Between the Orange Groves

by Nadia Marks

  ‘You two go in,’ Stella announced. ‘I shall stay and wait for you here in the shade.’

  ‘It looks as if hardly anyone is here. Maybe we should try to find Ali Shafak’s father’s house,’ Spiros suggested.

  Stella reached for the note in her pocket and reread the instructions that Ali had given her. His father lived exactly diagonally across from the mosque, just as he had told her.

  The two-storey house was well maintained and dated from 1905, according to the ironwork figure above its imposing door, on which was fixed a brass knocker at eye level in the shape of an elegant female hand like all the doors in the street. Stella lifted it and knocked twice. They stood waiting. It was almost two o’clock and the hottest part of the day was upon them – undoubtedly the worst time to be knocking on anyone’s door, especially an elderly person. He could be in the middle of eating his meal or, worse still, having his siesta. They waited nervously, stealing glances at each other.

  A voice from inside called out in Turkish.

  ‘Friends of Ali,’ Stella called back in Greek, hoping she had understood his question and he would understand her answer.

  The front door was flung wide open by an old man who was smiling broadly.

  ‘Mr Shafak?’ she asked and extended her hand to him.

  ‘Hoşgeldin!’ he said in Turkish and immediately followed with ‘Kalostous!’, the Greek Cypriot equivalent to his welcome greeting, indicating that the old man belonged to the rapidly diminishing generation of Cypriots who spoke both languages fluently.

  ‘Are you all Ali’s friends from England?’ he asked cheerfully, again in Greek, and ushered them into the house, shutting the door behind them to banish the unforgiving heat of the day. The urgency with which he shut the door amused Stella, in contrast to England where doors were closed against the rain or the cold as opposed to the heat.

  ‘Come, come inside,’ the old man said, still smiling, ‘too hot out there.’ Stepping into the cool of the house they sighed with relief that they had found him at home and evidently glad to receive them.

  ‘So, are you Greek from London?’ he asked, looking at all three in turn. ‘Ali has many Greek friends there.’ As he spoke he beckoned them to follow him. ‘My brother’s grandson married a Greek girl from London, she is a very good girl,’ he continued. That would be Loula, Stella thought. They followed him into a dark, deliciously cool kitchen where the old man had evidently been preparing his lunch. ‘Please sit,’ he said, showing them the chairs around the table. ‘Some water? You must drink water, you must be thirsty. Then we eat together,’ he said again, pointing at a bowl of salad, boiled potatoes, flatbread and olives in a jar. ‘When too hot you don’t want to eat so much . . . but we must drink water.’ He fetched three glasses from a cupboard above the sink and poured water for them from a jug he took out of an old refrigerator before sitting down with them.

  ‘So . . . friends of Ali!’ the old man said again, beaming. ‘You bring me news from my son?’ Stella, the first to speak, began to explain. It was always that way between her and Spiros: he dealt with the practicalities, she did the talking. His excuse was that his work demanded a lot of talking so when not working he should do the minimum. Stella thought it was a lame excuse but she didn’t really mind, she was good at communicating: her friends told her she brought out the best in people.

  ‘Oh, my girl,’ the old man said mournfully and sat back in his chair to look at Stella, after she had explained the reason for their trip and their quest to find Orhan. ‘You have come two weeks too late.’ His voice faltered.

  Stella glanced at her brother and Yiorgos and held her breath, waiting for him to continue. ‘I pray to Allah every day to return him back to us soon.’ His eyes watered and his voice faded to silence.

  ‘Why? What has happened?’ Stella asked him, her own voice unsteady from the anticipation of bad news. It would be so unbearably sad if they really were too late. The thought flashed through her mind that she had been right not to have mentioned this visit to her father: they had come so close to finding Orhan, she could hardly imagine his disappointment.

