‘We have come from the mouth of death,’ says Psaroboulis as they walk nearer; their limbs at the point of collapse, their feet dragging behind them. At this, the man turns around and looks at their blackened faces, their lost eyes, their bodies that hang above him like the limbs of trees, their features and bones sharp in the sunlight. He jumps up now and looks at them, his face twisted as though he has just seen what others have only spoken of. He opens his arms and hunches, in a strange position, as though he were preparing to catch them. ‘My God,’ he says. ‘My God!’ He looks horrified at the faces of the women. ‘Come,’ he says, ‘come,’ gesturing towards the donkey. He lifts Olympia up with the baby and puts Sophia behind them. He takes the donkey’s rope and they head off, along another dust path into the town.
‘We have travelled two days by boat from Kyrenia, just west off Pente Mile,’ says Psaroboulis. The man nods. Koki looks at his hand holding the rope and notices that his skin has the twisted look of a tree, and though he is not too old his back is slightly hunched at the top of his spine. ‘I am Petros,’ the man says. ‘I live in Pano Pyrgos,’ he says, pointing towards the hills. Soon they reach a clearing, which opens into a nettle field with the carcass of an old bus in the middle. This narrows further into another dust road, dotted with bikes and houses and dusty irrigation tanks. First, they pass an old lady, dressed in black, sitting beneath the shade of the vines, picking stones out of lentils. When she sees them she stops and stands, a look of horror on her face, balancing herself on the arm of her chair. They pass a group of young women sitting in a circle in the shade of their house, snapping beans; they too rise from their seats. The farmer freezes with his spade just above the soil. The women, who walk in a multicoloured trail towards the fields, freeze with their baskets beneath their arms. Another old woman, standing on a chair, reaching for figs, stops with her fingers outstretched. The seamstress freezes with her hand in the air; her needle sparkles in the sun. As they pass, everyone looks.
Petros does not salute anyone and does not stop. He continues instead, up the little ribbon of road to the limestone walls of St Irini. The bells chime as they ascend the last part of the hill and stand, drunk from the heat, beneath the frowning arches of the church. Petros puts down the donkey’s lead and runs into the church. A few moments later he comes out again, this time with a priest, three nuns and a tall candle-lighter. There is a brief moment when all five people pause, horror-stricken, before they run again towards them with open arms. Olympia and Costandina burst into tears as soon as they feel the safe touch of the nuns’ fingers upon their shoulders and Costandina’s knees give way as though there is no need to attempt to keep herself standing any more. The priest instructs the dog to wait outside, Psaroboulis lifts Sophia from the donkey and the nuns lead them all into the cool shade of the church, assuring them that there are no Turks here and that even the Turks that once lived amongst them have been taken away to the north. The nuns usher them to the benches, take the baby from Olympia and bring glasses of water and wet towels. ‘The island is being cut in two,’ says the young priest, pulling at his black beard as if he has been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. The candle-lighter, towering above him, nods and pulls nervously at his long fingers. ‘The Turks are finally achieving taksim,’ the priest continues, then pauses. ‘None of us can imagine what you’ve been through,’ he says, darting worried looks at the nuns. Litsa opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the priest. ‘There is no need for words now,’ he says softly. ‘We will take you to rest; there is a house that was previously owned by the Mehmet family. You can stay there for the time being. And you,’ he gestures to Psaroboulis, ‘can stay here in the room upstairs.’
On the way to the house, in the back of an open farmer’s van, the priest looks over at Koki and asks the women if they are happy to stay together. Litsa, understanding what is meant, straightens and purses her lips. ‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ she asks, and the priest shrugs and looks out at the passing fields.
The house has green shutters and a jasmine tree that climbs the walls so that there is a carpet of white flowers at the entrance. Inside, there is a large room with four beds, a kitchen and another room with two beds. There are cobwebs in the corners and the smell of old oil seeps from the kitchen. There are no pictures on the walls. The priest stands importantly in the centre of the room. He looks around at them as one of the nuns enters with a bucket of clean water. She fills some glasses and passes them around. ‘The toilet and well are at the back of the garden and the basin on the veranda,’ says the priest. ‘Unfortunately, they have taken all their clothes so we will bring you some from the town,’ he says confidently. He pulls at his beard again, but this time with a much different air; he has the look of one who is pleased with himself. ‘Once you are settled and bathed I will send a few to bring some food and later I will send the doctor.’ He says this looking rather concernedly at Sophia. Nobody replies. ‘You will be comfortable here.’ He looks at the women, pleased that he could help and that they had come to him and waits eagerly for a response.
