One by one, Irini took the tins out of the sack and read the labels. Some of them were looking rusty, but she knew the contents would still be good.
‘Did you see what happened to our herbs?’
Hüseyin shook his head politely.
‘They’ve grown!’ she said, struggling to sound positive. ‘Look at this basil! And the marjoram!’
She picked up two huge bunches of greenery that had been sitting in the sink and offered them to him to smell. The combined fragrance was intoxicatingly sweet and fresh.
He buried his face in them to hide his emotions. A few hours earlier, when they had left The Sunrise, he could not even look at Irini Georgiou. The tears had been coursing down her face. Her grief was a great burden to him. He knew he was responsible for it, and even his knowledge that it was self-defence would never assuage his guilt. Now here she was bustling bravely about in the kitchen telling him what she was going to cook from these meagre ingredients.
Making meals for them all was Irini Georgiou’s refuge, but when the cooking was completed and the meal had been served and eaten and every knife and fork put away, her sadness would still be waiting for her, like a coat hanging on the back of the door.
He handed her back the bouquet of herbs and hoped she had not noticed how his eyes were glistening.
‘With these, these and these,’ she said, pointing at three of the tins, ‘I can make a bean stew. And there is still some honey, so we will even have something for dessert this evening. Well done, my dear.’
Hüseyin turned away. The affectionate way in which she spoke to him, almost as if he were her own son, was unbearable.
‘Will you tell your mother that I’ll have something ready in an hour?’ Irini called after him.
Hüseyin took the stairs two at a time.
On the first floor, he almost fell into his mother’s arms.
‘Canım, are you all right?’
‘Out of breath, Mother,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
She hugged him. Behind her shoulder, he wiped a tear away on his sleeve.
‘I found some food,’ he said. ‘It’s downstairs with Kyria Georgiou. She’s cooking.’
‘I must go and help her.’
‘I’m sure she would like that,’ said Hüseyin, for the sake of something to say.
‘Oh,’ said his mother, almost as an afterthought. ‘This is their son Christos’ apartment. If you don’t want to share a room with Mehmet, then there’s always upstairs …’
‘You mean Markos’ apartment?’
Emine realised immediately what she had suggested.
‘I’ll sleep on the couch,’ Hüseyin said.
When they gathered round Irini and Vasilis’ table to eat, there was scarcely enough room and extra chairs had to be brought downstairs. Vasilakis sat on his father’s lap and the baby on her mother’s. Mehmet perched on a small stool.
Hüseyin volunteered to sit in the garden and keep watch. They could not drop their guard now.
Irini brought out a plate for him.
‘Can you still smell them?’ she asked.
He bent low over the dish. The aroma of the herbs rose up into his face.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Thank you, Kyria Georgiou.’
Within five minutes, his plate was clean.
Inside, Vasilis poured himself and Panikos a glass of zivania.
‘Stin yia mas,’ they said, clinking glasses.
Vasilis was happy to be home again. He had missed the strength of home-brewed firewater. The vintage whiskies and French cognacs in the Clair de Lune had been no substitute. They all ate hungrily.
They had got used to the grandeur of The Sunrise, to the porcelain, crystal and silver, but this felt more natural to them: the streaked, shuttered light, the lace cloth, the slightly chipped plates and the touch of elbows round a small table.
The icon was back on the special shelf where it belonged and the mati kept watch over them all. The photographs were where they had always been and Irini had even found time to dust them all, deliberately avoiding the gaze of both her sons. They looked out at the lens. Markos: deceased. Christos: missing.
By the end of the following morning, Hüseyin knew the truth of the food situation. He had risen early and walked every street in the neighbourhood, going in and out of every food shop. Most of them did not need to be entered forcibly. Doors were already ajar. He remembered the ones that had been a rich source before they went to The Sunrise, but any dry goods had meanwhile been devoured, and most tins taken, he assumed by soldiers.
When he returned, he found his mother with Irini at her kitchen table.
‘Where have you been, darling?’ said Emine. ‘We’ve been so worried!’
‘We thought something had happened to you,’ added Irini with concern.
‘I was looking for food,’ he answered. ‘I thought you would know where I had gone.’
‘But you were so long …’ said Emine.
‘I’m sorry you were worried,’ he said. ‘But …’ He hesitated. The reality was that he had found almost nothing all morning. In desperation, he had even broken into people’s homes to see whether anything edible remained.
Just as he had observed months earlier, there were houses that remained precisely as when their owners had taken flight. In one, plates were stained with the residue of a meal; in another, some dried-out flower petals were scattered in a neat circle around the base of a vase. A baby’s bib and an apron were slung carelessly across the back of a chair, discarded before the inhabitants had fled. All around were signs of normal life interrupted by the suddenness of flight. There was a stillness in these homes, as though their owners might walk in at any moment and resume their lives.
The houses that had been looted felt very different. They reminded him of the state of his own home. Chairs were not neatly tucked under tables and plates were not patiently waiting for soup or kleftiko. Furniture had been reduced to sticks of wood and china lay in pieces. Cupboard doors were wide open and valuables had been removed. Rumours that people had hidden money and jewellery inside mattresses or under floorboards meant that the Turkish soldiers had sometimes ripped homes apart. Though the vast majority of the houses belonged to Greek Cypriots, the destruction had been equally frenzied in Turkish Cypriot homes.
