by Nadia Marks
‘I think Yiorgos should give his mother a mobile,’ Stella said, getting up to answer the phone. ‘I think she’s the only one who ever uses this line, unless it’s Lambros ringing her.’
‘She’s probably calling to ask if Dad has arrived,’ Spiros replied.
As it turned out the phone call was not from their old aunt in Nicosia asking for Lambros but from Lambros himself in London, informing them that he would not be joining them as planned but had to delay his trip for another week, so he could attend the funeral of an old friend.
‘Oh well, that’s it!’ Stella said, returning to the terrace and throwing her arms in the air in despair, ‘I really don’t know if he’ll make it in time now.’
‘Don’t be such a messenger of doom,’ her brother scolded her. ‘You always think the worst – you never know, the poor man might get better.’
‘You can say that, but you didn’t see him today. Honestly, Spiros, he was in a bad state, I thought he was at death’s door. I fear Dad will be going to another funeral once he gets here, not the grand reunion we were planning for him.’
‘We’ll go together to the hospital and see how he is soon,’ Spiros insisted, trying to soothe his sister’s concerns. But a few days later when they attempted to visit Orhan again he was nowhere to be found. The patient was apparently undergoing surgery or rushed into emergency, they were told – no one could explain fully. Come back in a few days, the nurse told them with irritation, and try calling before you do, was her stern advice.
‘You see? I told you!’ Stella said as they left the hospital. ‘He’ll die, and they’ll never meet, and everything will have been in vain!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Stella, stop it!’ Spiros told her. ‘You don’t know that. He’s having surgery, he hasn’t been taken to the morgue.’
‘Even if he recovers, he might not be well enough. Would he even know Dad when he sees him?’
‘We shall just have to hope, keep calling the hospital and wait and see, won’t we?’ Spiros said and stalked off towards the car.
Stella found the waiting unbearable. She had set her mind on bringing the two old men together and had such high hopes for a glad ending; now each day that passed made her fear that disaster was imminent. She called the hospital every day, much to the annoyance of the nurses, until at last she was told that the patient was out of intensive care and could be visited again.
The distinguished-looking man sitting by Orhan’s bed stood up to greet them as Stella and Spiros approached. He must be that relative that Mr Shafak mentioned, Stella thought, gliding quietly towards him.
‘Kalimera,’ she whispered, aware of the quizzical look on the man’s face. ‘We are here to visit Orhan Terzi,’ she explained, approaching to stand next to him beside the bed.
‘Kalimera sas,’ he greeted them in return, speaking Greek, evidently perplexed by the apparently foreign elegant-looking couple who had come to visit the modest-living old imam.
‘How is he?’ Spiros asked also in Greek as all three stood at the bedside to watch the sleeping old man.
‘He’s getting better, but he’s been in intensive care.’
‘Yes, we know!’ Stella replied, to convey that they were well informed. ‘Last time I was here he was all wired up, he didn’t look at all well.’
‘How long ago was that?’ the man enquired politely, taking another good look at the two of them. ‘I didn’t see you, I’ve been here a while.’
‘About a week ago,’ was Stella’s reply, stealing a probing glance at the man, ‘but my brother didn’t come, I was on my own.’
‘I must have gone out and missed you,’ he said, clearly wondering who these visitors might be who seemed so familiar with Orhan. ‘I’ve been here every day. Well . . . every day since I arrived in Cyprus, that is.’
‘Oh! You don’t live here! Aren’t you Cypriot?’ a surprised Spiros asked – his turn now to scrutinize the stranger.
‘Well, yes and no,’ he replied and his face broke into a smile, a smile so familiar to Stella that it triggered something in her memory, though bringing no conscious recall.
‘It’s complicated,’ he continued, smiling, seeing the confusion spread on both Stella’s and Spiros’s faces.
‘Where did you arrive from?’ she asked, curiosity getting the better of her: she had assumed he was a Turkish Cypriot.
‘London,’ he replied, ‘I live in London.’
‘Really?’ Spiros raised his eyebrows, unable to hide his surprise.
‘What part of London?’ Stella asked, in English this time, with the same sense of disbelief as her brother.
