They moved silently, Hüseyin going ahead and scouting, beckoning Panikos to follow when he knew it was safe. When they reached the hospital, they encountered their first major obstacle. Peering through the iron railings, they could see that the doors were ajar, but the gates themselves were firmly padlocked.
‘Wait!’ said Hüseyin. ‘I’ll have a quick look round the perimeter. There might be another way in.’
Five minutes later, he was back.
‘This way!’
He led Panikos to a place where the railings had been prised apart, but he had not considered the man’s size. The space was not wide enough and Panikos knew there was no point in trying. Climbing over the top of the railings was even less of a possibility.
‘I can go alone,’ said Hüseyin. ‘But I don’t know what I am looking for.’
The minutes were ticking by.
Panikos felt inside his pocket and found a scrap of paper and a blunt pencil. He remembered the name of the penicillin from when little Vasilis had once been sick. He wrote it down and handed it to Hüseyin.
‘Can you read that?’ he asked. He was not referring to the legibility of his handwriting.
Hüseyin took the paper without answering and scanned it.
Panikos immediately realised that Hüseyin was perfectly able to read Greek and was embarrassed.
In a moment Hüseyin had slipped through the railings. Panikos watched him sprint across the gravelled area and disappear round the corner.
The wide corridors and wards were as eerily deserted as the rest of the city. There was a certain amount of destruction but it was hard to tell if this was wanton or caused by people leaving the hospital in a panic. Trolleys had been overturned and contents spilled from cupboards. Medical files were scattered across the floor.
Hüseyin had no idea where he was going. In his entire life he had never needed a doctor, so even the sour smell of antiseptic was unfamiliar to him. He ran down a corridor until he reached a set of signs. One of them read ‘Pharmacy’. He would try that first. Otherwise he would see if he could find the paediatric ward. Perhaps drugs for children would be stored there.
The pharmacy had already been broken into. There were shattered bottles everywhere and cartons emptied of their pills. Abandoned syringes lay on the surfaces. The room was cold. Although electricity had generally gone off in the city, a generator had obviously kicked in at the hospital.
Hüseyin retrieved the piece of paper and began trying to compare what Panikos had written against the labels on the drugs that remained in the cupboards. None of them matched.
He ran back into the corridor and followed signs to the children’s ward.
There was less chaos there. Rows of small beds were still neatly made up and Hüseyin noticed a box of toys in the corner. Someone had bothered to put them away before leaving. Doctors’ coats hung on a row of pegs and a stethoscope was coiled up on the desk like a snake.
Hüseyin tried the nearest cupboard. Bandages. Blood pressure monitors. More stethoscopes. He realised that he was not going to find what he was looking for here.
Recalling that the drugs in the pharmacy had been stored in a cold room, he began to look for a fridge. He found it soon enough, in a small back room; inside were rows of bottles, dozens of them with a name that matched the one that Panikos had written down. Hüseyin stashed four in his pockets. There was probably nowhere to keep anything cool in the Georgiou house so he left the rest. He could always return if more was needed.
Within moments, he was back at the entrance and round the corner. Panikos was waiting.
They got home as quickly as the corpulent Panikos’ pace would allow. He knew that every moment counted with sick babies. If theirs had another febrile fit, it could be fatal. His attempts to keep up with Hüseyin left him breathless, and by the time they were home, he was doubled up with the exertion.
It was Hüseyin who tapped discreetly at the door and entered first. He handed Irini the bottles.
With a teaspoon, Maria fed the baby tiny drops of the liquid. Little Irini’s breaths were rapid and shallow. Her grandmother continually dabbed her with a damp cloth.
‘We have to try and cool her down,’ she insisted.
That night, there was little change.
Maria was as silent as the baby. Panikos paced up and down. Irini wrung out her cloth again and again, praying constantly. Her hands were busy so she did not cross herself, but she looked up at the icon from time to time. At least while the baby was warm, they knew she was alive.
