UNSPOILED CYPRUS
When my driver came to say that a
pretty girl was waiting, the town rose as
one man and followed us. During the
trying moments that ensued I conceived a
deep respect and liking for the twelve
year-old Helene who bravely faced my
camera while the curious crowd of her
fellow-townsmen gazed and jabbered and
laughed.
It was too cruel a test. On the morrow,
I suggested, I might try again.
"To-morrow I have to work on the
Cape Andreas road,"
Helene answered
naively, "but if you want to take my pic
ture, my mother will break rocks in my
place."
Not once did I capture the whole charm
of that gentle little girl whose tasks are
those of men. Her hands were horny with
labor. Her large feet were cased in rude
shoes. Her immature body skimped Mu
rat's description as the cook's had over
flowed it, but Helene won my gratitude
for her help. When you look at her pic
ture, it is a fine spirit that is speaking to
you across the miles (see upper Color
Plate IV and page 26).
As we returned from the church of St.
Andrew the Miracle Worker, dowered
with grotesque ex voto offerings in bees
wax-one of them presented by a man
who then lay, slowly dying, on the floor
there was Helene straddling a pile of
rocks, "making little ones out of big ones"
as industriously as any convict (page 16).
REDISCOVERING BUFFAVENTO CASTLE
One of the highest peaks in the Kyrenia
chain acts as a perch for Buffavento Cas
tle. It isn't much of a castle now, but its
site is marvelous. In 1683 the Dutch
traveler, Van Bruyn, visited it.
"We had
to climb with our hands as well as our
feet, and whichever way we turned our
gaze we saw only what made our hair
stand on end" (see page 23).
Rey, who made an admirable plan of
the ruins, had to climb to them "flat on his
belly."
Kammerer, after three hours from
Kythrea, had arrived only at the Monas
tery of Chrysostomos and left Cyprus
without making the climb to the castle,
more than 3,000 feet above the sea.
When we reached Kythrea, perennial
oasis, the sun was already high. On foot
we retraced a mile of the motor road, tak
ing little consolation in the thought that
the mile would still be there on our return,
but that the motor would not.
After an hour and a half we came to a
village. The muleteer who was riding
gestured, palm down, as an umpire does
when a man is safe. That, in oriental,
means "We're here !" He was bubbling
with delight, his duty done.
High above us, and miles away, there
towered the peak on which I imagined the
castle to be.
"We're here, but Buffavento Castle is
there," I said, my arm lifted toward the
zenith. The plainsman went white. All
his life he had lived at the foot of that
puny range. But climb to the top? He
called the village schoolmaster.
"I speak very well English,"
said the
village Ichabod, but when I inquired about
the castle, he had never heard of such
a thing.
"Castle? What is it, a castle ?"
THE MONASTERY PROVIDES A GUIDE
Full of military architecture and battle
ments and moats and bastions as I was
after days in Famagusta, my lecture left
him blank. He could only point up the
slope toward a white monastery set among
charming orchards and suggest that I in
quire there. Because that brief climb was
beyond the mental terminus of the mule
teer, he made hard work of it.
Being a Cypriote, his worry was not at
being asked to do more than he had bar
gained for. He was not shamming to
swell the travel fund. That upreared
mountain really oppressed him.
The "pappa" at the Monastery of St.
Chrysostomos made things sound simpler.
Out of the welter of Italian, crusted over
with Latin, I sorted out the idea that he
would give me a "homo" to guide me to
the top.
Since the magnitude of our undertaking
still had the muleteer gasping for breath,
I decided to leave him behind with his
mule.
The "homo," a toothless woman, was no
flapper, but her heelless slippers were.
It was too much for my manhood to see
that little woman shoulder my heavy cam
era and start to scale that precipice in
flapping slippers held on by personal mag
netism. I would not stand it. So I called
the muleteer and made him carry the
camera.