by Nadia Marks
‘So how did you know Orhan Terzi?’ Stella asked, hoping he could help her with the reason for their meeting while enjoying his tales of trust between the two communities, so reminiscent of the accounts she heard from her father.
‘Imam Terzi conducted prayers and taught in my father’s mosque in Nicosia,’ he started to explain. ‘I met him when I went to visit my father. They were good friends and neighbours.’ Apparently Orhan Terzi was a well-known imam and teacher in northern Nicosia, so well respected by his community that the road running past his mosque had been named after him, an honour indeed and indicative of his popularity.
‘My father was very respectful of him. He is a good man who helped everyone.’
‘Is your father still alive?’ Stella asked and instantly regretted it in case she might cause distress.
‘Oh yes, he is!’ the man laughed. ‘He is a tough one, my old man. He’ll live to be a hundred I am sure and he’s not far from it!’
‘When did you last see Imam Terzi?’ Stella enquired, concerned that he might not still be alive despite being nowhere near that age.
‘It was about two years ago, when I last went to visit my father in Nicosia.’
‘Did you speak to him? Was he well?’ she asked, her voice betraying her anxiety.
‘When I saw him at the mosque he was well enough. I heard he had been quite ill but had recovered. If something had happened I would certainly know. My father writes regularly with news of everyone,’ he continued in his broken accent.
‘Do you think we should go to look for him together?’ Stella asked her brother as they sat in a cafe during their lunch break a few days later.
Both brother and sister worked in London’s Soho area in nearby offices, and they often took the opportunity to meet for a quick lunch. Spiros was in advertising while Stella worked for one of the big accounting companies; her children always teased her about this, considering her job boring, unlike their cool uncle who worked in a fashionable industry. Stella didn’t mind their jibes: she enjoyed her work, she liked numbers, and she was good at her job. We can’t all be creative, she’d tell the kids. She could have been managing a department by now if she hadn’t taken time off during those early years to take care of the children, but she didn’t regret it. She found a job without too much difficulty once she decided it was time to go back. Yet even if she was able and efficient, she had to start on a lower salary than her qualifications and abilities deserved.
‘You and I could go together,’ Stella said and took a sip of her cappuccino, ‘and if we find him, tell Dad afterwards.’
‘Isn’t he booked to go to Cyprus for a month with you?’
‘Yes, but we could go a week or so ahead. We could at least try to find Orhan before he comes? He doesn’t need to know anything now.’
‘Yes, we could do that,’ Spiros replied, taking a bite of his sandwich. ‘If we can find him . . .’
‘Loula’s relative gave me a good lead. He has told me where to go and look. But I really don’t want to go on my own. I don’t want to cross to “the other side” alone.’
Cyprus, 2008
August is far from an ideal month to explore Nicosia or anywhere else on the island, other than the high peaks of the Troodos Mountains. The heat is stifling on the plain and in the cities, and no one with any sense would step outside between early morning and early evening unless it was absolutely necessary. Cypriots choose to stay in the cool of their air-conditioned houses or offices, or better still in their bedrooms for the customary siesta, and people seen wandering the streets at noon can only be visitors.
That Wednesday morning, two days after they arrived in Cyprus, Spiros and Stella swallowed a quick cup of coffee at their seaside apartment in Larnaka and by eight o’clock they were on the road to Nicosia in search of Orhan Terzi. By the time they had arrived, met their cousin Yiorgos, who insisted on coming with them, parked the car and made their way towards the so-called green line, the border that separates the south of the city from the north, the rising temperature was already making them uncomfortably hot. Holding their British passports, they joined a group of tourists who were crossing into the occupied territory of north Nicosia and its Turkish community. Stella and Spiros had ventured north only once a few years previously and were surprised to see so many foreign visitors making the journey in the heat that they knew would await them in a few hours. For decades, the north of the island and capital city had been impenetrable to Greeks, a prohibited area imposed by Turkey; but nearly thirty years after the invasion by Turkey, a decision had been taken to ease the restrictions of movement. Provided that people reported to the Turkish authorities at a border checkpoint with their correct documents, they were allowed to cross over for a visit.
‘I object to having to use a passport to be allowed to walk in my own city,’ an uncle had snorted to Stella and Spiros when the two had expressed a wish to cross the border in 2003 after the restrictions were first eased. ‘The international community considers it to be an occupied territory. Only Turkey recognizes it, and I refuse to give validity to an illegal state,’ the uncle fumed. ‘I will go when we are united as one country again, but not before!’
But Spiros and Stella were curious; they had never been to the north and as they happened to be visiting the family for Easter at that time, they decided to join the hundreds of people who were seizing the opportunity to cross the border after so many years. It was early afternoon on Easter Saturday, before people gathered in church on this holiest of religious days to hear the good tidings that Christ had risen, when the siblings joined the procession of Greek Cypriots to pass through the checkpoint and cross the green line. They mingled with a crowd of men and women of all ages who all wished to make the long-awaited journey to their old neighbourhoods and see their occupied homes. Young and old, sons and daughters walked together, escorting their elderly parents by the hand, to visit ‘the other side’ for this emotional return. As they approached the strange neglected stretch of no-man’s-land, the buffer zone, they walked past once elegant neo-classical houses, now left derelict and crumbling. They continued past the famous Ledra Palace Hotel, in its heyday the most opulent and glamorous hotel throughout the Levant, now covered in bullet holes and used as the barracks for the peacekeeping UN soldiers. These were sights that neither sibling had ever encountered before when visiting the island.
