unremittingly of course; you cannot turn Greeks on and off like a tap. The Governor had narrowly escaped being killed by an exploding time-bomb in May—literally by moments—for the bomb, placed in a cinema and fused to go off during a charity performance, exploded as the hall had emptied but while the foyer was still full of people. The raids on the police stations too went on, while almost daily the police uncovered some new hoard of arms or ammunition.

  Wren’s deceptive composure covered many things—not least the realization that the task he was setting himself was an impossible one: for a police force is not merely a collection of arms and legs, and cannot be numbered by heads like a trayful of cabbages. Its animating force is intelligence, and here was the gap which could not be filled by the multiplication-table. It was fantastic in an island where everyone was related to everyone else, in an area so circumscribed, how little general intelligence was coming in. Usually in Cyprus gossip penetrated everywhere; if you blew your nose loudly in Larnaca before driving at speed to Limassol you would certainly meet someone on arrival who had already heard of the fact. Partly the silence was due to fear of reprisals; but mostly because the sympathies of the general public were engaged, and even the non-combatant’s door was always open to shelter a bomb-thrower. Paddy Leigh Fermor had once remarked how completely sabotage operations depended upon the sympathies of the general public, adding: “After all, in Crete there were only about five of us, each with a very small band of chaps, and we kept a number of German divisions sprawling and pinned down for years.” Were we to risk a repetition of the same thing in Cyprus? It was hard to decide, but on balance it did not seem that the Cypriots themselves would have the stamina to last out a long siege. I myself might have agreed with this proposition had I not felt that Greece was able to supply what was lacking in men, materials or moral support; and I knew that the island could not be effectively sealed off by sea and air.

  Mine was not a widely shared view, at least among the foreign community. General opinion here suggested that tough tactics and economic reprisals could be effec tive against the middle classes who would not long with stand a direct assault upon their pockets, and indeed would if pressed hard surrender from their midst the few active terrorists among them. This showed a frightening political ignorance, both about the nature of revolutions in general and about the animating spirit of the present discontents. It was clear even at this time that the intel lectuals regarded EOKA as having behind it the irre sistible momentum of modern Greek history; Cyprus was simply a repetition of Macedonia. Crete had, after all, been cleared in this way; and the only tragedy of the whole affair was that the war was directed against a tra ditional and much-beloved friend whose lack of histori cal understanding was incomprehensible.…

  It was easy to talk in bars about tough tactics (“One touch of the stockwhip, old boy, I’ve seen it before” and “We must squeeze the Cyps till they squeak”) but these were lines of thought which were politically unfruitful;
for the stockwhip might fall upon innocent shoulders, and unwittingly cause a resentment which would provide recruits for EOKA rather than informers for the Government. There was a village proverb which said: “He couldn’t catch the mule so he gave the saddle a good thrashing.” This was what we were gradually being compelled to do by the pressure of events, though at this early time, with a Conference coming up at which our problems might all be rationalized, there seemed no undue cause for despondency. Indeed as far as could be judged the general public enjoyed a widespread feeling of relief that at last Cyprus was going to be submitted to the arbitration of the mind, and not allowed to rot slowly like a gangrened limb.

  My own luck, too, was in; for I was offered a three days’ visit to Athens and London for duty consultations, an opportunity I grasped eagerly. I also snatched a night alone at the Bellapaix house during this slight lull among the tensions of politics, glad to recreate with deliberation the routine of last year—which already seemed remote and unrecapturable; rising at four, I mean, and cooking my breakfast by rosy candlelight and writing a letter or two, to far-away Marie or my daughter, before clambering down the dark street with Frangos and his cattle, to watch the dawn breaking behind the gaunt spars of the Abbey. Clusters of gold and citron, stretched taut as a violin string, upon bass Gregorian blues and greys. Then to climb the range with the light, spoke by spoke, to where the dawn spilled and spread on the bare cardboard plain with its two spikes of minaret rising out of the indistinctness, the car falling like a swallow towards the tableland of the Mesaoria.… I had come to love Cyprus very much by now, I realized, even its ugliness, its untidy sprawling vistas of dust and damp cloud, its hideous incongruities.

  Then up over the Cyclades, into a different weight less world inhabited by the music of gulls and surf breaking upon deserted beaches, covered now in a green fleecy mist which allowed an island to become visible from time to time, tenuous as a promise. The edges of the sea lime-green, cobalt, emerald.…

  Athens was recognizably beautiful still, as a woman who has had her face lifted may still be beautiful; but she had become a capital now, full of vast avenues and towering buildings. She had lost her grubby and endearing provinciality—had moved a step nearer towards the featureless modern problem town. It was hot, and everyone was away in the islands. The few friends I could find writhed over the Cyprus question like worms halved by the ploughshare—hardly able to believe their own eyes and minds. I was able to spend one memorable afternoon forgetting Cyprus however, with old George Katsimbalis in a favorite taverna under the Acropolis; and a whole day recalling Belgrade with Sir Charles Peake, who had been my Ambassador there, and who was now grappling with the thankless task of representing us in Greece: a Greece changed out of all recognition by the Enosis problem.

  On the quiet terrace at his summer villa, near Kavouri, I recaptured some of the old illusion of timeless peace as I watched the sky darken at his shoulder, and the smooth black polish of that magnificent bay become slowly encrusted with lights, sweeping and slithering upwards into the sky, the hot black sky of Attica. Here and there a green eye or a red glowed and smoldered, marking a ship. But sea and land had become indistinguishable.

