A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

by Christy Lefteri

  Later that night he walked along the port, passing the old man, who was sitting in a different chair this time, at a café further down the strip of rocking boats. He flicked the worry beads incessantly. ‘Eat good?’ the old man asked. Richard stopped and nodded. ‘Drink good?’ Richard smiled. ‘Life goes in our mouth and out our arse,’ the old man continued and smiled himself this time. ‘The rat?’ the old man asked, and Richard quickly shuffled his feet and looked down instinctively. The old man chuckled. ‘You no remember even your own words. The vermin. The cat!’ he finally exclaimed. Richard shook his head to indicate some kind of resignation. ‘Cats are no loyal,’ said the old man. ‘They give promise of love only when they want, but still we need them.’ Richard nodded, and the old man stared at him for a while. He seemed to look for longer at the jacket in his hand. ‘Goodnight,’ the old man said, stressing the word ‘good’ so that the meaning was obscure. He looked at Richard for a few more moments, as though waiting for a reply, and then continued to flick his beads and stare up at the milky sky. Richard hesitated briefly and then continued on his way along the port to where the road split finally into little branches of bumpy soil. He automatically took the one on the left that would lead down a hill, through the fields and towards the base.

  A loud clatter brings Richard back to reality. He turns around and sees that Paniko has dropped a coffee cup on the floor and has a stain on the front of his apron. Paniko curses and angrily wipes his hands on a kitchen cloth, before rushing to the kitchen and returning with a mop.

  Koki, Maroulla and the other two prisoners are led into a house at the bottom of a hill. The soldiers use their rifles to shove them in and then proceed to the back of the garden. Inside the living room are myriad women, all facing away from each other as though they are there alone. Sunlight sweeps in through the window, illuminating the beautiful colours and florals of their dresses and headscarves as they would have been on a normal day, dotted amongst corn in the golden fields. The back door is open so that a soft breeze drifts in, but nobody exits or attempts to leave. Soldiers stand amongst the trees that line the yard. The house has an orchard of lemon and olive trees and a trellised vine that spirals into a blanket of shade over the porch. There are marbles on the floor and a hunting bitch in a cage, who is whimpering now in her sleep, and some chickens roaming about and clucking gently. There is a window with green shutters that overlooks the garden of a church, where the remains of dead flowers from spring lie entangled like bones.

  The new prisoners hesitate at the entrance. Bent at the spines, with arms dripping to the ground, they all stare down at the unmoving women, displayed in this dismal room like ceramic statuettes. Life is only evident from the slight slide of their eyes, which, red and raw, serve to reveal a story of fear and loss. Koki recognises Litsa Miltiades, the daughter of Dimitri; her father’s old friend. The same age as Koki, with black oily hair and dark eyes and olive skin and a soft sprinkling of extra hair on her forehead and upper lip. She lies on the floor, in foetal position, knees tucked into her chest, with her eyes open.

  Elenitsa walks across the room, sits down on a chair and rummages through her bag, retrieving a bottle. Amongst the chaos of stillness and fear, a gentle humming drifts soothingly around the room, soft and sweet as rosewater. She is feeding her baby while rocking him in her arms. There are other women and young girls scattered about. A middle aged milkmaid, Costandina, sits cross-legged, staring at the stone wall, on a bed that is covered in a multicoloured handwoven blanket in the corner of the room. She still has a towel tucked into her skirt. Koki remembers her twin sons, who churned the milk to make cheese and yoghurt. Costandina would then take her donkey, fill up two baskets, tie them to the donkey’s sides and go around the town to sell the products, all the while keeping her eye out for prospective brides. Whose daughter was sweeping the veranda? Or busy making koubebia for lunch? Who was procrastinating beneath the shade? Koki’s heart aches as she remembers her own son and a flush of tears clouds her vision.

  In the other corner, Sophia, a young girl of fourteen, is looking at the ground. She had no siblings and lived with her very elderly grandfather. There are no more tears. Her eyes are dark and distant. The house is a prison now.