As ever, Vasilis sought comfort in zivania.
Late that night, Markos reappeared. He had bags of provisions with him.
‘What’s wrong, Mamma?’ he asked. He could see instantly that she was distraught.
‘The baby! She’s so ill. I think we might lose her …’
Markos sat with his father to have a drink.
With such an anxiety hanging over them, he decided to wait until morning before telling them his news. He had learned something that day that was going to have serious consequences for them all.
By morning, the baby’s temperature had begun to drop. Life was returning to her. Maria wept, this time for joy.
Irini took her little namesake from her daughter’s arms and walked about the room with her. She made little sounds now. This seemed a miracle after the previous day.
They continued to administer drops from the bottles. It was unscientific, but they knew it was curing her.
Maria was exhausted and lay on the bed to sleep. The first thing she saw when she woke up an hour later was her mother’s smile.
‘She’s going to be all right,’ said Irini. ‘I think she wants feeding now.’
The baby nestled against her mother’s breast and suckled. It was the first time in more than thirty-six hours. She was clearly out of danger.
By evening, everything was back to normal and even Maria found herself able to eat again. Markos felt it was a suitable time to give them some news. He was using information like a tincture, knowing that a small amount at the right moment would have a huge effect.
‘We’re not going to be rescued yet,’ he said. ‘Or at least it’s not going to be for a while.’
There was a look of dismay on his mother’s face.
‘But …’
‘How do you know?’ demanded Vasilis.
Twenty-four-hour-a-day incarceration with his wife and enforced absence from both the kafenion and his citrus grove were making him more irritable than ever. Markos had found some more zivania for him and there was a plentiful supply of tobacco, but Irini had told him to put away his komboloi, his worry beads. They were a little too noisy.
‘I overheard something …’
‘From who?’
‘Turkish soldiers … they were standing outside a shop when I was inside. What I heard means that we might have to stay here a while longer.’
‘But why? What do you mean?’
Markos sketched out a map of Cyprus on a scrap of paper and drew a line across it.
‘As far as I can tell, this is what they’ve done,’ he said.
For the first time, they all understood that they were inside a huge zone occupied by the Turks.
‘From the way they were talking, I think we’ve been completely outnumbered.’
‘But there’s still fighting?’ asked Panikos.
‘It seems so,’ said Markos.
‘Those poustotourtji!’ It was the strongest word Vasilis could use against the Turks. ‘And now we have some living next door!’ he spat. His prejudice against Turkish Cypriots had deepened.
‘Without Hüseyin,’ said Panikos, ‘we wouldn’t still have the baby with us.’
Vasilis put down his fork.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She would have died,’ he said emphatically. ‘He not only found the medicine but I probably wouldn’t even have reached the hospital safely in the first place.’
Vasilis carried on eating in silence.
r />
Irini smiled. Her little granddaughter had been saved by Emine’s son.
Amongst other provisions, Markos had brought back some semolina that day, so she made siropiasto, a sweet cake, and sent him to invite the Özkan family round.
Halit refused to come. Irini and Emine accepted that there might never be a day when their husbands would sit down at the same table. The men made the conflict personal and blamed each other for what had happened. By contrast, the women blamed themselves.
‘We’re all at fault somehow,’ said Emine. ‘Aren’t we?’
‘When something has been going on for so long,’ reflected Irini, ‘it’s impossible to say who started it.’
Now that they were round the table together, Markos asked Hüseyin if he had other sources of supplies in addition to the shop where he had left the note. The younger man was cautious. He did not want to give away the details so he answered vaguely, describing an area in the north-west of the city without mentioning street names.
Irini was passing round plates of cake.
‘I think I need to lose a little weight,’ said Panikos, his hand on his rotund belly. He pushed away his share.
Hüseyin and Panikos exchanged a smile.
