‘Where are you from?’ he asked, sipping his own drink.
‘Not far away,’ said Hüseyin elusively. ‘On the coast.’
The man would assume he meant somewhere close to Mersin, the port on the Turkish coast where the majority of the soldiers had embarked to reach Cyprus. He had begun to wind his clocks, some of them by hand, some with a key. It was a task that required the utmost patience and dexterity, and the shopkeeper seemed to be blessed with both.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I feel as if I have all the time in the world!’
Hüseyin knew it was not the first time the man had said this, but he smiled all the same.
‘Do you mend watches too?’ he asked, to make conversation.
‘Of course,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘I have one to do today. The owner wants to collect it later.’
‘I suppose there is always someone with a broken watch.’
‘But people like to treat themselves to a new one too,’ said the man. ‘You soldiers seem keen.’
Hüseyin wandered across to a cabinet full of ladies’ watches and peered inside.
‘Now those are as much a piece of jewellery as a watch,’ said the shopkeeper with a chuckle. The straps were all either gold or platinum, and many of them had jewels around the face. ‘Ladies who own those rarely need to look at them,’ he added. ‘They have a man there to tell them the time …’
‘They must be very expensive,’ Hüseyin commented.
‘They are. And I don’t think I’ve sold more than four in ten years. Since the troubles. Lost a lot of business then. So many of my Turkish Cypriot regulars have left Cyprus. And the Greek Cypriots can’t come here.’
Hüseyin knew he had to be bold, but so far the man seemed kind enough.
‘Look,’ he said, dropping his accent, ‘I’m not Turkish. I’m a Turkish Cypriot. I can’t afford to buy a watch.’
The watchmaker stopped what he was doing and listened. It was a story he had heard before.
‘My family has lost everything,’ said Hüseyin. ‘Except for this.’ He pulled the necklace out of his pocket.
The watchmaker’s eyes widened with amazement. He only knew about the cost of the tiny gems that were used in watches. Those in the young man’s hands were on a different scale. They were bigger than any of the precious stones he had seen in a long while.
‘Can I see?’
Hüseyin passed the diamonds across and the man held them up to the light.
‘I’ve never seen such beautiful sapphires,’ he said, handing them back.
‘They’re blue diamonds,’ said Hüseyin authoritatively.
‘Blue diamonds!’ The watchmaker took another admiring look at them. ‘And I suppose you need to sell them?’
Hüseyin nodded. ‘But I need to do it as soon as I can. I need the money.’
‘I’m sure you do. Everyone needs money these days.’
‘It’s to help somebody,’ he said.
The watchmaker was beginning to feel confused. There was a vulnerable desperation in the young man’s expression. Whoever it was he wanted to help, he clearly cared a great deal for them.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. ‘I think we can arrange for that necklace to be sold. And after that, you’ll have to tell me how you want to help these people …’
‘Thank you,’ said Hüseyin.
‘I’ll telephone one of my friends and see what he can do,’ he said. ‘I shut at lunchtime, so if I can arrange something, we’ll go together to see him. But if you’re not going to buy anything of mine,’ he added, ‘I’ve got work to do. Come back at twelve. On the dot.’
‘I won’t be late,’ promised Hüseyin.
He walked slowly around the city, killing time for the next few hours. He stopped twice for a coffee. It seemed strange to be using money again, handing over coins and waiting for change. He was then lured by the aroma of lamb and hungrily ate some șiș kebap from a stall, the first meat he had tasted in months.
When he returned, hundreds of hands on clocks and watches were about to reach their precise vertical position. As he walked in, they began simultaneously to strike the hour.
The watchmaker was ready for him.
‘I’ve found someone,’ he said. ‘You may not get the price you want, but it’s the best we’ll do today.’
The fact that Hüseyin planned to use the money to help other people had touched him. Hüseyin reminded him of his own boy, who was also in uniform but in another part of the island, and it was enough reason to give him a hand.