‘It was one of the most moving events I ever experienced,’ Stella had told their relations on their return, still emotional after that day. ‘There were so many people walking together, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, it was like going on a pilgrimage. One old woman who could hardly walk told me she wanted to see her home and her garden once again before she died . . . all I could do was cry.’
Stella and Spiros had never repeated their visit, although over the years they met many people, friends from England and locals, who had walked across the green line to ‘the other side’ out of curiosity as they had done. Apart from the sadness she felt for all the displaced citizens who had lost their homes, Stella had found the city neglected and squalid in comparison to the sophisticated European south. That Easter Saturday when she and Spiros passed through the checkpoint, they had left a cosmopolitan southern Nicosia after lunch at an elegant cafe, and crossed into what Stella could only describe later on to her children as ‘impoverished’.
Stella’s curiosity had been satisfied that first time and until now she had had no reason to repeat the journey.
The wait for inspection of their passports was long and tedious and both brother and sister remembered their uncle’s anger and frustration five years earlier. That first time when they had crossed over the green line they had been swept away by the novelty and emotion of the occasion. Then it had been a far less organized affair. Now that it had been accepted and formalized, the division seemed cold and calculating, and they keenly felt the injustice of being compelled to behave as if they were crossing into another country, when they were stepping over an
imaginary line into one and the same city.
‘It’s all such a mess,’ Stella whispered to Spiros in English as they stood in the queue to have their documents examined by the Turkish police and be permitted to proceed.
‘Where will it all end?’ he replied.
‘It’s been so long,’ Yiorgos said with a sigh. ‘Many of us hardly remember what it was like before. We only know what our parents tell us. Most of the Turkish Cypriots I know didn’t want any of this either.’
‘I know, our father can’t stop talking about the old days,’ added Spiros.
Stella watched a French couple ahead of them trying to communicate with the Turkish official in broken English and tried to imagine what their response would be once they passed into Turkish territory. Could they understand how it feels to live in a divided country? They were impartial observers, they were tourists curious to see something different from what they might see elsewhere in the west. Unless they had a personal interest or knew Cypriots, Turkish or Greek, who had explained their history to them, it was unlikely that they would have any strong emotional reaction. Probably, Stella mused, they were no more than casual spectators curious to visit a country with a colourful history and a disputed border that added a frisson of danger to their sightseeing.
‘Let’s move! Let’s go!’ Spiros suddenly called, leading the way out from the police cabins and bringing Stella out of her reverie. ‘Get your map out, Sis, we’ve got work to do – no time to lose.’ Aside from her absorption with the French couple, Stella was now distracted by something else that caught her eye and made her come to a standstill. It was the street sign for the thoroughfare where they stood: a continuation of the same road that crossed the border, leading to the green line. On the Greek side its name was and always had been Ledra Street; here it was known as Lokmaci Street. She later learned that this policy had been imposed everywhere; after partition all streets were given Turkish names, villages and towns likewise.
‘I hadn’t realized they had changed all the names.’ She looked at Spiros and Yiorgos, then remembered that all the street names that Ali Shafak had given her were in Turkish.
‘Yes, I know. I was shocked too, at first,’ Yiorgos replied, following the other visitors and stepping into a small piazza surrounded by souvenir shops and cafes. ‘I don’t like it, but you get used to it.’
The three made their way to the centre of the square, where a circular bench beckoned them for a moment’s rest. Glancing around her, Stella realized she had indeed stepped into another country; this place reminded her of a Tunisian market square she had visited long ago, before she had children. Here the over-eager faces of vendors beckoning visitors to favour their shabby cafes, shops and stalls lent an atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the streets on the Greek side. Gone were the smart Max Mara and Gucci shop windows they had passed earlier, or the ubiquitous coffee bars Caffè Nero and Starbucks, where they stopped to fortify themselves before joining the queue at the green line. Here they met indifferent tourist touts and stalls selling mass-produced sunhats and sunglasses to catch the fancy of day trippers who were unlikely to return.
‘Let me see your map and instructions,’ Yiorgos said, reaching for the notes that Ali Shafak had given Stella. ‘According to the map, Yenicami Mosque where Orhan preaches is north of the city.’ He looked around him for clues to show them where they were and which direction they should take. ‘I think we have to pass the Büyük Han, the Great Inn,’ he continued, turning round to try to locate it. ‘My father often talks about it. His mother used to take him there as a boy.’
The Han with its thick sandstone walls had seen many uses over the years, and before the partition had been frequented by both Turks and Greeks – now it was something of a tourist attraction with cafes and a souvenir shop.
‘Yes, we do,’ Stella agreed. ‘It would be interesting to take a look, and I think we also pass by Agia Sophia’ – she hesitated for a moment – ‘but even if we don’t, can we visit it, please? We have time, don’t we? I’ve always wanted to see it!’
