by Sophie Ward
The furthest end of the beach was where the girls camped for the day, dipping in and out of the water to keep cool. On the nearer side of the bay, the older boys who didn’t yet have to go to work smoked and sunned themselves and took the occasional stroll along the wet sand to let the girls see their newly grown bodies. The middle territory belonged to Ali’s gang.
He stuck out his tongue at her and ran off, duty and care rolling away from him with every step.
‘Al! Al! Al!’ he could hear the boys shout as they kicked the ball out of Damon’s reach. ‘Get in goal!’
The goal they had in mind was the entire beach as Damon struggled to land the ball out of the water. Ali wished his school friend hadn’t brought the ball out to play when he was so anxious for its safety. The more protective Damon was, the more the other boys teased him. Much of the time the children made the best of a random collection of abandoned beach balls, or clothes bundled with string. The unpunctured, eighteen panel leather beauty that Damon’s father had given him for his tenth birthday would have been enjoyed by the whole gang if Damon hadn’t held on so tight. It was more fun to try and get the ball away from him than play a game with Damon marching around with ‘his’ football and ‘his’ rules.
Ali kicked the ball back into the sea towards Damon and shucked off his t-shirt and shorts.
‘Hey, Stella, play nice.’ A stout, younger boy named Andras wrapped his arms around his own shoulders and mimed a movie kiss. Melina Mercouri was the most popular Greek actress that summer and her photograph as the ill-fated Stella was all over the island. None of the children had seen the film but they knew Stella married a football player.
Before Damon could respond, Nicolai thrust a foot out of the water and sent the ball further out to sea. Ali waded over as the rest of the group lunged towards the ball sending it further away.
‘They’ll get bored soon.’ Ali cuffed his friend on the shoulder. ‘Let them play.’
Damon shook his head. ‘Look.’ They both stared beyond the flailing boys to the sodden tan globe bobbing out to sea. ‘My dad’s going to kill me.’
A few weeks before, Damon had cried when he’d caught his shorts on a branch climbing a tree and refused to cut the trapped belt loop with his pocketknife. Ali had broken the branch off to free the sobbing boy. The others had laughed and for some days after they had tried to leave Damon behind when they went off for the day.
‘He’s a baby, he should play with the nepioi,’ Andras said.
‘His parents are strict.’ Ali wasn’t sure this was true but it seemed to make sense. Why else was Damon always so worried about what they thought? His own parents were too busy to think about Ali’s clothes and toys. They smacked him if he was rude and shouted at him to finish his chores and help his sister but other than that he was left alone. Ali didn’t think that Greek parents were any more or less terrifying than Turkish ones. They all seemed to have their own confusing habits. Still, Damon was the kind of friend you had to look after. ‘Give him another chance.’
The gang forgave him and when Damon’s birthday meant a new football to share, they stopped singing klápse moró when they tired of him. Ali asked Damon to leave the ball at home anyway, he could see the trouble ahead, but the little taste of power was irresistible to the unpopular child.
‘Please, Al. Stop them.’
With a glance at the scrawny Damon, now shivering in the retreating tide, Ali ducked under the water and headed for the ball. He was the strongest swimmer of the group but they were supposed to stay within their depth. Two summers ago, a guest from the house had drowned when he drifted out to sea. There were no coastguards, the only adults an occasional village elder out for a daily stroll. By the time anyone on the beach noticed the man in trouble on the horizon, it was too late to reach him. The body was never recovered. Publicly the accident was blamed on ignorance of local waters but in school and at home children were reminded of the danger in their backyard.
The current was stronger past the first break where the ground dipped away and the water went from the palest dawn blue to the faded ink of his grandfather’s vest. Ali rode over several large waves and felt the pull as they drew him back and under. Beyond the breakwater the surface seemed still, only the rocking of the leather ball ahead betrayed the undertow. He squinted in the sunlight, trying to judge the distance. Behind him, the boys’ shouts rose and fell with the crashing waves. He was far away from the group now, approaching the outer edge of the bay, the ball floating into the open waters of the Mediterranean as Ali closed the gap. He made the calculation to dive underwater and attempt to overtake the ball enough that his own wake would not push it out further.
