In 1985 a friend in England had suggested I rent Lawrence Durrell's villa in Bellapais in Northern Cyprus.
My friend was a writer, and he had said, "There are places that can inspire a man, and having read Lawrence Durrell's
Alexandria Quartet
, I am sure that his villa on Cyprus will be full of inspiration. And I have heard it's available to rent. Go there, Simon. For me."
I could hardly refuse him, as I knew he himself was longing to take Durrell's villa. But he was tied to cold damp London by a sick wife, three small children, and a demanding job with
The Times Literary Supplement
.
I had followed through on the villa, because I had always had a soft spot for my literary friend. And I'd had the villa for only a month when I wrote to him, saying that, yes, it was full of inspiration, though perhaps not the inspiration he imagined. There was no literary inspiration there for me, but there was an immense amount of sexual discovery. And I said sincerely that I wished he were there to share it with me. And for six months I was ecstatically inspired by it but was forced to leave. And my time in Turkey was also up soon after and I returned to England.
Then, five years ago I had finally come back to Northern Cyprus. I was semiretired, and was now idling my days away in my apartment in the old part of Kyrenia, when I wasn't working hard, lecturing on the Middle East at Oxford. I had always longed to return to Durrell's villa, but it had never been vacant when I enquired, until recently, when I had asked about it on a whim.
With his sick wife long gone, and his children at university, my literary friend would shortly be coming to visit for a fortnight with his lover, and the villa was my gift to them.
The plane had got me to the Ercan airport on time and I collected my car and drove straight to Kyrenia, glad that I was home and immediately I took the old familiar walk along the jetty wall, around the harbourside and nearly to the walls of Kyrenia castle. The cafés across the road were already starting to fill up as I wandered lazily by, savouring my return, and occasionally I saw a familiar face among the patrons and nodded slightly to them.
The old town was the same, but slightly different, because even in the two months I had been lecturing at Oxford, it had subtly changed. It lay nestled by the harbour as it had for centuries, but it now sat against a constantly expanding backdrop of modern holiday flats climbing the mountainside behind. And there were more pale European faces in the early summer crowd.
From the balcony of the British Club cafe, a familiar voice called out to me, and I crossed the busy road and climbed the stairs to join Mustafa and be embraced by him. He had aged into a solid bull of a man, all heavy shoulders and thick neck and belly, the beautiful solid man of twenty-two I had once known lost beneath the intervening years of contentment and good living. But as the body had grown, so had the humour and friendship, and we embraced with affection.
And as we embraced, I smelt the familiar warm scent of him and closed my eyes and was taken back to when we had first known each other twenty years before. When I had come to the island and my rented villa alone, escaping from the crowded city whenever I could. But not spending my time there alone.
Ahh, the days of drifting down to the square after lunch and sitting around ogling the local Turkish Cypriot men and letting them ogle me. Until I got that certain look from one I fancied and took him up to my small rented Bellapais villa, once the writing retreat of the British writer Lawrence Durrell, and let him vigorously and noisily fuck my brains out on a lounger under the sun on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.
Or down to the square in the twilight after dinner, with those fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the café's stone terrace. And, in that soft light hearing the twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and watching the wisps of strong Turkish tobacco smoke drifting up, as I was eyeing and being eyed. Until I got that certain look and took him back up to the villa and let him fuck me in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.
And maybe, if he was really, really beautiful and masterful, taking him back to my bed for a night of sleep broken up with brief periods of wanton lust, waking to the feel of a hot poker at my hole and a wheedling whisper for permission at my ear. Sighing "Yes," and arching back to accept the homage of his throbbing need to be deep inside me. Breakfasting on the terrace by the small pool. Then pulling him into the pool and wrapping my legs around his waist and letting the swirling water soften the rhythmic in and outing as I threw my head back and watched the morning Mediterranean light filter through the sighing branches of the olive trees. Thinking then about my after-lunch visit to the café on the square, already assessing which eyes I would respond to that day.
Ahhh, idyllic days. Days of youth. No, I hadn't been that young. I had been a thirty-five-year-old man working in Turkey and needing to escape.
