You know you’re in a village when you wake to the sound of a rooster crowing. At about the same time as the muezzin’s first call for prayer, which is before sunrise, when the first light can be seen on the horizon. Today in Lapta that would be 5:16. We do go back to sleep - or fail to wake up. Reminds us, though, of the five months we spent in Gazimağusa in 2020, most of it in the old wall city. We were staying not only in another country and another city but in another era. Something we sort of realised but didn’t completely understand at the time, Famagusta (Gazimağusa) is a world heritage site, a walled city of historic buildings and ruins that attracts tourists and daily coach tours, keeping the shops and restaurants busy. The majority of people who work in the city don’t actually live there and at night it empties. When the border closed in March of 2020 all the businesses closed except for grocery stores and pharmacies and only the few who lived there remained. It became a village. We could hear a rooster in the morning as well as the calls to prayer and in our little corner shop we bought eggs that still had feathers adhering to them. The neighbours brought us home baking and shared food from their barbecue. We gave them the customary donation by those not fasting during Ramadan to provide for the poor, especially at the celebrations of Eid al- Fitr. We felt we belonged to the village. We still treasure it and its people. It will never be a village again, but Cyprus does have enduring villages.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS