The Pillars of Hercules

Limassol was as unlike a town in Turkish Cyprus as it was possible to be, and yet if anything it seemed more hollow and dreary. It was, I suppose, the cheesy fun-fair atmosphere that tourism had forced upon it, and the weird jauntiness, the forced high spirits and fake geniality that can make a visitor lonely to the point of depression. Spillman had told me he was going fruit shopping at his favorite market and then straight back to the ship. There was nothing else to buy, only horrendous souvenirs, unpainted plaster statues, mostly nude women, but also animals, busts of anonymous Greeks; paperweights made of varnished stones, copper saltcellars, toy windmills, dishcloths depicting Cypriot costumes and maps, dolls in traditional dress, doilies, tablecloths, egg timers, letter openers, ashtrays labeled Limassol, and every souvenir plate imaginable. There were many images, in plaster, on dishes, modeled in plastic, of the goddess Aphrodite. Legend had it that Aphrodite had risen from the waves off the west coast of Cyprus. The Golden Bough: “The sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos was one of the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world.” The images on sale depicted a sulky and misshapen Barbie doll rather than the goddess of love.

The day before yesterday’s Mirror, the Sun, the Daily Mail and other British papers were available. Bus tours were advertised to various parts of the island. Signs said “Traditional English Pub,” and “Full English Breakfast,” “Fish and Chips,” and “Afternoon Tea.” There were bleak hotels on the promenade and some derelict mosques on the backstreets. There was something old-fashioned and fifties-ish about Limassol, as though like the newspapers the town too had an air of the day before yesterday.

The Greek Cypriots I spoke to were friendly and forthcoming, and as angry with the Turks as the Turks I had met on the north side of the island had been with them. Each side expressed its anger in the same words.

“I have a lot of property in the north, but I have no idea what happened to it,” a Greek woman told me. I had heard something similar from a Turkish woman, her exact counterpart, in the north, on a street in Lefkosa, who had fled from Limassol.

And there was Mrs. Evzonas. Twenty years ago, in Famagusta (now Gazimagosa), she said to her husband, “Let’s get out of here.” There were Turkish planes flying overhead, and Turkish ships in the harbor. They took a two-hour drive to Limassol and hunkered down. “We’ll go back when it’s safer.”

She told me, “We thought it would end soon. How did we know that it would last this long?”

In two decades the Evzonases had not been back, nor had any of their friends. But this is a legitimate republic, recognized by other countries. I made phone calls to the United States from the public phone booths. And because of the brisk tourist trade it was possible to make a living here in a way that in Turkish Northern Cyprus was out of the question.

“I would like to go back, but how can I?” Mrs. Evzonas said. “With my passport it is impossible.” She shrugged. “We are stuck here.”

“This was once a small town,” a man named Giorgio said to me in Limassol. “In 1974 it was nothing. But so many refugees made businesses, so it began to get bigger.”

I told him I had been to the town he knew as Famagusta.

“They say it is a ghost town,” he said.

He wanted me to agree, and he was right of course, but how could I tell him that in its ghostly way the town was more weirdly attractive than this?

The Sea Harmony was not leaving until late that night. The driving rain had discouraged me from leaving town, and so I hung around, and when the rain slowed to a thin drizzle I walked east along the coast, working up an appetite, and then returned and had a traditional English beer in a traditional English pub and met Mr. Reg MacNicol from North London who was on a two-week holiday (“We come for the weather”) and when I asked too many questions he exploded and his florid face grew redder and he said, “You Yanks give me the pip! Life’s a compromise! Utopia doesn’t exist!”

I took a bus back to the ship, where the Slovakians were kneeling in the midst of another solemn mass in the lounge bar.

“I bought these for you,” Spillman said, handing me some Cyprus tangerines.

A woman nearby said, “I know you. I saw them interrogating you in Haifa. They took you away.”

“You’re very observant,” I said.

“I was afraid for you,” she said. “Hi. I’m Melva. From Australia. I’ve lived a really cloistered life. All this is new to me.”