I met Hazel on my first trip to Cyprus. Thin as a twig, white-haired, she strode along the promenade in front of my hotel in Pyla, a seaside village on Dhekelia Road. Her beige McGill University cap matched her shorts. Hazel drew my attention by annoyingly outpacing me two to one on her walk. This octogenarian was clearly on her way to shattering a speed record. I had to slow her down.
‘Excuse me, did you attend McGill?’
‘No, a friend gave it to me. My married name was McGill.’
The woman was a delight. An English expat in retirement (it was cheaper and warmer here), still adventuring and loving her life. She was the consummate gossip, but try as I might, I could detect no malice in her. Hazel seemed to know everyone and everything about Cyprus. She spoke of bus drivers who were always late, yet detoured several streets to deliver elderly women safely to the Carrefour; of the taxi driver who felt sorry for a customer and loaned him fifty euros ($75); of the village she now lived in, where the local hotel allowed her use of their pool and gym at no cost. She spoke of local restaurants, ranging from Mexican to East Indian; of flea market operators; of the Russian nouveau riche taking over; the hostility between the Greeks and Turks on this divided island. Once started, Hazel showed no sign of the archetypal British reticence.
‘Hazel, it’s my last day tomorrow, where should I go?’
Without hesitation she replied, ‘Why, Kourion of course. It’s an excavation site of a Roman colony. You take a bus to the church in Limassol, wait an hour for a second one to Kourion.’
Did I really want to spend my last free day commuting to see a dug-up ruin?
It was high noon when I got there. No one dared to be out at that hour of the day… and Hazel forgot to tell me about the hill. A modern road hair-pinned its way up, but I decided to take a short cut. A stony footpath intersected the road straight to the summit. The weather was too hot and dry for grass to grow. I cursed my decision to wear Crocs: they did nothing to cushion the bite of the stones underfoot.
Halfway up the hill, I came upon a wooden gazebo – open and empty. A sheer cliff edged one side, overlooking a strip of beach. I felt like Gulliver gazing down at the Lilliputians, watching a couple of bathers far below, crawling out of the water and under a rainbow-coloured sun umbrella.
According to my pocket compass, I was facing the African coast.
Memories of annual summer holidays spent on the coast of East Africa, reunited with my family, friends and community after studying in England all year, hit me like a body punch. They were all gone. Cousins, aunts and uncles scattered across the world, thrown out by the shriek of African nationalism. In that moment, having absented myself from my mosque and my people for decades, the memory of evenings taking a shower, changing into clean clothes, walking hand-in-hand with my father along the palm-fringed harbour before entering our mosque, brought tears to my eyes. The large marble hallway, its filigreed, glassless windows wide open to let in the cooling ocean breeze. A girl singing ginans (gentle hymns of praise). A sense of peace never rediscovered.
Could I really see Africa?
I convinced myself I could. At that instant, the memory of my mosque, the lissom girl rendering her ginan in lilting phrases, the unknowing peace it had brought me, came to my rescue. It descended upon me, cocooning me from the day’s heat and glare.