  The forty-year-old schoolmistress, Olympia, also walks across the room without saying a word and sits upright and perfectly straight on a kitchen chair. Koki has an image of her standing with her students in church. Olympia starts praying and a few words here and there leak from her thoughts. Her hands are clenched tightly round a gold cross that hangs from a chain, as though this is her only salvation, her only grip of hope.

  Koki sees Old Maria sitting on the floor dressed in black, and remembers her running from her home with her husband and those three measly items in their hands. Maria had been scrutinising the women who entered with her beady, telescopic eyes. Maria had worn black since 1957, the year of the death of her brother, Andreas, who was imprisoned and then killed during the anti-colonial liberation struggle, fought by EOKA fighters demanding independence and enosis with motherland Greece. He had died for his country. Maria was proud to talk of her brother’s death. He was one of George Grivas’ guerillas and had fought a ten-hour battle in the Troodos Mountains near Machairas Monastery. He was forced to surrender and was captured by the British and held for months; when he died the British buried him in secure grounds so that his family could not visit his grave and he could not be worshipped as a martyr. ‘What tactics! What a damned and evil ploy,’ Maria had always said. ‘They will do anything to wipe Cyprus clean of Greek heroes.’ In 1960 she had even taken part in demonstrations protesting vigorously against British colonialism and was often the flag bearer, holding in her large hands the Hellenic and Greek Cypriot flags. It was true! She had become part male. She had taken her brother’s patriotic nationalism after his death and nourished it with good Greek food, seasoning it with her bitter, sour Greek memory. ‘Never forget’ was her motto.

  Maria thinks of her husband, also an EOKA fighter, a survivor, once young and fighting in those mountains. She crosses herself and looks at the sky. ‘My beloved deceased Vasos,’ she says out loud. ‘He said we’d go home soon!’ she cries, looking around at the women in the room. ‘He didn’t listen to me! He said we’d be back soon!’ This sorrowful howl causes the others to stare upon her with hopeless dread. Maria looks directly at Maroulla and Koki. ‘This is hell!’ she says, bashing her hand on the ground. Koki stares at the old lady’s creased face and her liver spots and disappearing eyes. The black scarf hides her neck and rests over her shoulders on a black dress. Koki does not reply, but pulls Maroulla closer to her.

  Koki leads Maroulla to an old porch chair in the living room; she sits and Maroulla kneels on the floor beside her. The others do not look up. The old lady, whose arthritic knees jolt through her dress, struggles and leans to one side. She winces from the pain, but she insists on sitting on the floor. Koki notices that her knuckles are also large and swollen.

  ‘War is a chance for men to be both the Devil and God. To destroy and then create a new world from the chaos. Maybe the Devil was born first.’ Maria looks at Koki more intently. She suddenly leans forward and spits on the ground towards her. ‘Devil hair!’ she says to her and then clasps the crucifix round her neck.

  Somehow, the other prisoners do not lose themselves completely either, for even in this room, close to hell, all of them, even Sophia, give Koki displeased looks as though the biggest sin still is the colour of her hair. Costandina especially throws evil looks in her direction. Her discomfort and irritation at Koki’s presence is clear. Now, away from the confinement of her own home, she suddenly feels exposed. Eyes seem to dart to and fro, to and fro. There is a look of repulsion, and Olympia shakes her head. The old lady still stares at Koki, as though waiting for a reply. Koki lifts her arms, sweeps her hair away from her face and twists it self-consciously into a roll, tying it into a knot; she then rips a portion of her purple dress and uses it as a headscarf. The other
women pretend not to notice. Maroulla looks up at Koki as she ties the scarf into a knot. Maria shifts uncomfortably to her side, looking away from Koki.

  From the back of the garden, a soldier approaches. He is holding something else apart from his gun. As he nears it is clear that his eyes are distant and dark. He enters the living room; Koki looks only at his feet now and notices his army boots encrusted with mud. Without looking at any of the women, he places a small basket on the floor and leaves again. The women, except for the old lady, slowly unfold themselves from their positions and gather limp as linen over the basket. It contains half a loaf of bread. ‘There must be more on its way,’ says Costandina and reaches over to take a piece.

