The Island of Missing Trees(46)

Kostas froze.

‘Yesterday, armed EOKA-B men stopped the bus my father and my uncle were on and asked all the passengers to say their names … they separated males with Turkish or Muslim names. My uncle had a gun on him. They asked him to hand the gun over, he resisted. There was shouting back and forth. It happened so fast. My father tried to intervene. He threw himself forward and was shot. He is in the hospital now. The doctors say he might be paralysed from the waist down. And my uncle …’ She started to sob. ‘He was twenty-six years old. Just betrothed. I was joking with him the other day.’

Sucking in a quick breath, he faltered, struggling with words. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He tried to hug her, but not sure she would want that, he stopped himself, waiting, absorbing this new rift opening up between them. ‘I am very sorry, Defne.’

She looked away. ‘If my family find out … If they learn that I’m seeing a Greek boy, they’ll never forgive me. It is the worst thing in their eyes.’

He paled. This was what he had been fearing all this time, a prelude to the end. His chest felt so full he feared it might burst. It took the effort of every muscle in his body to stay composed. Strange though it was, the only thing he could think of in that moment was the pincushion his mother used when sewing. That was his heart now, pierced by dozens of needles. He asked, his voice no more than a hoarse whisper, ‘Are you saying we should end it? I can’t bear to see you in pain. I’ll do anything to stop that. Even if it means not seeing you any more. Tell me, please, will it help if I stay away?’

She raised her chin and looked him in the eye for the first time since he had arrived. ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

‘I don’t want to lose you either,’ Kostas said.

Absent-mindedly, she lifted her glass to her lips. It was empty.

Kostas rose to his feet. ‘I’ll go and fetch some water.’

He pulled open the curtains. The tavern was packed tonight, a hazy fog of tobacco smoke hanging in the air. A group of Americans were sitting by the door, their heads eagerly bent over the plates of meze a waiter had set before them.

Kostas saw Yusuf standing in a corner, clad in a blue linen shirt, Chico perched on the shelf behind him, cleaning his feathers.

As their eyes met, Yusuf gave him a smile – trusting, untroubled. Kostas tried to return the gesture, his usual friendly demeanour tinged with shyness now that he knew their secret. But he could only manage to offer a lame smile in return, his heart aching with everything Defne had told him a moment before.

‘You okay?’ Yusuf mouthed over the noise.

Kostas gestured to the empty jug in his hand. ‘Just getting some water.’

Yusuf beckoned over the nearest waiter – a tall, slim Greek man who had just become a father for the first time.

As Kostas waited for fresh water, he glanced about vacantly, his mind clouded by all that Defne had confided in him. The sounds of the tavern closed around him, like a hand around the hilt of a knife. He noticed a blonde, stout woman at one of the front tables take her mirror out of her handbag to reapply her lipstick. The colour would stay with him for years to come, a vivid red, a smudge of blood.

Even years later in London he would find himself revisiting that moment and, although everything would happen too fast, in his memory the events of that night would always play out excruciatingly slowly. A dazzling light such as he had not seen before, had not imagined possible. A terrible whistling filling his ears, followed instantly by a roaring crash, as if a thousand blunt stones were grinding against each other. And then … broken chairs, smashed plates, mutilated bodies and, raining on everyone and everything, the tiniest pieces of glass, which in his recollection would always be perfectly round, like droplets of water.

The floor lurched and swayed under his feet. Kostas fell backwards, pushed by a force greater than himself, the impact oddly deadened. Then silence. Pure silence, of a kind that sounded stronger than the explosion that had just shaken the entire place. He would have hit his head on a stone step but for the body lying underneath him – that of the waiter fetching him a jug of water.

It was a bomb. A homemade pipe bomb hurled from a passing motorbike into the garden, destroying the entire front wall. Five people would lose their lives at The Happy Fig that evening. Three Americans visiting the island for the first time, a Canadian soldier about to be discharged from peace-keeping duties and return home, and the young Greek waiter who had just become a father.



When Kostas stood up, he staggered, his left arm flailing. As he spun round, his eyes wide with terror, he saw the shredded curtain at the back of the room part and Defne bolt out, her face ashen. She ran towards him.

‘Kostas!’

He wanted to say something but could not think of a single word of comfort. He wanted to kiss her too; amidst the human carnage it seemed such a wrong thing to do and yet perhaps the only thing he could do. Wordlessly, he hugged her, the blood of others soaked into his clothes.

Was it the American tourists or British soldiers who had been the target of the attackers? Or was it the tavern itself and the two owners? There was always a chance that it could have been a random act of violence, of which there were more and more these days. They would never know.

There was an acrid smell everywhere, of smoke, charred brick and debris. The entrance had taken the biggest hit, the wooden door wrenched off its hinges, tiles and framed photographs ripped from the walls, chairs splintered into pieces, shards of porcelain strewn about. In a corner small flames shot up from beneath an overturned table. Glass crunching under their shoes, Kostas and Defne quickly moved in opposite directions, trying to help the injured.