The cool lower rooms of the house echoed with silence and the sunlight filtered through the bitter lemon trees in the garden outside. I did not dare to climb to the balcony, so sad was I to leave it all. Xenu the puffing maid was cleaning up the kitchen. She greeted me warmly enough but said in the same breath: “Have you heard the news?” I nodded. “The execution?” She puffed and swelled with sorrow. “Why should they do such things?” I became angry. “If you kill you must die,” I said; she raised her hand, as if to stop me. “Not that. Not the execution. But they would not give his mother the body, or so they say. That is a terrible punishment, sir. For if you do not look upon your loved one dead you will never meet again in the other world.”
I busied myself in the little study, turning out a case of books. I found the old wicker basket which had accompanied me on all my journeys in Cyprus. It was full of fragments collected by my daughter, buried in a pocketful of sand which leaked slowly through the wicker mesh. I turned the whole thing out on to a sheet of newspaper, mentally recalling as I turned over the fragments in curious fingers where each had been acquired: Roman glass, blue and vitreous as the summer sea in deep places; handles of amphorae from Salamis with the hallmark thumb-printed in the soft clay; tiles from the floor of the villa near Paphos; verde-antico fragments; Venus’ ear seashells; a Victorian penny; fragments of yellow mosaic from some Byzantine church; purple murex; desiccated sea-urchins and white chalk squid-bones; a tibia; fragments of a bird’s egg; a green stone against the evil eye.… All in all asort of record of our stay in Cyprus. “Xenu, throw all this away,” I said.
Once more I walked down the main street to the car in the same heavy ominous silence, observed once more from many chinks and slits in those old houses, arousing no comment; and once more the village stared deeply at its shoes in silence under the great tree—frozen into immobility. The eyes which avoided mine, flickering shyly away from my glance “like vernal butterflies”—I cannot say that they were full of hate. No. It was simply that the sight of me pained them. The sight of an Englishman had become an obscenity on that clear honey-gold spring air.
I caught sight of a few of my friends, among them Michaelis and the Seafarer, sitting inside the café but I did not feel like intruding upon them with my good-byes.
The car started with a roar, fracturing the dense silence overflowing from the Abbey no less than from those silent, uncomprehending minds grouped about under the old tree. Nobody waved and nobody smiled.
I slipped down the empty street under the blos soming trees and out on to the crest of the hill. Frangos was on the threshing-floor looking out to sea; he turned his head as the car passed but did not wave. I lit a cigarette and was about to increase speed when my eye caught sight of a figure rushing down through the olive groves towards the road with the obvious intention of heading me off, waving and shouting. I recognized the small brown agile Andreas, running for all his sixty years like a boy of sixteen. I drew up.
He came panting down the last terrace and gave a tremendous jump into the road, beaming and panting. “Mr. Darling,” he cried, in his excitement using a version of my name which had once been current and which, under teasing, he had discarded. “Thank God I caught you. I wanted to tell you that the boy came back! He did not join EOKA because he won a scholarship to London instead. The Government radio announced the names yesterday!” He expelled his breath in a great sigh of relief and crossed himself twice, emphatically, in the Orthodox fashion. “God is great, and his wisdom hidden from us. The boy will go to London now. Will your mother look after him when he is in England—if you are not there? After all, neighbor, he is a kid still.” I could not look at his warm, merry kindly face without emotion. I got out into the road and we smoked a cigarette together while he talked with great excitement about London and of how much he had wanted to go there himself. “Education is everything,” he said. “How much we wished for it ourselves. Now perhaps our children can have it.” I felt bitterly ashamed of the neglect these people had endured—the poor Cyps. “Of course we’ll look after him,” I said. Andreas pressed my hand. “And don’t fear for the house,” he said, laying his hand upon his heart, “I will keep it sound and clean, everything in place. And I shall look after the vine on the balcony for your daughter. You will have shade from it over the whole balcony when you return next year, neighbor.” We stamped out our cigarettes in the road and shook hands. “And don’t forget,” he said, “to write to us, Loizus and Anthemos and the Seafarer—send us picture postcards of the London church—the big one with the clock.” I promised him that I would. “Remember,” he called after me, quoting the village proverb which illustrates hope for the future. “Next year’s wine is the sweetest.”
“You see,” said the driver of the taxi which took me up by night to the heavily guarded airport, “you see, the trouble with the Greeks is that we are really so pro-British.”
There had been two or more explosions in various parts of the town that evening, and doubtless there would be more. He drove with a certain elated caution across the deserted streets with their occasional patrol and their inadequate lighting. He was an elderly man with a grey moustache and a leisurely manner. His accent was a Paphos accent. “I don’t follow you,” I said absently, with one ear cocked for trouble along the dark roads, and only slightly reassured by the blue bead (talisman against the evil eye) which was tied to the dashboard. “Even Dighenis,” he said thoughtfully, “they say he himself is very pro-British.” It was one of those Greek conversations which carry with them a hallucinating surrealist flavor—in the last two years I had endured several hundred of them. “Yes,” he continued in the slow assured tones of a village wiseacre, “yes, even Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them. But he will have to go on killing them—with regret, even with affection.”
