The Icon Hunter

by Tasoula Georgiou Hadjitofi

  “Go,” I say.

  My daughters are in such a fragile state and at risk of infection. Michael returns a few minutes later.

  “Tasoula, they are breathing. They are alive,” he says.

  “I can’t bear to see them, Michael.”

  I am shocked at how hopeful he is.

  “They are so tiny they can fit into the size of my palm. They are beautiful little miracles,” he says.

  “Please, stop, Michael. The doctor told us they will probably not survive!”

  Michael gives me a calming hug.

  “But, my darling, they are here with us now.”

  After the nurses bathe me, they deliver me to my room. Michael comforts me in silence. Once I drift off to sleep, he rushes off to be with the twins and returns later once the staff have set up a bed for him in my room. My heart breaks for Michael. It means everything to him to be the father of twins.

  “The girls are beautiful, Tasoula. They are in separate incubators, but they are facing each other. Their heads are the size of a tangerine. They have hair! They are full of fight, just like their mother,” he says, trying to lure me to visit them. “You will feel better if you just come and be with the children, please.”

  His voice projects such sweetness. I want to get up and run to be with my girls with every fiber of my being.

  “Michael, I know I am going to love them. It will devastate me to lose them.”

  When I open my eyes this time, it is morning. Michael enters the room already having visited the twins. He pulls a chair up close to me, takes my hand, and says, “They are fighting for their lives, Tasoula. Please, they need their mother. They need you!”

  His words cut through me and release the tears that wash away my fears.

  “If they are fighting, then what kind of a mother am I that I am not fighting with them?” I say. “Maybe the doctors are wrong.”

  It is love at first sight. I can only stroke each of them by sticking my small finger inside an opening in each incubator, but I know they can feel my presence. Anastasia’s eyes are always open, and she stares directly at me. I thought, my God, look at how beautiful and aware she is. I didn’t realize that she was blind at first but as the days went on, despite her inability to see, she would turn her head toward me whenever she heard my voice. I connect to my girls, heart to heart.

  The nurses freeze my pumped breast milk, so there is an ample supply readily on hand. They feed the twins my milk via a syringe, which they inject directly into the stomachs of my girls. Ines, our pediatrician caseworker, meets with us daily to keep us abreast of the twins’ progress. The reports are dismal, but Ines is more than the consummate professional, she is a kind person of unlimited patience dedicated to her job and to those she serves. She manages to bring Michael and me the touch of humanity we so desperately need right now.

  Sophia suffers from thrombosis and Anastasia suffers from kidney issues. There are more complications on the horizon, no doubt, but they will reveal themselves slowly through the children’s natural growth process. Sophia was also born without an ear, but Ines says it will grow. The twins are fighting to survive despite their tiny bodies having to endure all these complications.

  I remember asking myself how could God give us such happiness with one hand and take it away with the other. Then I hear my mother’s voice, and I am reminded of her advice. “God does not give you more than you can handle, Tasoula. You must trust in his divine judgment. There is a purpose to everything.”

  Over the next week, Anastasia’s coloring turns yellow, a sign that her kidneys are failing. I reach out to my network of friends, who put me in touch with a kidney transplant center in Cyprus. I speak to a doctor in London, a Cypriot expert in fetal surgery, and implore him to rescue Anastasia. The reality that Anastasia is so little makes the transplant improbable. I plead and pray, but there is nothing that can be done.

  Michael gently tries to raise my awareness to the inevitable. “My darling, this is poisoning her body, and even if she is lucky enough to survive her kidney failing, which according to all the specialists she cannot, she will be severely handicapped.”

  “What does this mean, Michael? I don’t care if she is disabled.”

  In my mind I think, if Anastasia has disabilities, then Sophia will be okay and somehow we will all manage together. Michael tries to warn me that both children will have disabilities.

  Several days pass. Anastasia’s condition worsens, and the doctors request a meeting. We are led into a conference room where my gynecologist, the obstetrician, and hospital officials are gathered.

