The Island of Missing Trees, page 25
‘Shall I go downstairs to find you cigarettes?’
‘No, love. I want to finish. I want to tell you everything – just once – and never talk about that day again.’
He settled back down on the floor, put his head on her lap again. She continued to stroke his hair, her fingers tracing circles on his neck.
‘I stayed inside the tavern with Dr Norman. At first, we didn’t pay attention to what was going on outside. We assumed it would be over in a minute, whatever it was. We heard a scuffle. Angry voices. Shouting. Swearing. Then it got really scary. The doctor asked me to hide under a table, and he did the same. We waited, trying not to make any noise. And don’t think I haven’t flayed myself for my cowardice all these years. I should have gone out, helped Yiorgos and Yusuf.’
Kostas was about to say something, but she cut him off with a sharp gesture. With an impatient toss of her head, she continued, speaking faster this time.
‘As the sounds got louder, Chico panicked. The poor bird became agitated, screaming his head off, banging against his cage. It was awful. I had to leave my hiding place and get him out. Chico had made so much noise, the men outside must have heard him. They tried to come in and check. But Yiorgos and Yusuf blocked the way. There was a tussle. A gun went off. Still we waited quietly, the doctor and I. For how long, I don’t know, my legs went numb. When we walked out, the sky was dark and there was this eerie silence all around. I knew in my soul something terrible had occurred and I had done nothing to prevent it.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I believe these thugs had been casing the tavern for some time. They knew Yusuf and Yiorgos were a gay couple and wanted to teach them a lesson. They probably thought the place was closed. They were going to vandalize it, smash the windows, break a few things, write ugly slurs on the walls and leave. With all the chaos across the island, they trusted nobody would bother to investigate such a trivial incident and they would get away with it. But things didn’t go according to plan. They didn’t expect the owners to be there. Nor did they expect to meet resistance.’
Her hand, tracing his neck, slowed to a halt.
‘And neither Yusuf nor Yiorgos would have fought back in this way, they were the gentlest souls. I think they became overprotective because of me; they must have been worried that the men would force their way in and find me with the doctor. How would we explain what we were about to do? What would they do to us then? That’s why Yusuf tried to block the entrance and Yiorgos ran inside to get his pistol – things got out of hand.’
‘When you went out, they weren’t there?’
‘No. There was no one. We searched everywhere. The doctor kept saying we had to go, it was dangerous to be out so late. But I didn’t care. I just sat there, feeling dazed. My teeth were chattering, I remember, even though I wasn’t cold or anything. I had this crazy idea that the fig tree must have witnessed everything. I wished I could find a way to make the tree talk to me, that was the only thing on my mind. I thought I was going mad. I returned the next day, then the next … every day that month I walked to the tavern and I waited for Yiorgos and Yusuf to come back.
‘I always brought some food for Chico, those biscuits that he loved so much, remember? The bird wasn’t doing well. I was planning to take him home with me, but I hadn’t been able to talk to my family yet about my own situation, I didn’t know how they were going to react. One morning I came to the tavern and Chico wasn’t there. We never consider how animals are affected by our wars and fights but they suffer just like us.’
He watched her eyes become guarded, her jaw hardening, her cheeks hollowing. He could tell from the tight line around her lips that mentally she was somewhere else, a dark, narrow cave that held her in its thrall, shutting him out.
His throat tight, he asked, ‘These men … were they Greek or Turkish?’
In reply, she repeated the words she had said to him just the other day, the first time they had met after so many years. ‘They were islanders, Kostas, just like us.’
‘You never saw Yusuf and Yiorgos again?’
