August is the cruellest month in the eastern Mediterranean, for it is in August that we are afflicted with seven summer plagues.
The first is the sun plague. The sun rises early and bakes the back wall of the house, turning it into an inferno by mid-morning. It bores into your skull and lays its fiery fingers on your skin whenever you chance out of the shade.
All moisture is sucked up and the land is parched. The sun is in command until well past eight at night and even in the waning moments, its rays are sharp and stinging.
The sun builds heat - the second plague. Heat takes hold early in the day and slowly but surely roasts the landscape and everything within it. Concrete and macadam cities make perfect open-plan ovens. Inside buildings, each piece of furniture, every implement is warm to the touch.
Air-conditioners must work overtime to cool rooms along with their entire contents as well as their suffering occupants. Electricity bills soar.
Throughout the eastern Mediterranean, summer is plagued by the third - water-rationing. Here in Cyprus we receive water three days a week for only seven or eight hours a day. Bacteria festering in empty pipes during the periods of no water render supply unsafe to drink.
Most people lug home great plastic containers or litre-bottle six-packs of mountain spring water for drinking, risking slipped disks and strained shoulders.
Running water from the taps is stored in used bottles for washing vegetables, fruits and dishes. Water collected in roof-top tanks is used for bathing and house cleaning. This water flows hot and murky through taps and showers, scalding those who use it before dark. Hosepipes cannot be used to water gardens or wash cars so householders manage with backbreaking slopping buckets of the rare fluid.
The fourth plague is dust. Since we have no rain from May til October, dust - dry, fine dust - is everywhere and gets into everything. It rises from the street whenever a car or motorbike passes, it is lifted by the slightest eddy of wind and is transformed into a cloud of choking grit.
It insinuates itself into every crack and crevasse, stiffens curtains and coats and every item of furniture in the house and office. No matter how often you clean, dust dominates, stuffing up your nose and irritating your eyes and throat.
With the heat comes the fifth plague, insects. From early morning till dusk the cicadas zing-zing from the trees round the house, scraping their filament wings together in a dissonant song. Then come the ants, tiny black ants which trail in single file up and down kitchen walls searching for a speck of food or a grain of sugar. They bore through cellophane packaging and eat away at the edges of biscuits, bury themselves in flour and pierce fruit not confined to the refrigerator.
Worse still are the microscopic ants which invade computers, infest phones and faxes, anything electronic, and retaliate against interfering humans by inflicting brutal bites in soft, sensitive places. Moths, midges, mosquitoes and gnats scarcely signify when compared with the constant racket of thousands of cicadas and the intrusive invasions of millions of ants.
Tourists are the sixth plague. They cram hotels, shower away scarce water, cover beaches and clog airports, disrupting normally respectable airline schedules. The picturesque coastal towns of Paphos, Ayia Napa and Paralimni have all been wrecked by high-rise hotels and low-grade nightclubs catering to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who outnumber the natives during August.
While most tourists conduct themselves reasonably, some behave badly. They crash cars, engage in drunken brawls, commit robbery and rape. They make false claims of theft and loss to insurance companies, overworking the courts and, when prosecuted for their misdeeds, they set up a howl of complaint.
The seventh plague is the annual August shutdown which has been extended from two to three weeks. From the end of the first week of the month 'til the last weekend, plumbers, electricians, car mechanics, pharmacists, air-conditioning technicians, petrol station attendants, newspaper vendors, doctors, lawyers and dentists disappear.
Many go abroad for their holidays because Cypriot hotels are fully booked by foreigners. Woe to anyone whose car breaks down, pipe bursts or electricity fails. He or she must consult the yellow pages in the hope of finding someone on the job or trawl shuttered shops along empty streets in search of assistance.
Those of us who have not fled the island dream of September when the sun fades, the heat abates, the water runs cool, the dust settles, the insects disappear along with the bulk of the tourists and the country gets back to work.