  Litsa grabs her arm and pushes it away. ‘No,’ she says severely. ‘What if this is all?’ The other ladies look down at the measly pieces, dry and crusty.

  ‘We’ve had no water or food for a day,’ says Elenitsa, ‘this can’t be all.’ They look into the basket. Litsa stands up and walks into the open kitchen area. She opens the fridge. Empty. And the cupboards. Empty. And puts her hand to her face in a state of desperation. Litsa then takes the basket and places it in her lap, then counts the women in the room, including herself, and divides the bread into so many pieces. The other women watch expectantly. Each waits patiently and takes a piece from the basket. Koki and Maroulla wait until the end, take their pieces and sit in the far corner. There is one piece left in the basket. Koki looks at Maria. She has not moved, and is now looking at the other women, who have eaten their pieces of bread and are still immensely unsatisfied. ‘It is evil food,’ says the old lady. ‘It is the flesh of the Devil,’ she continues, looking disgustedly at the women around her. Maroulla puts her hand on her stomach, feeling nauseous. Koki notices, and takes her hand away, winking at the little girl.

  ‘She’s mad,’ Koki whispers, and Maroulla smiles doubtfully.

  ‘You should eat it,’ Maria says, looking in the direction of Koki, and the others turn to look at her. The old lady pushes the basket with her foot so that it slides closer to Koki. Koki does not look down, she continues to stare at Maria, who has her eyes fixed on her. ‘I am offering you a gift; it would be rude not to take it.’ Koki looks down at the portion of bread, secretly salivating, despite Maria’s cruel intentions.

  ‘That is your portion, not mine,’ Koki says finally and pushes the basket into the middle again. Maria looks down angrily, her face red with disappointment; she cannot stand to be defeated.

  ‘You belong with that dog,’ Maria continues, as adamant as a child to have the last word. She points to the garden where the dog walks from corner to corner of the small cage, its paws scratching the ground. One of the women sniggers, and Koki feels fury rising up within her.

  Adem looks down at his shoes. He imagines the Pater’s footsteps in the silence of the church. A thousand-mile journey on the same stone floor. The pretence of the certainty in the click of his heels. The creak of the leather as he adjusts his posture; his collar, his hat. Adem moves his hand from his hat and tastes the sweet, bitter taste of ouzo. He looks across the falling hills as soldiers pass behind him with stretchers and guns. Adem watches their faces as they pass. He looks out beyond the houses and realises that he can just about see the jagged edges of the big Troodos Mountains, cool and grey against the blue sky. The Kyrenia range would be on the other side, bombarded with carob and orange trees, pomegranate and wild flowers, crumbling castles and mosques. Fire upon fire, destroying all. He thinks of the white Taurus Mountains, silent across the Levant, and suddenly remembers the view from his childhood window, overlooking the Golden Horn harbour that stretched from Europe to Asia. He remembers the mosques, castles, churches, palaces and towers and then that dark living room, so full of death and void of dreams, his father behind that typewriter, hiding from life in the safety of tragedy, typing those names and those eulogies. One after the other, one after the other: Akara Gokhun, Emin Haluk, Cemil Gun, Abud Ajlan, Halis Halit. His father had made their final print in their journey of life. For his father there were no journeys. He ventured only sometimes to the edge of the harbour and spoke of the palaces that dazzled in the sun as though they were imprinted on pages in an old book. He lived in the shadows, existed only in that unknown space between this world and the next. The space where one’s name is crossed off the list. People feared him; believed him to be Azrael, the Angel of Death, the last to die, recording and erasing constantly in a large book the names of men at birth and death. The neighbours would whisper about him at the harbour, in the town stores, even outside the mosque, they would have conversations about whether he would rip their soul out or separate it like a drop of water dripping from a glass. His father, on some rare occasion, when he left that room and encountered such stupidity, would argue that the Angel of Death has four faces and four thousand wings, and his whole body consists of eyes and tongues of the number of people inhabiting the earth.

