by Hodge, Sibel
‘What was Cleopatra doing in Cyprus?’ I asked.
‘Mark Antony gave the rule of Cyprus over to Cleopatra after their wedding. Then after that you had the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans. Even the Knights Templar controlled Cyprus at one point.’ He carried on staring at the statue in awe. ‘I can’t believe this.’ He shook his head softly to himself. ‘I did my thesis on this sculpture for my art degree. I’ve actually used it as one of the main examples in my Egyptology sculpture course. I always wanted to see it in real life.’ He had a wistful look on his face.
‘Why is there a cat on it?’
‘Well, cats were supposed to be lucky in Egyptian society.’ Kalem went back to the article, his eyes nearly popping out, like he couldn’t bear to turn his head away from the picture of the sculpture. ‘Wow! This is fascinating.’ He looked like he’d gone into a trance.
Maybe the sculpture had one of those funny curses that I’d heard about before, where if you stared at it for too long, it made your brain explode or something. Yes, I’m sure I’d read about other weird curses where people had uncovered ancient Egyptian artefacts, and they’d all ended up dead.
Agh! Don’t look at the picture. Don’t look at the picture! I pulled the magazine away, just to be on the safe side.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘Well, you’re acting all funny.’
‘No, I’m not.’ He grabbed the magazine back.
Don’t look at the picture!
‘It might have a curse,’ I said. ‘I don’t want a curse. I have enough weird things happen to me as it is without having a curse on top of it.’
Kalem laughed. ‘It’s not cursed! I really have to see this up close. It’s such a rare piece. You know, this sculpture is probably worth around five million pounds. Amazing, huh?’
I could think of better things to spend five million on, like a luxury yacht or a hundred bedroomed mansion in the Bahamas, but there you go.
I snatched the magazine back off him and thrust my OK! Magazine in his hand instead.
‘There, read about Angelina and Brad’s love life instead of cursed sculptures.’
Kalem stared into space, all glassy-eyed. ‘Mmm, five-million. What would you do with five-million pounds?’
He was definitely going a bit funny. Kalem liked the simple things in life. He had a battered old Land Rover and a habit of wearing clothes until they had more holes than a bumper pack of donuts. Not that he was stingy or anything. He just wasn’t really into material things. So it was très bizarre now that he kept mumbling on about money.
‘Well, we’re hardly going to get an invite to the opening party, so maybe you should just forget about the statue.’ Yes, forget about it before if fries your brain and jinxes us! I tried to slowly prise the magazine away from his vice-like grip on it as the plane started descending.
****
We stood with the rest of the horde of new arrivals, waiting for my luggage to emerge and go round the conveyor belt. Kalem had already got his suitcase, but mine was taking forever. It was honestly amazing the things that actually appeared. I felt like I was on one of those game shows, trying to memorize objects: A set of skis, a giant cuddly teddy bear wearing an I Love You T-shirt – oops, its arm just got caught in the ramp and ripped off – a plunger, a half open hold-all stuffed full of a black paint, and a bike with no wheels. Well, someone was in for a strange holiday, that was for sure. I watched the skis go round, wondering if there was someone out there in some freezy-ass country watching a surfboard going around and around on an endless, unclaimed loop.
I was sandwiched in between Kalem and an impatient ferrety looking man with field-mouse coloured hair and beard and a pointy nose and chin. I kept getting a whiff of lemon cologne and cigarettes, making me feel slightly nauseous under the stifling warmth of the burka.
From out of nowhere a fluffy looking German Shepherd with a white harness jumped on the conveyor belt and trampled over all the luggage.
‘Oh, look! A poor blind person’s lost their guide dog.’ I pointed at it, looking around for someone with a white stick, so I could reunite them.
The dog was in a little world of its own as it pranced around the luggage conveyor, dribbling and wagging its tail. Then it jumped off the conveyor, ran around the room sniffing people’s crutches – particularly women, for some reason, I might add.
Kalem chuckled. ‘It’s a drug sniffer dog, not a guide dog.’
‘Well, where’s its handler then?’ I glanced around.