The little cafeteria in the hospital’s grounds was empty; locals apparently either went home to brew their own coffee or brought a flask to drink while sitting with their sick relatives, to avoid leaving the bedside. For these three, however, since their discovery there was no option; what they had to say to each other could not be discussed around the bed of a sick man nor could it wait till later. The only place for them at that moment, even in the fiery thirty-eight degrees of the August day, was the little coffee shop under parched trees beside the hospital car park. They had so much to find out about one another, so much to exchange. It could not be delayed for a second longer.
The moment of realization came to Stella first as they stood gathered around the sleeping Orhan. As they spoke she started to piece together who the tall slim stranger standing close to her might be, the man whose face seemed so familiar and whose smile she suddenly recognized as so closely similar to that of her own father. Instantly she knew this could be no casual relative of the sick man, but a member of her own family, a blood relative of the closest kind, her first cousin. He must be her ill-fated aunt Anastasia’s only son and her father’s nephew, his estranged sister’s child – who none of them had known much about, let alone that he lived in London; and the familiarity, they were soon to find out, didn’t stop there.
As they sat talking in the little cafe, brother and sister gradually discovered that the elegant man a few years older than them, who was their first cousin, was also none other than Hassandreas, the celebrated fashion designer whose creations were preferred by the rich and famous globally, and desired by Stella and Erini alike but which they could hardly afford. They sat under the August sun drenched in perspiration, establishing their identities, moved and fascinated by their meeting, trying to join up the first few missing threads of the yarn that was their family history.
By the time they finished talking some small pieces had been put in place, but the bigger picture could not be completed without the two old men who were the main protagonists. This they knew was only the beginning of their journey of discovery, there was so much more to follow. As the next generation of the Constandinou and Terzi families, it was now for them to continue where their parents and grandparents had failed and revive the shared family history that had tied two generations before them so closely together.
When they returned to the room they found Orhan awake.
‘Ah!’ he sighed and looked at the three faces turned anxiously towards him. ‘Hassan, my boy.’ He moved his head to look at him, struggling to keep his voice steady. ‘This young lady, Stella . . . came to see me a few days ago, but I was not able to speak then, not much at all.’ He gave her a weary smile. ‘I am happy you have all found each other.’ He reached for Stella’s hand. ‘I wondered when you were going to come back.’
‘You knew I’d been to see you,’ she whispered, pushing down a sob that was threatening to rise in her throat. ‘You heard me – you remembered my name!’
‘She is so much like your mother,’ Orhan said to Hassan and closed his eyes. The three cousins stood mute, looking at one another.
The old man opened his eyes again at last and looked towards the door. ‘Is he coming?’ He turned to Stella. ‘You said you will bring him to me, where is he?’
‘Oh yes! He’s certainly coming,’ she told him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, crying
and laughing at the same time. ‘Lambros is coming to see you very soon,’ she managed to say, as the sob that she’d been trying to suppress rose up. ‘I give you my promise,’ she said again through her tears.
A Brief Chronology of Cypriot Political Events
1878
The United Kingdom received the island of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire as a protectorate. The Cypriots at first welcomed British rule, hoping that they would gradually achieve prosperity and democracy following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
1914
Cyprus’s status as a protectorate of the British Empire ended when the Ottoman Empire declared war against the Triple Entente powers, which included Great Britain.
1923
International recognition of the new Republic of Turkey, in which the new Turkish government formally recognized Britain’s sovereignty over Cyprus. Greek Cypriots believed the circumstances were now right to demand union of the island with Greece (enosis), as many of the Aegean and Ionian islands had also done, but the British opposed it.
1925
Britain proclaimed Cyprus the Crown Colony of British Cyprus under an undemocratic constitution.
October 1931–October 1940 proved to be a very difficult period for the Cypriots. The colonial governor at the time imposed a number of suppressive measures, erasing the flimsy democratic infrastructure of the island. This was done to the extent that the legislative assembly was summarily dismissed, the elections of town mayors and village heads were also abolished, and the entire island was governed by decree from the governor. The aim of this was to prevent local public interest in politics. There were strong protests against the regime, but the suppressive measures were not lifted until the beginning of the Second World War, during which more than 30,000 Cypriots joined the British armed forces.
1948
King Paul of Greece declared that Cyprus desired union with Greece. After the war, a delegation from Cyprus submitted a demand for enosis to London but the demand was rejected.