They walked across the city together and Hüseyin explained what he needed the money for.
‘I can’t help you with that,’ the watchmaker said. ‘But we can ask my friend about it. He’ll know how.’
He led Hüseyin down a side street and he found himself in a dingy kafenion. Across the room, almost invisible through a dense fog of smoke, a pallid, fleshy man was sitting alone. Most others were in groups, playing cards, talking noisily, even shouting. A television blared from the wall, next to a hatch through which coffee was served.
The watchmaker strode towards the solitary man and beckoned Hüseyin to follow. They both sat down at his table. The man was about sixty, with a thick greying moustache, and did not look the watchmaker in the eye when he spoke to him. He remained staring impassively ahead, scarcely responding to anything that was said. Hüseyin even wondered if he was blind, so apparently uninterested was he in anything going on around him. Only when the watchmaker told Hüseyin to show him the diamonds did his expression change.
‘Pass them to me, but keep them out of sight.’
Hüseyin handed them to him beneath the table. He could hear the slight jangle of the stones as the man felt them. He was still not convinced that he could see.
‘You can have twenty thousand for them,’ he said.
‘Twenty thousand?’ repeated Hüseyin in disbelief. It seemed an enormous sum.
‘That’s in Turkish lira,’ said the watchmaker quietly. ‘It’s about five hundred pounds.’
Hüseyin repeated the figure. He had no idea if it was enough.
‘That’s all I’m offering,’ said the man, gazing into space.
‘There’s something else he needs. Tell him, Hüseyin.’
‘There are two families, one Greek Cypriot, the other Turkish Cypriot. Nine people and a baby. They need safe passage out of Famagusta.’
‘But there is nobody inside Famagusta. Just Turkish soldiers,’ stated the man bluntly, in the tone of one who was not used to being contradicted.
Hüseyin said nothing. There was something so cold about this individual and he could see that he was not a man to argue with.
The watchmaker turned to Hüseyin. ‘But how …?’ he began.
Hüseyin shook his head. He did not want to explain. In this company it seemed safer to keep up his guard.
‘I want to get them out safely. Today,’ he said under his breath. ‘Perhaps to Nicosia.’
‘So who exactly are the ten?’ asked the watchmaker.
Suddenly the old man was being too curious and asking too many questions. For Hüseyin there was some urgency about their departure, and the longer he sat in this café, the further it seemed to recede.
The dealer leaned forward and spoke directly to Hüseyin for the first time.
‘There are rumours of landmines,’ he said, showing filthy teeth. ‘So the fare isn’t cheap. It will cost exactly the price of these stones.’
Hüseyin had hoped there might be some money left. They would need something to live on once they were out of Famagusta, but it seemed he had to take this one step at a time.
The large man held on to the diamonds under the table. They were clearly demanded as advance payment. He said something in the watchmaker’s ear that Hüseyin could not hear.
The watchmaker indicated to Hüseyin that it was time to leave. With a slight lift of his head, the dealer summoned a man who had been standing by the door acting as look out. He came over to the
table and escorted the pair of them from the kafenion.
The transaction had been mysterious. All Hüseyin really understood was that he was glad to get away from this difficult and aggressive man of whom everyone seemed to be afraid.
Once outside on the pavement, the watchmaker explained what was to happen.
‘Someone will take you to Famagusta now. They will wait ten minutes and then bring you back to Nicosia.’
Soon Hüseyin was heading back towards Famagusta, surveying more bomb damage on the way. The driver was a Turkish soldier, more than six feet tall, of a senior rank and silent throughout the journey.
They passed several checkpoints on the road, and each time, after heated discussion, they were allowed through. It felt unreal to be driven through the silent streets of Famagusta. Hüseyin asked to be dropped a little way from home. He trusted nobody and was afraid of letting this soldier know exactly where his party was hiding out. Just round the corner from Elpida Street, he climbed out of the jeep.
‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ barked the soldier.
He ran into the Georgious’ apartment. They were all waiting for him expectantly, and with a mixture of excitement and trepidation he told them what he had arranged.
‘Once we are in Nicosia, Kyrios and Kyria Georgiou will be taken across the Green Line with Maria and Panikos and the children. After that, everyone will be free …’
His words tailed away. Free. What did that mean now?
Hüseyin felt the eyes of all the adults on him. He had nothing more to tell them, but they clearly looked to him for leadership. He had come up with a plan for the next few hours, but he could not see beyond that.
When the tanks had arrived in Famagusta all those months earlier, they had assumed that everything would return to normal. They all knew now that assumptions could not be made.
‘Do you know anyone in Nicosia?’ asked Emine.
Irini shook her head.
Emine remembered that the Papacostas had an apartment in Nicosia but stopped herself from mentioning it. It would not have been appropriate given all that had happened.
‘I’m sure they’ll help us find somewhere to live,’ she said brightly.
Even Emine was not certain whom she meant by ‘they’.
One of the last newspapers that Markos had brought into The Sunrise had shown a picture of a vast tented refugee camp. For Irini and Emine such a place would be worse than hell: nowhere to cook, no privacy, an inferno in summer and cruelly damp in winter. Perhaps they would have no choice.
They were all ready to leave and filed out of the front door. Vasilis was the last. He locked up and gave the key to Irini, then they followed Hüseyin silently, like an orderly procession of schoolchildren.
When they turned the corner, they saw the army truck. It was hard for Vasilis to climb up into the back, but Hüseyin lent him his strength and gave him a leg-up. They sat on the wooden benches facing each other and bumped along the rutted streets that led them out of the city, the objects of curious stares when they passed any soldiers. When they reached the barrier out of Famagusta, there was a long discussion between the driver and the soldiers on duty. Everyone on the truck stayed silent, even the children. Some papers were handed over and then an envelope. None of the passengers watched too closely, wishing they were invisible.
The roar and grunt of the engine precluded conversation, so even Mehmet and Vasilakis were silent on the journey, simply taking in the landscape as they lurched along the road. The orange groves on the outskirts of the city were laden with fruit, but the rest of the landscape seemed parched and barren. It appeared that no seeds had been planted. They trundled past ruined houses, farm buildings and churches. It was strange not to see farmers working in the fields, and there was a noticeable absence of animals: no goats, no sheep, no donkeys.
The outskirts of Nicosia shocked them, just as they had shocked Aphroditi all those months before. It was not a place any of them were familiar with, but for a capital city, it looked derelict and sad. The lorry roared through the narrow streets of the northern suburbs towards the centre.
Although they all looked down-at-heel, people seemed to be going about their daily business here, old men sitting in cafés, women looking in shop windows and children ambling home from school in scruffy shoes.
Eventually they came to a halt. Up ahead they saw the barricade that divided the city. They had reached the Green Line.
For a moment they sat still in the truck, then there was the scrape of the bolts being drawn back and the grid was lowered. Like cattle, they were being unloaded.
Hüseyin jumped down first and Maria handed him little Irini. It was the first time he had held the baby and he had not realised how sweet she smelled. She reached up and pulled at his nose.
Panikos struggled down next and helped the others – his in-laws, Emine and then Halit. Finally Maria passed Vasilakis to his father and then Mehmet showed off by jumping down on his own. Hüseyin was still holding the baby. He did not want to let her go.
Maria was now standing next him and with some reluctance put out her hands to relieve him of his burden. She could see that the child was happy in Hüseyin’s arms.
The soldier was getting impatient. He was not going to stand there all day waiting for these people, and his fee depended on the completion of the job, namely to see these Greek Cypriots safely across the Green Line.
‘Go!’ he ordered them, pointing to the barrier.
The two families stood looking at each other wordlessly. They were fearful of the soldier’s impatience, but even greater was their fear of saying goodbye. This departure had been so hastily arranged that they had scarcely imagined the moment of separation.
