‘I’m going out,’ Hüseyin said.
‘Going out where?’ his mother asked.
‘Look, we need to find some food. And I’m sure there’s some still sitting in the shops.’
‘Let him go, Emine,’ said Halit. ‘The boy’s a fast runner. He’s our best hope.’
‘At least wait until it’s dark,’ pleaded his mother.
That night, Hüseyin rolled up an old flour sack and quietly left the house. Taking a serpentine course through the back streets, he made frequent stops, keeping out of sight in doorways in case soldiers should unexpectedly appear.
Once outside, he was in no hurry to return. After all these days with little food, he was as slim as a wheat stalk and he knew he could hide with ease. He wanted to look round his city. He wanted to see what had taken place outside the prison of his own home.
Were there soldiers everywhere? Were he and his family alone in this city? He walked this way and that, keeping to side streets but occasionally taking a glance down the main streets. He was astonished.
The same quietness in their own small street extended across the whole city. The night was hot and still and the silence heavy.
Once or twice he saw movement in the distance and hid while soldiers passed. He could hear their laughter and see the glow of cigarettes. They seemed relaxed enough, as though off duty. Clearly they felt their work was done and they were not on the lookout for anyone.
Hüseyin made his way cautiously across the city towards the centre. On the way he peered into several houses and saw tables laid for a meal. In one house there was even food still mouldering in dishes. Apart from the soldiers, he had seen no other living creature, not even a stray dog.
Many shopfronts looked the same as normal. In one street, ghostly mannequins in nuptial white stared out blankly. Opposite, in the window of one of the best men’s tailors in town, dummies dressed in wedding suits gazed back at their brides. These shops were untouched.
In other streets it was a different picture. There was a cluster of shops selling electrical goods. He had been passing one shop every day for the past months on his way to the beach and coveted the hi-fi equipment. Every boy of his age wanted a collection of records and the chance to play music when he wanted. He had once plucked up courage to go in, and a young sales assistant had demonstrated a Sony stereo sound system to him. It was like magic, hearing different sounds coming from the two speakers. Hüseyin knew his mother walked down the same street because he had heard her mention the idea of a television to his father. She had been firmly turned down.
The price of both was beyond reach. Now there was not even the possibility of owning them. Every radio, television and record player had been removed. Even the till was missing. Doors and windows had been smashed and moonlight caught the sparkle of glass sprinkled across the pavement. It was like a carpet of diamonds.
Closer to the seafront and the hotels, the shops became more expensive. He knew that one of his mother’s friends had worked in Moderna Moda because they sometimes passed it on the way home together and Emine’s friend would come out to chat. His mother always commented on the price tags.
‘Take a nought off and I’d buy it,’ she joked to her friend.
The mannequins were naked now.
Zenon Street, not far from The Sunrise and other luxury hotels, was where many of the expensive jewellery shops were situated. All of them had been stripped completely bare. The display cases themselves had been ripped out of the walls. In one of them a plastic clock had been left. It told Hüseyin that it was midnight.
He reached the beach and saw his sunloungers neatly stacked exactly as he had left them. Behind was The Sunrise. The dark windows unnerved him. He thought of the day when he had seen his cousin’s lifeless body, inside which the heart had stopped and the blood no longer moved in the veins. The hotel itself resembled a corpse.
Hüseyin crept past the gates and peered through the railings. He took in the unlit neon signage and the heavy iron grate across the front doors. He thought he saw some movement inside, but knew he must be mistaken. The nightclub entrance was firmly locked too.
He saw the damage that had been done to the adjacent hotel. There was a huge hole in its side and many of the balconies were hanging loosely at an angle. It was shocking. If anyone had been inside at the time of the explosion, they would have stood little chance of survival.
There was a moment when he felt that he had seen enough. He was saddened by all the destruction. This was a place he loved, and even if he dreamed of playing for a national team, it was the city he would always return to. Hüseyin could see that Famagusta would never be the same again.
It was time for him to find provisions. He had already passed some grocery shops, so he retraced his steps towards home. In the first one he came to, the door pushed open easily. There was a terrible stink. The electricity had been off for days now, so the fridges had shut down and the milk and cheese had gone rancid. The vegetables had rotted. He could not make out exactly what it was, but there were dark shapes in boxes – probably potatoes, tomatoes and, judging by the smell, some bananas. A swarm of flies buzzed close by.
It was hard to see in the darkness, but Hüseyin felt his way along the aisle. He filled the sack with packets of biscuits, various tins picked at random because he could not read the contents in the darkness, and bags of rice. It seemed that no one else had got there before him, as the shelves were still full.
Then he felt his foot touch some bottles and heard the sound of several falling over. They rolled away across the floor and Hüseyin picked up a few, hoping they would be the fizzy drinks his brother so craved.
On his way out of the shop, he took some bars of chocolate. They were soft to the touch, but he ate several as he walked home, their sweetness giving him much-needed energy.
Next door to the grocer there was a butcher. Even with the door shut, there was a stench in the street outside. Hüseyin did not go too close, but he could see that a meat carcass hanging up in the interior was almost swinging, brought to life again by the volume of maggots feasting on it.