  Gradually the old man recovered his composure and he began to explain that Orhan had been unwell for several years now: ‘He had the sugar, you see, too much sugar in his blood.’ Orhan had apparently been suffering for years from diabetes, or ‘sugar’ as the locals called it. As the complications of the condition increased, he had been seeking medical treatment with Greek doctors, which entailed crossing to ‘the other side’ of Nicosia for appointments on a regular basis. Two weeks ago, Orhan had suddenly collapsed in the mosque while conducting prayers, Mr Shafak told them, his eyes sad.

  ‘It was his heart, you see, it couldn’t take the strain any longer.’ Orhan’s chronic diabetic condition, which he was not good at managing, had caused him to suffer a massive heart attack and he had been admitted to the general hospital in Nicosia, where he was now. ‘I think a relative is here staying in his house across the street. He came to help him when he got sick.’ The Greeks, the old man explained, have good doctors, and many Turks go to the south to be treated. ‘If we want to see the Greek doctors they agree to see us, like in the old days,’ he told them and the sadness in his voice reminded Stella of her earlier meeting with his son in London, or her many conversations with her own father. ‘We used to all live together, not like now . . .’ He picked up his glass of water and took several sips before continuing. ‘Sometimes I would go with him to the hospital, for company, you see, I would wait outside when the nice lady doctor called him, she always looked after him well. May Allah bless her and her family. They are Christians, we are Muslims, but there is only but one God!’

  They stayed with the old man for a while, accepting his hospitality and his offer of lunch with pleasure and listened to his stories. They ate a salad of ripe tomatoes and raw onions drenched in olive oil and lemon, shared his flatbread and olives, and drank cold water from the jug. After that they took their leave so that he could have his afternoon rest, though not before he told them where they could find Orhan. Then Stella, Spiros and Yiorgos ventured into the afternoon heat to make their way back home via Agia Sophia.

  ‘I can do this alone,’ Stella told Spiros when they returned to the apartment in Larnaka. ‘I can go and see what state he is in and if he is stable, then we can go back to visit him together.’

  ‘Only if you’re sure,’ her brother replied with apparent relief at being spared a possibly gruesome hospital visit. Neither of them knew what to expect.

  The next morning she set off for Nicosia much earlier, so by the time she had located the hospital and parked the car it was hardly past eight o’clock and the morning temperature still positively pleasant. She found a spot under a tree to park, in the hope that by the time she had finished and returned to it, it wouldn’t be a pizza oven on wheels; but she knew well enough that she was fooling herself and that by then she’d be able to fry an egg on its bonnet.

  Locating Orhan was easy, for there were few Turkish Cypriots in the wards. Stella followed a nurse along the air-conditioned corridors, feeling almost chilly but knowing that in less than an hour she would be grateful for it.

  ‘He’s in bed number four.’ The nurse pointed at a bed by the window. ‘He is quite sedated and sleeps most of the time. If you need any help, I’ll be in the ward.’

  Stella stepped into the room and made her way to the window. There were four beds in the room, two side by side against each wall facing one other. She stood by the window and looked down at the old man lying motionless, wired up to machines. She hadn’t considered what he might look like now. A little like her father, perhaps, she had imagined. Lambros had talked about him far more than he had ever described him to her. She didn’t have a strong visual image of him; what she had was a strong feeling, a loving feeling as conveyed by her father. He looked much older than Lambros: probably because of his white beard, she thought. Her clean-shaven dad always looked dapper and younger than his years. She stoo
d for a while, watching him breathing, then she bent over him and softly whispered his name. After a pause she repeated it, then again, and touched the back of his hand, which lay by his side. She saw his lips move but his eyelids remained shut. A few minutes passed, she again touched his hand lightly with her fingers. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked up at her.

  ‘Anastasia,’ he whispered, his voice barely audible. ‘You came.’

  ‘It’s Stella,’ she said softly and reached for his hand. ‘I came to see you. I’m Anastasia’s niece, my name is Stella.’

  ‘Ahh,’ he breathed out and closed his eyes again, shutting her out; she sensed disappointment.

  ‘I’m Lambros’s daughter,’ she said, her tears starting to gather.

  ‘Lambros . . .’ he murmured, eyes still shut, ‘my old friend.’ He slowly opened his eyelids and looked at her.

