Padel for Beginners
Readers will know that I have been bitten by the bug, and blazing hot weather is no deterrent to me if there's a game of padel in the offing.
Debbie also has the addiction, although a milder form. We've played together several times. However, Wednesday was going to be great fun - for the second time only, we had persuaded our other halves to join us for a gentle knockabout.
So it was, that at 7pm on Wednesday, we were drying ourselves off after a game at Aphrodite Hills, looking up at the smoke. Two fires were burning, one here in the Paphos district, and another in neighbouring Limassol, where we all live. Debbie and Allan live in the same village as us, all be it on the opposite side. Wildfires happen every year. Mostly in the interior, and mostly higher up, altitude-wise. Mrs L's phone was telling her the power was down. Collectively, we decided to skip a drink and get home.
Escape
Quietly, I began gathering key documents, bits and pieces. I put some dog beds and their food into the car. Just in case. With no power, there was nothing to do but sit on the terrace and try to keep cool. Night was falling, and the air was thick. Laden with smoke and ash that prickled at our eyes. The fire had turned the sky to our north-east, orange. The blaze, always to our north and initially to our west, had spread eastwards. To my eye, the glow wasn't as far to the north as I would have preferred. Traffic west through our sleepy part of the village was heavier than usual. Mrs L suggested we head to Allan and Debbie's air conditioning which was still working. Given that they live east of us, I wasn't overly keen, but my finely tuned marital receiver had picked up that I had been given an instruction rather than been posed a question.
We shut up shop, loaded the dogs and set off. The car climbed the hill to the Mukhtar's office and community coffee shop. From there, on a clear day one can see all the way to Troodos at the top of the mountain. I slowed to a crawl.
The skyline reminded me of Manhattan, but with pillars of flame rather than skyscrapers. The fire was north and east of us and getting closer. I crossed the mountain road towards Allan and Debbie's half of the village while Mrs L tried to get them on the phone. We sent texts and Whats Apps telling them it was bug out time. Communications were down. Mrs L ran to their door and explained. They told her they'd be right behind us. Every road south to the coast was choked. Nose to tail. I understood why people had cut through past our house; in order to reach an alternate route to the coast. Mrs L tried to keep up with news feeds and social media groups as I concentrated on keeping calm and not rear-ending the car in front of me. We crawled down the hill. Slow, but moving. Firetrucks, fire cars and police cars streamed past us heading up.
We were at the final bottleneck, when the car in front of me drove into the twin cab it was following. As is the norm in Cyprus, all vehicles stop, and everyone gets out to wave their arms at each other. It's a sort of national sport. In the old days, one was legally obliged to do this and await law enforcement, who would come along, wave their arms around a bit and declare whomsoever was least connected as being at fault. Nowadays, this role has been delegated to insurance representatives. I feel the lack of uniform has detracted a bit from the drama, but then I'm old-fashioned like that.
I took a deep breath. I was going to explain, in the most diplomatic terms possible, that people were trying to escape a wildfire and it might be best if these gentlemen took their arm-waving to a different, less-obstructive venue. However, my hairdresser (no really, it's a small island) appeared from a couple of cars behind and managed to explain, rather less diplomatically, I fear, where these two gentle-fellows might find their heads if they didn't move on immediately. Whatever he said, it did the trick and we passed the slipways to the motorway, where most people were heading. The traffic dissolved, and we headed to our meeting point, the Three Keys Bar.
Sanctuary
Allan and Debbie arrived shortly afterwards.
"Just after you'd knocked, a fireman did the same and told us we had ten minutes before the fire was with us. Focuses the mind, that."
The throng of escapees grew and began to swap stories. Debs and Allan had their dog Sandy with them, and we had Spice and Charlie. We all resolved to sleep in the cars and try to get back to the houses in the morning. Finding dog-friendly hotels would have been challenging, and besides, it was already ten thirty. Once this was agreed, I felt safe in having an ice-cold beer.
Mick and Jan live not too far from Allan and and Debbie. They had left their house with flames at the door. Jan was certain her home was gone. Everyone tried to make positive noises, but she was voicing all our fears. David, a senior chap, was relentlessly chipper as he explained how pleased he was that his wife was safe in hospital in the city. She was finishing a session of intense chemotherapy.
Over the next couple of hours, bits and pieces of news came in, and everyone sat, praying that the fire would skip past our homes. One person from the village shared on social media that her neighbour had told her that their two houses had been consumed. Horrible.
Sleep
Replete with a few beers and a slice or two of pizza, I was ready for bed. Spice and Charlie, being dogs, had adapted to the new reality of living in a BMW and seemed to rather enjoy it. I took them for a last constitutional before settling in to close my eyes in the driver's seat. I have a much envied ability to sleep. I'm like Martini. Any time, any place, any where. Of course, I'd much rather still have a house in the morning, but whether I do or not is beyond my control, so I may as well face that reality after a good night's sleep.
Mrs L does not have this ability. In fact, quite the opposite. As I closed my eyes, she doom-scrolled. An ability, some might say, compulsion, that Mrs L does have is sharing. She's a warm, generous soul who enjoys sharing every snippet of information or emotion she has.
Sweet, but not necessarily conducive to a good night's sleep, either for her, or me. She even tapped on Debbie's window to ask whether she was asleep. Anxieties were running high.
Thursday
Refreshed from two or three minutes sleep, I watched the sun rise. We made for the mountain road where the police turned us back. All four of us (and three dogs) headed to a bakery where we knew we could get a coffee and settled on a plan to get some breakfast at a beach bar. We were hoping to persuade them to allow the dogs in, and to permit us to charge our devices. Not only did they allow the dogs, they brought them water and offered us drinks on the house, in recognition of the night we'd had.
Fortified by breakfast and touched by kindness we decided to head up the back route to the village, each to our own house.
We climbed from the motorway and Sotira, a neighbouring village was untouched. Encouraging. Then, the landscape morphed into a film set.
Nuclear winter. Colour had burned out of the land. Everything was white, gray and black. Skeletal tress stood, twisted and charred. The approach to Souni-Zanadja was sombre. The first houses we saw were intact. Even where scrub had burned, the fire seem to have stopped short of residences.
As we rounded the corner, our house came into view. It was there. I forced myself to concentrate on driving and took the car up the lane beside our plot to the side gate. To the left was our garden wall and to the right was scorched earth. The lot was an empty one, and the fire had consumed the trees.
Our gate was open. Mrs L spotted it first, one side of the house was blackened. Our kitchen terrace, only recently finished, had burned. Gingerly, I climbed the newly tiled steps, observing the boot prints in the soot and ash. The side of the terrace adjacent to the vineyard next door was like something out of Stranger Things. The TV had been barbecued, the blinds incinerated. Someone had pushed the furniture against the kitchen. Away from the fire. Someone had been on the terrace, fighting the fire. Someone had saved our house.
We lost some fencing at the corners of the plot. The fire had tried to come in, but was thwarted either by human intervention or simple fate. There's a row of six tall conifers along the back of the garden. One was burned. One. Barely a couple of feet from its neighbours either side, which were completely untouched. The worst damage was that which we saw first. The vineyard had caught alight, and flames had leapt from its burning trees to our fence and terrace.
What relief.
I messaged Debs and Allan - and immediately realised that the masts were probably down. We drove to their house. They'd left already, but it was obvious that their house still stood, apparently unharmed.
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