Under the surface he could only make out his hands as they pushed past his face. His eyes stung and the back of his throat burnt from the seawater filling his sinuses. He rose level with the ball but several strokes to the right and decided to launch himself across the distance with his remaining energy. With a gulp, he pistonned his legs beneath him and threw himself up into the air. His fingertips grazed the coarse leather as the ball floated away from his grasp but Ali curled under and caught it with his feet, cupping his arms around to form a little pool with his whole body. Out of breath, he took hold of the ball and rested for a moment on his buoyant treasure.
Under his stomach the ball rose up and down. He thought about the time he’d been by car to the baths in Nicosia for the day with his uncle. More used to the bony back of Gri the donkey than the upholstered comfort of his uncle’s Mercedes, Ali slept the entire way home and missed his uncle’s tour of the island at night.
‘He’s no guard dog,’ his amca said, ‘Let’s hope he’s never called up.’
The words made a strong impression on Ali, who thought them both deeply unfair and yet hurtful, as though his uncle knew some buried truth. Ali had no wish to be a soldier but he wanted to be brave and loyal. He knew he could be useful. When he helped Kostas with the chores in the house he felt the satisfaction of the work and Kostas would congratulate him on a job well done. But had his uncle seen an awful defect in his character? There was the time he had hidden from Apollo in the year above so he couldn’t steal his lunch. That had lasted a week until he got sick of eating on his own and had surrendered his favourite mince pastry. When he found out that Apollo hated vegetables he’d asked his mother to only make him cauliflower börek. Ali wasn’t crazy about cauliflower but from then on he was left in peace at lunchtime and all his friends adopted vegetarian diets at school. Was that cowardly?
Ali kept his eyes closed and the water swayed beneath him. He knew he had drifted further but he’d found a way out of the Apollo problem and if he thought hard enough, he’d find a way out of this one too. His uncle was wrong, he could be a soldier. His uncle couldn’t know about the nights he had peed out of his bedroom window instead of going to the outhouse because he’d once seen a scorpion there. That was sensible. Who wants to get stung by a scorpion or bitten by a spider? But he knew it would seem like he was scared. Being brave meant taking risks and so Ali had resolved to be daring.
Above him he could hear the whine of an RAF aeroplane headed for Nicosia. The boys used to raise a fist at the British aircraft but with the addition of the new helicopters there were too many to bother with lately. Ali checked back to see what his friends were doing. Only Andras was visible this side of the breakwater, the other boys now stick figures against the beach. Ali scanned the water line around him.
He was well beyond the bay, the rocky coastline stretching either side of his good beach. Far away to his left, a passenger ship was approaching what he knew must be Larnaca port. He had never been this far from shore. He had swum out to one of the caves on the southern side of the bay before, to collect a starfish as a dare. But what had looked like a ledge to climb from into the gap in the mountain was too high and steep. The swim back had been tough without a rest.
‘I’ll try the other side next time. Or when the tide is in more,’ he had said when he returned to
the group. But he didn’t go again. He didn’t want to feel the way he had on the swim home; the queasy dread that crept up on him as he kept on swimming without seeming to get anywhere. The importance of the swim was that his friends had seen him do it and thought him fearless. That was why they now stood on the beach to watch instead of raising the alarm. Ali was the one who could swim.
Of course, he knew the tides. The ‘gentle tides of the Mediterranean’ as he had read at school. The sea itself was not orderly and predictable as a textbook. Every little inlet had its own nature, every beach its own troubles. The kalos beach was no different. He kicked his legs to get started and his calf muscles ached with the effort. Ahead of him the water rolled and heaved in the afternoon sunlight. He shouldn’t have come so far at this time of day. While he’d rested, he had floated further out.