  ‘Yes!’ Stella said, gaining courage, ‘Lambros, he wants to see you, I can bring him to see you.’ She sat down by his side and took his hand in hers and waited.

  ‘The boy, he came . . .’ he whispered, his voice weaker than before. ‘He came to see me. She sent him to me . . .’

  27

  Istanbul, 1960s

  Anastasia’s son was growing into a fine young man, but his mother’s untimely death left a lasting imprint on him. The fear of losing anyone he loved would linger over him for the rest of his life. Mother and son had been so close, far closer than he had ever been with his father, and adjusting to life without her proved hard for both of them. Enver had always been obsessively committed to his medical practice and was absent a great deal, so Anastasia and Hassan had developed an exceptionally close bond with each other. Now, left alone with the thirteen-year-old Hassan, Enver was at a loss and unfamiliar with how to deal with the boy. Although he was a generous provider of the material things in life, he was oblivious to his son’s emotional needs, so the boy spent his teenage years in a state of simmering and sometimes open anger towards his father. Anastasia had always been the one who cared for, comforted and encouraged him, as well as instilling in him the importance of his dual ethnic identity. She made sure the boy was aware that his mother’s Greek background was as significant as his Turkish inheritance from his father; in fact at times his affinity to the former seemed stronger, to his father’s irritation.

  ‘We live in Turkey and we are Turks,’ he would tell Hassan when he considered his son was being deliberately provocative in front of friends after Anastasia’s death.

  ‘While Alev was alive there wasn’t much I could do,’ he would explain to people apologetically, using the Turkish name which he had given to Anastasia when they first arrived in Istanbul. ‘The two of them always spoke Greek to each other. But now he must take pride in being Turkish.’

  However, this was no simple matter for the teenaged Hassan. He was beginning to feel much the same way as his mother had done when the full impact of her decision to change her religion and take on a Turkish identity struck her – conflicted and confused. Anastasia had imparted some of her Christian values to her son and had often taken him to the Orthodox church when she visited her Greek friends. Growing up with the acceptance of two faiths made his circumstances unlike any other family he knew, but this seemed quite normal to him when he was little. His mother made sure he understood their situation was sensitive and it was never openly discussed outside their home; besides, Hassan wasn’t an unduly gregarious boy, often preferring the company of his family to boys his own age. He would regularly go to prayers at the mosque with his father – one activity he liked doing with him – but would also be taken by his mother to light a candle and kiss the icons at the Christian church.

  During early childhood his acceptance of his dual cultures and religions was unquestioned but once he reached adolescence he began to be troubled. After Anastasia’s death, when Hassan found himself alone during his father’s long hours of absence, he continued to go to church. He would take himself most Sundays to Pera and into the Orthodox church to light a candle for his mother; then after the liturgy, continuing their habit while she was alive, he would pay a visit to her friends at the Greek community. There, with Myrto and her family, he would be Andreas not Hassan. He was one of them; he was their dear friend’s son on whom they felt duty-bound to lavish love and affection. For his part he revelled in the women’s warm attention, while always taking care not to divulge too much about himself, as his mother had warned. Myrto and her family lived in a spacious apartment above their shop and on Sundays, when there was no trade, they would invite him upstairs for refreshments. Myrto had married a personable young man from Greece and had two children of her own, a boy and a girl. The marriage was arranged by one of her aunts who knew the family, and her husband was now helping them to run the shop.

  ‘Welcome, Andreas mou,’ Myrto would greet him as she took him in her arms. ‘We miss and lament our Anastasia so much, I can’t imagine what your own grief must be like, my boy.’ Her eyes would brim with tears as she fussed over him while her mother or daughter would hasten to bring him some sweet delicacy with a glass of water. He enjoyed his visits to the Greek family, he felt a sense of belonging there, but he liked it even more on days when the shop was open; he loved it as much as Anastasia had done when she first discovered it. The fabrics and tapestries, the textiles and colourful yarns and above all the special aroma of the place, were all so evocative of visits spent there with his mother.