‘I never saw them again. I decided to have the baby whatever the consequences. My sister already knew about us. I told her that I was pregnant. Meryem said there was no way we could tell my parents the full truth. We had to keep your name out of this. So between us we came up with a plan. As gently as she could, Meryem conveyed the news to the family. My father was mortified. In his eyes, I had dishonoured our name. I have never seen anyone carry his shame like that, as if it were his skin now, inseparable. This man who was paralysed from the waist down … He had lost his job and his friends, and was suffering physically and mentally and financially, but for him honour was everything, and when he found out that I wasn’t the daughter he thought he had, it just destroyed him. He wouldn’t look at my face, he wouldn’t speak to me any more, and my mother … I don’t know if her reaction was better or worse. She was beside herself with rage – shouting all the time. But I think my father’s silence hit me harder in the end.
‘And here is something else you can hate me for: Meryem and I decided to tell them the baby was Yusuf’s and we were planning to get married, but he had mysteriously disappeared. My mother went to the tavern looking for him, but of course there was no one there. She even called Yusuf’s family, asking where he was, accusing them of things they had no knowledge of. And all that time I kept quiet and I despised myself for having smeared the name of a good man – when I didn’t even know if he was dead or alive.’
‘Oh, Defne …’
She made a vague gesture with her hand, not allowing him to say anything else. Quietly, she stood up, went inside and began putting on her clothes.
‘Are you leaving?’ Kostas asked.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’d like to take you to a military cemetery.’
‘Why? What’s in there?’
‘Soldiers,’ she said softly. ‘And babies.’
Fig Tree
After Yusuf and Yiorgos disappeared and The Happy Fig closed down, Chico fell into a deep depression. He started plucking out his feathers and chewing his skin – a red, raw map of pain spreading across exposed flesh. It happens to parrots, just like humans, they succumb to melancholy, losing all joy and hope, finding each day more excruciating.
The bird wasn’t eating properly, even though he had plenty of food. He could easily survive on stores of fruits and nuts, insects and snails, tearing at the sacks in the larder, not to mention the biscuits that Defne brought him. But he had barely any appetite. I tried to help him, only now realizing how little I knew him. All these years we had lived in the same tavern, sharing one space, an exotic parrot and a fig tree, but we had never been close. Our personalities were not exactly aligned. But in times of crisis and despair the most unlikely beings can become friends; that, too, I have learned.
A yellow-headed Amazon parrot, an endangered species native to Mexico, is an unusual sight for Cyprus. You don’t find his kind around here. Nor among the thousands of passerine birds that fleetingly grace our skies each year. Chico’s presence was an anomaly and I had accepted it as such, never really wondering where Yusuf had got him from.
When I asked him about his past, Chico told me that he used to live in a mansion in Hollywood. I did not believe him, of course. Sounded like a lot of baloney to me. He must have noticed my scepticism, for he got upset. He mentioned the name of an American actress famous for her voluptuous figure and her various roles in classic films. He said she adored exotic birds, had a whole collection of them in her garden. He told me that every time he picked up a new word, the actress rewarded him with a treat. She would clap her hands and say: ‘Darling, how clever you are!’
Chico said that after a torrid affair with a mafia leader, during which time she cruised the Mediterranean in a private yacht, the actress had become fond of Cyprus. She especially liked Varosha, the ‘French Riviera of the Eastern Mediterranean’, where she purchased a spectacular villa. She wasn’t the only celebrity who had discovered this heavenly spot. On an ordinary day, you could spot Elizabeth Taylor emerging from a glitzy hotel, Sophia Loren stepping out of her car, her skirt having ridden up above her knees, or Brigitte Bardot strolling along the beach, gazing into the watery depths as if waiting for someone to emerge.
The actress decided to spend more time here. It suited her – the weather, the glamour – but there was one problem: she missed her parrots! So she made arrangements to bring them over. Ten birds in total. Placed in smelly, stuffy containers, loaded from one plane to the next, they were dispatched from LA all the way to Cyprus. And that is how Chico and his clan ended up on our island.
