by Jo Bunt
The road in front of me wasn’t in as bad a condition as I had feared, even though low growing, lush green foliage with yellow flowers seeped over the hot grey thoroughfare. A building to my left housed a strip of shops with apartments on top. Each shop was open to the elements and completely empty inside. Panes of glass littered the pavement and dusty puddles of bottles and twigs pooled in the corners. Signs indicating that these had once been hairdressing salons and beauty parlours hung limply from above.
To my right I could see a church down the end of an alleyway. Never had a house of God looked so uninviting. Rusting barrels and oil drums piled high behind thick iron railings and barbed wire conveyed a clear message that I was not welcome there. I carried on walking in the silence past a beautiful house which, in its day, would have housed one of Varosha’s elite and wealthy inhabitants. Terraces and archways were dotted pink with the rice-paper flowers of Bougainvillea. A half-hearted attempt to board up the windows and doors with a wire mesh had been dismissed by either hand or wind. I allowed myself a brief moment to picture the home in its full glory and how I would develop it, imagining myself sipping gin and tonic on the terrace with a slice of lemon from my own tree.
Ahead of me down the broadening road was what was left of a hotel. Even from here I could see the devastation the war had wrought on its once imposing walls. The missing walls exposed pink wallpaper that was never meant to be unmasked to the outside world. In the courtyard of the hotel, chairs and bits of wood congregated in the empty swimming pool. I’d read that somewhere in Varosha there was a car showroom with cars sitting idle, never to be driven. It was unlikely that I’d be able to locate it, even though it intrigued me.
I picked my way over the detritus and stepped into what would have once been the foyer of the hotel. Chairs squatted in armless huddles. Something bulky and long lay on the floor by the front desk. Nervously I approached it to try and take a closer look. It was what was left of a grand piano. The inner workings of the piano were still there but the keys were all missing and most of the wood had been taken away. I backtracked out of there, stumbling over a mislaid shoe. I chose a road at random and started jogging down it, keen to leave the hotel behind.
In front of me I could see the golden blossoming of the open, unshadowed street up ahead but my path was now blocked. Thick, prickly, thistle-like weeds had punched their way through the walkway, demanding their day in the sun. A small white fridge lay rusting and pock-marked on its side. The door was open, lying flat against the floor. Leaves and cardboard had taken up residence in its shelter. I picked my way over the obstacles, ignoring the barbed spikes of the monstrous plants. Dirt and twigs had drifted to the walls in neglected brown peaks.
Placing both hands on the white peeling wall beside me I saw what I knew would be there all along. The buckled metal sign on the wall opposite me read ‘Lakira Street’.
I was buzzing with equal quantities of excitement and trepidation. I took a deep breath to steady myself and to arrest my urge to sprint across the road. It would be all too easy to make a mistake now. I remained immobile holding onto the wall a moment or two longer while I steadied myself and looked about me.
These were the streets where Mum and Eddie had walked as a newly married couple in love. This was where my other mother, Helene, had lived and died. I’m not sure what emotion I expected to feel but it certainly wasn’t this. I felt elated. I’d made it, I’d found the place. But now what did I do? I’d not really thought any further than the need to get into Varosha unnoticed. My concerns for Anna had vanished now and there was no way I was going back to Famagusta to find Stefanos. This was where I was meant to be. I drummed my fingers on the wall, considering my next move. Instinct had brought me this far and it seemed churlish to stop listening to it now.
I pushed myself away from the wall, noting the white flakes of paint clinging to my sweating palms, and stepped boldly into the weakening sunshine. The hairs on my arms rippled even though there was no breeze. There were clouds in the sky but they were skirting around the sun for now and the rays were still warm. I didn’t know exactly where the old flat was so I picked my way carefully to my left down the street, touching everything I could: the leaves on the overgrown bushes, the low lying walls, the miniature dunes of sand which had gusted up against the sides of the houses. Lizards stuck to the sides of sun-warmed homes which would still be throwing out warmth even as the sun set. Untrusting of this anachronistic outsider they darted away as I drew near.
I was trying to conjure up the image in my head of the map that Eddie had drawn for me. I had stared and stared at it last night and this morning, but even so, it was difficult to equate these perishing edifices with the neat blue biro lines drawn in Eddie’s hand.
There was a pretty building on my left that showed the ravage of almost four lonely decades of sun and rain but still held an aged, ragged beauty. Round balconies of black wrought iron railings stood before tall doors and windows. On the ground floor window boxes held dried brown offerings, which would have obscured the view if anyone had been looking. I gazed at it for a long time. I was as sure as I could be that this wasn’t Mum’s old flat although, I confess, I’m not entirely sure I’d recognise Mum’s apartment if it fell on me. Now I was here I wanted to look around a bit more. The hotel had been an impersonal space and I itched to see someone’s home from all those years ago.
“Just five minutes,” I told myself.
It was difficult to find the path that led to it but I picked my way through the weeds and up the cracked, bowing steps. As I stood on the top step it crumbled beneath me with all the solidity of a meringue. It was enough to make me stumble and grab at the rutted railings but otherwise I was unharmed. I found my right hand covering my heart, as if that would help stop the hammering in my chest.