  Hassan had always been a good student and Enver’s plans for him were to follow in his footsteps and into medicine.

  ‘Orthopaedic surgeon! That is what you must train for,’ his father would advise when they were discussing the future. ‘There’s much money to be made in that profession – plenty of work, people break bones all the time.’

  But Hassan had other plans. He was an excellent draughtsman and had an unerring eye for design. He was good with his hands, but he didn’t intend to use them to mend broken limbs. He was far more interested in acquiring the skills of his grandfather’s and mother’s trade than in qualifying in his father’s profession. Fashion design was his passion, the sartorial arts fascinated him; the sensuous fall of folds of fabric over the body, the sharp cut of tailored suits, the shimmer of silky yarns were where his mind dwelt after school. Sewing needles intrigued him more than syringes or surgical equipment. Every month he would visit the largest newspaper kiosk in Istanbul to buy an armful of whatever European magazines he could afford on his allowance. When he was small, while Anastasia made clothes for them both, he would sit by her side and watch her cut the fabric and pin the pieces together to transform them like a magician into a jacket or a blouse. She had never lost her own passion for dressmaking and preferred to make her own clothes, adapting the Vogue patterns as she had done when she worked with Kyria Thecla, although Enver could buy her whatever she wanted from the best shops.

  ‘It’s a matter of preference not necessity,’ she would reply when he asked why she bothered to put herself to so much trouble. ‘It’s a pleasure not a bother, I love making clothes for myself – I know what suits me and besides, they fit me better,’ she would try to convince him. Later, when Hassan was older, he would go shopping with his mother to the textiles bazaar to choose cloth for an outfit that she planned for herself. He liked nothing more than the smell of a fabric emporium with its bolts and rolls of materials stacked on the shelves; he loved the process of helping Anastasia to choose the fabric by its weight, colour, design and motif and then seeing how she adapted the pattern to her own shape and style.

  These activities always took place without Enver. ‘I don’t think your father would quite understand the importance of what we’re doing,’ Anastasia would laugh, knowing that her husband would consider a boy taking interest in such matters as effeminate. On the odd occasion when he witnessed mother and son discussing the design of a garment he would protest.

  ‘You’re filling the boy’s head with unnatural ideas,’ he would complain moodily, ‘this is women’s
work.’

  ‘Didn’t your family come from a long line of tailors?’ she snapped back at him. ‘Was that women’s work? Your father was a tailor and for your information your uncle Hassan Bey was a master at his craft and a great inspiration to me.’

  ‘That’s not the same,’ he’d protest, ‘they made clothes for men! Not women’s dresses!’

  ‘Their work was no different from any seamstress I ever saw,’ she would argue. ‘Better get used to it, Enver – our son takes after your father, not you!’

  But Enver persisted. After Anastasia’s death and once the boy was ready to graduate from high school he continued to push him towards medicine. However, unfortunately for Enver, they were now well into the 1960s and Europe was ablaze with revolutionary new fashion, style and music with England as its Mecca. Hassan, poring over the pages of his magazines, was well informed; he knew that London was the centre of this carnival of youth. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, the wild music, the new boutiques of crazy clothes were all there in the British capital. Mary Quant, high priestess of fashion, was practising her craft there along with Biba, Ossie Clark and a host of others and he longed to become a disciple. Hassan had no doubts where his talents lay: London must be his destination, and nothing would dissuade him from following his ambition. But he also knew that the only way to achieve this was to convince his father to support him. His father, however, was of a different opinion; if he was going to spend money on his son’s education, it had to be on something he approved of, worthwhile and respectable.

  ‘No son of mine is going to become some kind of, what do they call them, some kind of degenerate hippy!’ he shouted.

  ‘I want to study, Father, not drop out!’ Hassan would try to explain in desperation.

  ‘Fashion! What kind of studies are these?’ Enver would scoff and throw his hands up in the air. ‘Next thing you’ll be wanting to grow your hair long like a girl and wear flowery shirts!’