Member-only story
Carobs, Castles, and Cypriot Seashores
I traveled to my dad’s homeland and found the Greece and Cyprus that tourists miss
PART 1: CYPRUS
If you need help finding Cyprus on a map, look just below Turkey for the island with land jutting out like a pointer finger towards the northeast.
The island has been divided since 1974 into a predominantly Turkish-speaking north and a Greek-speaking south. My dad’s family comes from the latter. He grew up in Polis, a seaside town where I spent summers as a kid.
I remember being woken by roosters. Returning home from the sea with salt and sand on our skin. We’d pass the jasmine bushes that lined my yiaya’s balcony, circling the kitchen table still wrapped in our towels.
Waiting for us were stuffed squash blossoms and dactila my yiaya made with her hands. The same hands that sewed a red sweater for my stuffed monkey when I was five.
At night, we’d wade through the temperate air to the Luna Park to ride the bumper cars. A chatty mechanical parrot laid toy eggs for us whenever we fed it a Cyprus pound.
