4)OTHELLO CASTLE (DOWN)
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Unfathomable feelings captured me unexpectedly as I observed donkeys and mules roaming wild over sleeping kings, now long dead, or such important relics as the relief of the Lion of St Mark, frescoed on the walls of that ‘impenetrable fortress’ Othello Castle, now fading and threatening each day to disappear – and that due not to the ravages of the sun but to those of man. During such a journey into the past, one comes to understand why that place had laid such a pensive sadness on previous visitors; one comes to understand the source of that gloom: not the wretched houses, nor the villagers’ poverty, nor the ruined relics, but merely the prospect of treasure which the town holds. Famagusta’s melancholy springs from its beauty; it embraces life within the melancholy of that beauty. Visiting it, one realises, just as other visitors have done – and even said many times – that if the town were to surrender its soul to better hands, it would surely flourish; it could become more beautiful than many European coastal towns; but no, Famagusta was, and perhaps still is, a town built amidst ruins that are destined to decay. Like an enchanted city in a fairy-tale written in an extinct language, Famagusta felt forgotten, erased from the surface of earth; and despite its long memory, it appeared to me like a town with no future.