There is an eeriness about knowing that you are the first person to set foot in a place for many years. I could feel it like an imprint of a previous life. I fancied that the inhabitants were just round the corner, out of reach of my outstretched hands, and their voices a little too quiet to hear.
The first door that I tried was unlocked. Was I surprised by that? It seemed amiss by the previous inhabitants to go out and leave their home unprotected, but then, the kind of things that they needed protection against were unlikely to be stopped by a standard house lock.
Even though I knew that no one was in there, it felt like I was intruding and I almost knocked before easing the door open as quietly as I could and tip-toeing into the stale and time-frozen room. I expected to see a mound of unread mail and flyers in a heap on the floor as often happens in a house that has lain uninhabited. But I shook my head, there was nobody to deliver the mail and takeaway menus here. No postman would be traipsing up to the door with letters bundled by a red elastic band.
I absent-mindedly wondered if there was an office somewhere holding onto the mail for when the people of Varosha returned. Had their mail been redirected? Of course, having a mail service wouldn’t have been a priority in Famagusta during the invasion. I mused that it would be a priority in England. There is something so innately British about the Royal Mail and letters. I would still be “Tsk-ing” if my mail wasn’t delivered by mid-morning even in the middle of a war. Some things are just the British way.
My feet padded into what looked like the living room. I looked down, expecting to see carpet, but the cushioning under foot was forty years of dust. The imprint of my footsteps could be seen clearly behind me, complete with the wavy lines of the tread from the underside of my shoe. There was an oval table, with one side folded down, pushed against a wall with four chairs arcing round it. Three of the chairs were pushed out from the table around the open sides but one was pushed firmly into place.
Two coffee cups and an old coffee pot sat on one side of the table next to a sepia coloured newspaper. Two small glasses with pink and orange flowers and two forks sat flanking two empty white plates on the other side of the table. The set-up suggested this was th
e home of a family of four people with two young children.
The fact that the breakfast things were still laid out suggested these people had been in a hurry. Perhaps they stayed as long as they could, telling each other that it would never happen, they would never leave their home. It wouldn’t come to that. They all sat down to breakfast together and enjoyed a cup of coffee, pretending all was normal until... Until what? They heard tanks? Voices? Gunfire? Perhaps they left at the urgings of their neighbours. Perhaps they were dragged from their home.
The other side of the room held two hard-looking sofas facing a low oblong coffee table. There was more wood than padding in the seats and the rough orange-brown fabric had bobbled with age. There were no cushions to soften the effect of the austere furniture. On the wall there was a painting of a lioness and cubs lying supine on a dark green background. The painting was at a slight angle and I couldn’t resist straightening it a little. My fingers came away black with dust and I wiped them on my shorts.
I walked through a doorless archway into the kitchen. There was no glass in the windows and the shutters were wide open. Where a back door once was, there was nothing but air. This room had taken a lot of the battering from the elements. One wall had been once covered with framed photographs, but now some lay on the floor, faces smiling up through the shattered glass pinned down by splintered wooden frames.
I picked up one of the pictures and its frame came apart in my hand. I let the dark wood fall to the floor but held firmly onto the photo. I turned it over to see illegible angular Greek writing on the back. The snapshot showed an angelic little girl of about five years old on the shoulders of a muscly dark man with an age-masking beard. Her hair was loose in rat-tails around her shoulders. And she was displaying two cavernous holes where her front teeth should have been. The camera had caught her in the middle of a shriek of glee.
The man, her father I assumed, was holding her knees and she was gripping the sides of his head. The joy on their faces radiated from the picture and filled the little kitchen with sunshine.
“And where are you now?” I asked the picture out loud. The child would be older than me, perhaps with children, perhaps even grandchildren. Maybe she now carries children on her own shoulders. Does she remember this picture? Does she long for her childhood home? Did they get out of Famagusta safely?
I turned then to take in the kitchen and frowned. It wasn’t only the wind and the rain that had been through this room. I could now see that that all of the drawers and cupboards were open and everything had been taken. Green squares on white walls showed where cupboards had been removed from above the sink. I puzzled over why the inhabitants would have taken their cupboards with them and then I saw the green glass beer bottles on the side. There was no doubt that someone had been in here since the Greek family had fled.
I placed the photograph in the back pocket of my shorts – I don’t know why – and headed towards the stairs. Nervously sticking to the outside of the steps, where I hoped they would be more stable, I slowly picked my way up to the landing using the ornate bannister as support. The style seemed more French than Greek.
At the bedrooms I noticed the doors were missing here too but I didn’t step over the threshold. The first room came alive as cockroaches scuttled into the corners and I shrank backwards instinctively. There were two stripped beds in the centre of the room. A filthy blanket and pillow were on one of the beds. On the floor were more beer bottles, some teaspoons and aluminium foil. Drug users.