‘You cannot imagine what it was like to—’ starts Litsa, but once again, the priest interrupts her.
‘Relax, my child,’ he says with a smooth smile and skin pale from the shadows of the church. ‘There will be time for this later. It will do you no good.’ He touches Litsa’s shoulder and looks reassuringly at the other women. He is disappointed that the women stand motionless, as though hanging from the air, like old linen. The young priest looks at the women, and just then another divide is created: the divide between those with a story and those who will never understand it, those with a tale and those who cannot hear it. The priest darts another inconspicuous look of disgust at Koki and then turns on his heel, exits the house and the rumble of the engine is heard as the farmer drives him away. The women stand still, dejected. They stand like vessels filled to the brim with horror, like bombs filled with anger, like books filled with a scramble of words. And just then, they swallow their stories, as one would swallow one’s tears.
Olympia sits on the bed and looks at the concrete floor. Litsa collapses into an armchair and Costandina ventures onto the other bed with Sophia; the dog sits on the floor beside them. And, just then, they all shrivel and fold their wings, full of fire, into themselves, and submerge, with tired eyes, into their cocoons. Koki looks down at the little girl standing beside her. ‘Come,’ she says, and Maroulla follows her out onto the veranda, where they both sit on a wooden bench. Ahead, white wisps from the cottonfield rise as a breeze blows. The heat ripples above it and the church bell tolls again. A young man passing with a carriage of veined figs stares at them, but he does not salute as is the custom of the Cypriots. Inside, the women sleep and Koki and Maroulla sit on that bench beneath the speckled shade of the vines, until the sun softens in the west and the neighbours venture out and stroll into the house with arms full of dresses or blankets or bread. Others carry bowls of salad or pans of stew or beans. ‘There is enough here to feed a whole town!’ says one woman as she exits. All avoid conversation with the refugees, and as they walk away Koki and Maroulla can hear their words tumbling back to them. ‘They are dirty!’ says one, looking over her shoulder. ‘Some say they have all been raped,’ says another. ‘Their life has ended!’ agree all three. Koki and Maroulla listen to these words as though they are the truth carried by the breeze, the real meaning behind the whistles of the wind.
Koki touches her chest. First she takes out the carved crucifix and touches the sharp end with her fingers, then she takes the small silver tin from her apron. She opens it up. This is all she has left in the world. She touches the contents of the tin with her fingertips; small, sentimental items resting on top of some money that lines the bottom of the tin. First, a delicate gold cross and chain, once owned by her mother. Her father had given it to her when she was nine years old and had told her to always look after it. Koki had run to her secret hiding place beneath her bed and put it in this silver tin. S
he knew her memories and her secrets were safe in here. Beneath that is a photograph of her mother holding Koki in her arms. She looks at her mother’s face and her dark hair and her beautiful smile. There is a lock of her son’s baby hair, a gold coin given to her by her grandfather and her dad’s wedding band. She picks up the wedding band and puts it in her palm. It glints in the sunlight and she closes her fingers round it, so tightly that her nails dig into her palm. ‘Pappa, Pappa, Pappa,’ she whispers, with such a pain inside her that her shoulders fall and her head drops slightly. Maroulla looks up and places her hand on Koki’s knee.
