Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Lawrence Durrell

Contents

“A race advancing on the East must start with Cyprus. Alexander, Augustus, Richard and Saint Louis took that line. A race advancing on the West must start with Cyprus. Sargon, Ptolemy, Cyrus, Haroun-al-Rashid took this line. When Egypt and Syria were of first-rate value to the West, Cyprus was of first-rate value to the West. Genoa and Venice, struggling for the trade of India, fought for Cyprus and enjoyed supremacy in the land by turns. After a new route by sea was found to India, Egypt and Syria declined in value to the Western Nations. Cyprus was then forgotten; but the opening of the Suez Canal has suddenly restored her to her ancient pride of place.”

British Cyprus
by W. H
EPWORTH
D
IXON
, 1887

“But the poor Cypriots are much-enduring people, and God in his Mercy avenges them; they are no more rulers than the poor serfs and hostages are; they make no sign at all.”

“Portents do not speak falsely, for those who have experience of them recognize their truthfulness.”

The Chronicle of Makhairas

Preface

T
HIS IS NOT
a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953–6.

I went to the island as a private individual and settled in the Greek village of Bellapaix. Subsequent events as recorded in these pages are seen, whenever possible, through the eyes of my hospitable fellow-villagers, and I would like to think that this book was a not ineffective monument raised to the Cypriot peasantry and the island landscape. It completes a trilogy of island books.

Circumstances gave me several unique angles of vision on Cyprus life and affairs, for I did a number of different jobs while I was there, and even served as an official of the Cyprus Government for the last two years of my stay in the island. Thus I can claim to have
seen the unfolding of the Cyprus tragedy both from the village tavern and from Government House. I have tried to illustrate it through my characters and evaluate it in terms of individuals rather than policies, for I wanted to keep the book free from the smaller contempts, in the hope that it would be readable long after the current misunderstandings have been resolved as they must be sooner or later.

I much regret that the cutting of my overgrown typescript removed the names of many friends to whom I am deeply indebted for material and information on Cyprus; let me briefly make amends by thanking the following for many kindnesses: Peter and Electra Megaw, G. Pol Georghiou, Fuad Sami, Nikos Kranidiotis, Paul Xiutas, and Renos and Mary Wideson.

The poem “Bitter Lemons” first appeared in
Truth
, March 1, 1957.

Chapter One: Towards an
Eastern Landfall

J
OURNEYS, LIKE ARTISTS
, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures—and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.…

These thoughts belong to Venice at dawn, seen from the deck of the ship which is to carry me down through the islands to Cyprus; a Venice wobbling in a thousand fresh-water reflections cool as a jelly. It was as if some great master, stricken by dementia, had burst his whole
color-box against the sky to deafen the inner eye of the world. Cloud and water mixed into each other, dripping with colors, merging, overlapping, liquefying, with steeples and balconies and roofs floating in space, like the fragments of some stained-glass window seen through a dozen veils of rice paper. Fragments of history touched with the colors of wine, tar, ochre, blood, fire-opal and ripening grain. The whole at the same time being rinsed softly back at the edges into a dawn sky as softly as circumspectly blue as a pigeon’s egg.

Mentally I held it all, softly as an abstract painting, cradling it in my thoughts—the whole encampment of cathedrals and palaces, against the sharply-focused face of Stendhal as he sits forever upon a stiff-backed chair at Florian’s sipping wine: or on that of a Corvo, flirting like some huge fruit-bat down these light-bewitched alleys.…

The pigeons swarm the belfries. I can hear their wings across the water like the beating of fans in a great summer ballroom, The
vaporetto
on the Grand Canal beats too, softly as a human pulse, faltering and renewing itself after every hesitation which marks a landing-stage. The glass palaces of the Doges are being pounded in a crystal mortar, strained through a prism. Venice will never be far from me in Cyprus—for the lion of Saint Mark still rides the humid airs of Famagusta, of Kyrenia.

It is an appropriate point of departure for the traveler to the eastern Levant.…

But heavens, it was cold. Down on the grey flagged quay I had noticed a coffee-stall which sold glasses of warm milk and
croissants
. It was immediately opposite the gang-plank, so that I was in no danger of losing my ship. A small dark man with a birdy eye served me wordlessly, yawning in my face, so that in sympathy I was forced to yawn too. I gave him the last of my liras.

There were no seats, but I made myself comfortable on an upended barrel and, breaking my bread into the hot milk, fell into a sleepy contemplation of Venice from this unfamiliar angle of vision across the outer harbor.