The trip wasn’t easy for the birds. Being photosensitive, they found the travel across oceans and continents gruelling. They stopped drinking water and eating properly, homesick in their ornamental brass cages. One died. But the remaining birds, when they finally reached their destination, swiftly adapted to their new home in Varosha, in the southern quarter of Famagusta. Glitzy shops, flashy casinos, exclusive brands, the latest of everything was here … Music blasted from brightly coloured convertibles as they glided along the main avenues. Luxury yachts and sightseeing boats bobbed up and down along the harbour. Under the moon, the sea glistened in the dazzle pouring out of the discotheques, its dark waters festooned like carnival floats.
Tourists travelled to Varosha from all over the world to celebrate their honeymoons, graduations, wedding anniversaries … They saved money so they could spend a few days in this famous resort. They sipped rum cocktails and dined at exquisite buffets; they surfed, swam and basked on sandy beaches, bent on getting a perfect tan, the horizon stretching out blue and clear before their eyes. If this was paradise, they knew from news reports there was trouble brewing at its margins, reports of inter-communal tension between Turks and Greeks. But inside the confines of the resort, the spectre of civil war was invisible and life felt fresh, eternally young.
Chico said there were nine of them sharing the same space – four couples plus him. He was the only bird without a partner. He felt hurt, excluded. Parrots are strictly monogamous. Loyal and loving, they mate for life. When they have chicks, they raise their little ones together, males and females sharing the work. They are homemakers like that. None of which worked in Chico’s favour. When the others formed pairs, he was left alone. He had no one to love and no one to love him back. And to make things worse, the actress, who now had a new boyfriend and an exciting new film in the works, was busier than ever. She spent solid days and weeks away from home, entrusting her parrots to the housekeeper with long, detailed lists of instructions pinned to the fridge – what to feed the birds, when to give them their drops, how to check their feathers for signs of ectoparasites. Lists that would languish unread.
The housekeeper did not like parrots, finding them noisy, boisterous and spoiled. She saw them as a burden and made no secret of it. The other birds, busy with their own families, didn’t mind this as much. But Chico did, lonely and vulnerable as he was. One morning, he flew out through the open window, leaving behind his kin and the actress and all that gourmet food. Not knowing where to go, he flew without rest, making it all the way to Nicosia, where Yusuf, by a stroke of destiny, found him perched on a wall, squawking in distress, and took him in.
Chico worried that now Yusuf, too, was gone. Humans were all the same, he said. Untrustworthy and selfish to the core.
Protesting with all my might, I tried to explain to him that neither Yusuf nor Yiorgos would just disappear like that, something must have happened to keep them away, but I was increasingly gripped by a pang of anguish myself.
None of us knew then that, in only a few weeks, Varosha’s fate would be sealed. In the summer of 1974, after the Turkish army moved in, the entire population of the town, more than 39,000 people, would have to run away, leaving all their belongings behind. Among them must have been the housekeeper. I imagine her packing a bag, rushing out of the door and evacuating with others. Had she remembered to take the parrots with her? Or at least to set them free? To be fair, she probably expected to be back in a few days. That’s what everyone thought.
None of them could return. Women in go-go boots, miniskirts, baby-doll dresses, flared jeans; men sporting tie-dye shirts, earth shoes, bell-bottoms, tweed jackets. Film stars, producers, singers, footballers or the paparazzi trailing after them. DJs, bartenders, croupiers, spotlight dancers. And the many, many local families who had been here for generations and had nowhere else to call home. The fishermen who brought their fresh catch to fancy restaurants where they would be sold for ten times the price, the bakers who worked at night to prepare cheese-filled breads and the street vendors who strolled the promenade peddling balloons, candyfloss, ice cream for children and tourists. They all left.
The beaches of Varosha were cordoned off with barbed wire, cement barriers and signs ordering visitors to stay away. Slowly, the hotels disintegrated into webs of steel cables and concrete pylons; the pubs turned dank and deserted, the discotheques crumbled; the houses with flowerpots on their windowsills dissolved into oblivion. This worldwide resort, once opulent and fashionable, became a ghost town.