Over all of them hung an odour of staleness, damp and decay. If buildings were mortal, these were dying or dead.
Whatever the state of the place he walked into, Hüseyin had a single purpose: to see if there was anything edible. The pickings were not rich. In the entire morning, he had found four rusty tins that would scarcely feed them all for a single meal.
The two women watched him expectantly. He felt almost uncomfortable beneath their gaze. Ever since Markos’ death, he had been conscious that the adults had been looking to him for guidance.
‘This is all there is,’ he said, putting the tins on the table in front of them.
Irini and Emine stood silently. They could not conceal their disappointment.
‘There is next to nothing out there,’ said Hüseyin.
‘Go and find your father and Kyrios Georgiou,’ said Emine.
The two men were having a cigarette on the rooftop of the building. They had found some stale tobacco in a tin in Christos’ apartment.
When Hüseyin arrived, he had a moment to observe them before they noticed him. Their heads were inclined towards each other as they spoke. So much had changed.
They heard his footsteps and turned towards him.
‘Hüseyin!’ said Halit, smiling.
‘Will you come downstairs?’ he asked.
‘When we have finished our cigarettes,’ responded Halit. ‘Is there something your mother wants me to do?’
Hüseyin shrugged. There was a sweet breeze that day and he felt it brush his face as he turned to leave.
A few minutes later, the five of them gathered in the Georgious’ apartment.
‘Hüseyin has something to tell us.’
&
nbsp; ‘I think we have to leave.’
‘But why?’ asked Vasilis.
‘We don’t know what it’s like out there …’ added Halit.
‘There’s no food here, Baba. It’s time to go.’
His words were blunt. It was the truth.
They all looked at each other. Even now, growing hunger was telling them that Hüseyin must be right.
‘We’d better tell Maria and Panikos,’ said Vasilis.
‘But how can we just walk out?’ asked Irini. ‘It can’t be safe.’
Hüseyin, who had seen the behaviour of the soldiers, knew that it was not.
‘If we leave here,’ said Halit, ‘we have nothing. We have nothing at all.’
‘And Ali won’t know where to find us … nor Christos,’ said Emine.
‘We have our smallholding,’ said Vasilis. ‘And our trees.’
‘But nowhere to live,’ Irini added, almost inaudibly.
Panikos had appeared at the door. He had left Maria upstairs with the three children and had been listening.
‘If Hüseyin says we have to leave, we should listen to him,’ he said. ‘The children are hungry all the time. And if there is already no food out there …’
‘But we have to find safe passage,’ said Vasilis. ‘We can’t just walk out of here.’
‘And who is going to give us that?’ asked Panikos. With two small children and a wife, in a city occupied by Turkish soldiers, he was full of fear.
Once again Hüseyin found that all eyes were on him.
‘Give me until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But be ready to leave when I come back.’
They all looked at each other. There was little to prepare. The icon, the photos and the mati would be repacked. There were no other possessions that seemed of any importance.
Hüseyin raced up to Christos’ apartment. Stuffed down the side of the sofa where he had slept was the necklace. He emptied it out of the pouch and held it up to the light. Even he, with his lack of knowledge about such things, admired its beauty.
‘Hüseyin!’
When he looked round, he saw that his mother had followed him. Her eyes were blazing.
‘Hüseyin – where did you get that necklace?’
‘Markos … it was in his pocket when I killed him.’
‘Let me see it,’ she demanded.
Hüseyin had rarely seen his mother so angry. He handed her the necklace; she examined it for a moment and looked at the distinctive clasp.
‘There’s only one woman in Cyprus who owns anything like this,’ she said. She had recognised it immediately as Aphroditi’s.
Hüseyin was anxious that she was not going to give it back to him.
‘These sapphires are all we have now, Mother,’ he pleaded. ‘I need to sell them to get us safe passage.’
She looked at him thoughtfully, and then at the necklace that she nursed in her hands. Like Hüseyin, she could see that this provided their only chance. Somehow, one day, they would pay Aphroditi back.
‘Something you should know,’ she said, ‘is that these are not sapphires. They’re blue diamonds. It’s the necklace that Aphroditi’s father gave her for her wedding.’
‘So if I can sell them, they’ll definitely buy us our safety?’
‘I hope so,’ said Emine. ‘I think they’re very rare.’
She did not want to know the details of Hüseyin’s plan, but she trusted him to have one.
‘Will you cut my hair?’ Hüseyin asked. ‘I need it really short.’
Emine did not ask any questions.
They found a pair of scissors in Christos’ bathroom, and as proficiently as she could with such inadequate tools, she sliced off her son’s hair.
Irini was in the kipos when he passed by. With everything so overgrown, she felt safe to sit here in the warmth, with the sun filtering through the canopy of early summer leaves. She thought Hüseyin was going out on another excursion to find food and crossed herself several times, saying a little prayer for his safety. Her old habits had begun to return.
