Life With Power Cuts

We are extremely fortunate: for whatever reason – and I've heard several ranging from our proximity to the airport to our being 'on the same loop' as the wind turbines, to our community's being too small – we have suffered no power cuts. The lights went out briefly on the day of the explosion and again for half an hour the following Thursday, but other than that we have had constant power, unlike most other residents of Cyprus. Best Beloved is fortunate, too. His home/office lies between the American and Russian and close to the Egyptian embassy, and he has not had any cuts, either.

But most of the rest of Cyprus is without power for at least one (and sometimes two or three) two-hour periods every day. And in the current temperatures and humidity levels, that can be terribly uncomfortable – or merely inconvenient... depending on how you live.

When I was first here, in 1990, many more of the houses were old – with massive walls and relatively little glass. Lots of the small businesses relied on balance scales, and May saw the start of 'summer hours' that lasted until October. Shops and offices opened seven 'til one every day, and again from four p.m. until seven. People worked around their environment, and yes, the summer heat and humidity could be taxing, and the pace of life was slow.

Modernisation brought architecture that paid no heed to local conditions: concrete and glass structures that became greenhouses the moment the sun hit at eight in the morning until well after dark, it brought a dependence on electronic stock control and cash machines, and it brought no standardisation of hours. Businesses opened when they wanted, worked through 'siesta time' and closed at five or six thanks to the miracle of air-conditioning. And home computers and limitless t.v. opportunities mean that, instead of socialising with neighbours, adults and children were more likely to spend longer indoors glued to a GoggleBox of one kind or another.

The explosion on July 11 turned all of that on its head. Even if we did lose power along with everyone else, it would not inconvenience us much. We built our house of mud-brick and shaded all the windows with roof overhangs. Although fans help keep it cool, without them inside temperatures are a long way from unbearable. The fridge and freezer would be our vulnerable points, and we would have to plan meals around hours when we could use the oven (the unpredicatbility of the cuts are one of the things which make them maddening for those enduring them – so many friends have said 'I'd just got the pizza ready and the power went off!' or 'The joint was halfway through cooking, and we had no electricity for the next three hours...'). Other than that the loss of the computers and DVD player would be the worst that we would face, and then I would just have to put my Mommy Creativity hat on... or head for the beach.

Others are not so lucky. For people with compromised health, for the elderly, for families in small apartments dependent on airconditioning, the lack of power is more than a mild inconvenience. For office and shop workers in fancy new buildings, the working day becomes untenable. For businesses as small as our local health food shop or as large as the Paphos Mall, stock control has become massively more complicated: everything must be written by hand and entered into the computers later. Banks close during the cuts – and the employees congregate outside in the shade. Petrol stations shut down. Mili and I took Lucky to be spayed, and fortunately the vet's operating theatre had big windows – when the power went out, he just went on snipping and stitching. Hospitals, of course, have back-up generators... but they are not sufficient to run the aircon in non-vital areas, and when I went for an appointment the other day, doctors, nurses, receptionists, and patients alike worked or sat, limp-clothed and sweaty, sighing and fanning themselves with whatever came to hand.

I think that no-one realised how absolutely dependent we are on an uninterrupted supply of electricity to make modern life in this climate bearable, and to sustain the pace that we have gradually assumed to 'keep up with' the rest of Europe, and to live 'in the style to which we have become accustomed'.

On a brighter note, a friend in another town reports a surge in community feeling. 'No longer do we sit inside, cut off from our neighbours,' she said. 'People come out at dusk. The barbeques are fired up, neighbours gather for a beer together, children play in the street...' If every cloud has a silver lining, this must be it – a sense that people, neighbours, family, friends, are in this together – and for the long haul (the Electricity Authority, although it has been buying power from the North, and has borrowed emergency generators from good neighbours Greece and Israel, but is predicting that this situation could last for at least six months until the generators at Vassiliko are fixed and running again). Maybe it will also raise the awareness of the need for more environmentally suitable architecture for both home and work environments... We'll just have to see.

Cookbooks

I love cookbooks. I have a shelf and a half of them and always lookout for more at book sales or in charity shops. It must be an inherited trait: my mother had a good collection, and when I visited my brother in Ireland, I was thrilled to see that he shares my compulsion. “Oh yes,” he said when I mentioned it. “I love cookbooks!”