Slinging the sack over his shoulder, he started out for home, taking a different, shorter route, ever vigilant for the sound of soldiers. He was soon back in the residential area. This time he noticed a number of suitcases simply abandoned in the street, more evidence of the panic with which people had hastened from the city. Running would have been hard enough in that heat without the weight of such baggage.
Everything was quiet, but at the end of a street not far from home, he noticed something that shocked him more than anything else he had seen.
He put the sack down behind a gate and went up close. Ahead of him, there was a line of barbed wire. He was at the edge of the modern section of the city now, and as he peered in both directions down the moonlit street, he realised that the wire stretched as far as he could see. Famagusta had been fenced off. They were now living in a giant cage.
Chapter Twenty-one
EMINE WAS OVERJOYED when Hüseyin returned, but she showed it by being angry.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, her voice rising. ‘Why were you so long? What were you doing?’
He eased the sack off his shoulder and started to unpack it, lining everything up on the table as if it were a small shop. Emine brought a candle over.
‘This is what I was doing,’ he said, a note of triumph in his voice.
‘Canım oğlum,’ she said. ‘My precious boy, thank you.’
Mehmet pointed at the lemonade.
‘Can I have some?’ he asked.
At the same time, Markos was bringing supplies of food to the Georgiou home. As Hüseyin had also discovered, there were no fresh goods to be had, but Markos reached into people’s gardens to pluck a few oranges, and Irini’s tomato plants continued to bear fruit.
‘You won’t let us starve, will you, leventi mou?’ she said, hugging her son.
Vasilis constantly listened out for the sound of sol
diers, always expecting them to return, but as the days passed, it seemed that there were plenty of other places for them to go.
Irini’s lacework grew. Now that Vasilis allowed her to have the shutters open for longer in the day, there was enough light to work by. One day, he even said that she could sit in her beloved kipos.
She missed the company of her cherished canary, his absence making her yearn all the more for the life they had lost.
‘You can stay outside, as long as you listen out,’ said Markos. ‘At all times.’
With neither his smallholding nor the kafenion to go to, Vasilis was restless and difficult company. His supply of zivania was running out too, which put him on edge.
Late one afternoon, while they were sitting hidden behind the straggling gerania that Irini had managed to revive, Vasilis saw a movement.
‘Irini! Look!’
Down the street, they could make out the receding figure of a man. He was walking fast, glancing behind him.
‘That’s not a Turkish soldier,’ said Vasilis.
‘Do you think he’s National Guard?’
‘No. Doesn’t look like military at all …’
Mystified, they retreated inside, bolted the doors and moved the furniture back into position.
The following day, at about the same time, they kept a cautious watch and saw the figure again. This time, Markos was at home.
‘Look!’ whispered Irini. ‘I don’t think we’re alone here!’
Before she could remonstrate, Markos was out of the gate and hastening after the unknown figure, all the time looking around him.
Markos had raided a shoe shop to find crêpe-soled shoes, so his steps were noiseless when he was out on his forays into the deserted streets of Famagusta. For this reason Hüseyin had no idea that there was someone close behind. When he got to the front of his house, he automatically turned round, just as he always did, to double-check that nobody was watching him.
Markos had anticipated this and ducked into another gateway. He had already worked out where Hüseyin was going. He knew every member of The Sunrise staff by sight, even if they had never spoken, and he knew that Hüseyin was the son of his mother’s friend Emine. He also remembered that they lived in the same street.
Within minutes Markos was back at home.
‘The Özkan family,’ he told his astonished mother. ‘I think they might still be here.’
‘Emine?’ she exclaimed.
‘Well, I didn’t see her,’ answered Markos. ‘But it was definitely her son.’
‘What shall we do?’ asked Irini, palpably excited by the thought of her friend being so close.
‘We’re not going to do anything,’ answered Vasilis. ‘We can’t trust anybody. And we’re definitely not trusting them now.’
Before the invasion, Vasilis had got used to Emine calling at the house, but he had no desire to meet her husband. Moreover, he believed that the presence of another family close by might increase the discovery of his own.
‘But Vasilis,’ protested Irini, ‘we might be able to help each other.’
‘Turks? Help us?’
‘Father! Don’t shout! Please!’
Only Markos knew how deep was the silence of the streets. If anyone was even in the next road, the sound of a raised human voice might be audible.
‘They’re Cypriots, Father,’ interjected Maria. ‘They’re not Turks.’
Irini began to bustle about in the kitchen. It was time for a change of subject.
‘Would you like me to try and get another canister?’ Markos asked. He’d guessed correctly that their gas was beginning to run low.
For several years it had been the task of either himself or Christos to go and fetch the new cylinders. Vasilis’ old leg injury was increasingly slowing him down and he found them hard to lift. Markos’ mundane request momentarily diverted his parents’ attention from their disagreement.
‘Of course, leventi mou,’ said Irini.
Markos gave his mother a hug. In the warmth of his embrace, he communicated something more than affection. She knew that he would bring her and Emine together.