Kalem shrugged.
Ferret Face’s eye started twitching as he reached to pull his case off the conveyor. Maybe he was allergic to dogs.
‘Ah, here’s my case.’ I was nearer to it than Kalem, so I pulled it towards me.
And that’s when the cute little doggy jumped on me, sending me slamming right into Ferret Face.
‘Agh!’ I fell on top of Ferret Face, squashing him and knocking over both of our suitcases in the process. Not a nice experience, really. I mean, what if he had conjunctivitis?
The dog’s nose dived into my handbag, grabbed my uneaten packets of sandwiches, and then it ran off. Can you believe it? I was going to eat those when I got to the hotel!
‘Are you OK?’ Kalem helped me struggle to my feet.
I dusted myself off, avoiding the stares of the other people. ‘I don’t know. Am I? Did I just imagine that?’ My arm throbbed from where I’d banged it on the suitcase. I gave it a tentative rub.
Oh, God. The curse of Queen Cleopatra had begun.
‘No, I think I’ll live. Come on. Let’s go before it comes back.’ I looked at Ferret Face who was grabbing his suitcase again. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked him. He looked a bit flustered, but he nodded he was all right.
I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and wheeled it towards the customs office and the exit beyond with Kalem swiftly following.
Ferret Face mumbled something, hurrying after us. He smiled, as if he wanted to apologize. Then he seemed to think better of it as the customs officer called us over to his desk, and he rushed past us and out into the crowded Arrivals area.
I groaned. What now? I’d had enough of customs men to last a lifetime.
‘What sandwiches did you have?’ The customs officer peered at me.
Well, I didn’t want to say bacon, just in case I upset him. Even though Kalem and Ayshe ate bacon, I knew that most Muslims still didn’t eat pork, and I couldn’t do with any more upsets today. ‘Er…cheese.’ I frowned, confused. What did that have to do with anything?
‘Hmm.’ He thought about this for a while. ‘I think that’s the problem. The dog just loves cheese.’ He waved us on. ‘It’s OK, you can go.’
Chapter 3
We stepped outside and the warm night air seeped into our skin.
I sniffed. It was heady holiday air that made your skin prickle with the excitement of arriving in a foreign country for the first time: a mixture of jet fuel, heat, and some kind of plant that I couldn’t distinguish. I took a big gulp of it and glanced up at the stars. Wow! There was hardly any light pollution so it was like looking up at my own personal planetarium.
‘Aren’t your mum and dad or Charlie picking us up?’ I asked.
There were plenty of people milling around, but I couldn’t see Yasmin or Deniz, or, for that matter, our own personal wedding planner, Charlie. I could, however, see a man who looked suspiciously like a Mexican bandit, waving at us so hard I thought his arm might pop out of its socket. He was about fifty years old with a bandit moustache, bushy black eyebrows, and moist dark eyes, a bit like a spaniel’s.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked Kalem.
Kalem squinted at the man, trying to place him. ‘I think it’s Dad’s cousin, Osman.’ Kalem waved back. ‘I haven’t actually ever met him before, but I recognize him from some photos that Dad showed me.’
Osman rushed towards us and kissed Kalem on both cheeks, Turkish style. ‘Kalem! We finally meet!’ He then gave me a bear hug. ‘So, this
must be Helen. Why are you wearing a burka?’ He pulled back, examining me with interest before settling on a puzzled look.
Kalem rattled off something to Osman in Turkish. Osman raised his eyebrows, which seemed to have a life of their own, and chuckled.
‘Your dad said you were always a practical joker – even when you were a little boy.’ Osman smiled. ‘Come, come. I’ve got the car waiting with my mother in it. She’s dying to meet you too. Yasmin and Deniz wanted to come as well, but there’s not enough room in the car with the sheep.’ He herded us towards an ancient Renault – probably the same era as the Cleopatra statue – that looked like it was about to fall to pieces. I think it used to be grey, but it was quite hard to tell underneath all the rust patches. It had a roof rack made out of bits of old scaffolding held together with some dodgy looking frayed rope. A threadbare armchair was tied precariously to the top.