Pink curtains danced around the floor-to-ceiling windows with the deftness of ballerinas as the breeze picked up outside. Their movements caused me to feel uneasy and I went back towards the stairs, unable to stay here any longer now I knew what had been going on in the child’s bedroom. I had expected everything to be frozen in time, a snapshot of perfect 1970s’ family life. Instead, I had seen that nothing is sacred. These houses had been looted, used and destroyed. Nature wasn’t the biggest enemy of this town. Man was. I snorted at my own naivety, thinking that anyone respected the lives of the previous inhabitants here.
The day had lost none of its warmth but it was mercifully overcast now as I rushed back into the open air. The clouds had sneaked up on the sun and smothered it. It felt like the spotlight had been turned off at last and I was free to explore the Ghost Town in anonymity.
I closed the door carefully behind me, even though there was no one there to complain if I left it ajar. I could almost hear my mum’s voice shouting, “Were you born in a barn?” Some habits die hard. From my vantage point at the top of the steps I looked across the street and imagined the neighbours of this family. Did they know Mum and Eddie? Did they exchange pleasantries on a morning or did they pass by on the street, too caught up in their own lives to be interested in the English woman and her army husband?
The light wind stirred up sand, litter and memories, spinning them in the air indiscriminately. I sucked in the air which was both fresh and oppressive. No food smells pervaded the air from houses or cafés. There was no lingering odour from cars and motorbikes thickening the air. There were no well-heeled ladies sweeping by leaving a wake of perfume and hairspray. And yet, although the air was untainted, there was something unbearably heavy in the ether. Hints of war and hatred still lingered on street corners and loitered in the abandoned buildings. Menace and slyness beckoned you round corners and into deserted alleyways.
The end of the pitted road opened up into a larger square which contained a few shops and two identical apartment blocks, two storeys high, each housing four families by the looks of it. I carefully descended the steps, taking care to walk on the edges to avoid the cratered concrete blocks. I was about to turn and head back up the street to explore the top end when it loomed at me. The rest of the world dropped away for a minute as I saw with unwavering clarity the apartment block where I had been born. It looked at me expectantly like it was thinking, “It’s about time.”
Chapter twenty
Cyprus, 1974
Pru swayed in the inky water. She opened her arms wide and threw her face up to the purple sky. This was her last goodbye to the world. She looked at the stars blinking at her. Her father had taught her the names of the stars and the constellations. She turned her head slightly and spotted the Plough, the Great Bear and acknowledged the orange glow of Mars. She wondered if Dad was up there somewhere, watching her. Wasn’t that what some people thought happened to you when you died? If it was true, she’d be seeing him again soon enough. And what of her baby? What happened to those who died before even taking their first breath? Where does God stand on what constitutes a life, she wondered. At conception? When its heart starts beating? Or when it takes its first gulp of air in its mother’s arms? It was too late to be considering theology now. She’d either see her baby boy in the afterlife or she wouldn’t. There was certainly no chance of seeing him again in this world. As far as she could see, there was only one option open to her now.
She nodded to the Seven Sisters, spotted the Milky Way and then pinned her sights on the scimitar moon. She would walk to her death while fixing her gaze upon that glimmer of light. A silver chink in the darkness that would deliver her from perpetual grief. She walked forwards, her feet finding cold rippled sand under her toes. There were no stones to impede her progress on the welcome mat spread before her.
A flash of intense golden light illuminated the beach and coloured the air orange. Pru felt the explosion rather than heard it and was thrown forward into the water. Shock and fatigue rendered her arms unable to hold her up and her face plunged into the salty liquid. Coughing she remerged from the shallow water wiping the strands of wet hair from her face. She turned with terror as a percussion of explosions boomed through the clear night and stung her ears. Pru was frozen to the spot and unable to do anything but kneel in the water and sway with the tide.
Her pulse was pounding in her ears like the aftershocks of an earthquake. She couldn’t hear anything except a ringing like the distant peels of
cathedral bells. She watched as people came running out of the taverna and looked towards the throbbing glow in the distance. They didn’t see Pru sitting on her heels up to her chin in the water, nor would they have cared if they did. Two of the younger men set off at a sprint up the beach and Pru dragged herself out of the water to do the same. The sea didn’t want to give up its prize so easily and it pulled on her hospital gown, wrapping it round its watery fingers and yanking her into the deep. She struggled to her feet but fell sideways with a splash and felt the stitches on her stomach give way.
Pru fumbled with the tie on the gown at her neck and ripped the blue material off her battered body. Naked, she pushed herself to her feet and looked up the beach towards the orange glow in the sky and the fast moving would-be heroes. She was searching her mind, trying to get her bearings, so that she could work out exactly which building had been hit. She kept coming back to the same answer but didn’t want it to be true.
“The baby,” she whispered.
Rivulets of liquid ran cold from her hair over her bare body. Pru started wading back to the dry sand but her progress was slow and cumbersome. She reached the tide-line and collapsed with a muffled thud on to her front. The cool sand clung to her wet body and scratched at her raw skin. It took a Herculean effort to get herself into a standing position and she staggered to the discarded housecoat. At first she carried it by her side unencumbered by embarrassment at her naked body. She only realised that she was cold when her teeth started to chatter. It was then that Pru struggled into its limp arms and closed it around her, thankful for its protection once more.