Some of the attraction must lie in the simple fact that they are books and I love books and words. My house (and my brother's) is filled with books. And some of our cookbooks are full of superlative writing. Maybe luscious illustrations were a reason that I bought some. Others found their way to my shelves because they have recipes that suit my lifestyle and the ingredients that I have available.

But I think that the main reason that I collect cookbooks is because, although food is the vehicle, the idea behind the cooking and sharing of food is that of nurturing and community, the forging of common bonds. The first cookbook that I remember impulse buying was in Waldenbooks in Kahala Mall on a visit home to Hawaii. It was Viana La Place's The Unplugged Kitchen, and the simple way that she conveyed the pleasure that her kitchen, her ingredients, and the associations that working in her kitchen wrought between her modern life in California and her mother's in Italy hooked me.

Who are my favourite authors? Well, Elizabeth David is one. No collection of cookbooks is complete without one of her volumes. She manages to embrace personal and cultural history – as well as passion for ingredients and method – in a single recipe, and reading one of her books is to acquire an education, not just in Italian Food or French Provincial Cooking but in the geography, demography, and society that produced them and the people for whom they are daily fare.

Fast forward to the present, and although I have not read nearly all the celebrity chefs' writings that are so popular today (something – fear of falling short of the mark? – keeps me from How to be a Domestic Goddess, although I really want to read it), I enjoy Jamie Oliver and Nigel Slater because they seem to truly enjoy what they're doing and are genuinely interested in conveying their experience so that other people can enjoy it, too.

Claudia Roden is one of my favourite food writers and her A New Book of Middle Eastern Fare is a volume that I have turned to at least once a week for the last ten years. When Arabesque, A taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon came out in 2005, I bought it at once. Her depth of understanding of the region and its peoples is unparalleled, and her books are full of stories whose characters come to life in a way that brings their food to life, and makes enjoying the dishes all the more intimate because, while preparing or eating them, you remember something of the other people that enjoy them.

But Elizabeth David, Jamie Oliver, and Claudia Roden are all big names. Some of my favourite cookbooks come from lesser-known names or groups of friends who put together a collection of recipes that have a particular significance for them. Gilli Davis spent time in Cyprus and grew to so love and respect Cypriot cuisine that she published The Taste of Cyprus – A Seasonal Look at Cypriot Cooking, and although for most Cypriot recipes I turn to my mother-in-law, I enjoy reading Gilli's experiences as she wanders the same paths that I do. Kopiaste: Cyprus Food, Customs, and Traditions – written by a Cypriot, Amaranth Sitas, but published in English – is full of priceless advice like: 'Incidentally, when you go and buy your olives, don't be talked into buying the large variety... What you need are the medium type of green olives, and nothing else will do. Now, take the olives one by one... No! First find a small stool to sit on – you can't possibly crush all those bending down! And take everything onto your back veranda...'

Four years ago my California brother sent me Palestinian and Jewish Recipes for Peace, a book that celebrated 'twelve years of sustained relationship-building and outreach by the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo County, California'. The frontispiece shows a group of mostly middle-aged friends gathered in a room, above the quotation by Dr Harold Saunders, a former US Assistant Secretary of State and negotiator of the Camp David Accords: “There are some things that only governments can do, such as negotiating binding agreements. But there are some things that only citizens can do, such as changing human relationships.”

The book is about food – the kosher food of European Jews; spicy Arab dishes with a hint of the desert; Levantine food , the pittas and hoummous, tabouleh and felafel loved by both Arab and Israeli. It is also about people and community, compassion, and peace. The recipes are interwoven with stories – of celebrations and holidays and the recipes that accompany them; of families marking rites of passage; of the determination of a small group of individuals to see past stereotypes.

Take cookbooks at face value – flip through one to decide what to make for dinner, how to cope with the glut of eggplant in the garden, or to learn how to test the set of jam. But if you look a little deeper, you find a whole new world, and it's there that I like to dwell. I learn which variety of plum is the best for preserving; how, why, and by whom certain breads are prepared for Easter by Orthodox Christians; how to use every last scrap of a butchered hog; and how a long table and a commonly prepared feast can provide a foundation for understanding.