Maroulla notices, runs towards her, stands behind her, takes the two purple ends in her own fingers, ties them safely and pushes the stray hairs into the sides. Maroulla sits beside her. Koki looks at the little girl, feels the warmth of her thigh near her own, but cannot reach out to touch her for fear that she may be cold. Unreal. There were too many years of hatred to believe in anything.
From the distance, a trembling light moves closer to the living room. The women remain still. Nobody speaks. A soldier approaches and, as he enters the house and his army boots crunch on the ground, it is clear that he is not holding a basket of bread. He has a lantern and a gun and has obviously come for a different purpose. His badges glint in the light of the lantern. It is the commanding officer. He looks at the faces of the prisoners, one by one, with his head held high. His right foot moves forward, towards Olympia. Every small sound is amplified in that silent room and the prisoners hang their heads and peek at him fearfully from the corners of their eyes. He looks down at the floor where the baby sleeps in the basket. He walks forward, crouches down, looks into the basket and whispers words in Turkish. The prisoners sit rigid and tense, fear swelling inside them. Olympia raises her arm towards the basket, but the commander grabs it with one swift move and twists it so that her body bends and coils. He looks into her eyes threateningly and then releases her arm with a violent push. She holds her arm, but her mouth is straight, her face unreadable.
The commander looks into the basket one more time, then he gently lifts it and, trying not to wake the baby, walks out of the room.
Adem offers to take the bread to the prisoners. In the distance, and close by, bombs stamp about the island. He stands beside a lamp that is hanging from a tree and looks across a garden into a house where a group of women are held captive. Apart from the fruit on the trees, the bread would be all they have to eat, there are no chickens in this garden and he is sure that the soldiers have cleared out the cupboards. Two other soldiers guard the back of the house and he knows that there is one at the front. The soldier standing beside him hands him the tray expectantly. Adem takes it and hesitates. Kyriaki is either already dead, a prisoner in one of these houses or else she has somehow managed to escape. Adem looks across the expanse of garden. He unhooks the lamp from the tree and walks along the edge of the garden that is skirted by orange and carob trees. He holds the lamp low so that his face cannot be seen.
The garden falls downwards into the house like a dry river into a waterless sea. It is not a humid night and there is no air. He wonders if he should have insisted on bringing a jug of water as there does not seem to be a well in these grounds. As he approaches a familiar stench fills the air. Nauseating and heavy. He remembers at once Engin’s face and those dark eyes. Those dark, open eyes. He stops when he reaches the open doorway of the house and holds up the lamp. He becomes aware of a set of eyes staring at him, shielded behind a shawl, and shifts his own face so that his features sink beneath the shadow of his cap.
The smell is overpowering now, and there seems to be a heap on the floor, covered neatly with a blanket. He moves the light over it and sees the contours of a body beneath the white lamplit sheet. He moves away from the body and places the basket of bread on the floor. None of the women move. Their eyes remain still and white in the darkness, like stars. Not too far away a bomb explodes and the floor trembles, then three other bombs, in succession, wander away, probably towards Nicosia.
Adem walks around the room, using the lamp to search the women’s faces. The first woman, sitting near the body, hugging her knees, has hair darker than the night. The second, who lies behind the first with her ear to the ground, is not much older than seventeen. Next to her a young girl buries her face in her mother’s lap. Next to them is an old lady, twisted and gnarled like an ancient olive tree. Adem lifts the lamp higher: black hair, in plaits or ringlets or matted over shoulders, fills the room, like the heat. He takes a deep breath, lifting his chest heavily. The bombs beat like his heart. ‘Kyriaki,’ he says, but nobody answers. He holds the lamp higher, and his hand shakes. The light filling the room from his lantern strobes over the faces of the women, from face to face, never touching the same one twice. He grips the iron handle tighter, but the light now wavers and everything before him seems to be shrouded in a layer of sea. The air becomes thicker. He struggles to take a deep breath. The bombs beat again … or is that the crickets? Time is loud. It stamps amongst those living with the feet of the dead. Adem uses his free hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He then presses his temples together and brings his palm down over his eyes, nose and mouth as if trying to wipe off his features.
He breathes in, but his chest is tight. ‘Is there a lady here called Kyriaki?’ Adem says in Greek. His voice breaks the incessant beating of bombs and hearts and crickets. A few of the women look up at him, but say nothing. ‘You may know her as Koki.’ A woman on a chair coughs, and this is followed by the muttering of the crickets and another explosion. His shoulders slump and his chin drops slightly.