‘Can I have it?’ asked Mehmet, running up to the table. Up until now he had been on the floor playing a game with Vasilakis. Mehmet had enjoyed this immensely. Making up the rules and being looked up to by the toddler was a new experience. The last few weeks had passed very slowly.
‘With pleasure,’ said Panikos, handing his slice of cake to the little boy.
Chapter Twenty-two
IN THE CAMP at Dhekelia, there was no cake. Sometimes there was not even enough bread, and conditions were worsening each day.
Like many there, Aphroditi was sick. Hundreds had been suffering from dysentery, and bacteria rampaged indiscriminately across the generations, from old people to the newborn. There were fresh graves on the perimeter of the camp.
Aphroditi was already slim, but after ten days of violent illness, her grubby dress hung off her. For a few days she was taken care of in a medical tent, lying on a low army bed in the airless space, from time to time doubled up with pain and nausea. Markos was constantly on her mind. She tried to remember his face. When it did not come easily, she questioned whether he was even still alive.
She had not taken off her jewellery since coming into the camp. There was no reason to remove it and nowhere safe to store it. She played constantly with her pendant. It always felt warm, and she held in her mind the last person apart from her who had touched it. She imagined that somewhere deep beneath the layers of her own fingerprints, Markos’ remained.
Aphroditi had not looked in a mirror since the last glance she had given herself in the apartment all those weeks ago. It was strange to care so little, a change in her as unexpected as the affection she had developed for the Frangos children.
When her condition gradually improved, she returned to the squalid tent she and Savvas now shared with Costas Frangos and his family.
They had expected to be away for a few days, but it was now five weeks since they had arrived in the camp. Savvas had heard that people were beginning to return to their homes in Nicosia. There was currently no possibility of anyone going back to Famagusta, and many were travelling to relatives or friends who were prepared to give them accommodation.
‘Let’s leave,’ said Savvas. ‘The sooner we get out of here, the better.’
‘Aren’t we going to take the Frangos family?’
‘We don’t have enough room for them in the car.’
‘But we could fit the children.’
Anna Frangos overheard the conversation.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t want to be separated.’
Aphroditi looked at her: four small children, two beneath each arm, like ducklings beneath her wings.
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ she said.
The five of them made a picture that was both beautiful and full of pathos. At this moment, Aphroditi would happily have swapped places with Kyria Frangos, who had neither home nor possessions and yet at this moment looked like the richest woman in the world. The Frangos family had lived in a small apartment on the outskirts of Famagusta and had left home taking nothing apart from their children. Neither a photo, nor a book, nor any piece of the past was in their hands to remind them of how life had been. They queued daily for food rations or small items such as spare socks for the children. There was little else available. Quite often if a dress or a pair of trousers needed washing, the children had to sit wrapped in a blanket while they dried.
They had no relatives in the south of the island with space to put them up but there was talk that the government was going to build special camps to give the refugees better accommodation.
‘If you can get to Nicosia,’ added Aphroditi, ‘come and stay with us.’
She bent down to give each of the three small girls and their brother a hug. It was the first time she had spent so many hours in the company of children, and they had been happy and rewarding times. Two of them were almost reading now. She had spent days and days working on their letters and making up stories. She was sad to be saying goodbye.
‘We’ll try and let you know where we end up,’ promised Costas as they said their final farewells.
With her handbag over her shoulder, Aphroditi walked away. As usual, her husband was waiting for her and growing impatient.
They drove in silence from the camp and towards Nicosia. The motion of the car brought on a return of the nausea that had so plagued Aphroditi in the past few weeks, and twice they had to stop for her to retch at the side of the road.
Their route was littered with debris and abandoned cars. From time to time they came across a crater in the road and had to drive on to rough ground to get round it. The landscape was dotted with bombed-out buildings. It was unrecognisable. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say. Their beautiful island had been ravaged.
Eventually they reached the outskirts of Nicosia. All around, there was evidence of the days of fierce fighting that had taken place. They passed the damaged Hilton and several apartment blocks that had been completely destroyed.