I have always wondered what happened to those Amazon parrots that a Hollywood actress had brought to Cyprus. I hope they managed to get out of the villa through an open window. Parrots live long lives, and the chances are they might have survived on fruits and insects. Perhaps if you were to pass by the barricades of Varosha today, you might catch a flash of bright green among abandoned buildings and decay, and hear a pair of wings flapping like a sail torn in a storm.
There were many words Chico was able to say. Remarkably talented, he could imitate electronic sounds, mechanical sounds, animal sounds, human sounds … He could identify dozens of objects, pulverize cockleshells or even solve puzzles, and if you gave him a pebble, he would use it to crush nuts.
In the empty tavern, as the two of us waited for Yusuf and Yiorgos to return, Chico would display his talents for me.
‘Come, birdie, birdie!’ he would cry out from the chair behind the till where Yusuf used to sit every evening to greet customers, now covered in an inch of dust.
‘S’agapo,’ Chico would croon in Greek, I love you, something he had heard Yiorgos whisper to Yusuf. And then, when the truth sank in and he realized that no one was coming, he would pluck another feather from his bruised flesh and repeat to himself a word he had learned in Turkish: ‘Aglama ’ – Don’t cry.
Ammonite
Cyprus, early 2000s
After they visited the military cemetery, and Kostas saw for the first time where his son was buried, they walked in silence, holding hands. They trudged through fields of crown daisies with their pale orange flowers caressed by the wind as thistles and brambles scratched their bare ankles.
In the afternoon they rented a car and drove towards the Castle of Saint Hilarion. It did them good, the long, hard scramble up the steep and twisty hillside, the sheer physicality of the climb. When they reached the top, they surveyed the landscape from a Gothic window carved into the ancient structure, their breaths shallow, their pulses hammering.
That evening, once the castle was closed and both tourists and locals had left, they loitered around, not quite ready to go back and mingle with other people just yet. They sat on a rock where a saint had once rested, worn smooth from centuries of passage.
Steadily, dusk filtered into night. As the darkness around them thickened, it became impossible to walk down the way they had come, so they decided to spend the night there. This being a military zone, they were taking a risk by staying after hours. Next to a patch of meadow saffron, glowing pinkish-white under a pale sliver of moon, they made love. To be naked like that in the open, canopied only by an infinite sky, was a frightening experience, and the closest they had come to freedom in a long time.
They nibbled through a bag of hazelnuts and dried mulberries, the only food they had with them. They drank water from flasks they had brought in their rucksacks, and then whisky. While Kostas slowed down after a few sips, Defne didn’t. Once again, he noticed she was drinking too fast, too much.
‘I want you to come with me,’ Kostas said, keeping his eyes trained on her as if fearing she might disappear between blinks.
Shaking her head, she gestured at the empty space between them. ‘Where?’
‘To England.’
Just then the moon darted behind a cloud, giving him barely enough time to detect the change in her expression. A momentary surprise, then withdrawal. He recognized that way she had of closing in on herself defensively.
‘We can start all over again, I promise,’ Kostas said.
When the cloud edged away, he found her absorbed in thought. Now she was looking at him carefully, surveying his lips, the split still healing, the bruises around his eyes slowly changing colour.
‘Is this … Wait, are you proposing?’
Kostas swallowed, upset at himself for not being better prepared. He could have brought a ring with him. He remembered the jewellery store they had stopped by after visiting the psychic. He should have gone there the next day, but, busy tracking songbirds, he hadn’t had a chance.
‘I’m not very good with words,’ Kostas said.
‘I figured.’
‘I love you, Defne. I have always loved you. I know we can’t roll back the years – I’m not trying to gloss over what happened, your suffering, our loss – but I want us to give each other a second chance.’
Remembering he still had the fossil in his jacket pocket, he took it out. ‘Would it be terribly untoward if I gave you an ammonite instead of a ring?’