With the ball in his arms he only had his legs for propulsion. He kicked harder and leant over the top of the ball to add his arms. If he leant too far, he lost control, not far enough and only his hands were submerged. He changed position, tucked the ball in the crook of one arm and pulled forward with the other. Without the ball pushing into his chest, he could breathe but he had no balance or speed. He threw the ball in front of him and swam towards it several times but by the fourth try, he was only throwing it a stroke or two ahead, his arms as heavy as rocks. Every time he stopped, he drifted back.
His eyes were full of salt and his skin burned, but he kept kicking. There were more vertical bodies on the shoreline now. He saw them as if through glass, his watery world on one side, land and air on the other. He needed them now, needed one person to help him. Was it possible they could see or hear him? Who would come? Not the older boys with their swagger and their hair oil. Not the girls, who heeded their parents’ warnings, though they might get help. Which of his friends would take the risk? He recognised the sickness in the pit of his stomach and knew that time was running out. If he kept hold of the prize he was not going to make it back.
With the ball against his head, he kept pushing forward. He had to get into the more protected waters of the bay and he didn’t have the strength for his overarm crawl. An image of resting on top of the ball while he slept started to form in his mind. A nap might revive him, he thought, even as he knew that the idea was a bad one. Too tired to nudge the ball with his head, he turned on to his back and tucked it under his chin. The change in position gave him a minute of renewed energy until his neck started to ache. The ball slid off his chest and Ali reached out to grab it. He should let it go. Without it he might have a chance of getting back to shore. He tried to turn his head to see if help was coming but his sight was blurred and the white light that glanced off the water stung his eyes. Still, he could not let go of the ball. The shame of being rescued for nothing, the failure of his mission, Damon’s disappointment and the jokes from his friends all pressed him to hold on. He was Ali the brave. His uncle was wrong.
He returned to his stomach and held on to the ball, his legs pedalling beneath him, his eyes closed to stop the salt sting. He tried to breathe through his nose. He was thirsty and his throat was raw. His body felt broken. He thought of Hanife on the beach with her friends. Would she notice he was in trouble? His mother would know, wherever she was, would realise he was in danger. Had he shouted, had he waved? If someone swam out to him now they risked drowning themselves. If no one came they risked watching Ali drown. He was too tired to move except his legs, cycling, cycling, while he solved the problem of getting home.
He couldn’t swim hard enough with the ball in his arms but he didn’t want to let go of it. If he had string, he could drag it but still the friction would hold him back. He needed to get the air out, but how?
A football pump could put the air in or take it out. He had a bicycle pump, but that was the same deal. The bicycle pump was in the shed back at the house, stored in the bucket with the big spanners and some of Kostas’s other equipment. If Kostas were here he would find a way to deflate the ball without a needle. He’d seen Kostas string together electric wires, fill walls with flour paste, line roof tiles with hay. Once, Ali had watched while Kostas cut open a pregnant goat, delivered the kids and stitched the mother using sheep gut for thread. The goat stood up an hour later. After he’d seen that, Ali thought that anything was possible. He tried to remember that feeling. He thought of finishing-lines and podiums, he thought of soldiers and colonels. He was a Kargin. He could achieve whatever he wanted, be whatever he dreamed.
A soft body brushed against his foot and what felt like a hand. He tucked his legs in sharply. It was a fish. Only a fish, he repeated to himself. Where was he? He’d fallen asleep, for a second. The shoreline had receded and he was back out beyond the line of the bay. The ball was going to kill him. He had to swim for his life before it was too late. Ali slipped off his floating prison and sank below the surface. He had his breath back but his body could no longer float. He felt the pull of the water beneath him and struggled in vain to push his face into the air. Now his leg was trapped, an arm circled his neck. With an enormous effort he struck out at the phantom.
‘Ow! Al! Stop. It’s me. Stop or we’ll both go under.’
Ali’s ears were full of water. He couldn’t hear above his own flailing and splashing but he could see. Swimming beside him, one arm around the ball, the other extended to Ali in a mixture of defence and supplication, was Damon.
For a moment, Ali couldn’t make sense of it. This was not Damon’s environment. It was like seeing your teacher in a bar, or your mother climbing trees. Ali thought maybe he was still asleep. Or dead. He stopped struggling and let Damon hold his head above the water. The boy had his pocket knife braced against Ali’s shoulder.