Koki looks down at all her belongings. Everything she has left in the world. She then pulls out the money from the bottom and counts it. She sighs. There is enough to get by for a short while. As she attempts to put the money back she notices that the bottom of the tin is lined with white. Suddenly, something flashes into her mind and leaves her fingers shaking and her body unable to move. She stares down at the tin; she remembers herself at twelve years old, fearfully opening the tin, folding a white envelope and pressing it down into the bottom. She remembers how she sat on the floor by her bed for a long while, breathing as though she had run five miles, terrified that her father would find it. Now another memory: a grey man sits before her, lonely, sad, beneath the lemon tree. He grabs her arm and hands her a letter. Koki’s heart flutters. Her mouth is dry. She closes the tin and looks down at her distorted reflection in the crooked silver top. She remembers his eyes, clear like the shallow part of the sea, and the way they were brimming with tears. She had never known why, but there was something in his eyes which had compelled her to reach out and touch this stranger’s fingers. She remembers his words, how he had told her not to open the letter until she was prepared for her life to change and how its contents would destroy her father. From that day on she had lived in utter fear. The letter, although tucked into her secret tin, had hung over her like a dark cloud. It followed her wherever she went; its potentially disastrous and devastating contents became her greatest source of fear. She did not dare to touch it, let alone open it, and, each night, she felt as though it was slithering around beneath her bed, like a snake. She had imagined it biting her; filling her with poison, making her hair turn redder and her eyes more clear, so that she looked like a monster. Koki shudders as she remembers her childhood fears. She recalls how as she grew older she covered the bottom with a pound note or two and eventually forgot about the letter in the tin. So many things had happened in her life that the letter had become a distant memory, as one would remember a childhood phobia. Koki looks down at the white envelope. A surge of that distant but familiar fright fills her heart. The past always finds a way to bite you in the end; brushing things under the carpet never makes them go away.
Koki rests the tin on her knees and rubs her eyes and her face. She looks out at the town ahead, at the dry cornfield, at the unfamiliar dips and grooves of the road ahead. The heat clings to her. There is nothing left to lose, she thinks. Nobody left to hurt. Nothing left to prove. Nothing left to fear. She looks again at the tin, opens it and quickly pulls out the envelope. But her hastened movements slow down as the panic rises inside her again. She looks at the frayed edges and how it has yellowed over time and the flowery letters at the front, with her full name in English letters: ‘Kyriaki.’ She glances quickly at Maroulla and opens the envelope, pulling out the letter, and she reads it with trembling fingers and a pounding heart; her life suddenly dissolving, distorting and re-forming before her eyes.
For a while, her lips move, whispering inaudible words, and her eyes blink too fast and then too slowly, until she finally closes them completely and her eyeballs move across them as though she were asleep. She takes a deep breath, purses her lips, opens her eyes and looks down at Maroulla, who stares at her expectantly. Koki stands up, composes herself for a moment only, takes the girl’s hand and walks purposefully into the house. She looks around at all the gifts from the visitors, piled up high: mountains of soft white towels smelling of the jasmine-scented air that passes through them as they dry in the morning breeze. Bars of soap and bowls of soft grey ash from the ovens, used as hair conditioner. Piles of multicoloured dresses, perhaps previously worn by the women and children working in the fields. Headscarves of silk, tossed across a small table, shoes of all sizes and colours lined up along the wall, like flowers. Pots and pans still sizzling and bubbling with smells of garlic and sweet onions and tomatoes. Pastry parcels dusted with sugar, jars of honey sweets dripping with syrup, bread fingers still soft from the oven, baskets of lemons and figs picked from the trees, a watermelon already sliced in a tray, olives in pots of oil and lemon, yoghurt, jars of fresh milk, halloumi, pink lounza, zaladina in glass bowls, carob fruits and pumpkins, turnips and golden shoe-figs. And herbs too: dried mint and coriander, daphne and aniseed. ‘All that’s missing is the cow,’ Koki says, and the little girl laughs for the first time. It is a strange laugh that flutters beautifully, but shortly, and falls like the white wings of those silk butterflies.
Everything rests. The others sleep and their breathing is heavy, making the house rise and fall, rise and fall, slowly, as though over the ripples of a waking sea. The shadows are still and mosquitoes move through them. Koki breathes in and sighs. In the distance is the sound of a passing car and from the other side a man calling his sheep and a dog barking. She pauses for a moment as though she is deep in thought and then rummages through the dresses. After a few moments she pulls one out and holds it up to Maroulla, tilting her head slightly. It is brown, thin cotton, with little red roses embroidered on the collar and red buttons trailing along the front. She hands the dress to Maroulla and proceeds to find one for herself. Amongst the pile, she finally pulls out a dress she seems happy with. It is that dusty, uncertain colour of the distant mountain haze, or the leaves of olive trees, or the misty hues where the sea and the sky join. Koki holds it up against her and looks at Maroulla. The little girl looks up, nods, and tells her it is the same colour as her eyes. Koki smiles.
