A Time of Birds

by Helen Moat

  Rauf Orbay Avenue became Kennedy Avenue and from there we slipped into another strip of green. The park path led on to a promenade that curled between road and shore. We dodged families with toddlers and youths on skateboards. We passed bottles lined up on the rocks of the shoreline defences and rows of pink balloons – an improvised shooting range for the city strollers. I wanted to cry and I wanted to laugh. I wanted to shout out ‘I’m going home’, or rather, ‘I’m coming home’ – because home was the place where my family was complete. But I didn’t. Instead I cycled on, my head as light as the balloons.

  By the time we arrived in Zeytinburnu we were just seven miles from Sultanahmet and the other half of my family, but we were under strict instructions from Tom not to arrive until the next day. We pulled our bikes over the footbridge that crossed the dual carriageway and found beds for the night. And so we sat it out on the fringes of the city centre like the great grey tankers anchored on the Sea of Marmara, waiting for the signal to continue to the Bosporus.

  5. Between Sea and Sky

  I had brought Tom to Istanbul for his fiftieth birthday. We had come to this city that teeters on the edge of Europe and Asia, one foot in, one foot out – like a teenager loitering in the entrance of a night club. We’d stayed in a little hotel run by two brothers below the Blue Mosque and explored the city that freezing Easter. I remember how we’d picked our way through the fishermen on the Galata Bridge, their fishing rods dangling off the rails, and on to the quayside, where men in gilded boats were grilling mackerel on great skillets. I remember the reek of smoking fish, and how, unable to resist the smell, we’d squeezed in apologetically between women in brightly patterned headscarves and their more sombre-clothed, moustachioed menfolk, to order fish sandwiches. We’d devoured the fresh catch in the crusty bread, olive oil dribbling down our chins as black-eyed gulls wheeled overhead, angling for titbits. The city had glowed in the gathering darkness and I’d felt mesmerised by this place with its mix of ramshackle dwellings, glassy towers, Ottoman palaces and golden mosques, calls to prayer ringing out across the water in fugue-like waves, rising and falling before fading away. As we’d headed back alongside the port, the calls to prayer had been replaced with the rough cries of the ferrymen touting for business, their calls carried by the wind above the cry of gull and lap of shore: Bospor, Bospor, Bospor.

  Little did I know I would come back a few years later, only instead of flying through the sky in a fistful of hours, Jamie and I would cycle in slow motion through days, weeks and months to this very spot by the Galata Bridge. Along the way, we’d experienced the gradual transition from Europe to Asia: the low-lying cottages on the Austrian border with Slovakia heralding the Balkans; the onion domes of Hungary; the men gathered outside cafés in Croatia; the Klezmer music in Serbia, so Middle-Eastern in sound; the echoes of the Ottoman Empire in Romania and Bulgaria. It had eased us gently into this exotic place straddling East and West.

  Jamie and I woke up early on our last morning of cycling, although we were less than an hour away from our arranged meeting point. Tom, Patrick, Maggie and Andy had agreed to meet us at 10am. We wheeled our bikes out of the hotel into the early morning rush hour and cycled between a squeeze of concrete and corrugated metal barriers, trying not to skin our knuckles on the metal.

  Relieved to get off the road, Jamie and I peddled on through Sahil Park, the Sea of Marmara below us the colour of pale pewter. We passed a lighthouse and the towers of the old city wall. Ahead, I caught glimpses of the Bosporus suspension bridge stretching out across the waterway that connected the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea – those waters beyond waters that linked Europe and Asia. All around us were the places I’d visited with Tom in the April rain and sleet: the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia.

  Tom was less than a mile away – but we were still too early. We found a café above the city wall and lingered there. ‘It’s like Christmas morning when Dad made us wait outside the living room door until we were all ready,’ Jamie laughed.

  As our meet-up time approached, we headed on to Sirkeci ferry terminal. A cycle path on the promenade took us away from Kennedy Avenue, now choked with rush-hour traffic. The air was thick with exhaust fumes and the sound of manic horns, but it didn’t matter: we were almost there. The road bent sharply left and rose steeply one last time before dropping down to the ferry terminal.

  Somewhere in the crowds were Tom and Patrick.

