Daughter of the Winds (19 page)

Chapter seven
teen

Famagusta. The name tastes exotic on my tongue. It is a place my mother has mentioned in passing over the years, but never in detail. Her vagueness added to the mysterious and hazy aura ever present when she alluded to Cyprus. The word conjures up fairy-tales of dusky damsels imprisoned in crumbling sandstone towers. Just the mere mention of the Ghost Town in Famagusta evokes feelings of poignant sadness, lost souls endlessly searching dusty abandoned streets for the disappeared and the dead.

In reality Famagusta
was a scorching, harried and odorous city like any other in the Mediterranean. Brash shops and overconfident shopkeepers clanged in my ears as I scurried forward trying to look purposeful. The Ghost Town, that the locals knew as Varosha, sat silently and inert off to the side like the forgotten relative at a boisterous family wedding.

I sli
pped away from the heaving mass of bodies and into the dusty streets of Famagusta’s old city. The walls should have been impressive, and in their hey-day would undoubtedly have been so, but now they protected nothing and no one from the rest of the world. They leered over me unaware of their impotence. The yells of roadside vendors raised such a cacophony that their cries became an indistinct babble. Domes of mosques held the sky aloft and open-fronted shops boasted the best Turkish Delight in Cyprus. I slowed, without stopping, tempted by the powdered confectionary.

Ostensibly the Turkish inhabitants of Famagusta
were the same as their dark-skinned, thick-haired Greek counterparts in the south, but the Muslim presence was palpable and I felt like I really had crossed into another country which, according to the Turkish, I had. I hadn’t gone far when a wiry man with a pitted face was grabbing my elbow to escort me into his shop selling leather jackets and shoes.

“
No, thank you. Too hot,” I mimed, flapping my t-shirt and blowing my fringe off my face.

He persevered and this time held out a hot, sweet, apple
-scented brew in a glass which I declined.

“
Thank you. But no,” I answered firmly but politely and quickened my pace until he turned his attention to another pasty-legged passer-by.

I
had been walking for about thirty minutes when I found what I was looking for. The streets were largely deserted here. Buildings that had been damaged in years gone by, probably with the shells of the war in 1974, had been left to falter and decay. There were no flashy shops here and no residents creating homes for their growing families. This seemed to be the domain of cats and stray dogs alone.

“
Don’t do it.”

I wheeled round, guilt flowing from my pores.

“Shit, Stefanos! You gave me a heart attack! What are you doing here?”

“
I thought you might be up to something. I was right, wasn’t I?” He smirked at me triumphantly like a head boy who’d caught me smoking behind the bike sheds.

“
Have you been following me?” I blustered, trying to deflect the attention back on to him.

He inclined his head and shrugged in response.

“Stefanos, please don’t do this.”

“
What?”

“
You know what. Don’t get in my way, Stefanos, not today.”

“
You shouldn’t be doing this.” He stepped closer to me, peering into my eyes with such deep intensity. “You are going to get yourself in trouble and I can’t let that happen to you.” He picked up a strand of my hair and rolled it between his fingers.

“
I know what I’m doing. Trust me.” I don’t whether I was trying to convince myself or him but either way, neither of us bought the act. “This might be the only chance I get,” I continued.

“
You don’t even know where you’re going.”

“
I do. I’ve got this.” I reached into my bag triumphantly, pleased to be able to prove him wrong for once.

“
What is it?”

“
A map. See? Eddie drew me a map last night. I know exactly where I’m going.”

Stefanos
went to take the paper from my hand but I snatched it out of his reach. This was all I had; I couldn’t risk Stefanos destroying my only clue to what lay behind the sandbags and rusting barbed-wire fences.

He scratched at his lightly
stubbled cheek and sighed dramatically. “At least wait until dark. And take me with you.”

My impatience was getting the better of me.
And I stepped from one foot to another, mulling it over. I was desperate to get my own way but knew that Stefanos could make it difficult for me if I didn’t acquiesce.

“
Okay,” I dropped my shoulders in defeat. “I’ll wait until dusk but you ar
e
no
t
coming with me.”

“
As you wish. Come with me now.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Please.”

He held out his hand, whic
h I ignored, but I walked alongside him anyway both hands gripped on the shoulder strap of my bag. I didn’t trust Stefanos enough to assume that he wouldn’t try and take my map from me.

After five minutes of taciturn silence,
Stefanos took me to Ledra Street which was now packed full of shoppers, both locals and tourists alike.

“
Do you know this place?” he asked. His polite tourist-guide voice had returned.

I shook my head in reply, still sulking s
lightly and not feeling particularly loquacious.

“
Do you know how long I have been able to walk down this road?”

I shook my head once more.

“Since 2008.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise and looked down the busy street.
It could have been any pedestrianised city centre in England. There was a Starbucks and a McDonald’s for a start.

“
Come.”

I followed
Stefanos into the Starbucks and sat at a table in the window while he ordered two coffees. I tried to imagine how different this scene would have been just a few years ago. It was unfathomable. But that wasn’t the only thing that was troubling me.

