by Nadia Marks
‘I knew you would come if I asked you to,’ Leila said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she ran to meet Maroula when she saw her coming down the hill towards the house.
‘How could I not?’ the older woman replied, taking the girl in her arms.
‘I used to beg her to let me help more at the shop,’ Leila said as they made their way to the house, ‘but she told me I was better off taking care of cooking and the housework, but what good did that do?’ A little sob rose to her throat, cutting her sentence short. ‘My uncle Ahmet was at her side when she had the stroke,’ she continued, finding her voice again.
‘How is she now?’ Maroula asked, fearing the worst, as they entered the kitchen through the back door.
‘You’ll see . . . come,’ Leila said, holding back her tears, and led the way towards the bedroom. ‘She doesn’t open her eyes or recognize any of us, not even Orhan, who came straight away. He spends most of his time by her side.’
Leila wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and pointed to the bedroom. ‘She’s alone now, my brother is at the mosque, praying for her.’
Maroula walked towards the bed where her beloved old friend lay motionless, her mane of hair, once so enviable for its mahogany lustre and richness, deprived now of its colour and framing her face like a pale halo. She looked as if in a deep peaceful sleep.
‘How long has she been like this?’ Maroula turned to Leila in a whisper.
‘Since it happened. It’s a week now, the doctor says she’s in a coma . . .’
Maroula sat down next to the bed and reached for her friend’s hand.
‘I’m here, askim mou,’ she said, softly speaking in Turkish and crossing herself. ‘See, I’ve learned the words as you always wanted me to.’ She brushed a lock of hair away from Hatiche’s forehead and, leaning towards her, gently kissed it. ‘But it’s time to wake up now, do you hear me?’ she said, more forcefully this time, as if her voice could snap her awake like the Sleeping Beauty.
She stroked her face tenderly with the back of her hand and went on talking. ‘You have to wake up now, Hatiche mou, and then we will let all that has happened between us go with the wind.’
She touched the sleeping woman’s shoulder, giving it a gentle shake, willing her to move. ‘It’s all water under the bridge now, it wasn’t your fault that Anastasia did what she did, I was wrong to blame you. I know that now. You couldn’t have stopped her. It’s all water that has run from the river into the big wide sea . . .’ Maroula’s voice faltered. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and continued, her words trickling out softly.
‘You have always been my best friend, Hatiche mou,’ she said, as if she was now a girl talking to her friend after they had had a little squabble. It was as if she had turned the clock back to their youth. She sat by Hatiche’s side, holding her hand for timeless minutes or hours, speaking tender loving words; she couldn’t tear herself away. Leila and Orhan came and went, bringing her coffee and water and slices of orange. Maroula refused to leave the bedside. ‘We need to get some colour, some henna on that hair of yours,’ she suddenly heard herself say and gave a little chuckle, remembering their youth and the days of Ayşe Hanoum and her beauty recipes, ‘not to mention your legs. You must be as hairy as a monkey by now! I have a good mind to go and make some halaoua, and not just for your legs, look at the state of your face.’ She gave another chuckle. ‘You’re growing a moustache as healthy as Ahmet’s!’
While she spoke, Maroula fancied she felt the faintest squeeze of her hand. She dare not move in case she broke the spell. With her eyes fixed on Hatiche’s face, she continued. ‘What do you think your mother would say, eh?’ This time the squeeze, which she was convinced she felt, was stronger than before, and holding her breath Maroula tightened her grip. Scanning Hatiche’s face, she was certain that she saw a ghost of a smile on her lips.
‘Oh! Mother of God!’ she breathed as tears filled her eyes. ‘I think she heard me.’ And without looking away, she called for Leila to join them.
Whether or not Hatiche regained consciousness for a few short minutes to respond to Maroula’s words, no one ever knew for certain, except for Maroula herself, who maintained that her friend had indeed been aware of her presence and that in communicating with her by squeezing her hand she had also forgiven her.
Hatiche died peacefully a few days later with her beloved childhood friend and her two children by her side. She was laid to rest straight into the earth with no coffin, wrapped as tradition required in seven metres of unbleached calico cotton and placed on her side, facing Mecca, in a grave beside her beloved Hassan. The funeral procession was attended by all the villagers, Christians and Muslims wishing to pay their respects by walking the mile-long distance from the mosque to the Turkish cemetery. In death, their differences faded away; Greek and Turk would always unite to mourn each other’s dead.
Maroula stayed until after the funeral, which Orhan performed for his mother. Before leaving she took both children in her arms and kissed them tenderly.
‘What has separated us until now should not matter any longer,’ she said and reached for Orhan’s hand. She looked deep into the young man’s eyes but said nothing, deciding that she would leave it up to him to speak if he wished. Then she got on Bambos’s bus and returned to Nicosia, promising Leila that she would come and visit her again. Meeting both of Hatiche’s children, who Maroula had considered almost as her own until the family feud, gave her both joy and pain. She had lost her own daughter and was separated from her son but these two children that she had loved so fondly all through their early life were still here. For the first time in years, as she sat on the bus during the long journey back to Nicosia, she allowed herself to start remembering and revisiting all that had happened to divide the two families. How could she have allowed the dispute to fester, she asked herself, to be estranged from her best friend, her soulmate, her ‘sister’ who now had gone forever.