‘Jellyfish,’ his friend said, ‘Breathe, then we’ll start back.’
There was no boat. How had Damon got here? How would either of them get to the beach? Ali’s legs were as feeble as a newborn kid’s. He could hardly move his arms. And Damon had the ball. They were both going to drown.
‘You have to relax, Al. Let me swim.’
With his arm around Ali’s torso, Damon started to drag his friend toward the shoreline, the ball in his free arm. They hardly moved.
‘The ball.’ Ali tried to take it and immediately slipped underwater again. Coughing, he rested on the ball and clung on to Damon. ‘We have … leave it.’
Both boys looked at the beach in the distance. Several heads now bobbed toward them but they were still far away. Ali could barely hold on and Damon couldn’t keep him upright with the ball slipping underneath.
‘Go!’ Ali released the ball and grabbed hold of Damon. The ball skittered across the water. They stared at the object that had brought them both so far out to sea and so close to staying there.
‘Wait.’ Damon held on to Ali and brought up his free arm, knife in hand. In one move, Damon closed the gap, took the ball and stuck the blade deep into the leather. ‘Take it.’ He pushed the folding moon of the ball to Ali. ‘Hold on.’
Slowly, the two boys started the long journey back.
*
For his speech as Best Man, Damon chose his words carefully. It was not true, he said, that he had saved Ali’s life all those years ago on a beach back home. The truth was, Ali had saved his. Ali, he was sure, would have worked out how to get home even with the troublesome matter of the jellyfish, which Damon had to admit was a close call.
‘Al knew how to solve a problem, how to escape from trouble. If I didn’t know it before, I saw it many times in the schisma.’
The guests, both Ali’s Turkish friends and Celena’s Greek ones, nodded at the recognition of the division of the island.
‘If Al hadn’t shown me how to be brave when we were paidiá I would never have made it here.’ Damon indicated the street outside, and with a wider sweep of his arm, the park and the greater area of north London. ‘He stood up for me when others would have turned their backs. He climbed trees to rescue me when I would fall. Al is the first person I turn to and th
e last person I want to leave. Dear Celena,’ Damon raised a glass, ‘You have chosen well, you have chosen wisely. May your life together be long and enchanted. And may you never know the difficulty of choosing between your best friend and a football. Sağlığınıza!’
II Defection
Ali drifted further out to sea with the rescued ball balanced beneath him. He thought about Hanife on the beach. Every morning he was so impatient with her, so quick to leave her behind if he could. The fizzing in his legs had gone now. How he wished he could stand next to his sister again, the sand between his toes, and wait while she unbuckled her shoes with all the time in the world.
There was no time left in the open water. He looked back at the shoreline. On the beach he saw a small group, a blur of lines from this distance, but standing together. There was no sign of anyone on his side of the breakwater.
He slipped off the ball and slid under a little way, his muscles too tired to support him. A rope of water appeared in front of his face, no, not water, a tentacle, as clear as the stream from the tap. He ducked to one side as a jellyfish floated away from him and the ball skittered over his shoulder. He let it go. One jellyfish meant more jellyfish. If he was stung now he would drop to the bottom of the ocean as fast as Damon had dropped out of the tree when his belt had caught on a branch. Instead of cutting himself free, the siska boy had struggled and lost his balance. Damon was not a soldier but his broken bones were nothing compared to what lay in wait for Ali.
This was the moment his uncle had meant. Ali was being called up, right now, in the depths of the Mediterranean. He could make every effort to swim hard for the shore. Or he could give up. His family might never find him though his mother would know where he lay. She would think of him below the sea for the rest of her days. And Hanife would forever be a twin without a twin.
Ali had never faced a moment like this before. He was nine. The closest he had come to death was in birth. He remembered times when he was afraid but had he been afraid for his life? The creatures that lurked in the outhouse were his main foes, but they were not going to kill him. Nor were Apollo and his henchmen. But out here in the water he might die and no one was coming to rescue him, just as no one had rescued the man in the boat, though they’d all seen it happen.