“
What?” he asked when he looked at my furrowed forehead and questioning eyes.

“
It’s just...” I began, wondering which conundrum to begin with, “I wouldn’t expect you to want to drink coffee somewhere like this. It isn’t the kind of place that I would choose to drink coffee while on holiday in Cyprus. Are you trying to make a point?”

“
What point exactly?” Ignoring the handle, Stefanos picked up the mug with both hands and looked at me over the steaming rim.

“
I don’t know
.
Yo
u
tel
l
m
e
.”

“
What is it that you people want?” he challenged.

“
So I’m
‘you people’
now, am I?” I asked, not attempting to hide how offended I felt.

“
Do you only feel that you have your money’s worth if you see an old woman dressed in black leading a donkey by a rope?” He slammed his mug back on the table and the deep brown liquid sloshed over the side onto the wooden table.

I bit back a retort.
How dare he? But part of me wondered if he might have a point so I sat patiently while he continued in the same fashion.

“
You think that you’re better than the tourists that come here and want their nightclubs and their British beer, but people lik
e
yo
u
are just as bad.”

“
People like me?” I tried to ask evenly.

He nodded.

“Explain,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm against yet another unwarranted attack by Stefanos.

“
People like you think they are above the average tourist. You come for the ‘real’ country and to soak up the ‘culture’. But you do not want to see that we too eat burgers and pizza and listen to popular music. You do not want to know us as westernised civilised people, you want us to be quaint caricatures of ourselves.”

“
Whoa! Slow down. I hardly think that’s fair!” I raised my voice, unable to contain myself any longer. People at nearby tables turned to look in our direction. “When have I asked you to be anything other than what you are?”

“
You–”

“
No! That was a rhetorical question, Stefanos. It’s your turn to listen for a change. Every conversation we have ends in you criticising me for the way I behave or my lack of understanding. I may have been born here but I did
not
grow up here, I d
o
no
t
know about the history of the island. I d
o
no
t
know about the reality of living here on a day-to-day basis. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I ask all of these questions: I am trying to learn.
I
wan
t
to learn. Cypriot blood runs through my veins too, like it or not, and my biological parents are dead. They can’t answer my questions so I’m trying my sodding best here to piece together what I can about my heritage.”

I stopped for breath and waited for what I exp
ected would be his counter-attack.

“
Well?” I asked, goading him into a response.

Stef
anos kept his eyes firmly on mine. My hands were shaking and my heart was quivering in my throat.

“
The coffee here is shit. Let’s go.”

I had
to run to catch up with him as he took long strides out of the café. I almost didn’t bother but I knew he was far too valuable as a guide, and besides, I was shocked at how easily he had backed down from our fight.

Stefanos
was difficult to work out. On one hand he was arrogant, narrow-minded and argumentative but on the other he was fascinating, passionate and exciting. He wasn’t the type of person I should spend time with. His personality and mine were inflammatory when mixed together. It was definitely a safety goggles and gloves relationship.

We walked side
by side as Stefanos marched me around the city explaining as much about the history as he could. Our earlier fight might not have been forgotten, or at least not by me, but Stefanos had moved on from it with remarkable ease and was back in his persona as charming and affable tour guide. Ledra Street, he explained, had run through the UN buffer zone and had been barricaded until a few years back when it became another crossing point between the North and South of the island.

During the EOKA struggle it had been known as the
‘Murder Mile’ due to the fact that so many of the British military and their families had been targeted in this area. I didn’t want to dwell on that too much. My imagination has always been overactive and the last thing I wanted to do was to imagine dead bodies in the street where people now ate their Big Macs.

What surprised me most about this information was that this barricade was in place long before the Turkish invasion of 1974.
The barricade had stood since 1963 following clashes between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

“
1963? Why hadn’t I heard that before? It must have been a serious dispute.”

Stefanos
shrugged. “If you ask a Turkish Cypriot, they will say ‘Yes’ but the Greeks don’t remember it with such... ah... importance
.
It led to the Turkish Cypriots setting up areas where they could live safely. They called these places ‘enclaves’. North Nicosia was one of these.”

“
Why were there clashes? Come on, you are not normally so reticent to share information, so spill it.”

“
I’m not sure I know all of the details,” he lied.

“
Nah, I’m not buying it. Come on, get chatty.” I nudged him playfully in the ribs with my elbow.

“
I am not trying to be evasive.” He lowered his voice and I realised that his views could possibly get him into trouble with those around him. He placed his hand on my arm and ushered me to a table outside a nearby café. The coffee shop looked almost British with its green and white striped canopy and white plastic chairs set around round plastic tables with English menus propped up between tomato sauce and vinegar bottles.

Stefanos
ordered us two coffees and a jug of water without even consulting me on what I would like to drink. I bristled at the assumption. I calmed myself down by reasoning with myself that if he had asked me what I wanted I would have said exactly the same, but it was the arrogance of his actions that irritated me. If he noticed my discomfort he didn’t acknowledge it. He waited for the drinks to be placed in front of us before he continued talking.