ABSTRACT
It is a little before midnight in the summer of 1885. An August moon shines across the threshing floors which run down a spur below the village of Mitsero in central Cyprus. On one of the floors stand two women, talking and laughing quietly as they sieve the winnowed grain. All around them lie the other threshing floors, with heaps of unthreshed sheaves, long piles of grain and the assortment of shovels, pitchforks and sledges which are needed for processing the harvest. As they shake and tip the heavy sieves the women glance down occasionally at a spare sieve lying beside them, stilling their conversation for a moment. A winnowing breeze from the north brings a first hint of coolness, and begins to dry the sweat on their chaff-encrusted arms. From a threshing floor down below them come the loud snores of a man, a foreigner from outside the village, sleeping amidst the sheaves with a halfempty goatskin of wine beside his limp right hand. The women pause and listen, smile at each other as they hear the snores, and continue their work.