  “This is not a conversation I like to have, but, as you know, Anastasia’s kidneys are failing. We need your permission to discontinue the breathing apparatus.”

  I rise from my seat. “How dare you give us false hope, and now place the responsibility on us to pull the plug on Anastasia’s life!”

  The doctor attempts to calm me as the discussion continues. We are eventually placed back in my room, where Michael and I speak privately.

  “I understand the anger you feel, Tasoula, I feel it as well, but they gave Anastasia the breathing apparatus to save her. And Sophia may still yet live.”

  “No, Michael,” I say, sounding sure of myself. “They told us from the beginning that the babies would not survive. I begged not to see them, not to fall in love with them.”

  My hormone levels dropped drastically the moment the babies were born, and I am not in the best state of mind to handle the latest catastrophic blow. Now we are expected to choose whether our child should live or die.

  I feel that I don’t have the right to take a life. Being raised an Orthodox Christian, I believe that only God can do such things.

  “We have to make this decision together,” says Michael.

  “I can’t,” unable to let the thought rest in my consciousness for even a second.

  “We must, Tasoula, because we will have to live with this decision for the rest of our lives.”

  “Yes,” I reply, “that is why you and I must come to our decisions separately.”

  I place a call to Bishop Maximos, who married Michael and me and also christened Andreas, to confide in him about our situation. He comes to the hospital and christens our daughters. My two girlfriends, Anna Franse and Elizabeth Sahin, the girls’ godparents, stay to support me.

  “Tasoula,” Bishop Maximos takes my hand, “have you any idea what it means to care for a severely disabled child?”

  “No,” I reply.

  “There is a young lady, a secretary who works in the Greek embassy, whom you should meet. Shall I arrange a call?”

  “Yes, but what am I to do in regard to Anastasia’s life support?”

  “How long can Anastasia survive on her own?” asks Bishop Maximos.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I ask, wanting the bishop to relieve my pain.

  “Some hospitals have a policy whereby if the child can breathe on its own for two hours, then they will intervene. If the child cannot survive that long without intervention, then you know that it is God’s will to remove them from life support. Your situation falls in a very gray area because the hospital has already intervened.”

  After speaking with the bishop, I am still unclear about what to do. I decide to see a psychologist. I need to think about this very carefully. As Michael correctly stated, this is a life-changing decision that will remain with us for the rest of our days.

  Have I explored my motivations for wanting to keep Anastasia alive? What is the best choice for my daughter?

  Seeing the psychologist proves to be a valuable sounding board and a safe place for me to address the complicated issues at hand. I do take the bishop’s advice, and through his introduction to the lady at the embassy, I am now aware of the reality of what I will face should Anastasia survive. Reflecting upon the information I acquire, I determine that I cannot take the responsibility of choosing life and death because of the Greek Orthodox faith so deeply rooted in me.
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  When Michael and I reunite to discuss our individual feelings, it is no surprise to me that he has come to the same conclusion. We will not supersede God’s will.

  That night we return home instead of sleeping at the hospital. Michael and I are both mentally and emotionally exhausted, and we decide to give ourselves a break for a few hours just this one evening to spend time with Andreas, who suffers from our absence. Looking into the eyes of my little boy who is thrilled to have this time with me, I can feel his light ignite my own, which the events of the past several weeks have all but extinguished. For just a few short hours, life feels normal again.

  The next morning we receive a call from the hospital that Anastasia’s kidney condition is worse. We return to the hospital immediately.

  “She is dying,” says Dr. von Rosenstiel.

  I manage to overcome the lump in my throat to speak.

  “May we hold her?” I ask.

  The hospital staff places a privacy curtain for us in the intensive care unit. Michael and I take turns holding Anastasia. When she is in Michael’s arms, my thoughts stray. If only I stayed with her last night. She needed me, and I was not there to support her. She must have sensed my absence and assumed that I had abandoned her. Dear God, I can’t live with the pain of knowing that I let her down. Please, forgive me.

  When I am holding her in my arms, these thoughts subside as I connect with her, heart to heart. I want her to feel my love during her last moments, not my fear and guilt. I want her to remember me for as long as time continues. I have never witnessed the kind of courage I see in my daughter at this moment. This is the only time I have held her without wires being attached to her body. I curse all the days that I have taken life for granted as I watch my sweet angel fight for her life. The tears flow for Michael, but I cannot shed one tear. I smile instead, wanting Anastasia to remember me this way so I can feel that I was as strong for her as my mother was for me during the war. She takes her last breath in my arms as I watch her pass from this life to God’s embrace.

  The hospital moves us into a private room where Michael and I continue to hold her. There are no words to describe what losing a child is like. There is a numbness that takes hold of you, a paralysis that tricks your mind into believing you will never feel again. My daughter’s struggle to survive ended, but mine is only beginning. Michael and I make preparations to bury Anastasia while caring for our two living children, no easy feat when all I want to do is give up. Seeing Michael so devastated makes the situation even more crushing for me.

  “In your view, God chose to take Anastasia from us, Tasoula, but at the end of the day, I believe that it is Anastasia who chose for all of us.”

  “If only I had stayed . . .” I say, continuing to punish myself.

  “Then it would have happened the next day or the day after that. It was not meant for her to survive. She knew it, and she chose when to leave us.”

  We selected a white, child-sized coffin and requested that those in attendance not wear black. It wasn’t a funeral. It was a tribute to Anastasia for how she lived in the short time that we were graced with her presence. Fifty of our closest friends and family members attended a service in Rotterdam led by Bishop Maximos. I wore a pink suit and dressed Anastasia in a beautiful white gown. I placed a doll in the coffin that I had specially purchased for her before she was born, which I bury with her. I also purchased the same doll for Sophia and Michael as a gift to mark the unique connection they all shared being twins.

  Because Michael and I own a house in Wassenaar, we are allowed to purchase a gravesite in the graveyard that surrounds the church in the middle of town, the place where we began our life together. We feel extremely lucky to be able to bury her in a place we consider so precious to the history of our family. I design her grave marker in the image of a beautiful angel with a butterfly, as their time on earth is also brief. Anastasia lived the same two-week life span as the butterflies who morphed from the silk worms I used to raise, the ones who created the beautiful silk threads that were processed into items for my dowry back home. For the short period that Anastasia was with us, she enriched our lives immeasurably.

  When we bury Anastasia a part of me is buried with her. I suffer alone in silence. There are moments when the despair swallows me whole, and I think I will not survive another minute, and other times when I allow myself a laugh or two, especially when Andreas does something adorable, but it is fleeting. The anguish always returns, like a boomerang, to remind me of my greatest loss.

  Three weeks after her death, I attend an annual Greek Gala in The Hague, which raises money for our church. No one is expecting me to attend. The Cypriot tradition when losing a loved one is to mourn in isolation for the first forty days. Despite, or perhaps even because of my heavy heart, I go to dance and to build a life for the daughter who lives, not the daughter who left us.

  Twelve

  WHAT LIES BENEATH

  Weeks of exhausting, repetitive scheduling makes one day bleed into the next. It starts with caring for Andreas before heading off to the office to manage Octagon and perform my duties as consul. Late morning, I then go to Leiden Hospital where I meet with Ines to review Sophia’s condition before I head over to the neonatal section to care for her. In the midst of all this, I prepare for our looming relocation to Egypt.

  The sight of tubes coming out of Sophia’s tiny body after weeks of hospitalization wears on my heart. She is too small to fit into infant clothing, so I rummage through doll shops in search of a fitting wardrobe, discarding the dolls after purchase so as not to be reminded of Sophia’s vulnerability. Separated by a glass cocoon with only one small opening to reach in and touch her with my finger, I pine to do more, yet she is so delicate that I am sometimes afraid to even bathe her. The one-snap closures on the back of the doll garments make it easy to dress her, and the nurses oblige my need for an appearance of normalcy.

  The neonatal nurses require me to set a schedule in advance in order to coordinate Sophia’s feedings and bathing times with the hospital staff. It is difficult for me to be on time because of the responsibilities I have, and conflict with the nursing staff occurs whenever I am late. I am judged as a woman more interested in my career than in the survival of and bonding with my child. This could not be further from the truth. I am scared stiff that I will do something wrong and hurt her while she is in my arms. What if a tube comes out? What if my touch is not as tender as it should be? These thoughts interfere with my ability to bond and mother her. There is also the constant pressure of having the eyes of the staff judging my every move. And the whole time I’m torn with guilt over having to abandon my son, Andreas, in order to care for Sophia. I wonder how it will impact him. I’ve yet to properly mourn my daughter Anastasia, whom I buried a few weeks ago, and I live in a constant state of terror wondering if Sophia will even survive.

  What people see on the surface is me in survival mode. I wear the composed façade of a businesswoman who appears as if she has it all together, but in reality I know that if I shed one tear I will be unable to stop.

  Despite my personal woes, the world keeps moving. Word that a John the Baptist icon is about to be auctioned off at Sotheby’s draws me away from my grief and places me back on track to recover the stolen artifacts. Being back at work brings me a needed reprieve from the world of doctors, nurses, and hospitals. I inform Kyprianou about the forthcoming auction, and he immediately sends a letter to Linda Jotham, the solicitor director of Sotheby’s, informing her that the icon belongs to the Church of Cyprus, was stolen during the Turkish invasion in 1974, and should be pulled from auction.1

  Sotheby’s responds that the icon was previously up for sale in 1980, 1985, and 1987, and neither the Church of Cyprus nor the government made any claims then.2 Jotham intimates that Cypriot monks and painters from Cyprus traveled and left their creations in other parts of the world throughout history. Famagusta was the center of trade between the East and West during the thirteenth century, so the possibili
ty that traders could have also moved the icons out of Cyprus exists, but in this case we have evidence to the contrary. There was no legal trade of sacred antiquities in Cyprus before or after the invasion of 1974.

  Kyprianou enlists attorney Nick Kounoupias in the United Kingdom to represent Cyprus in preparation of a possible court battle. In 1985 when the John the Baptist icon was last for sale in the Christie’s catalogue, it was identified as being from the Cretan school of icon painting. The correct geographic provenance (Cyprus) was not cited. In the trade this type of misinformation can mislead both buyer and original owner as to an artifact’s true provenance.

  My mind avails itself of the effort to uncover how the trade operates. Working in parallel to lawyers Kyprianou and Kounoupias in search of evidence to support their efforts to stop the Sotheby’s sale becomes my oasis. Unlike the rest of my life, my actions here can actually impact the outcome. After more digging, a copy of a catalogue from the 1987 London exhibition of East Christian Art displaying the John the Baptist icon for sale is discovered. Yannis Petsopoulos is the man behind the exhibition.3

  Petsopoulos is the Greek dealer whom Van Rijn insists is being given leniency by the Cypriot government, so it will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out. Setting my sights on providing evidence to show how the John the Baptist icon got from Cyprus into the hands of Sotheby’s, I throw myself into the search.

  Kyprianou replies to Sotheby’s that the church is not disputing their assertion that the Cypriot icon was exhibited previously, it is claiming that the exhibition was not brought to the attention of the Church of Cyprus due to the false statement of provenance. This should not affect the basis for the Church’s claim that the icon was illegally removed from the Church of Agia Paraskevi situated in the village of Palaesophos in the district of Kyrenia. Kyprianou further says that if the icon does go to auction, the buyer will be purchasing it at his own risk, as it is stolen Cypriot property.4