The first time Stella had visited north Nicosia, there had been no time to see anything of significance; she and Spiros had followed the crowd and meandered about for a short while before hurrying home to attend the evening Easter service. The cathedral of Agia Sophia, the oldest Gothic church on the island, had been converted into a mosque during the period of the Ottoman Empire; Stella had always wanted to visit it properly and see the interior. Often she had stood on her uncle’s roof garden on the tenth floor of his apartment block just outside the old wall, her bird’s eye view extending over the entire north and south of Nicosia, encircled by the enormous fortress built so many centuries ago by the Venetians to keep out the prowling Ottomans. The irony of its failure never ceased to strike Stella as she stood looking at the divided city. Agia Sophia loomed majestically, unobtainable and unapproachable, its two added minarets towering over its surroundings. Together with the Venetian wall, Agia Sophia, or Selimiye Mosque as it later became, was Nicosia’s most prominent and oldest landmark, believed to have been built on the ruins of an earlier Byzantine church of the same name. Having read about this splendid example of Gothic craftsmanship, now that they were within a few streets of the building she was determined to pay it a visit.
‘Maybe we can go there after we’ve found Orhan’s mosque?’ Yiorgos knew that although they had the whole day at their disposal, the heat would hinder their search as the day wore on. ‘Let’s visit on our way back,’ he suggested.
Spiros studied the map. ‘From what I see, Ali’s father must live very close to the Yenicami Mosque, which means it wouldn’t be too difficult to locate him if we ask around. But first we must find the mosque.’
Clutching the notes giving Ali Shafak’s father’s address, Stella, Spiros and their cousin made their way through the city. The commercial tourist quarter extended a little further with more cafes and souvenir shops, but as they ventured further from the checkpoint into the residential area they found a different scene. The houses were similar to the ones in the older part of southern Nicosia, but here decay and decline had taken hold. Whereas on the other side of the green line extensive renovations were being undertaken to restore the old villas and town houses, here they had been left to crumble. Residential neighbourhoods within the city walls in Nicosia had been mostly constructed around the turn of the twentieth century and traditionally the houses had their completion date displayed above their door in decorative wrought-ironwork. Stella found this custom charming and intriguing: who might have been the original owners of these family homes? She had enjoyed taking her children for a stroll on early summer evenings when they visited relatives in Nicosia, exploring the old residential areas and imagining the people who had lived there before the advent of cars, electricity or running water.
As they ventured further into the city, the houses that they passed looked as if nothing much had been done to them since the war: doors and windows in urgent need of repair, the narrow lanes littered with rubble and rubbish as children played there. Looking through a gate that led to a backyard, Stella saw chickens and a goat mingling with washing draped over the clothes line. Peering through open doors and windows, she saw poverty and deprivation. Many of the people living here, she had been told, were settlers from Turkey. Few were Turkish Cypriots, most of whom had chosen to move out of the city into the provinces and countryside.
‘I never expected it to be as bad as this,’ she murmured as they passed by a window with a broken pane where a man stood in his vest and underpants watching them walk by.
‘Look!’ Yiorgos suddenly shouted, stopping abruptly in front of Stella so that she bumped into him. ‘Look,’ he said again, pointing at a street sign, ‘this points to Yenicami Mosque, so it must be down this way.’
They continued down several narrow lanes until they arrived in a neighbourhood where the streets were wider and the buildings in better repair, often surrounded by gardens. Following the directions show
n by a signpost, they took a left turn and walked beside a high wall running the length of the entire street, which they realized was concealing a large garden.
‘This is it!’ Stella clapped her hands and ran ahead to the end of the street. ‘Over here!’ she shouted, turning left to find the very mosque they were searching for. They looked up as she pointed at the road sign on a telegraph pole above their heads: it read Orhan Terzi sokak – Orhan Terzi Street.
The mosque’s walled garden was lush and green and flanked by two large sycamore trees. Four boys had climbed it to hide among its branches and observed the unexpected visitors waiting by the gate. Smiling, Stella waved and greeted them cheerfully; the boys responded with suppressed giggles, ignoring her. ‘I like to see kids playing like this.’ She turned to her brother and cousin. ‘Climbing trees is surely more fun than sitting in front of an iPad.’
‘I’m sure if they had an iPad they’d be sitting in front of it,’ Yiorgos returned, mounting the steps to the gate.
‘What do we do now?’ Spiros said, looking at his cousin. ‘Do you think he’s in there?’
‘Let’s find out . . .’
‘I think prayer time has been and gone. Are we allowed to go inside?’ Stella added, concerned that as a woman she might not be welcome.
‘Let’s just go into the garden and see,’ Yiorgos replied.
Entering the gate, they were met by a display of roses, geraniums, pinks and several jasmine bushes all competing with each other for the attention of bees and butterflies. In the centre of the garden stood an ancient stone basin with a tap above it for the mandatory ablutions before prayer.
Cautiously approaching the front porch of the mosque, they saw that only two or three pairs of shoes were left outside.