The apartment that had been owned by Aphroditi’s parents was close to the centre of the old town. Many of the older buildings had crumbled easily in the bombardment and it seemed that most of the windows in the city had been shattered.
The car struggled. It was not just the unevenness of the roads and the obstacles of rubble and abandoned sandbags that made the going slow. Savvas pulled in to the side of the street and got out.
‘Damn it! Damn it!’ he cursed, kicking the car. ‘We’ll have to walk.’
Two of the tyres were almost flat.
From where they had to leave the car, it was not far to the apartment. At least they had little to carry. Savvas had his briefcase with various papers and deeds that he had rescued from his study before they left, and Aphroditi merely had her handbag, containing keys to a home that now seemed a world away, some earrings, a purse and a pearl.
By some miracle, their apartment block still stood. The windows on the ground floor had been boarded up as a precaution but the owners had not returned. They both looked upwards. Their apartment was on the third floor, and from what they could see from the street, it looked relatively undamaged.
An elderly woman was pegging out laundry on the balcony above them. Her husband was watering some plants. A caged bird tweeted cheerfully. It was a Saturday morning.
The couple stopped their activities for a moment.
‘Good morning, Kyrie and Kyria Papacosta,’ called down the man. ‘Ti kanete? How are you?’
The greeting seemed so ordinary, so banal. It was the standard question of everyday life but one that was impossible to answer. The city all around them was in a state of dereliction, everyone was grieving lost relatives and homes, and yet flowers still needed tending and birds feeding.
‘I w
as so sorry to hear about Kyrios Markides,’ said his wife.
Aphroditi felt her mouth dry up. It was more than two years since they had been to stay in Nicosia. After the opening of The Sunrise, they had been too busy.
Kyria Loizou knew how to interpret her brave dismissive smile.
‘Has anyone been here to find me?’ Savvas asked.
Aphroditi held her breath, waiting for the answer.
‘Not as far as I know,’ the neighbour shouted down.
Aphroditi pushed open the main door and flicked the switch that illuminated the hallway. At least there was still electricity in the building. Markos had not come. They climbed the three flights and Savvas let them in to the apartment with his key. It was exactly as her parents had left it when they last visited.
Aphroditi wandered about opening the windows and shutters. There was a strong, musty smell that almost choked her. She was desperate to let in both light and air.
Savvas went out almost immediately.
‘I want to know what’s happened here,’ he said. ‘And I’ll see if I can find any shops open. It looked as if a few areas were returning to normal.’
Aphroditi was more than happy to be left alone.
In spite of the odour, the apartment was tidy and ordered. After the chaos in which they had been living during the past weeks, it seemed a haven. Everything looked so permanent and solid. It was unlike their own apartment in Famagusta, which was almost minimally furnished in 1970s style. Her parents had favoured heavy reproduction antiques. With most of the upholstery in shades of maroon or burgundy, it made the place gloomy.
For Aphroditi, this place was burdened by memory and emotion. It was the backdrop to her earliest years, when everything, including time, had seemed big and spacious. Standing in the room brought the past flooding back: visits from her grandparents, early birthdays, saints’ days, games with her brother. She even imagined that in the corner cupboard some wooden toys might still be stored.
Her parents’ belongings were dusty but undamaged. Most prominent in the room was a dark wood table. Protecting its surface was a white lace tablecloth, on top of which was a collection of photographs. There were wedding photos (Artemis and Trifonas Markides in black and white, Aphroditi and Savvas in colour), pictures of two godchildren and several of Aphroditi as a little girl with waist-length plaits. In another, Trifonas Markides was being presented with an award. The photo had been taken five years earlier. He was holding a plaque on which was etched an image of a ship. The actual plaque now hung on the wall: ‘Presented to Trifonas Markides for Achievement in the Development of Export by the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce’. In the photograph, he was shaking hands with a politician.