A tug sighed and spouted a milky jet upon the nearest cloud. The cabin-steward joined me for a glass of milk; he was an agreeable man, rotund and sleek, with a costly set of dimples round his smile—like expensive cuff-links in a well-laundered shirt. “Beautiful,” he agreed, looking at Venice, “beautiful”: but it was a reluctant admission, for he was from Bologna, and it was hard to let the side down by admiring a foreign city. He plunged into a pipe full of scented shag. “You are going to Cyprus?” he said at last, politely, but with the faintest hint of commiseration.

“Yes. To Cyprus.”

“To work?”

“To work.”

It seemed immodest to add that I was intending to live in Cyprus, to buy a house if possible.… After five years of Serbia I had begun to doubt whether, in wanting to live in the Mediterranean at all, I was not guilty
of some fearful aberration; indeed the whole of this adventure had begun to smell of improbability. I was glad that I was touching wood.

“It is not much of a place,” he said.

“So I believe.”

“Arid and without water. The people drink to excess.”

This sounded rather better. I have always been prepared, where water was scarce, to wash in wine if necessary. “How is the wine?” I asked.

“Heavy and sweet.” This was not so good. A Bolognese is always worth listening to on the subject of wine. No matter. (I should buy a small peasant house and settle in the island for four or five years.) The most arid and waterless of islands would be a rest after the heartless dusty Serbian plains.

“But why not Athens?” he said softly, echoing my own thoughts.

“Money restrictions.”

“Ah! Then you are going to live in Cyprus for some time?”

My secret was out. His manner changed, and his picture of Cyprus changed with it, for politeness does not permit an Italian to decry another’s plans, or run down his native country. Cyprus was to become mine by adoption—therefore he must try to see it through my eyes. At once it became fertile, full of goddesses and mineral springs; ancient castles and monasteries; fruit and grain and verdant grasslands; priests and gypsies and brigands.… He gave it a swift Sicilian
travel-poster varnish, beaming at me approvingly as he did so. “And the girls?” I said at last.

But here he stuck; politeness battled with male pride for a long moment. He would have to tell the truth lest later on, in the field, so to speak, I might convict him—a Bolognese, above all!—of having no standards of female beauty. “Very ugly,” he said at last, in genuine regret. “Very ugly indeed.” This was disheartening. We sat there in silence for a while until the steamer towering above us gave a loud lisp of steam, while beaded bubbles of condensing steam trickled down the siren.

It was time to say good-bye to Europe.

T
ugs brayed as we passed the harbor bar. The mist thinned out and quivered on the hills beyond Venice. With such associations how could I forget Catherine Cornaro, the last Queen of Cyprus, who in twenty years of exile forgot perhaps her uneasy reign over the island, finding in the green arbors of Asolo, surrounded by devoted courtiers, a kindlier way of life? She died aged fifty-six in 1510, and her body was carried across the Grand Canal from the family palace. (“The night was a stormy one, with heavy wind and rain. On her coffin lay the crown of Cyprus—outwardly at least Venice insisted that her daughter was a Queen; but, inside, her body lay shrouded in the habit of Saint Francis, with cord and cowl and coarse
brown cloak”) It is hard in the early morning radiance of this sky and sea to imagine those flapping torches, the scattering waters flushed by lightning, the wind snatching at cloaks and vestments as the long boats set out with their marvelously clad dignitaries. Who remembers Catherine? Titian and Bellini painted her; Bembo wrote a philosophy of love to amuse her courtiers. In the only portrait I have seen the eyes are grave and beautiful, full of an impenitent life of their own; the eyes of a woman who has enjoyed much adulation, who has traveled much and loved much. The eyes of one who was not narrow enough, or self-seeking enough to trespass on the domain of politics without losing at the game. But the eyes of a true woman, not a phantom.

And then my thoughts turned to another sad relic—the flayed and stuffed skin of the great soldier Bragadino which lies moldering somewhere among the recesses of
Giovanni e Paolo
. His defense of Famagusta against the Turkish general Mustafa ranks among the great feats of military leadership in the whole of European history. When at last the pitifully small forces of the besieged were forced to parley they agreed to surrender on condition that they were given a safe passage to Crete. Mustafa broke his word, and no sooner was Bragadino in his power than he unleashed upon his person and that of his captains all the pent-up fury of the religious fanatic. Bragadino s nose and ears were cut off, and his body was flayed; then he was set in a slung seat with a crown at
his feet and hoisted at the yard of a galley, “hung like a stork,” for all to see. Finally he was dragged to the main square and tortured while “the drums beat.” But “his saintly soul bore all with great firmness, patience and faith … and when their steel reached his navel he gave back to his Savior, a truly happy and blessed spirit. His skin was taken, stuffed with straw, and carried round the city: then hung on the yard of a galliot and paraded along the coast of Syria with great rejoicings.”

All this was recorded faithfully by Calepio, detail by detail—but it is difficult to read in cold blood. Venice is fading against the hills.