‘I have always thought of you as a second mother,’ Leila had told Maroula while they sat vigil by Hatiche’s bedside.
‘I know, Leila mou,’ Maroula sighed. ‘We were all one family.’ The pain of regret pinched her heart.
‘Anastasia was my best friend and I loved Lambros as much as my own brother,’ Leila continued. ‘We should never have allowed what happened to come between us.’
The mere mention of her daughter’s name filled Maroula’s heart with more regret.
‘At the time I thought that Anastasia’s actions were unforgivable,’ she replied, shaking her head, ‘but now it’s myself I cannot forgive.’ As they sat hour after hour by Hatiche’s side Leila spoke of their visit to Istanbul; she spoke of the beautiful grandson Maroula had so far away and of the life her daughter was now living.
‘I know she misses you and I think Anastasia feels the same as you do. Perhaps it’s time you both forgave each other.’ Leila reached for the older woman’s hand. ‘It’s never too late.’
Leila’s words echoed in Maroula’s ears all the way back to Nicosia. She had lost her most beloved friend by arriving too late to make amends. She must not make the same mistake again; she must go to find Anastasia.
As Bambos drove his bus away from the familiar landscape of the mountains and across the plain towards the city, Maroula made up her mind. She had to make the journey of reconciliation. She needed to make peace with her daughter; she longed to take her in her arms once again and there was no time to lose. Her only concern was how to break the news to the rest of the family.
She was less concerned about Andreas’s reaction, knowing well enough that her husband was as torn as she was by the loss of their daughter. But she also knew that Penelope would have much to say about it.
‘How can the girl be forgiven after what she did, turning her back on her family and religion?’ she would often say, never allowing Maroula to forget the shame she had brought upon them. As far as her sister-in-law and the rest of the world were concerned, Anastasia had sinned and her actions we
re indefensible. Maroula knew that her daughter had done wrong; she too would pray at the little altar that her mother had given her when she got married, and ask the Holy Mother of God to forgive her daughter. But Penelope was not the girl’s mother and she did not feel the maternal love Maroula had deep in her soul for her child.
The loss of her only daughter and the regret she felt was the cross Maroula had carried with her since the day Anastasia left without a word. Since the death of her old friend, she had made up her mind that she must act soon, before it was too late.
As Maroula had rightly predicted, the only person to raise vehement objections to her decision was Penelope.
‘She chose the Turk over you! Over all of us,’ she said, her lips tightly pursed. ‘You gave her everything, and how does she repay her family? By betraying us and forsaking everything that is sacred.’
‘Yes, Penelope, but she is my flesh and blood and I have spent long enough with this burden of blame; I must rid myself of it now because I cannot live with it any longer.’
‘How do you know she wants to see you?’ the other woman retorted. ‘She left and never looked back.’
‘That is a risk I am willing to take. She is a mother herself now and she might understand a mother’s sorrow at the loss of her child.’
So Maroula wrote to Lambros, informing him of her decision and letting him know that it was time for her, if not her son, to forgive his sister. She sent a note to Leila, asking her to accompany her to Constantinople and to warn Anastasia of their arrival. Then she started to make arrangements for the long journey.
But much as Maroula wished to rid herself of her burden of grievance and be reconciled with her daughter, it was not to be.
The letter from Leila informing Anastasia of their arrival came too late and it lay unopened for days.
Early one hot and humid Istanbul July morning, after a heavy rainfall the day before, Anastasia woke at dawn and went out into her garden to greet the day and tend her plants. No matter how many years since she had arrived in Istanbul, she never became used to these summer downpours which brought annoyance to the people and traffic to a standstill, and caused chaos with leaking roofs, muddy potholes and slippery streets; nonetheless Anastasia welcomed it. Where she came from, it was drought that they feared, especially in Nicosia where July rain would have been a godsend. She loved the way her plants revived after rain and early morning was her favourite time to trim the spent flowers and patrol the pots and flowerbeds to see what needed to be done.
She made her coffee – she liked it strong and sweet – and took it out into the garden to savour it alone before her son and husband rose from their sleep. She breathed in the cool morning air and gathered herself for her task ahead. The rusty nail on a plank of wood was hidden behind a tumbling rose and the scratch on her arm seemed so minor that she did not even bother to interrupt her gardening to wash the blood away.
By the time Hassan came home from school she was showing signs of a cold.
‘These summer colds are the worst,’ she said to him as he dropped his satchel on a chair and ran to see what ailed her.
‘You never take care of yourself, that’s your problem,’ he scolded her. ‘The rain was heavy yesterday. Maybe you caught a chill after you went shopping in the rain.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, smiling at her over-protective son. He saw a shiver go through her body. ‘I’ll be fine by morning.’
‘Papa can give you something to help with it when he comes home,’ he replied and made his way to the kitchen to get her a glass of water.
‘Don’t fuss, I’ll be fine,’ Anastasia replied, ‘now go and do your homework.’
