Life becomes a struggle for survival in 42 degrees of heat, particularly when searing wind teams up with summer sun after five long years of drought have parched the land and emptied the reservoirs.
Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Mediterranean have been sweltering at 41, 42 and 43 degrees for over a week now. The prognosis is for little change. More than 100 people have died and hundreds have suffered heat and sunstroke, particularly elderly folk in Bulgaria and Romania, Turkey and Iran who are not used to living in an oven.
Cypriots have become acclimatised to normal spells of the low 40s by hibernating. They close their shutters and sleep away the hottest hours of the afternoon, venturing out of doors only at dusk when they sit on their verandas and sup watermelon and salty haloumi, chat and play tavli or backgammon. Indeed, so few people were about when I first moved to Nicosia I thought everyone had left town because houses were closed and streets were deserted during July and August.
This way of dealing with the heat has, almost certainly, denied the current heatwave many Cypriot victims: over the weekend four people died and 27 were treated in hospital. The 40s have also taken their toll in other ways. The old town, the core of the capital within 16th century Venetian walls, and some suburbs suffered lengthy power cuts. People stuck in stalled lifts had to be rescued by the fire department. Shops and cafes were forced to close. Residents took chairs out of their stuffy flats into shady streets where eddies of hot air provided a little relief. The cuts followed an explosion at a transformer protesting at 43.7 degrees of heat and air conditioner overload.
A fire near the hill village of Lefkara, famous for its lace since the time of Shakespeare, raged out of control for many hours. An Israeli fire-fighting plane and helicopters from the British bases helped local firemen, national guardsmen and civilians put out the blaze, the second major conflagration of the summer to be set by a pyromaniac. Tens of tonnes of precious water were consumed and a police helicopter crashed into the lake behind the Lefkara dam when the scoop it was using got stuck in the mud because the water level is so low.
Warm, salty desalinated water is piped into households for a few hours three nights a week. If the pressure is high enough it flows into roof tanks where it becomes scalding during the day. This water is used for washing clothes and dishes and showering - when it cools. But no one considers it safe to drink. Gleaming tanker lorries deliver spring water from the mountains to many households. Some people buy bottled water in shops while others tote fat plastic jerry-cans to dispensers providing 20 litres for 50 cents. Twenty-first century Cypriots have reverted to ancient village springs to survive.
The setting of the sun provides little relief. In the great outdoors roads, cars and even trees radiate heat. Inside homes walls, furniture, clothing, cutlery and crockery store and retain the day's ration. When a heatwave endures, as now, nothing fully cools overnight so the oven stokes higher and higher from day to day to day. Plagues of cicadas who normally sing their scratchy song day and night have been stunned into silence and armies of ants who wage kitchen campaigns throughout the summer have retired to domains deep underground to escape the extraordinary July of the Big Heat.
Agencies report:
The prolonged heatwave continued to cause wildfires throughout south-east Europe and across the Mediterranean yesterday, with Bulgaria and Greece declaring states of emergency. Meteorologists forecast a new rise in temperatures for the southern Balkans, heightening fears that arid conditions will hamper efforts to fight hundreds of fires breaking out daily.
Firefighters were dealing with large blazes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo and Italy - where two pensioners died. In southern France, firefighters remained vigilant as more high winds were forecast in the region where forest fires claimed two lives and destroyed 2,470 acres over the weekend.
In Greece, nearly 5,000 firefighters fought more than 150 blazes around the country fanned by winds and temperatures expected to rise from yesterday's 39 degrees up to 43 degrees today. The most serious was on the Aegean Sea resort island of Samos, where a state of emergency was declared last Thursday, and one-fifth of the island has burned. Three Bulgarian villages were ablaze near the town of Haskovo, south-east of Sofia, and fires were burning in four of Kosovo's five military sectors.
Temperatures are forecast to start dropping below 40 degrees tomorrow.