In an island of bitter lemons
Where the moon’s cool fevers burn
From the dark globes of the fruit,
And the dry grass underfoot
Tortures memory and revises
Habits half a lifetime dead
Better leave the rest unsaid,
Beauty, darkness, vehemence
Let the old sea-nurses keep
Their memorials of sleep
And the Greek sea’s curly head
Keep its calms like tears unshed
Keep its calms like tears unshed.
—LAWRENCE DURRELL
Select Bibliography
Newman, Philip. A Short History of Cyprus (London, 1940). Handy, condensed history.
Luke, H. C. Cyprus under the Turks (London, 1921). Information on the Turkish Period.
Dixon, W. Hepworth. British Cyprus (London, 1887).
Lewis, Mrs. A Lady’s Impressions of Cyprus (1893).
Brown, Samuel, M.I.C.E. Three Months in Cyprus: During the Winter of 1878-9 (1879).
Orr, C. W. J. Cyprus under British Rule (London, 1918). Information on the British Period.
Gunnis, Rupert. Historic Cyprus (London, 1936). Comprehensive “guidebook” to the antiquities.
Cobham, C. D. Excerpta Cypria: Materials for a History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1908). Selected extracts from books and travel-diaries on Cyprus, A.D. 2.3 to 1849. A unique compilation.
Storrs, Sir Ronald, and O’Brien, B. J. The Handbook of Cyprus (London, 1930). Detailed information on every aspect of the island.
Hadjicosta, Ismene. Cyprus and its Life (Nicosia, 1943).
Balfour, Patrick. The Orphaned Realm (London, 1951).
Index
A
Akanthou 32, 310
Alexis (Athenian friend) 151–156
Algiers 130
Amathus 15, 16
Anatolia 138, 139, 158
Andreas the Seafarer 118, 239, 303, 352–353
Anthemos (grocer) 101, 354
Aphrodite, Goddess 120
beach of 232
legend of 121, 133, 234
Armitage, Sir Robert 195, 227–228, 260, 291
Arnauti, Cape 228, 240
Artemesia 140
Asoka 234
B
Babylas 58
Baffo 235
BafFometus 235
Barber, Stephen 260
Barnabas, Saint 120, 122
Basil, Father 13–14, 287
beccafico 47
Bellapaix 26, 58, 60, 61, 69, 92, 95, 202, 237, 264
Abbey (Abbé de la Paix) 94, 96
Berengaria 184
Bragadino 6
British colony in Cyprus 32, 34
Brown, Samuel 139, 222
Buffavento 26, 57, 66, 308
Byron, Lord 168, 169
Byzantine culture 160
Byzantium 180
C
Calepio 7
Cape Andreas 58, 131
Cape of Cats 15
Caramanian mountains 87
Cardiff, Maurice 143, 181, 183, 186, 199, 299
Leonora 183
Carmi 142
carob trees 114, 133, 240, 307, 320, 345
Churchill, Sir Winston 169, 178, 185
Cleopatra 10
Clepini 59
Clito, and Clito’s Cavern 36, 56, 126, 142, 145, 239, 304, 346
Coeur de Lion 9, 16
first camp 341
Commanderia 23, 56, 183
Constantine the Great 160
Cornaro, Catherine 5
Cosmopolitan café incident 285–288
Curium 15
Cyclades 265
Cyprus. See also Enosis, Police, UNO
lack of amenities in 182, 211
London Conference on 273–283
tree, “ownership” in 138–139
Turks and 51, 161—163, 201
wage structure in 113
D
Detention laws 274
Dighenis (or Grivas) 58, 251, 296, 304, 355
Dmitri, and Dmitri’s cafe. See Tree of Idleness
Dome 19, 34
E
EMAK 243
Enosis 17, 136, 149, 150, 152–190, 196, 232
and communism 164
and the church 194, 255
EOKA 251
oath of 252–253
youth organization of 252, 263, 277, 282, 288, 312, 313, 321, 343, 353
F
Famagusta 2, 123, 140, 216, 220, 250, 296
Famagusta Gate, Konak 254, 347
Fermor, Patrick Leigh 133, 136, 262, 332
Fez 125, 130
Foster, Sir J. 275–279
Frangos 37, 38, 44, 108, 136, 139, 203, 264, 270
G
General Envy 33
George, Saint, Church of 327
Georgiou, G. Pol (painter) 143
Goa 125
Greek and Turk compared 51
Gymnasium, Nicosia 165, 166–181, 217, 225–226
H
Harding, Field Marshal Sir John 292, 342
Haroun al-Rashid 9
Harrison, Austen 126, 128, 129, 186, 300
Henry VIII of England, gift of culverins by 344
Heracleides, Saint 122
Hilarion, Saint 26, 137–138
Honey, Mr. (grave digger) 93, 119–120, 145, 145–150, 203, 216
Hubbard, Pearce 126, 127, 129, 130, 140, 141, 185, 300
I
Istanbul 130
Izzard, Ralph 260
J
Jalousa 216
Jamal 60, 68, 83, 85, 87
Janis 319, 330, 339, 345
John, Saint, Church of 167
Julian 235
K
Kakojannis (cobbler) 62, 65, 70, 75, 76, 86, 110
Kakopetria 192
Kalamata olives 94
Kallergis, Andreas 88, 91, 111, 120, 111, 196
Kalopanayotis 122
Karaolis 281, 319, 339, 340
Karpass 58, 311
Kasaphani 58, 66, 92, 308
Kato Pyrgos 231
Katsimbalis, George 265
Kavouri, Athens 266
Khlorakas 243
Kinross, Patrick 129.