He had a reason for doing so. He surmised that it would be safer for his own family if the Turkish Cypriots were aware of their presence. At some point, if they were discovered by the Turks, it might make them more lenient in their treatment. It was an insurance policy at least.
Within a short time, Markos had worked out Hüseyin’s pattern.
There was more systematic looting going on in the city now, something that Hüseyin had noticed too. He was becoming almost as canny as Markos.
During certain hours of the day, lorries were arriving in the main retail streets and clearing the shops of any valuable goods. These were then driven towards the port to be stored. It was evident that at some point all these goods would be shipped to Turkey.
The scale of this shoplifting operation was enormous, but it meant that some of the food shops were being largely left alone. Neither the Özkans nor the Georgious wanted a fridge or fancy furniture. They merely needed food to survive. The families did not know for how long they might need it, but Irini’s dreams told her that it might be weeks rather than days.
For two days running, Markos followed Hüseyin’s journey to the general store. On the third day, Hüseyin found a note there waiting for him.
His heart was already beating fast when he arrived at the shop. Even though he had now been there and to other stores dozens of times, he was anxious about discovery on every occasion. His parents always said that though Hüseyin could run with the speed of a panther, it was Ali who had the courage of a lion. When he noticed the letter, propped up on the shelf closest to the door, his heart almost leapt from his chest. His hands were shaking so much he could scarcely unfold it.
Having read the contents, he gathered a few bags of rice and dried peas and made his way back home via a different route from the usual. He did not want to be seen by the Georgious.
‘Mother – look!’ He was scarcely inside the house before he was showing her the note. ‘The Georgious – your friend Irini …’ he said breathlessly.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘Let me see that piece of paper!’ said Halit, snatching it out of his wife’s hands.
‘We’re not alone here!’ said Hüseyin.
‘Not alone?’
It took Emine and Halit a moment to digest the news.
‘I want to go and see her!’ said Emine. ‘I want to go now!’
She was determined to get her way.
‘Go with her, Hüseyin.’
The pair of them silently left the house.
When a timid knock was heard on the door, Irini was expecting it.
The pair on the doorstep could hear sounds from behind the door, and then a crack appeared.
‘Irini! It’s me!’
Soon the opening was widened enough for them to go inside. The two women embraced, looked at each other and embraced again.
‘I just don’t believe it!’ cried Irini.
‘Neither do I,’ said Emine. ‘When Hüseyin came back with that note, I nearly fainted.’
‘It’s like a miracle,’ exclaimed Irini.
The tearful women continued to embrace for a while, and then Irini offered Emine some coffee and the pair of them sat down to share their reasons for staying. Hüseyin waited outside, keeping watch.
‘Maria, how is she?’
‘The baby came early … the same day as the Turks.’
Emine clasped her hand over her mouth.
‘It must have been the anxiety that set off the labour. And Christos being missing,’ continued Irini.
‘Is he …?’
‘Yes,’ said Irini. ‘Still missing. And Ali?’
‘No sign,’ responded Emine, trying to hold back tears. ‘That’s why we’ve stayed. I can’t go until he comes back to us.’
Panikos appeared. He spent most of his time looking after Maria and playing with little
Vasilis in the back bedroom. They only came out to the living area when it was time to eat. The irrepressible sounds of baby and child had less chance of carrying into the street this way.
Irini noticed immediately that he was ashen-faced. He did not seem to register that there was another woman in the room.
‘Panikos, what is it?’
‘The baby …’
‘What’s wrong?’
Before the answer came, Irini had pushed past him and into the bedroom.
Even in the semi-lit room, she could make out the anxious features of her daughter’s face. She was cradling the baby, who was unusually silent.
‘Kori mou, what’s happened?’
Maria looked up at her mother and her eyes were full of tears.
Irini put her hand on the baby’s tiny head.
‘Panagia mou! She’s burning up.’
‘And she hasn’t fed all day. Mamma, I’m really afraid …’
Irini had already left the room and a moment later returned with a bowl of cold water. She started to sponge the baby’s head.
‘We need to cool her down,’ she said. ‘Otherwise she might have a fit.’
‘She already did …’
‘She needs some penicillin,’ said Panikos.
‘And how are we going to get that?’
‘We’ll have to find a way. There’ll be some at the hospital.’
The baby was very still and wan. Even little Vasilis sat quietly, sensing his parents’ anxiety.
‘I’ll have to try and find some.’
Irini stroked her daughter’s hair and then followed Panikos out of the room. She could see the look of desperation on her son-in-law’s face.
Emine was standing outside with Hüseyin waiting to leave. Irini explained the situation.
‘I’ll go with you,’ said Hüseyin to Panikos. ‘It will be safer.’
Panikos did not hesitate. They had never met before, but he was grateful for the offer. He did not feel confident about doing it alone. He had been unfit and overweight for a long time, pampered for years first by his own mother and then more so by his mother-in-law.
It was late afternoon when the two of them set off. The hospital was on the other side of the city, so they would have to make their way cautiously. They were bound to see soldiers en route.