  Then I saw them, Tom tall among the tourists with his russet-grey hair, and Patrick beside him, his hair still the colour of bright autumn – a younger, slimmer Tom. And my sister and her husband too. Tom had his back to us. I shouted out. He turned around in surprise.

  ‘You’re too early,’ he spluttered, groping in his pocket for his ‘finishing line’ streamer.

  Jamie looked at me and laughed: ‘Christmas morning.’

  But I didn’t care. My face was already against Tom’s, the bristles on his face prickling my cheeks; his smell, familiar and strange; the contours of his body locking mine like shoreline and sea. Then Patrick, the son I’d abandoned for three and a half months. But he was grinning, pleased for us, pleased we were all together again. I turned to Jamie and hugged him too. Gone was the closely cropped hair and the pale, clean-shaven face he had left Rotterdam with. Now his hair was long and unkempt, his face weathered and browned by weeks and months in the open air, and a patchy beard covered his chin and jawline. I craned my neck to try and read the expression on his face. I thought I read relief. I thought I saw pride, but there was definitely a shine in his eyes. I still didn’t know what this trip meant to him. One day, I would sit down and ask him, but for the moment I was just glad we had done this journey together.

  As for me, I realised, it was not just the rivers and hills and the open roads that had healed me, but the people along the way that had taken us into their homes. I thought of my old friends: Marcella, Andrea, Manuela and Maria. Then the strangers who’d opened up their home to us: Asher, Petra, Hans, Klaus, Kat, Eszter, Zita, Sashka and Ayhan. They’d all taught me what generosity and openness meant. They had restored my faith in human nature and made me a better human being.

  We wheeled our bikes onto the boat to cross over to the Asian side to celebrate in Turkish style, with glasses of chai. As the little ferry chugged across the water, the realisation came on slowly: there was nowhere left to cycle. The wheels could stop spinning. I had come home.

  *

  My father lived somewhere between sea and sky. The birds were his songbook along with his Brethren hymnals. Finches and tits, waders and warblers, his God in the heavens – he knew them all. The fields and the woods were his earthly home and the country lanes that stretched out in invitation. We drove and drove to find the ocean. Nowhere was too far within a day’s reach: County Down, the Antrim Coast, Donegal, Galway, Claire, Dublin and Kildare. What was it that called him?

  The smell of the sea? The slap of wind in his face? The taste of its salt on his lips? The damp of sand between his toes as he walked the shoreline in his solemn suit? His jacket slung over an arm, braces tangled on his white shirt. He’d roll up his suit trouser legs, revealing shins of creamy white, and paddle through the Irish Sea or the Atlantic. Perhaps he liked the open horizons, the waves that rolled in from other countries, even continents. They were all beyond his reach. His world was limited in thought and physicality. He lived in the straitjacket of his Brethren suit. But it didn’t stop him dreaming.

  The sea and its waterways had called me too. I’d followed the Rhine from the North Sea to the edge of the Swiss Alps, and the Danube to the Black Sea. In the stifling heat of the Bulgarian and Turkish interior, I’d missed the waterways in the waves of yellowed corn, until we’d reached the ocean again at the Sea of Marmara.

  My father was now lost in the corridors of broken neurological pathways and the corridors of the care home, his breathing growing shallower with each passing year, his mind vague as twilight. Visits with him were like reaching into th
e gloaming: there were moments of clarity, bright enquires after Tom and the boys, until he withdrew into the shadows again. When I returned home, I would tell him about my journey along Europe’s waterways and beside Europe’s seas. I would tell him about the cuckoo that travelled with us through May and June; the storks that lined the chimney pots of the Upper Rhine and Danube villages; the summer swallows and the house martins on the water. Who knew, maybe he would respond.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ I’d asked him on that last visit before the cycle.

  ‘Dromore.’

  ‘Dromore?’ I’d echoed in wonder. Not Tyrella, or Newcastle, or Greencastle by the sea, or even the lough on the edge of our town. I’d taken him to Dromore as he’d requested, to the inland market town with its motte and bailey, firmly wedged in solid land between lake and ocean. And I was puzzled. The next day, back at the care home, he requested to visit Dromore again. Now I saw why: Dromore was my mother’s hometown. And I realised that in spite of his silence after her death, as though she had never existed, he’d loved her in his own way. He just didn’t know how to express it.