"You look good," Mustafa said, holding me at arm's length, smiling and nodding. "And the villa. It is yours for two weeks?" he asked.
"Yes, for my friends," I replied, smiling foolishly.
"Ahh. I don't understand why you want to rent that old place, when you could have had a big new flat, or a house like mine. My brother has built many good villas, he has many for sale," he added enthusiastically.
"All you think of is new," I replied sharply, wishing that more of the old island remained, the ancient ochre stone walls, the old houses with their hidden lush courtyard gardens and cool dim whitewashed interiors, the inconvenient but shaded winding lanes.
"OK. OK. You foreigners," he said with a smile, not understanding what outsiders might see in his island's past, "I'll see you later. Tomorrow," he added, leaving me.
But then he turned back and his face was sad. "You probably don't even remember him now. Kamil. Do you remember Kamil? The musician? He died in a car accident last week," Mustafa said. "So much trouble for you both. So long ago," he added, shaking his head sadly, before moving off to answer a call from an English customer inside.
They were everywhere now the English retirees, and I watched him hurry back into the dull cool interior of the old-style café.
I had no idea who he was talking about for a moment, as he disappeared inside and left me there. But my mind spun and the name Kamil clicked into place, and I stood, stunned, as the past washed over me.
Oh God, Kamil, how could I have forgotten him. I had come down to the square in Bellapais after lunch, or in the evenings, and wandered into Sami's familiar old-fashioned café, always full of a variety of Turkish Cypriot men. And I would sit up on one of the stools by the counter, waiting to be ogled, to be eyed off, and then later to be possessed by the man of my choosing.
I had seen it as no more than part of escaping from my demanding work and obligations in the city, an escape into an indulgent place of timeless pleasure. But then one day I had been possessed in a way I had never imagined.
Yes. One day I had walked down the winding cobbled lane to the square without realising that I was taking the walk that marked the end of my island days as clearly as anything ever could. The café was busy, and Sami's son, Mustafa, the handsome, smiling twenty-two-year-old honey skinned, god like youth, who had eyed me off himself more than once, had to clear someone from a stool so I had somewhere to sit that day. And I looked about in mild surprise at the crowd, but with no real curiosity. There were even more good-looking young men there that day than usual, and it was that I had come there for. I had felt the heat in me rise and I was happy.
At first I hardly even noticed that quite a few of the younger men were clustered in a laughing, murmuring group to one side, arms linked about each others' shoulders and their bodies moving with the talk.
But then several turned to look at me and I smiled back, realising I must have become the topic of conversation. Then most in the group were turning to look at me with looks of lust, curiosity, a few even of dislike, before the bodies moved aside so that those sitting at the table in the shadows behind them could see me too. There was much quiet laughter and whispering, and I felt the thrill of knowing that they were admiring me, and sure that two of them, who I remembered taking home at different times, were showing by their smiling looks and whispers how good it had been.
A couple gave me that certain look and I returned it, but there was some more talk and one of the men seated at the table in the shadows stood up, and the group was making a humming noise and the looks had turned to different ones. Not unpleasant, not lustful, different. They were the looks of men on the eve of the big game who know their football team is certain to win.
The man at the table stepped through them, and I saw him clearly for the first time. He was giving me a look, but it was not the usual one. He was young and slim and proud, but his look was almost a shy one, his huge dark eyes giving an impression of something serious yet timeless. At odds with the murmurings of the group around him and with his own posture.
I heard someone suck in a breath behind me, and knew it was Mustafa. I had no idea who the young man coming towards me was, but he obviously mattered on the island, so I made an effort to look friendly and harmless.
He stepped up to me and said, "We go," his huge dark eyes holding mine briefly, and the look was one of me being politely ordered, and I sensed I had no choice whatever I wanted.
Fortunately, he was good looking in his own brooding way, and I mentally shrugged and stood up and smiled to his friends as I left the café, with my companion leading the way. I heard laughter and shouts behind us; very different to the normal casual way I left.
