The Island of Missing Trees(34)
There is a carob tree in Nicosia with two bullets lodged inside its trunk. They have learned to live together, fused into a single being, metal and plant. Unbeknownst to Kostas, his mother visited this tree from time to time and tied votive offerings to its branches, applied balm to its injuries, kissed its wounded bark.
It was the year 1956. Kostas was not born yet, but I was alive and well. Those were terrible times. Every day at dusk, Nicosia was placed under curfew. The radio transmitted news of bloody assaults on soldiers and civilians alike. Many British expatriates, among them writers, poets and artists, were leaving the island that was their home, no longer feeling safe. Some, like Lawrence Durrell, had started carrying a pistol to defend themselves. In the month of November alone, Black November they called it, there had been 416 terror attacks – bombs, shootings, ambushes and point-blank executions. The victims were Britons, Turks, and Greeks who did not agree with the aims or the methods of EOKA.
We trees also suffered, though no one took notice. That was the year entire forests caught fire during hunts for the insurgent groups hiding in the mountains. Pines, cedars, conifers … they all burned down to stumps. Around the same time, the first barrier was erected between the Greek and Turkish communities in Nicosia – a barbed-wire fence with iron posts and gates that could be swiftly shut if and when violence erupted. A large prickly pear cactus, finding itself trapped by this unexpected obstacle, would keep growing nevertheless, extending its green arms through the wire mesh, twisting and bending as the steel cut into its flesh.
That day, the sun had just begun its descent and the curfew was about to start. The few locals out on the streets were rushing home, keen not to be caught by patrolling soldiers. Except for a man with sunken cheeks and green eyes the colour of a mountain river. He seemed to be in no hurry, smoking placidly as he made his way along the road, his gaze fixed on the ground. Behind the thin veil of tobacco his face was drawn, pale. This man was Kostas’s grandfather. His name, too, was Kostas.
A few minutes later a group of British soldiers turned the corner. They usually patrolled in groups of four but this time it was five of them.
One of the soldiers, spotting the figure ahead, checked his watch and then shouted in Greek, ‘Stamata!’
But the man neither stopped nor slowed down. If anything, he seemed to be walking faster now.
‘Halt!’ another soldier ordered in English. ‘Hey, you! Stop! I’m warning you.’
Still the suspect didn’t flinch, just kept walking.
‘Dur!’ The soldiers yelled in Turkish this time. ‘Dur dedim!’
By now the man had reached the end of the street, where an old carob tree loomed over a broken fence. He took a drag from his cigarette and held the smoke in. His mouth was stretched thin and wide, and in that second it looked as if he were smiling, mocking the soldiers trailing him.
‘Stamata!’ One last warning.
The soldiers opened fire.
Panagiota’s father fell by the carob tree, his head hitting the base of the trunk. A muffled sound escaped him, then the thinnest stream of blood. It all happened too fast. One second he was holding his breath and the next he was on the ground, riddled with bullets from multiple firearms, two of which whizzed past him and pierced the carob tree.
When the soldiers approached the fallen man to empty his pockets, they found no gun or any kind of weapon. They looked for a pulse, but there was none. The family was notified the next morning, his children informed that their father had openly defied orders, despite repeated warnings.
Only then was the truth revealed: Kostas Eliopoulos, aged fifty-one, was born deaf. He had not heard any of the words shouted in his direction, whether in Greek, Turkish or English. Panagiota, who was newly married back then, would never forget, never forgive. When she gave birth to her first son, she was set on christening him after her slain father, but her husband was adamant that their first child should take the forename of his own father instead. So when their second son came along, Panagiota would not take ‘no’ for an answer. Kostas Kazantzakis, then, was named after his grandfather, a deaf, innocent man, killed beneath a carob tree.
As much as I dislike carobs and their rivalry, I therefore have to include them in our tale. Just as all trees perennially communicate, compete and cooperate, both above and below the ground, so too do stories germinate, grow and come into bloom upon each other’s invisible roots.
Music Box
London, late 2010s
On the second morning of the storm, the entire city grew dark, as if night had finally won its eternal battle against day. A sharp sleet serrated the air, and just when it felt it would go on forever, it receded, giving way to a blizzard from the north.
Cooped up in the house, the three of them sat in the living room, watching the news. Heavy rain had caused rivers to break their banks and thousands of homes and businesses had been flooded across the country. There had been landslides in the Lake District. A block of flats on a busy street in London had its entire roof ripped off by the gale, crushing several cars, injuring people. Fallen trees blocked roads and train tracks. Weather reports warned that the worst was yet to come, asking people to stay indoors unless strictly necessary.
When they turned off the TV, Meryem sighed audibly, shaking her head. ‘Signs of the Apocalypse, that’s how I feel. I worry the end is near for humanity.’
‘It’s climate change,’ said Ada, without lifting her gaze from her phone. ‘Not a revengeful God. We are doing this to ourselves. We are going to see more floods and hurricanes if we don’t act now. No one is going to save us. Soon it’ll be too late for coral reefs, monarch butterflies.’