  Now, sitting in Atatürk Airport, our bicycles stowed away in cardboard boxes, a message pinged up on my mobile from my sister back home: It’s not looking good for dad. His heart is failing and breathing laboured.

  When exactly had the birds stopped singing? Or had I just stopped listening? And I realised, sitting in the noise of the airport waiting for our flight to be called, I had removed myself so completely from my father, it was difficult to reconnect with him emotionally. I thought of my father, quick to take offence, slow to forgive, dwelling on slights, intolerant of human failings. Hadn’t I been just the same? I’d held on to that night in the kitchen so long ago and hardened my heart – feeling only coldness towards him. I’d felt anger at his withdrawal from the world, from me and my mother. Now my father’s journey was coming to an end, and so was mine. But as the journey of my life continued, my ties to him could not be severed. I would start out on a new path of acceptance – not just of him, but of me and who I was and what I had become – and in doing so would be freed.

  The birds would sing again. The waterways and pathways would draw me once more.

  These were his gifts.

  Epilogue – What If ?

  There is a window and a city of red-tiled roofs and skyscrapers beyond it. There are needles of minarets and discs of gold. There are seas of navy and a river striped with bridges. There are swabs of clouds that float suspended in the blue-washed sky. I twist my neck to see the world beneath me. Squinting in the sunlight, I look out over the silver thread of rivers, the peaks of dusty rock and the dark stain of forest. The only sound is the hum of the plane’s engine. There is no birdsong, no scent of flower or bread – just the odourless cabin. Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands disappear in minutes and hours – not weeks and months, as it should be.

  In less than an afternoon, I reach the English Channel and the clouds part to reveal the light playing off the ocean below – slate grey to petrol blue, olive green to steel. Beyond the plane, there is the curved thread of horizon between sea and sky. Somewhere out in the greys tinged with colour, there are birds taking wing. I feel the pull of the line between the visible and invisible. And I think, What if?

  This is the end. As I remember it.

  It is also the beginning.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my husband, Tom, for his unfailing support throughout the writing of this book, and on a more practical level, for providing a keen eye as proofreader. Thanks to my sons, Jamie and Patrick, for giving me permission to tell my – and their – stories.

  Deep gratitude goes to the members of my writing group for their advice and support: Moira Ashley, Stephen Fabes, Elizabeth Gowing, Paola Fornari Hanna, Suzy Pope and Marie Kreft. And to Gillian Shimwell, whose gentle encouragement and wisdom helped me to find the narrative for the book.

  To everyone at Saraband: Sara Hunt for her support and guidance; Craig Hillsley, who edited the book with such care and attention, and likewise to Maddie Pollard and Elizabeth Beck for additional proofreading. Thanks to Don Shewan for his excellent cartography.

  This book is for all those who’ve been part of my journey through life and on the cycle. To my siblings for their continued love and support. To friendships across Europe that have endured across the years, sometimes decades. To the Klein and Willms families in the Eifel, Germany, Manuela Gaggiotti and her family in Switzerland and Maria Ives-Strasser and Chris Ives in Austria. Thanks go to Derbyshire friends Chris and Richard Powley, who generously offered their home in Ungstein. My gratitude also goes to the strangers across Europe who welcomed me into their homes and communities. Because of them I was able to experience a slice of real European life, and in doing so they helped me understand my continent and history a little better.

  Copyright

  Published by Saraband,

  Digital World Centre,

  1 Lowry Plaza,

  The Quays, Salford, M50 3UB

  www.saraband.net

  Copyright © Helen Moat 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781912235704

  ebook: 9781912235711

  Designed and typeset by EM&EN

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

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  In the interests of protecting privacy, some names, places and other identifying details have been changed for the publication of this book, whilst the essence of the characters and stories is true and accurate to the best of the author’s recollections. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is correct at the time of printing. Details about routes and other practical information should not be taken as implying either permission to follow the same or similar roads, paths and cycleways or a safe environment for cycling or method of securing accommodation. No liability can be assumed either by the author or publisher for anyone following what they believe to be any examples described in this account, which is purely personal and has been edited for privacy reasons.