I was rummaging the other day and dug up this postcard I bought while travelling through Cyprus in the summer of 2001.

It’s one of my favourites. The inscription on the back of the card reads: “Moustachio’d Simos, the butcher of Polis.”

The epithet has a kind of war criminal ring to it. But soon after buying the card, I ran into Simos in a back-alley in the village of Polis (a seaside community on the border of Northern Cyprus). He was as gentle and disarming as he is in this photo.