He moves with the lamplight through three other rooms, all filled with darkness and that inimitable smell of death. He is amazed by their silence. The women do not speak or cry in his presence, even the children seem to comply. He notices how the women force themselves to sit a little straighter as he passes. The immense dryness in the air is engulfing, like a sandstorm, and the women’s limbs intertwined in those small rooms are like the dust roads; those almost-there paths in the seams of Kyrenia that would appear to lead one to a different place each time. Like the elusive string of a memory.
A bomb falls nearby. The crickets pound. The air is stagnant. He takes another deep breath and proceeds to follow the path of limbs to the door, but stops when he reaches the body beneath the sheet. ‘What are the chances?’ he thinks, but he cannot leave until he knows for sure. He pauses for a beat. He bends down and holds the lamp over the thin sheet so that the colours of flesh and clothes wash through it. He reaches over to the edge near the face, holds his breath and lifts the sheet. The eyes are closed, the lips parted, the skin drawn and old. White hair rests on the white sheet. Adem breathes out. He covers the face with the sheet and stands up. His hand shakes uncontrollably now, and the light rocks on waves of darkness. He turns to face the garden and walks back beneath the orange and carob trees, feeling the outside air on his face, cool now compared to the dense smells and heat of that house.
As he reaches the back of the garden he notices two silhouettes; one tall and straight, the other smaller and hunched. As he moves closer he sees that it is Serkan and the soldier from the church with the long arm. They are talking passionately. He can hear them muttering amongst the trees like the crickets. Adem nods at them and hangs the lamp back on the tree. ‘You didn’t bring a woman out for us,’ calls Serkan after him, disguising his question as a comment. Adem does not answer. The man beside Serkan laughs. ‘I remember young Serkan, of twelve or thirteen, forcing me to take the sesame fingers from the tray while Mrs Theodoulou slept on a chair beneath a tree. With a naked pot belly poking over his shorts and a mud grin on his face, Serkan would say, “C’mon, idiot, I’m hungry, drag your bent self over there and bring some back for us. She’s sleeping, she’ll never know.”’ The man laughs again and slaps Serkan on his back. Strangely, Serkan does not respond. Instead he looks down at a basket on the floor.
Day 4: 23 July 1974
In the early hours of the morning, in that short slice of time where everything is completely silent, Serkan sits beneath a tree at the base with a baby in his arms. He picks up the bottle that he had taken and attempts to feed the baby, but the baby turns his face the other way. It is at that very moment, between darkness and light, when the sun is but a golden outline across the landscape, that the whole island is still. It stops for a moment, as brief as the gap between heartbeats or the pause between the ticking of a clock. For this short time even the crickets seem to sleep and the sea breathes in, away from the shore, slow and heavy and languid. It is 23
July and it is the beginning of a ceasefire. By the end of the day yesterday, a bridgehead had been created between Kyrenia and Geunyeli. It was now fully controlled by Lieutenant General Nurettin Ersin. Today Turkish forces had initiated their attack on Nicosia International Airport. Serkan had sent two M47 tanks into the attack with the Turkish armoured force, moving through roads along the Kyrenia-Agyrta-Nicosia bridgehead. Now they had been ordered to stop fighting. How long could that last? He never liked waiting. Never could stand intervals. He wanted things to be done there and then.
Serkan sits, somewhat restless without the bombs. He remembers a particular time as a boy when he would wake in the middle of the night, tiptoe past his parents’ room and round the edge of the field, avoiding the sheep that hovered like clouds in the darkness. He would sit on a tree stump in his make-believe home, a circle of sticks and stones, and wait for that moment of silence when, for a brief moment, the flapping wings of time would embrace him and hold him in the night. Nobody knew of his secret nocturnal escapades until the morning his father had woken to find three of his sheep dead. They had been poisoned, he was sure. Who was the perpetrator? The Greeks, surely! That day Mohammed had paced up and down, sneaking looks into Mrs Theodoulou’s home. At that time, years before they left for Turkey, they were unfortunate enough to live in Lapathos, Famagusta, in a Greek-Cypriot neighbourhood. His father insisted that times were not as they used to be and that now the damned Greeks would do anything to get them out. He watched her every free hour of the day: while Mrs Theodoulou hung the clothes on the line to dry, while she sat in the shade and cleaned grain in a large tray, while she chopped onions and dried her eyes, while she wiped her hands on her apron and sat down for a little siesta. He watched even while her husband came home for lunch with his spectacles on his head and new leather shoes in his hand. Pavlos Theodoulou had made all kinds of things out of leather: from shoes, to purses, to bags, he had even made Serkan a catapult once, which he had kept hidden from his father for years. ‘I’ll rip the skin off his back and make myself some nice boots,’ Mohammed had said before sitting down to lunch that day. ‘If I catch who did this, I will—’
‘Sshh,’ his wife said, offering him a tray of bread.