‘Er…did he say there’s a sheep in the car?’ I whispered to Kalem.
Oh, my God. What have I let myself in for? Is this what Kalem meant about the simple life? I didn’t want to be rude or anything, but…no, he had to be joking about the sheep. A big, smelly, hairy sheep. In the car?
Osman’s mum, a wrinkly woman with bright, shiny eyes, opened the car door and repeated the kissing, talking quickly in Turkish to us.
‘She can’t speak English,’ Osman said, shoe-horning the suitcases in the boot of the car.
So I nodded and said ‘yes’ a lot to her. I hoped she wasn’t asking me if I was a suicide bomber.
Osman motioned for us to get in the car, and that’s when I saw the sheep, curled up on the backseat.
Right. So maybe not a joke, then.
I slid in next to the sheep. It made a bleating noise and suckled the arm of my burka.
‘Agh! It’s so sweet,’ I cooed.
‘She’s called Kuzu.’ Osman beamed at me.
‘Nice name. And what does that mean in Turkish?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘It means lamb. I’m training her to be a sniffer sheep.’
‘A what?’ What the hell was that?
‘Well, have you seen the state of the sniffer dogs here? They can’t do a thing right. No, this is going to be the way of the future. Sniffer sheep.’
‘Er…and what can Kuzu sniff so far?’ I frowned, scratching her behind the ears, which had just pricked up, like she knew we were talking about her.
‘She can sniff out olives. If the wind’s in the right direction, she can sniff out wild sage.’ Osman sounded so proud, as if he were talking about his own child. ‘She can sniff me out when I’m hiding in the garden. She’s a quick learner, though. I’ve been training her for a year since she was a little lamb. Soon she will be fully trained.’
What had I let myself in for? Osman had to be nuts, surely. I tried to disguise my look of unbelieving terror as polite interest. I’m not sure if it worked, but Osman didn’t seem to notice.
‘Yasmin and Deniz have been having trouble with the rental car. It keeps breaking down. Not like this reliable beauty.’ Osman patted the dashboard lovingly.
Maybe loving old heaps of cars was hereditary. Now I knew where Kalem got it from with his wreck of a Land Rover back in the UK.
‘What car did they hire?’ I asked Kalem.
‘I booked a Land Rover for us all. I wanted to take you off-roading up in the mountains. The scenery is absolutely amazing – views for miles over the sea and the Kyrenia mountain range. I thought we could have a romantic picnic up there this week before the wedding, just the two of us.’ Kalem hugged me towards him.
‘It broke down again on their way to pick you up, so I volunteered instead,’ Osman said.
‘I had a Land Rover in the UK for fifteen years. It never broke down.’ Kalem shook his head to himself.
Osman tried to drive off, when suddenly his mum yelled something at him, and he did an emergency stop, the ancient Renault creaking and shuddering like something was about to snap.
She ambled slowly out of the car, then proceeded to break a hardboiled egg on the bumper and peel off the shell. Next, she climbed back in the car and handed it to me with a nightmarish cackle.
I shook my head manically and gave her my best I-don’t-really-think-you-are-a-nutcase smile, but really I was thinking three words: Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
OK, now I was building a mental list of bad things about moving here. First up was:
1) Crazy extended family.
The car made a scraping sound as it pulled away, like a bit of bumper was hanging off, or, even worse, our suitcases were falling out the back. Luckily, it distracted me from my anxiety attack.
I turned around to check that our clothes weren’t billowing out in a stream behind us and saw Ferret Face following in a black Mercedes. Actually, if he were any closer, he’d be on our laps. His eye had stopped twitching, but he was giving me a funny look. Glaring at me almost. Strange.
‘They’re all waiting for you at the hotel,’ Osman said. ‘It’s been so good catching up with Yasmin and Deniz since they arrived.’
‘Do you think you should turn the headlights on?’ I asked Osman as we drove up to the exit barrier of the car park with Ferret Face following close behind.
Osman shook his head. ‘I always forget that.’ He flipped on the lights and pulled a coin out of his pocket, licked it, then shoved it in the money slot. The barrier lifted and we slowly drove off.