  He spoke with gentle affection of Greece and of his hopes for the coming Conference which might find a resolution for things and bring us all a more breathable air; and I echoed them. It was hard to say good-bye, though, and leave that delightful villa, to drive back through the dry scented starlight to Athens; harder still to watch the Acropolis from a thousand feet fade and diminish in the dawn-light, all its nacreous marbles glowing at the sky.

  London with its drooping grey mist and unemphatic tones awaited me. Coming out of the Colonial Office I knew at once that the Empire was all right by the animation of the three African dignitaries who shared the lift with me, and who walked to the bus stop talking like a trio of cellos. They gave off overpowering waves of Chanel Number 5—as if they had hosed themselves down with it after breakfast like genial elephants, before starting out on a round of official calls. I pitied the occupants of the bus they hailed with yells and waved umbrellas.

  I attended as best I could to the wants of my office, but was completely unprepared for the honor of a personal interview with the Secretary of State, to whose office I was summoned on my third day. His intimidating height and good looks would have marked him out as extraordinary in any company; but to these were added the charm and liberal disposition of an eighteenth-century gentleman—great style completely untouched by affectation, and a broad cutting mind which was sophisticated in the true sense. And humor. There was no room for timidities and attitudes in his presence—his simplicity and directness would have riddled them. I told him what was in my mind; how great were the hopes to be reposed in the coming Conference. I added that while sharp Turkish reactions were to be expected, and the Turkish support of our case might seem on the face of it politically expedient, it would be unwise to shelter behind it. We should face the self-determination issue squarely if we wished to achieve a lasting settlement which would mobilize the general goodwill of the people without which even a heavily defended base would be simply an enclave in a bitterly hostile area. Cyprus seemed to me one case where sovereignty and security were not necessarily compatible; and within a planned time-limit of twenty years (which I believed might be acceptable) we might achieve a great deal. The present situation was containable indefinitely by force, of course, even if it grew worse; the one dangerous aspect was the police picture in the island.… I can put these points down since I made a note of them immediately after this talk.

  He listened to me gravely and sympathetically, and I knew why. He himself knew the island well, had lived in Pearce’s lovely house and walked the lemon-glades of Lapithos, or taken coffee with the villagers. He knew every inch of the sinuous Gothic range with its tiny hospitable villages. For him too the present situation was painful, crowded with associations, and full of thorns. He could tell me little, however, as the Cabinet was still debating the affairs of the island.

  From the vantage-point of Whitehall, too, the angle of vision changed, for here in London Cyprus was not only Cyprus; it was part of a fragile chain of telecommunication centers and ports, the skeletal backbone of an Empire striving to resist the encroachments of time. If Cyprus were to be frivolously wished away then what of Hong Kong, Malta, Gibraltar, the Falklands, Aden—all troubled but stable islands in the great pattern? Palestine and Suez had been questions of foreign sovereignty; they had never been Crown possessions. Cyprus belonged, from the point of view of geography and politics, to the Empire’s very backbone. Must it not, then, be held at all costs?

  I could not find my way forward among all these mutually contradictory propositions; it seemed to me that everybody was right and everybody wrong. Yet a peaceful solution must be there to be won if only we could provide a formula. But the Conference would perhaps do that for us.

  While I was busy with these brain-wrenching considerations I was told that the Secretary of State had decided to visit Cyprus the next day, and that I must return to my post forthwith. Arrangements had been made for me to travel back in his private plane.

  The take-off was scheduled for five the next day, but frequent telephone calls were necessary to check this; we would fly all night, touching down only at Naples for refueling.

  At four that afternoon I found the sleek old-fashioned C.O.I. cars drawn up outside the private office, together with the Secretary of State’s own gleaming Rolls. There still remained hurried last-minute dispositions to be made and my car was told off to pick up the personal bodyguard and Sir John Martin who was to travel out with us.

  In the shady portals of New Scotland Yard we picked up a ruddy-faced, white-whiskered man in well-cut clothes, who combined the air of being a regular colonel with something else, an indefinable sense of having seen the seamy side of life; he joked slyly as his luggage was loaded. No, he did not carry machine-guns about him on assignments like these, he said. “I mana
ge with a good eye and a very small Colt.” One had the impression that anything larger would show a bulge in that well-cut suit. He had a novel and a set of pocket-chess with him, and proposed to spend the night working on a problem.

  Now we swept across London, halting only to pick up Sir John and his suitcase. He was armed, more appropriately, with a copy of the Iliad which sorted well with his gentle and scholarly manner.

  Rain was falling over London but by the time we reached Northolt the sky was clear and full of larks spiraling up from the grass of the airfield. I was impressed by the V.I.P. Lounge, which I was not likely to see, I thought, again in this life, and enjoyed the passport and customs formalities which were so cursory as to make me feel rather like the Aga Khan. Such are the pleasures of traveling in a great man’s entourage. The old Valetta, however, had rather a secondhand air, and the Secretary of State inspected the guard of honor briefly. His wife and children were there to see him off, and he embraced them warmly and naturally in a way that would have touched old Frangos. The red dispatch cases were loaded and we climbed aboard and seated ourselves, while the pilot gave us a sharp talk about life-jackets, adding with a twinkle, “This is a well-victualed ship, and there won’t be any closing time once we are airborne.”