Mohammed stood up, raising a hand to her face. ‘Keep your mouth shut. I am the shepherd of the house. Without me, you would not have this bread to put in your mouth. Never shush me!’ His mother had flinched and withered and hunched deep into her shoulders. Then they ate in silence. This was a different type of hush, though, full of tension and expectation and fear. It was not like the silence of dawn, where there was nothing to fear but the beating of the world again.
That night while Serkan tiptoed past the sheep as usual someone grabbed his wrist viciously from the shadows and brought the boy close to his face. Serkan could feel warm breath on his cheek as nails dug into his hand. ‘So it is you!’ his father’s voice bellowed in the night, breaking the buzzing of the crickets. ‘You are the perpetrator!’ he whispered vehemently, with clenched teeth, bringing Serkan closer to him, his arms strong, his body firm. Serkan tried to protest, but his father pushed him to the ground, into the thorn bushes and jutting stones. His father’s foot crunched by his side as he stepped nearer to him. ‘All this time I was looking for an enemy outside of my own home and all this time it was you!’ He spat onto Serkan’s face, kicked him in the head and left him there, with the crickets pounding in his ears.
Serkan could not move. He stayed there until he finally fell asleep, and when he woke again it was morning and the August sun had burnt the side of his face. Or was it a bruise that now throbbed? He scrambled up and dragged his feet into the house. His mother said nothing about the incident, she simply said that she was pregnant, and that he would have another brother or sister, and Serkan had somehow felt sad about this. Since that day he never woke in the middle of the night again.
*
Serkan looks down at the baby in his arms. He sleeps peacefully. The sun has risen now, the crickets beat the air and bombs fall in the distance. There is a tear in Serkan’s eye, but nobody will ever know this. He blinks so that it falls onto the blue quilt in which the baby is wrapped.
‘Have you been here all night?’ a voice says from behind him. ‘I’ve divided them into units and sent them out with the new ammo,’ says Hasad, looking down now at the baby in Serkan’s arms. Serkan does not reply. ‘The mother?’ asks Hasad.
‘Dead,’ Serkan finally replies. Hasad nods.
In the prisoners’ house, Olympia is crying soundlessly. She is kneeling on the floor as still as the air and is muttering words to God. She has an icon in her hands, which she holds close to her heart. Her hair is in a grey bun that is no longer neat and spills out at the sides. And her head drops over her chest. The tears from her eyes fall to her lap.
The other women in the room are quiet. Elenitsa is slowly turning blue, like the sea when the sun rises. She has not moved for hours. Her baby has gone. The sun is rising, and slowly the shadows extend in the room and the picture of these women, in this old abandoned house, hangs frozen in the silence like an old photograph. Sophia complains about being hungry while the dog whimpers by her side. She still will not touch it. Some of the women look up now from their solid positions, irritated by Sophia’s childish demands, and take this opportunity to look again disgustedly in the direction of Koki. Koki shifts uncomfortably in her chair, and Maroulla stands up instinctively, walks towards Koki and perches on her lap. Koki puts her arm round the little girl’s waist and Maroulla leans back onto Koki’s chest. She likes the sound of her heart.
Maria, who is of course sitting on the floor, grabs onto the leg of a nearby chair and heaves herself up. She pauses for a moment, perhaps to regain her balance, and then walks towards the bed where Elenitsa lies lifeless. Olympia is still motionless by her side, but is now holding the dead girl’s hand. She grips it close to her chest. The icon is on the floor beside her. ‘You must let her spirit go,’ Maria says, but Olympia does not move. The other women look in their direction. ‘You are keeping her from God,’ Maria insists and then moves closer, leans over Olympia and peels her hands away from the young mother’s. Elenitsa’s hand hangs limp. Olympia pauses for a moment, as if contemplating for the first time the true horror of the scene before her, and removes a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and looks down at it dejectedly. Then her body judders, her firm exterior shatters, her hands shake uncontrollably and she begins to wail. A deep, pounding sobbing that pumps dark sadness into the room. Her chest thrusts and her breath rips out in shreds. She cries into the silk handkerchief that her grandmother had given her when she was a little girl. She cries for Elenitsa, because she is no longer a mother and no longer a wife. She cries for the life this young woman could have had and for the boy who has no mother and no father to love.