See also Balfour, Patrick in Bibliography
Kitchener in Cyprus 8–9, 299
Klepini 123, 305, 309, 312, 314, 324, 346
Kokkinotrimithia 275
Kollis (of Bellapaix) 95–98, 112, 115, 126, 144, 155, 258
Konak, Turkish 254
Kopiaste 23, 317
Kranidiotis, Nikos (poet) 143
Kuklia 230
Kykko Monastery 122
Kyrenia 2, 14, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 34, 48, 49, 52, 54, 57, 61, 66, 98, 115, 121, 124, 131, 132, 167, 185, 239
castle 58, 59, 87, 274, 279, 289, 296, 297, 303, 307, 321, 335, 346
L
Lalou 106, 135, 142–143, 217
Lambousa Church 130
Lambros, Dmitri 315–322
Lapithos 32, 84, 87, 102, 126, 129, 230, 268, 272, 335
Larnaca 27, 138, 250, 262, 347
Ledra Palace Hotel 212
Lehmann, John 123
Lewis, Mrs., on Cyprus 8, 10, 97, 235, 357
Limassol 11, 24, 46, 184, 218, 250, 262
Limonias 231
Lion mountain 124
Loizus (woodworker) 96, 112, 118, 239, 354
Loti, Pierre 199
Luke, Sir H. 129, 133, 137, 139, 184, 300
Lumley, R. 260, 285, 299
Lusignan, Etienne de 134
M
Macaulay, Rose 124
Makarios, Archbishop 273, 292, 343
Makhairas 137
Mandeville, de 137
Manoli 33, 136
Mansoura 231
Marathassa, defeat of Bulgarians 109
Marie 125–116, 119, 131, 140, 142, 184, 185–186, 191, 264, 299, 304, 321, 328, 339
Martin, Sir John 269
Megaw, Peter 141
meltemi 87
Menas, Andreas 99, 101, 102, 114
Mesaoria 25, 138, 168, 191, 247, 335
Michaelis 99, 100, 102, 120, 134, 145, 146–150, 155, 284, 352
Morais (neighbor) 99, 100, 103, 112, 149, 217, 259
Morphou 130
Moustapha, Lala 222
Myrtou 57, 58, 216, 230
N
Naples 269
Narthex (plant) 97
Nicosia 19, 57, 187, 192, 200, 231
Mayor of 194
Police Station of 256
O
Olympus, Mount 122
Oneseilos, King 184
ouzo 16, 17, 19, 127, 136, 217
P
Pachyammos 123, 307
Palaeologus, Helena 9
Panos 22–25, 36, 55, 56, 60, 69, 70, 115, 120, 150, 232, 234, 237, 283, 304, 307, 311–327
Papadopoulos, Achilles 210, 288
Paphos 27, 46, 120, 216, 219, 227, 229, 230, 131, 234, 244
Gate 250, 347
Paul, Saint 10, 234
Pavlides, Sir Paul 188
Peake, Sir C. 266
Pendedactyl 58
Pentadactylos 251
Pitsillia 210
Police Commission, 1956 (Cyprus) 213
Polis 232
Poullis, P. C, killing of 281
R
Renos (bootblack) 55, 325
retzina 183
Rhodinos, Neophytos 137
Rimbaud 8, 193, 334
Romeos 232
S
Sabri, Mr. 49, 60–89, 113, 190, 240, 279, 308, 322
Salamis 122, 216, 352
Sergius, Governor 122
Seven Sleepers, Mosque of 299
silkworms 135
snakes 139
Sophia, Saint, Cathedral of 130, 168, 224
Stanhope, Lady Hester 98
Stark, Freya 129, 133, 142
Stavrovouni 123
T
Taurus Mountains 26, 54, 66
Tekke of Hazaret Omer 124
Templars, Order of 235
Templos 58
Thalassinos, Andreas.
See Andreas the
Seafarer
Tree of Idleness 61, 68, 93, 112, 144, 167, 240, 259, 350
Troodos range 25, 191, 199, 216
Turkish influences 51, 218
U
UNO and Cyprus 152, 155, 166, 199, 200, 207, 225, 288, 314
V
vampires 134
Venice 1
Volkan 319
Vouni 231, 313
w
Wideson, Mr. 289
Williams, Richard 260
Wren’s “Special Branch” campaigns 243, 255, 256, 274, 281, 303
X
Xenu (maid) 142, 148, 259, 351, 352
Z
Zephyros 152
Zervas, Napoleon 285
A Biography of Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion, Life called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”
Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.
Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers. He also read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel, The Black Book (1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note, The Black Book was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.
In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote Prospero’s Cell, a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island Page 27