Chapter Thirty-two
HÜSEYIN HAD A single purpose. First he had to find a soldier’s uniform. As a civilian, he would have much less chance of making his way safely to his destination.
There was only one place he knew he would find one. He vividly remembered the location of the store where he had killed Markos. It was impossible to forget. It took him only ten minutes to get there and his heart was racing when he arrived. If he did not do what was needed quickly, if he even paused for thought, he knew he would fail.
As soon as he was inside the store, he pulled off his shirt and tied it tightly round his face, covering nose and mouth. Even from the doorway, he imagined he could detect the smell of decomposing flesh. He walked briskly towards the back and started pulling away the piles of sacks. The soldier’s body had not been discovered by vermin and had been left to quietly decay.
Hüseyin quickly unbuttoned the shirt and the trouser fly, trying his best not to look at the face. The boots slipped easily over the feet and then he dragged off the trousers. The shirt was harder to remove. It required rolling the corpse to one side and pulling one arm through at a time. He left the soldier’s rotting body in his underwear and covered him up again with sacking.
Taking the clothes towards the front of the shop, Hüseyin shook them vigorously to make sure that no grubs lurked inside. He tried not to gag as he swapped his own trousers for the dead man’s, remembering to remove the diamonds from his pocket. Then he put on the shirt and boots and stuffed his own behind the counter.
The clothes were slightly too large, but rolling the top of the trousers over helped them to stay up. The boots fitted as if they were his own. He caught sight of himself in the dirty shop window and knew that he would just about pass. He had no recollection of the soldier wearing a hat. Perhaps it was lost when he fell.
Hüseyin made for the section in the wire that he knew had been Markos’ way out of the city, not passing even a single soldier en route. When it was almost dark, he slipped through. It appeared that most of the military now remained at their sentry posts around the edge of Famagusta and did not have a view of his path out of the city.
He made his way across some scrubland, staying close to trees where he could, and walked until he reached a main road. Ten minutes later he heard the sound of a lorry behind him. It was an army vehicle with a group of soldiers in the back. It slowed to pick him up and the grating at the back dropped down for him to climb in.
They squeezed up to make space for him on one of the benches and carried on with their drinking song. When they got to the chorus, they passed around a bottle of firewater and took a large gulp each. Hüseyin mimed both the singing and the swigging. Nobody looked twice at him. Most of the others seemed not to have a hat either.
It was difficult to see very much in the dark, but he noticed dozens of abandoned cars by the side of the road, some of them now pushed into ditches. He wondered if they were vehicles that had run out of fuel on what must have been a terrifying flight from Famagusta all those months before.
They passed a couple of United Nations vehicles on their way and stopped once or twice more to pick up other soldiers who needed lifts, but eventually, in the early hours, they reached Nicosia, where they were dropped at a barracks in the suburbs. Most of the men went inside and a few others wandered off towards the centre of the city. Hüseyin ambled along with them. None of them seemed to know each other that well, so he melted in with their group and managed to conceal the Cypriot accent that might have given him away. From their conversation he gathered that they were off to find a brothel. He kept up with them for a while and then hung back pretending to look in shop windows until they were out of sight.
He was not familiar with the streets of Nicosia. He had been there once or twice as a child, before the Green Line had been run across the city, but he had little recollection of it. Even in the darkness he had been able to see that the island was in chaos. He was anxiou
s enough about his own parents and his brother, but finding safety for the Georgious would be even trickier.
Hüseyin wandered the streets, trying to avoid the groups of soldiers milling about. After a while, exhaustion swept over him and he crept into the dark recess of a doorway and slept. It was only when the shopkeeper pulled up the shutters at five minutes to nine the following morning that he realised he had spent the night outside a watchmaker’s. The grey-haired man was only slightly surprised to see him; there were so many soldiers in the city that it was no surprise to find one curled up on his doorstep.
Once the shutters were pulled up, Hüseyin saw that there were hundreds of watches lined up in neat rows. They all looked almost identical. An off-white face with fine golden hands seemed to be the standard. He had never owned a watch and wondered how people chose from this huge selection.
The shopkeeper had been doing good business. Many of the soldiers wanted to buy a watch, as he sold brands that they could not get at home in Turkey, and he imagined that Hüseyin might be such a customer.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘There are plenty more to choose from inside.’
As Hüseyin entered, a hundred clocks began to chime, each one sounding a different note. For a few moments it was impossible to say anything. It was a percussion orchestra, a morning chorus of repeated single notes. Once they had announced the hour, the sound of ticking took over, insistent, busy and relentless.
‘I don’t really hear it any longer,’ said the watchmaker, knowing what the young man was thinking. ‘They say it would drive me mad if I did.’
He was a good salesman and knew to let his customers browse and try on, browse and try on.
‘Anything you want to take a closer look at, just tell me,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’
Hüseyin nodded.
He felt that each moment brought him closer to the question he most wanted to ask.
The watchmaker stepped outside the shop for a second and beckoned to a boy loitering outside the café opposite. A few minutes later, the child appeared with a tray hanging down from a chain and two small cups. The watchmaker knew that coffee helped to focus a customer’s mind.