  Adem, as a child, had itchy feet. He was so frightened of being sucked up by that dark room, lost in those rows and rows of names and faces and eyes and tongues that he became the errand boy, running from house to house, along those smoky, gridlocked streets of Istanbul, sewing mats, selling tobacco, polishing shoes. He avoided telling people his name, he was known as the son of Death and after his father died they called him nothing, out of respect; they usually grunted at him, or whistled as though he were a dog. Sometimes he would run to the harbour, toss his shoes off and dip his feet into the water of the Golden Horn, elated at the thought that he was somehow touching two continents.

  When his father’s name, Halim Berker, was the first on some other poor sod’s list, his mother died shortly after and Adem decided to leave. To put on his father’s shoes and take them across the Levant to that little island his father had so admired from a distance. The island that also bore mosques and churches side by side on what seemed to be two mountain ranges, one smaller than the other. Well, he did it, he came to Cyprus. But, as fate would have it, he had somehow turned into his father, living in that hut, afraid to go out, terrified of making his own journeys, of finding his own paths. Adem looks down at his shoes. What has become of him, of his life, of his dreams? He thinks about the mistakes of his life and the person he could have been.

  Adem looks around at the other soldiers and wonders about their families back in Turkey; their wives, their children, their parents waiting for them anxiously. It becomes increasingly apparent that Engin has not been among them. He fingers the photograph in his pocket. He longs to tell Engin, to have someone to talk to. He remembers Engin’s nervous twitching. He grabs one of the soldier’s arms as they pass. The soldier looks down at his arm and up into Adem’s eyes.

  ‘Engin Bulut?’ he says, but the soldier shakes his head and continues. He tries a few more times but the response is the same. Until, finally, he reaches one soldier, the small man who had stood beside Serkan, who hesitates, looks at Adem’s bottle of ouzo, looks over his shoulder and says, ‘I will tell you for the ouzo.’ Adem nods and follows.

  They walk round the church and through the graveyard. The man in front limps slightly and does not look back. His shoulders are square and his left side slopes a little to the ground, making his left arm seem longer. The pace of his footsteps is steady, giving no indication to where they are going. There is no real urgency to his movements and no uncertainty.

  They reach a wooden gate. The soldier in front lifts the latch and opens it. It creaks slightly. There is no one around. The cicadas buzz in nearby trees. A bird rustles above. The air is white with jasmine and yellow with citrus and the blue sky pokes through the leaves. They climb down five steps, deeper beneath the cool arch of the trees, and walk across a small sloping orchard until they reach a wooden basement door. The other soldier turns to him for the first time. ‘It leads to the storage room beneath the church. It was built at the end of the orchard for convenience. The priest liked fruit. Grapes especially. Like the kings of the past.’ The soldier smiles.

/>   He opens the door, opens his palm and signals for Adem to descend first. The darkness is sharp and sudden and from it emanates a peculiar smell. Soft and thick and sweet. As nauseating as rotten figs.

  Adem enters the darkness, right foot first, lowering himself into a corridor. The sound of his shoes hitting the ground bounces off the walls. The song of the cricket stops here. Time is silent. The air is static; there is no marching or beating, just a soothing, soft silence. A drop of water suddenly drips from the curved roof. The other soldier enters. His boots echo differently as he jumps into the corridor. In the darkness he casually rummages on the floor, looking for something. Then the flick of a match is heard and a candle is lit. It is quite a short candle; it has been lit many times before.

  The candle creates a ball of light in which they walk. Adem looks at the crevices in the walls and tries to ignore the smell. Stronger than rotting chickens. Decaying rats? Yes, that’s it. Or maybe not, the smell is too immense to be rats. The smell swells in the thick air and he struggles not to put a hand to his stomach and lean forward and vomit onto the priest’s shoes.

  The corridor widens and becomes a room. The smell is thicker than smoke. It strangles the air. The soldier now in front lowers the candle. The shape of a small mount emerges in the darkness. Rubbish? A face. An arm. The gold glimmer of a button. The gleam of shoes. Discarded corpses of neighbours. But above and between, the murky green of Turkish uniforms. ‘Soldiers,’ Adem says, and his voice is thrown back to him in the form of an echo, as a question this time. He looks at the legs and army boots tangled in a web, the soft petal-white of open eyes, the nameless bodies discarded in a heap.