The Island of Missing Trees(81)

Tourists travelled to Varosha from all over the world to celebrate their honeymoons, graduations, wedding anniversaries … They saved money so they could spend a few days in this famous resort. They sipped rum cocktails and dined at exquisite buffets; they surfed, swam and basked on sandy beaches, bent on getting a perfect tan, the horizon stretching out blue and clear before their eyes. If this was paradise, they knew from news reports there was trouble brewing at its margins, reports of intercommunal tension between Turks and Greeks. But inside the confines of the resort, the spectre of civil war was invisible and life felt fresh, eternally young.

Chico said there were nine of them sharing the same space – four couples plus him. He was the only bird without a partner. He felt hurt, excluded. Parrots are strictly monogamous. Loyal and loving, they mate for life. When they have chicks, they raise their little ones together, males and females sharing the work. They are homemakers like that. None of which worked in Chico’s favour. When the others formed pairs, he was left alone. He had no one to love and no one to love him back. And to make things worse, the actress, who now had a new boyfriend and an exciting new film in the works, was busier than ever. She spent solid days and weeks away from home, entrusting her parrots to the housekeeper with long, detailed lists of instructions pinned to the fridge – what to feed the birds, when to give them their drops, how to check their feathers for signs of ectoparasites. Lists that would languish unread.

The housekeeper did not like parrots, finding them noisy, boisterous and spoiled. She saw them as a burden and made no secret of it. The other birds, busy with their own families, didn’t mind this as much. But Chico did, lonely and vulnerable as he was. One morning, he flew out through the open window, leaving behind his kin and the actress and all that gourmet food. Not knowing where to go, he flew without rest, making it all the way to Nicosia, where Yusuf, by a stroke of destiny, found him perched on a wall, squawking in distress, and took him in.

Chico worried that now Yusuf, too, was gone. Humans were all the same, he said. Untrustworthy and selfish to the core.

Protesting with all my might, I tried to explain to him that neither Yusuf nor Yiorgos would just disappear like that, something must have happened to keep them away, but I was increasingly gripped by a pang of anguish myself.

None of us knew then that, in only a few weeks, Varosha’s fate would be sealed. In the summer of 1974, after the Turkish army moved in, the entire population of the town, more than 39,000 people, would have to run away, leaving all their belongings behind. Among them must have been the housekeeper. I imagine her packing a bag, rushing out of the door and evacuating with others. Had she remembered to take the parrots with her? Or at least to set them free? To be fair, she probably expected to be back in a few days. That’s what everyone thought.

None of them could return. Women in go-go boots, miniskirts, baby-doll dresses, flared jeans; men sporting tie-dye shirts, earth shoes, bell-bottoms, tweed jackets. Film stars, producers, singers, footballers or the paparazzi trailing after them. DJs, bartenders, croupiers, spotlight dancers. And the many, many local families who had been here for generations and had nowhere else to call home. The fishermen who brought their fresh catch to fancy restaurants where they would be sold for ten times the price, the bakers who worked at night to prepare cheese-filled breads and the street vendors who strolled the promenade peddling balloons, candyfloss, ice cream for children and tourists. They all left.

The beaches of Varosha were cordoned off with barbed wire, cement barriers and signs ordering visitors to stay away. Slowly, the hotels disintegrated into webs of steel cables and concrete pylons; the pubs turned dank and deserted, the discotheques crumbled; the houses with flowerpots on their windowsills dissolved into oblivion. This worldwide resort, once opulent and fashionable, became a ghost town.

I have always wondered what happened to those Amazon parrots that a Hollywood actress had brought to Cyprus. I hope they managed to get out of the villa through an open window. Parrots live long lives, and the chances are they might have survived on fruits and insects. Perhaps if you were to pass by the barricades of Varosha today, you might catch a flash of bright green among abandoned buildings and decay, and hear a pair of wings flapping like a sail torn in a storm.



There were many words Chico was able to say. Remarkably talented, he could imitate electronic sounds, mechanical sounds, animal sounds, human sounds … He could identify dozens of objects, pulverize cockleshells or even solve puzzles, and if you gave him a pebble, he would use it to crush nuts.

In the empty tavern, as the two of us waited for Yusuf and Yiorgos to return, Chico would display his talents for me.

‘Come, birdie, birdie!’ he would cry out from the chair behind the till where Yusuf used to sit every evening to greet customers, now covered in an inch of dust.

‘S’agapo,’ Chico would croon in Greek, I love you, something he had heard Yiorgos whisper to Yusuf. And then, when the truth sank in and he realized that no one was coming, he would pluck another feather from his bruised flesh and repeat to himself a word he had learned in Turkish: ‘Aglama’ – Don’t cry.





Ammonite


Cyprus, early 2000s


After they visited the military cemetery, and Kostas saw for the first time where his son was buried, they walked in silence, holding hands. They trudged through fields of crown daisies with their pale orange flowers caressed by the wind as thistles and brambles scratched their bare ankles.