1950
The Orthodox Church of Cyprus presented a referendum in which around 97 per cent of the Greek Cypriot population wanted the union. The United Nations accepted the Greek petition and enosis became an international issue.
During the 1950s demands for enosis from the Greek Cypriots emerged with renewed force, led by Archbishop Makarios. Attempts to win world support alerted Turkey and alarmed the Turkish Cypriots.
The British withdrawal from Egypt led to Cyprus becoming the new location for their Middle East Headquarters.
1955
When international pressure did not suffice to make Britain respond as required to enosis, an effective campaign began, organized by EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters), a guerrilla group which desired political union with Greece, and violence escalated against the colonial power. Makarios was exiled, suspected of involvement in the EOKA campaign.
From mid-1956 onwards there were constant discussions in NATO, but all efforts to create an independent Cyprus which would be a member of the Commonwealth of Nations were futile.
1957
Turkish Cypriots responded to the enosis demand by calling for partition (taksim), which became the slogan which was used by the increasingly militant Turkish Cypriots to counter the Greek cry of enosis. Fighting was renewed in Cyprus by EOKA, and violence between the two communities developed into a new feature of the situation. Eventually Greece had to recognize that Turkey was now a vitally interested party in the dispute.
1958
The British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, prepared new proposals for Cyprus, but his plan, which was a form of partition, was rejected by Archbishop Makarios. The archbishop on his return from exile declared that he would only accept a proposal which guaranteed independence, excluding both enosis and partition.
16 August 1960
Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom after the long anti-British campaign by EOKA. The Zurich Agreement, however, did not succeed in establishing cooperation between the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot populations on the island. Both sides continued the violence. Turkey threatened to intervene.
November 1963
President Makarios advanced a series of constitutional amendments which the Turkish Cypriots opposed. The confrontation prompted widespread intercommunal fighting. In December, Makarios ordered a ceasefire and again addressed the issue to the United Nations, which resulted in partitioning the capital Nicosia into north and south. The Turkish population moved north of the city and the Greek south. The rest of the island remained mixed until 1974.
July 1974
Turkey invaded Cyprus in a two-stage offensive. Turkish troops took control of 38 per cent of the island and 200,000 Greek Cypriots fled the northern areas which were under occupation. At the same time, 60,000 Turkish Cypriots were transferred to these northern occupied areas by the United Nations and authorities from the British Sovereign Base Areas after an agreed temporary population exchange by Turkish and Greek leaders. Since then, and to the present day, the southern part of the country has been under the control of the internationally recognized government of Cyprus, now part of the EU. The north of the island is under the control of the government of Northern Cyprus which is recognized only by Turkey.
Acknowledgements
Although this book is a work of fiction, with the plot line and characters created from my own imagination, my gratitude goes to all those Cypriots, Greeks and Turks who so long ago lived side by side on this sunny island. Stories told to me over the years by my father, who had lived through more peaceful times, inspired me to write this book.
My thanks also go to my agent and good friend Dorie Simmonds for her constant encouragement and support, my editor Alex Saunders for his good advice and keen eye, Anne Boston for her brilliant editing skills and to all my friends and family for putting up with me during this time.
For research purposes while writing the book I had to pay a visit to north Nicosia, thus crossing the ‘green line’ and onto the occupied Turkish side of the city. I would like to thank my friend Lefki Demetriou for offering to accompany me on this journey – it made it much easier than doing it alone.
The poem at the front of the book was written by a man called Orhan Seyfi Ari, not to be confused with Orhan Terzi, one of the main characters in this book.
The latter is a figment of my imagination and the former was a very real dear friend of my father’s.
Between the Orange Groves
Nadia Marks (née Kitromilides, which in Greek means ‘bitter lemons’) was born in Cyprus, but grew up in London. An ex-creative director and associate editor on a number of leading British women’s magazines, she is now a novelist and works as a freelance writer for several national and international publications. She has two sons and lives in North London with her partner Mike.
By Nadia Marks
Among the Lemon Trees
Secrets Under the Sun
Between the Orange Groves
First published 2019 by Pan Books
This electronic edition first published 2019 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-8973-0
Copyright © Nadia Marks 2019
Cover images © Shutterstock
The right of Nadia Marks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
A CIP catalogu
e record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.