Milestone 21: Cyprus — Near Pyla, Cyprus

The iron ship docks with a clang. There are beaches slathered with baking Russians, baking Brits. Then a port city. Then a checkerboard of olive groves, of yellow hay fields. Empty chalk roads that burn out the eyeballs. Boarded up villas. (The global banking crisis hit hard.) Marooned villages. Old Byzantine churches. The racket of cicadas only ratchets up the heat. Carob trees throw lead-colored shadows. Up in the dry hills above Pyla, an Indian tractor driver points the way north to the Turkish enclave. Sitar music twangs from his ear-buds. Another new arrival. He turns soil that has been plowed for 9,000 years yet still gives. It has always been this way in Cyprus.