Ferret Face jerked to a halt at the barrier and slammed his money in the slot, but the barrier wouldn’t open. The last thing I saw out the rear window was Ferret Face kicking the barrier machine and waving his fist at us. How bizarre. Maybe my elbow had crushed the ferret food in his suitcase when I fell on top of him and he wanted to sue me. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to stop to find out. He looked a bit upset to me.
We turned onto a dual carriageway. Well, that was a good sign anyway. At least it wasn’t a narrow little dirt track that was only suitable for donkeys. Not that I’d ever actually analyzed the finer points of a dual carriageway before. But the place couldn’t be that basic and unspoiled if it had one, surely?
****
As we got nearer to Kyrenia, which was one of the main tourist resorts, we came over the mountains and saw the twinkly lights of the town below. To our left, a large section of the mountain was lit up like a giant Christmas tree; a dazzling display of white neon. It looked amazing in the dark, but someone must have had a hefty electric bill.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed out the window.
‘St Hilarion Castle,’ Osman said. ‘You should visit it when you get the chance. It’s a spectacular sight. Perched high up in the Kyrenia mountain range, the views of the Mediterranean are like nothing you’ve seen before. You can see for miles up there.’
‘It looks amazing.’ I gazed at it.
‘The castle was named after a monk who fled from persecution in Palestine in the seventh century,’ Kalem said. ‘There’s a legend that he was deaf, so he was able to resist the tempting cries of pagan demons who lived on the mountain. I’ll have to take you up there after the wedding when we have more time.’
‘What happened to the demons?’ I asked, feeling a tad worried. It was bad enough with a cursed statue on the island, never mind demons as well.
‘Well,’ Osman went on, ‘because the monk couldn’t hear them, they finally left the mountain in peace, and a monastery later sprang up around his tomb. After a while, a fort was added as well. It was built into the mountains, and it’s got a kind of fairytale look about it. All towers and walls. In fact, there’s a rumour that Walt Disney based the Snow White Castle on it. Richard the Lionheart captured the castle on his way to the Third Crusade, and some people still think that the Holy Grail was actually hidden somewhere inside.’
Demons, Disney castles, and Holy Grails? Sounded a bit Da Vinci Code to me. Still, if Indiana Jones and Walt Disney were inspired by North Cyprus, it had to be a good sign. I started an opposing mental list of things I was going to like about being
here, and thought I was doing pretty well. So far, I had:
1) Kalem
2) Sunshine
3) Beaches
4) A Disney Castle
5) Indiana Jones searched for Holy Grail here (not sure if that was technically correct, I couldn’t remember the actual plot of the film)
6) A dual carriageway.
‘It’s even more impressive during the day.’ Kalem stroked the inside of my palm with his thumb.
A bolt of electricity zapped up my spine. Ooh, just you wait until I get you to the hotel, Kalem Mustafa, and try that chocolate body paint out. Who said a girl couldn’t have chocolate and an orgasm?
‘Have you ever climbed it?’ I asked, nuzzling into his shoulder.
‘Yes, Mum and Dad made us climb it the last time we all came here on a family holiday when I was about ten.’
We finally pulled up outside our hotel – not quite the plush Plaza, but still pretty damn nice – to a welcome party of Yasmin and Deniz, Ayshe and her husband, Atila, and Charlie. Yasmin’s hands flapped around when she saw us. Deniz looked pretty plastered with a glass of whisky in his hand (a regular occurrence). Atila rubbed Ayshe’s back as she shuffled her glowing pregnant body from one foot to the other with a beaming smile. And Charlie…well, he was in a tight, pink jumpsuit, bouncing up and down. Need I say more? It left little to the imagination, and I’m pretty sure he had been stuffing socks down there again, if you know what I mean.
Hugs and kisses galore from everyone before they all admonished Kalem for carrying on the burka joke too far.
‘I’ll leave you all to catch up then.’ Osman gave a puzzled look at Charlie’s attire and clambered into the Renault.
We all waved goodbye as it popped and groaned back down the driveway.