There had to be a final moment, a fleeting flash of time, and their instincts told them how to spend it. Both Vasilis and Halit were holding their respective talismans. Vasilis had put the Georgiou mati in a napkin to keep it safe. When he held it out to Halit, as if gift-wrapped in its cloth, Halit automatically handed his nazar to Vasilis in return. It seemed a natural transaction. They were similar in size and both made of bright blue glass. The only difference was that Emine had used a red cord to hang theirs, and Irini a blue ribbon.
Emine gave Irini the briefest hug.
‘We’ll never forget how you saved our baby,’ Panikos said to Hüseyin.
Hüseyin shook his head, unable to speak.
The small boys were chasing each other around the circle of adults. Maria held little Irini.
The soldier repeated his instruction but more loudly this time.
‘Go. Now!’
The Turkish words meant nothing to the Georgiou family, but the gesture was unambiguous. Time had run out. They suddenly realised that this was it. This was the end of their life together. For both parties it felt as if they were being wrenched apart.
It was a year to the day since the coup that had set everything in motion, and there could be neither tears nor any further words.
A few passers-by noticed the elderly lady in black and two younger women, one of whom was wearing a Chanel shift. Their children were expensively dressed too. It seemed unlikely in these times that such smart people should be standing around in the street.
To onlookers they seemed one homogenous party, but only some of them needed to follow the soldier’s order. Suddenly they became two groups: Irini, Vasilis, Maria, Panikos and their children moved as one. Emine, Halit, Hüseyin and Mehmet stayed where they were.
The Georgiou family walked towards the barrier, catching sight of some blue-bereted United Nations soldiers on the other side. There was a discussion that they did not hear, but it seemed only a small problem that they had no identification with them. They were soon allowed through.
The Özkans watched their friends until they were out of sight. The Georgious did not turn their heads to look back.
In the years that followed …
AS THE GEORGIOUS crossed the Green Line, both they and the Özkans became part of the stat
istics.
More than two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots lost their homes in the north of Cyprus and forty thousand Turkish Cypriots were displaced from the south. All of them were refugees.
For neither family could Nicosia be regarded as home. Famagusta was the only place that would ever be worthy of that name. The capital city was merely a starting point for their lives in exile.
Eventually both families were allocated places to live that had been left vacant after the conflict, the Özkans in Kyrenia and the Georgious in Limassol. The towns were on the north and south coasts of Cyprus respectively, as far from each other as it was possible to be.
Even if they had known where the others had ended up, they would not have been allowed to cross the border to meet, and communication between the two sides was almost impossible.
To begin with, the Georgious’ new apartment was less cluttered than the previous one, simply because so many of the possessions they had accumulated over the years had been left behind. The icon, which had seen them through so much, still watched them. So did an evil eye on a red cord.
It was easy for Irini to replicate some aspects of their home in Famagusta. With Maria and Panikos, they bought a set of similarly mass-produced plastic chairs for the garden, and Irini made a lace tablecloth identical to the one that was still lying undisturbed on their table in Elpida Street. Any possessions that had still been in the house when they first walked in – some photograph albums and a few pieces of china – she stored away for safe keeping in case their Turkish Cypriot owners ever returned.
Gradually too she re-created something that resembled her beloved kipos back in Famagusta. With the sunshine and spring rains, things grew quickly, and soon jasmine trailed around the door and gerania rampaged from her pots just as they had done before. She cultivated peppers, tomatoes and herbs, and within two years they would be picking bunches of grapes from their own vine.
It was almost a relief to Vasilis that he no longer had his land. He found it hard to walk far these days and could not bend to dig and weed as he had done before. Many other people from Famagusta were resettled in Limassol as well, so it was not long before Vasilis found some of his old friends. They reconvened daily as before, but in a different kafenion, talking of past times and dreaming of future ones.