This can’t be real life. I woke up to a tea tray beside my bed and lazily brewed a cup of PG Tips, with two squares of sugar unfolded from their paper wrapper. Now, I am myself folded, sweaty knees held tightly together, on a cushioned chair in the sun. Inside, two cleaning ladies jabber away, their voices not unlike the clicking birds in nearby trees. A beetle overturns itself on the pale terrace tiles. For a moment, I watch its legs wiggle like frantic reeds in wind. But then my conscience kicks in and I cannot witness its transparent panic. I offer it the tip of my pen, to which it clings like a barnacle and then will not be shaken off. I grow weary and slightly disgusted by its brittle brown body. I go from mildly interested to merciful to downright annoyed in just a handful of seconds.
When Tess wakes up, we have a breakfast feast of fresh fruit, cereal, strong coffee, and delicious Cypriot bread. I am asleep and surely dreaming. There is no anchor, no chain, no stone; here, we float, divested of earthly realities. I’ve quickly realized the folly of packing make-up and am thrilled by the prospect of a bare, clean face. My London body is less than stellar—made ample and plump by months of bread and beer—but we are secluded on this dry hill. The landscape is forgiving. My bare feet quickly become coated in a fine tan dust. Not the black grime of London that finds me in the basements of nightclubs but the terra cotta residue of untouched earth.
The smell of sunscreen and the candy-bright hue of the pool remind me of summers at the Sand Springs pool, back in Williamstown. Eating grilled cheeses and ice cream sandwiches, towels falling off our bony shoulders. Everything grassy and wet. Making whirlpools in the hot tub when the adults went away—all of us kids running through the water at slow speed, surging forward and then letting go, propelled by our own coordinated force. And then there’s another memory: as my skin rapidly darkens under the Mediterranean sun, I think of Maine, when Dad would call me his little brown berry. My body was never lovelier, never more buttery bronze, than during those summers on the lake.
Some Cypriot observations:
- This evening, we drove to a grocery store in the village center of Peyia (alternatively spelled Pegeia). The streets were narrow and steeply angled upward, just as I’d imagined small Greek towns would be. An ancient woman in a headscarf disappeared up a slanted path, back stooped and arms hooked around shopping bags. It was an exotic evening scene, until we entered the grocery store. Inside, browsing supplies of Cypriot wines and buckets of green olives, were freckled Western Europeans: Brits and Swedes and Germans. Wholesome white families filling baskets with halloumi cheese and large, juicy pomegranates. As two American girls, we were hardly foreign. No one gave us so much as a cursory glance. How strange, not to be strange in a faraway place.
- Herds of goats on the hill. Ladders are place against carob trees so that they may climb up and enjoy the skinny, green, tubular fruits, and the stellar views.
- Many of the television channels play American shows and movies. This is unsurprising. What shocks us is the extreme censorship: on an Arab station, every mild kissing scene in the Mel Gibson film “What Women Want” fades to black right before the actors’ lips meet.
- What a strong sun! I must now bite my tongue and revoke bragging rights about how I only ever tan and never burn. My body is an unattractive pink-red all over—the color of uncooked tuna. Both shins, having acted as sun-magnets as they dangled in the water, are striped and throbbing. Tomorrow, I won’t be so stingy with the sunscreen.
