It’s our last evening on the island and as we pack for tomorrow’s early start we are sorely tempted to wedge the citrus fruit we picked this afternoon in the nooks and crannies of our suitcases. The scent of the three types of oranges (Jaffa, Blood & Merlin), mandarins, pink grapefruits, pomelos and lemons from Lena’s family’s orchard is intoxicating and there could be no better, bittersweet souvenir of a month of warmth.
It’s ironic that it has taken us until the very last day of our stay, when we spent the afternoon with Lena’s family that we would finally get to experience the magic of rural life here. We now completely understand what drew Lena’s parents back to the place they reluctantly left at the age of sixteen in 1960, to make their lives in England. Long simmering tensions between the ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities in their village (and island-wide) had become violent clashes. A legacy that is still visible today in the many buildings pockmarked with bullet holes and in the dialect which is spoken here- a mixture of Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish, which apparently is quite distinct from the languages spoken on either mainland.
Warmly welcomed by Lena’s parents Erene and Rotis and her brother Miltos, to the house where Erene grew up, we have our first experience of a Cypriot home cooked meal. We begin with freshly squeezed orange juice and tiny green olives ‘tsakistes’ sprinkled with coriander seeds and lemon juice, then feast on Keoftedes, barbecued chicken and black-eyed peas and bitter greens drizzled with just harvested and pressed green olive oil from their grove, which is dramatically situated high on an escarpment above the village with views of the sea in the far distance. One day, Lena plans to build a house on this land and I can think of nowhere we’ve visited in the Eastern Mediterranean which has a more beautiful prospect.
As Rotis shows us around in his old Toyota pickup truck we are struck by his huge pride in the land and culture and the spirit of friendship in this village where every one we encounter seems to be either an extended family member or close friend. Every day here is lived to the full, in harmony with the rhythms of the land, but in the knowledge too of the fragility of it all as talks to reunify the island ebb and flow, but get no closer to resolution, nearly 50 years after the partition.
Erene’s Keoftedes: Serves Four to Six
After a month of (admittedly spectacular) fish and seafood, these meatballs and the bitter greens and black-eyed peas enjoyed at a long table in a shady vine covered backyard pergola on a warm January afternoon, will be the meal I will most remember from our time here.
500 gms pork or chicken mince
2 medium onions, finely chopped
3 large potatoes for grating
1/4 of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a pinch of cloves
A couple of sprigs of fresh mint and a small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp EV olive oil
1 egg
Olive oil for frying
Salt and black pepper to taste
One or two lemons
Place the mince and chopped onion in a large bowl. Grate the potatoes into a smaller bowl using a medium sized grater, then taking handfuls of the grated potatoes, squeeze them tightly until they run dry. Add each dried handful of potatoes to the mince and chopped onion as you go. When done, pour the potato juices away but reserve the starch at the bottom and add this to the mixture too. Add the remaining ingredients to the mixture and mix thoroughly.
Shape the mince mixture into palm-sized ovals and pan fry them in batches.
Serve them with a squeeze of lemon juice.
While today in Agios Theodoros it finally felt like we’d found the island’s rural heart, looking back over the last few weeks we’ve certainly enjoyed searching for it.
In Zygi, a small fishing village east of Limassol on the south coast we drank frappés on a restaurant terrace next to a traditional bread oven, then enjoyed a magnificent (and hugely generous) Fish Meze in the sunshine overlooking the village’s fishing fleet at ‘The Captain’s Table’ which consisted of taramasalata, tahini, tirokateri cheese, pickled squid and olives as a cold starter, followed by deep fried and grilled prawns and mussels, grilled calamari, sardines, ling and whiting. Already more than full to the brim at this point, we were about to ask for the bill when yet another course arrived of grilled sea bream & octopus and a seafood soufflé, served in a clam shell!
Here, as in so much of the island, we were surrounded by bevies of Russians young and old, who have taken shelter here either from the regime or the taxman and as we discovered they are just as likely to be waiting tables and manning store counters as they are to be splashing the cash.
Away from the coast, distances in kilometres have little meaning on steep hairpin studded byways and we got ourselves into a lot of trouble trying to visit the tiny hamlet of Fikardou in the Troodos mountains, with its wooden balconied Ottoman period houses, as it began to drizzle and dense fog descended. Driven on by sheer bloody minded determination to reach our destination before nightfall, we took it as a good omen when a monk from the nearby monastery of Maheras suddenly appeared by the roadside in the murk. Having reached the village in pouring rain and near total darkness, there was nothing to do but turn the car round. The nightmarish two and a half hour crawl back to Larnaca where we were staying, in almost zero visibility on narrow roads with no guard rails, is a journey we felt lucky to have survived.
The countryside in the western part of the island is gentler and more verdant- an emerald green land of coastal banana groves that in parts resembles Hawaii, while its vine covered countryside is dotted with pine forests. The island’s wines are a wonderful surprise (to us at least) and our tasting at Vouni Panayia Winery was a revelation- five exceptional vintages, two white, two red and a rosé harvested from pre-phylloxxera root stock (Cyprus escaped the late 19th century blight which ravaged continental Europe’s vines), using indigenous grape varieties such as Xynesteri and Maratheftiko.
Just up the hill from here is the austere 12th century monastery of Chryssorogiatissa where we’d been hoping to eat lunch but not a soul was about apart from a solitary old lady, who admired the expansive view across the valley with us.
The village of Panayia itself was similarly shuttered and with lunchtime hunger pangs mounting we passed through village after village before finally finding the unusually named ‘Spring of life forever’ taverna in Amargeti. Leaving a large party of ‘ancient Britons’ to colonise the sunny terrace (there is a huge community in and around Paphos), we ducked inside and got chatting to a couple from Lyon, while the husband, wife and son who run the place served us delicious Goat Kleftiko and flame grilled lamb chops and vegetables.
Goats are indeed everywhere, seemingly roaming free and on our way back from tasting olives and olive oil in the lovely village of Anogyra a few days later, we spent fifteen minutes in their company as they surrounded our car while enjoying the roadside vegetation.
Greek Cypriot cities are admirably multicultural and this goes way beyond the aforementioned British and Eastern European communities. Indeed, (again to our surprise) according to the UNHCR, the Republic of Cyprus is the leading asylum receiving country per capita in the EU. We saw this in the larger villages we visited too, such as Omodos in the Western Troodos mountains, where apart from the now familiar sight of Russians in retail (two very jolly young women were running operations at ‘George’s Bakery’), we encountered Bangladeshi waiters in the restaurant where we ate lunch in the pretty cobbled main square.
One can only hope that the warm welcome that Greek Cypriots are giving to the world will count for something in the long road to reunification. Rotis told us the story of when the border was first re-opened twenty years ago and of the emotional reunions in their village with the many former Turkish Cypriot residents who flooded into Agios Theodoros for the day, to find their still empty homes and drink coffee with their erstwhile Greek Cypriot neighbours.
Apparently this happens every day in Pyla, the only village in the South where Greek and Turkish Cypriots still live side by side. Sadly, it is located in the UN controlled Buffer Zone, so we were unable to visit, but its very existence is a heartening sign.
I have so been looking forward to reading about where you explored on this, our beloved island! Of-course your eloquent detail hasn’t disappointed. You capture your experiences so well, and I am so happy you enjoyed my parent’s village and their hospitality. So privileged to have made some fond memories with you and Sabrina.
Bucolic, hair-raising, familial; neighbor nations, politics, history, migration ... there are so many stories being told here, and you tell it all, beautifully.