By the time Enver arrived home, Anastasia was running quite a high temperature; she prepared and served dinner for the three of them but had no appetite herself. The next morning her condition worsened, although she was still adamant that it was nothing but a cold, consenting at least to staying in bed. In the afternoon, when Hassan returned from school, he found his mother in a terrible state and at a loss as to what to do he telephoned his father at the hospital, who immediately sent an ambulance. The symptoms of sepsis were accelerating.
In hospital, Hassan sat at his mother’s bedside for two days, talking to her and willing her to get better. She held on to her beloved boy’s hand and tried to respond to him.
‘I love you more than life itself,’ she whispered at one point, her voice barely audible. ‘I do regret some things in my life but having you, my boy, made up for everything . . .’
She struggled to breathe. ‘I want you to do one thing for me, my son.’ She turned to look into his eyes, her own pleading. ‘When you are older I want you to promise me that you will go to Cyprus and find Orhan and tell him how much I loved him.’
The boy nodded, fat tears starting to roll down his cheeks, unable to believe that he had watched his mother transformed from a healthy and well woman one day to a dying one the next.
26
London, 2008
One day, while shopping in her favourite Cypriot bakery for some pastries to take to Lambros, Stella had asked the Greek Cypriot owner, Loula, if she might know anyone who could help her to trace her father’s old friend.
‘They were best friends when they were young back in Cyprus,’ Stella explained, ‘and he talks about him a lot these days. I would so much like to bring them together, but I don’t know where to start.’
‘Let me ask my husband’s uncle,’ Loula offered. ‘His father lives in Nicosia. He’s been there since ’74, he might know something or someone, you never know. It’s such a small place and these old people always seem to know one another.’
Stella knew that Loula, who was about the same age as herself, was married to a Turk – they often spoke about her family when Stella shopped there – and she mused on the irony of their conversation. Here she was, talking to a Greek woman married to a Turk as if it was entirely normal and unexceptional. Apparently families didn’t break up or lifelong friendships perish because of a mixed marriage anymore.
The man who Stella went to meet was sitting in a coffee shop in the predominantly Turkish neighbourhood of Green Lanes in north London. She had been told that he had information about Orhan from the old days. He was sitting alone at a small table, a cup of Turkish coffee in front of him, smoking a cigarette. Surely smoking is forbidden indoors was her first thought, but on glancing around the cafe she realized that apparently this particular law went unrecognized in these premises.
Stella crossed the restaurant to his table. ‘Good afternoon. Mr Ali Shafak?’ she greeted the man, holding out her hand to shake his.
‘Ne!’ yes, the man replied in Greek, gesturing with his chin to the chair opposite him.
Stella pulled out the chair and joined him. ‘Coffee or tea?’ he asked, still in Greek.
‘Euharisto,’ thank you, Stella replied, following suit. ‘Turkish coffee please, sketo, no sugar.’
‘So, you are from Cyprus,’ the man continued, raising his hand to attract the attention of the young man behind the counter.
‘Yes . . . well, my parents are. I was born here in London, but I do consider myself a Cypriot,’ she explained.
‘I come from the Larnaka area,’ he informed her, this time in heavily accented English, ‘and not a day goes by I don’t miss my village, even if I have been living here for nearly forty years now.’
‘What made you leave?’ she asked as the waiter arrived with her coffee and water.
‘The war . . . after ’74 everything changed. We all had to move, leave our homes, leave our friends. We moved to Nicosia first, then I came to London. Here is like old days in Cyprus. Greek and Turk live together again like before . . .’ He let out a sigh and reached for his glass of water. ‘In the old days, we were all Cypriots, not like now, torn apart . . . your parents perhaps tell you this, no?’ He looked at Stella and then gestured to the waiter to bring him another coffee. ‘In those days we always left our doors unlocked, no one came in,
we would leave our tomatoes in the yard and our donkeys in the field.’ He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘My father had a donkey and some goats and always he left them outside, nobody touched each other’s property. We respected one another. Now . . . after the war, all different.’ Ali Shafak sat back in his chair and looked at Stella again. ‘That’s why I left, came here. Maybe here is what’s left of old Cyprus, Turk and Greek live like old days. The way I see it we are all Cypriots.’
The segregation of the Turks and Greeks to the north and south of Nicosia respectively, which Ali bitterly lamented, had taken place in 1963 following political unease between the two communities, inflamed by the British regime whose colonial rule had come to an end three years earlier after a bitter struggle with the Greeks. However, after Turkey invaded Cyprus eleven years later the division became a militarized border and Turkish troops occupied the north of the island. From then on the Turkish and Greek populations became segregated across the entire island as well as the capital. For decades the Turkish north, guarded by Turkish forces, had been a no-go area for the Greeks in the south. No one was allowed to cross over, movement was prohibited, and friends and neighbours were separated with no hope of a reunion unless, as Ali Shafak explained now to Stella, they left the island and came to London.
‘Do you go back there often?’ she asked, remembering how much her parents longed to visit every summer and more.
‘No, not often. No point if I couldn’t visit my village,’ he replied. ‘I only go back to see my old father who lives in Nicosia. When the restrictions were eased I did go back to our village but only once; it’s not the same now. I don’t know the people there.’