She takes the crucifix and the tin and puts them on a console table next to a hairbrush full of dark, matted hair. Maroulla looks up at her and reaches into her apron pocket and pulls out the scissors and the little green book and places them neatly next to Koki’s belongings. Koki looks at them uncertainly and then at the girl. She smiles faintly and pulls her torn purple dress over her head. The girl unties her own apron by pulling the strings at the back and takes off her red dress and kicks off her shoes. Koki takes two towels from the pile on one of the beds, wraps one round Maroulla, one around herself, takes two jugs from the kitchen cabinet, two bars of soap and a bowl of ash and walks off outside towards the well.
Koki and Maroulla walk back and forth from the well at the back of the garden to the copper basin, filling it with cool water. They stand in the basin, lather themselves thoroughly with soap and rinse themselves with water. It shimmers gold and silver in the afternoon light. A soft breeze blows and the smells of the evening rise up to meet them; the fragrant night-flower and the whiff of evening meals heating on the stoves in kitchens and the sweet red soil releasing the heat from the day. A cockroach scuttles close by and something slithers in the bushes, perhaps a snake or a lizard. Koki fills her palm with ash, massages it into the girl’s hair and rinses it with water. The water runs off, grey, and as soft as sand. She then rinses her own hair and the girl stands on a gold patch of grass and watches her with the towel wrapped around her shoulders. She passes the other towel to Koki as she climbs out of the basin.
They enter the house, splash their skin with rosewater and pull on their dresses. Maroulla runs her finger along the red buttons and realises they are made of silk. Koki takes the hairbrush, rips out the old hair and, sitting on one of the beds, brushes the young girl’s hair. She takes her time doing this, pulling the brush from the top of her temple down to where the tip reaches the girl’s waist, with such precision and care, running over each section so that the hair is as smooth and sleek and
straight as it can be. It shimmers black, like tar. Koki lowers the brush, runs her palm along Maroulla’s hair and feels a heavy feeling in her heart. She then picks up the brush and does her own hair, quickly this time, her eyes darting to and fro in thought, as the room fills with shadows and the humidity of the coming moon and forlorn jasmine flowers brought in by the breeze. Sophia stirs slightly and Costandina mutters something, but nobody wakes.
Koki moves over to the kitchen, finds a knife, cuts some tomatoes, and peeks into each pan. She fills two bowls with rabbit stew and grabs two forks. They sit together at the table, savouring the warm, familiar taste of soft sweet onions and cinnamon and wine, and then dip into the honey sweets in one of the jars. This one, a preserved walnut, soaked in deep red syrup. They top this off with a glass of milk, and lean back, for a moment, in their chairs. But Koki cannot be still for long; she finds a wicker bag, rummages again through the gifts, and throws into it some underwear, some bread fingers, a jar of sweets, a towel and a bar of soap.
After this, she walks barefoot across the room, to the row of shoes. She walks up and down slowly, looking at each pair carefully. She walks to the left, stops, looks down and continues. Passing brown ones with laces, red ones with two buckles or one, black and camel-coloured sandals. She is unsatisfied. She walks back again, sizing up each pair, with her hand on her chin and her eyes almost closed, so that she looks upon them through shadows of lashes as though she cannot face them head on. Finally, in the furthest corner, nearest the door, she stops, bends down and resolutely picks up a pair and holds them up to her face. Black patent with a buckle, slightly frayed and worn beneath, but their rounded toes sparkle in the half light. Round and smooth. Like eggs. Koki smiles. She slips them on, they are slightly small and cramp her toes, but they will do. She picks out a pair for Maroulla, the only pair small enough. Black, with laces, and small embroidered hearts. The girl slips her shoes on and Koki stuffs some tissue into the back where they are too big. She then grabs the wicker bag and they both stand in the doorway with their feet straight, pointing at the path ahead.
A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible Page 25