The crying transiently mutes the crickets and the silence. The women sit still. Maria puts her arm on Olympia’s shoulder and Olympia’s storm eases into a drizzle of tears. The heat is heavy and full of unspoken words. The women’s sadness hangs in the air like a brimming cloud. Maria moves away from Olympia, disappears into the bedroom and returns about five minutes later with a Bible and a ceramic incense burner. Although it is becoming lighter outside, she finds the matches, brings a lamp from the garden and lights it, throwing the room into a golden glow. She gives the lamp to Olympia, instructing her to hold it up, and then lights another match and brings the flickering flame to the olive leaves in the incense burner. She blows into it gently, and soon a plume of sweet smoke rises and Maria circles it anti clockwise over Elenitsa’s body, creating a grey halo. The smoke fills the room. Maria puts the incense burner down and picks up the Bible. She opens it, licks her middle finger and leafs through the pages. Then she signals for all the women to stand. They all rise and bend their heads and close their eyes. Maria clears her throat and starts reading the Prayer for the Dead. ‘Christ, our eternal King and God, You have destroyed death and the Devil by Your Cross and have
restored man to life by Your Resurrection; give rest, Lord, to the soul of Your servant Eleni, who has fallen asleep, in Your Kingdom, where there is no pain, sorrow or suffering. In Your goodness and love for all men, pardon all the sins she has committed in thought, word or deed, for there is no man or woman who lives and sins not. You only are without sin. For You are the Resurrection, the Life, and Repose of Your servant Eleni, departed this life, O Christ our God; and to You do we send up glory with Your Eternal Father and Your All-holy, Good and Life-creating Spirit; both now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.’ Her words resonate around the room as clear as a bell. The women repeat ‘Amen,’ and cross themselves, and Maria circles Elenitsa’s body once more with the burning olive leaves. She then leans forward and puts her hand on to Elenitsa’s chest. ‘To stop breathing is to free the breath from its restless tides,’ she says softly, reciting the words of a Lebanese prophet. And then she straightens her back, clenches her fist, scrunches her face and, spitting viciously, says, ‘If I could feed their brains to the dog I would cut their heads open myself.’ And there is not a woman in that room that does not believe her. She then bends down and lifts the lamp.
‘Devils,’ she proclaims, stamping her foot. ‘The Devil. The Devil. The Devil.’ The light of the lamp sways over the faces of the women. Most of them look now at the floor, not knowing what else to do. The dog is sitting as close to Sophia as it can get to her without her shuffling away. Litsa has been unusually quiet for a while and sits now with her elbows on her knees and her fingers covering her eyes. Costandina is, once again, staring at Koki, but this time her eyes glow with anger.
‘Devils,’ continues Maria, ‘the Devil. The Devil. The Devil.’ She stamps her foot and the lamplight rocks in the darkness. ‘The Devil. The Devil. The Devil!’ She stamps her foot and the crickets pound in the darkness. ‘The Devil. The Devil. The Devil!’ She stamps her foot and cockroaches scuttle in the shadows. The heat clings to their skin. Costandina scratches her arms manically. The dog wines. The cicadas pound and pound and pound, like blood in one’s ears. It is all of these things that burn Costandina’s nerves, that scorch her itchy skin. It is all of these things that cause her to stop scratching, jump from her chair and pounce, head first, at Koki. Costandina grabs Koki’s red hair, clenches her teeth and drags Koki off the chair. The lamp is lowered and the room darkens, but nobody moves. Costandina pulls Koki’s hair desperately, pulls until blood drips from Koki’s forehead. Koki clutches Costandina’s wrists in an attempt to loosen her grip. The other women watch. Maroulla stands there with fear in her eyes. She kicks Costandina’s leg manically and punches her back with her little fists. Costandina screams as she pulls the other woman’s hair harder, and Koki cries now in pain and begs her to stop.
A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible Page 15