A strawberry smoothie is being sucked up a plastic straw in a cafe, beads of sweat are still appearing on my forehead, yet it is already well into October. The same sun that beats down upon Pafos's car filled streets and the un-shaded van (where my deodorant stick is melting), is the same sun that beat down upon women making their way to Aphrodite's temple to have sex with strangers thousands of years ago in these parts. Which was part of an island wide convention of that ancient time.
In the distance many white hotels are gazing longingly at the sea, seeming to be waiting for something; a tidal wave? One that starts in the deep places of the collective mind and washes away things like:
The arrogance that supposes women are merely facilitators of orgasm, that land and sea cannot give consent, and the ignorance that supposes the sun we bathe in is not a part of our own self.
Back in Nicosia Eμπρός is being performed by the usual orchestra of drills, chain-saws, power-saws, lawnmowers, car horns, hammers, hedge-trimmers, parrots, birds, έλαs, όχιs and crying babies. There is a page of rest parked up by the Archbishop's Palace, interrupted by a single mosquito buzz in the dead of the night, then the infuriated crash of cymbals in my mind.
In the morning I'm woken by a bell ringing in through the van window from the Pancyprian Gymnasium. I sleepily emerge onto the street, scowled at by an early-morning dog walker, and head to La Croissanterie.
The cafe over looks two Golden Oak trees whose arms reach to either side of the square, below them a crowd of pigeons are milling about, bobbing their heads, pecking at fragments of food. A lone cyclist flies through their midst, setting off a blur of flapping wings as they flock to the branches above.
As the hours pass the square fills; benches get peopled, no more space for the pigeons, who permanently retreat on high, watching the waves of people, like the white hotels watching the horizon. They are waiting too, for the tidal wave.
