The Island of Missing Trees(88)
The good cheer surrounding the birth of the Ledra Palace lasted for as long as it could. Such amazing parties they had back then! The grand ballroom echoed with the clacking of high heels, the popping of corks, the striking of a Ronson lighter before a lady’s cigarette, the sound of fingers snapping as the orchestra played ‘Smooth Sailing’ into the early hours, always ending the night with ‘Que Sera Sera’. Scandals broke out under its ornate ceiling, and gossip, like champagne, flowed unceasingly. It was a joyous place. Once they crossed its threshold, visitors felt they had slipped into some other dimension, where they could cast aside the day’s worries and forget the violence and ethnic conflict merely a few feet outside the hotel walls.
Although inside the Ledra Palace everyone did their best to shut out the real world, they couldn’t always prevent it from trespassing, like the time they found leaflets written in impeccable English scattered across the lobby as if the wind had swept them in: WE HAVE TAKEN UP THE STRUGGLE TO THROW OFF THE ENGLISH YOKE. DEATH OR VICTORY! Or like that time in November 1955 when EOKA attacked the hotel to assassinate the British governor, Sir John Harding, who was inside having a drink. They hurled in two grenades: the first exploded, causing substantial damage, and the second did not because the attacker had forgotten to pull the pin. An officer picked up the unexploded grenade, put it in his pocket and walked out. And the orchestra played on – Frank Sinatra’s ‘Learnin’ the Blues’. Even when the hotel’s entrance was blockaded with sandbags and barrels, and fears of another attack prowled the hallways, the music never stopped.
Over the years, all kinds of personalities frequented the hotel: politicians, diplomats, writers, socialites, call girls, gigolos and spies. Religious leaders too. It was here that Archbishop Makarios met the British governor. And it was here that intercommunal talks were opened in 1968, albeit to fail horribly. As violence escalated, international reporters covering ‘the Cyprus story’ flocked in with their typewriters and notepads. Then came the soldiers – the United Nations Peacekeeping Force.
Throughout all these manoeuvres, the hotel continued to operate – until the summer of 1974. The guests were lolling on chaises longues, sipping cocktails in the afternoon sun, when they were told to evacuate, and they did so in such fear and panic that they merely grabbed whatever they could and left. Their invoices were posted afterwards, with a note attached:
We hope that you have had a pleasant journey back home and that your stay at the Ledra Palace Hotel was an enjoyable one, up to the unfortunate moment when the Turkish invasion broke out on Saturday, 20th July 1974, for which I’m sure we will all have a memorable experience … Enclosed please find your hotel invoice to the amount of … for which an early settlement will be much appreciated.fn1
Afterwards, there were mortar shell craters in the walls and bullet holes staring like empty eye sockets. A disturbing silence reigned along the corridors. But underneath the surface, a plethora of sounds swirled: wood-boring beetles carved tunnels inside the balustrades, rust ate through the brass chandeliers and, at night, the floorboards creaked with age, a noise like varnish cracking. Then there was the pattering of cockroaches, the cooing of pigeons roosting in the ceiling and, particularly, the whispers of mice.
They dwelled in the crevices of the lobby, scurried along the expensive oak flooring, skidded up and down the parapets. When the urge hit, they climbed up the chandelier in the ballroom, balanced themselves with their tails, swung from side to side and leaped into the empty space beneath. They were good at jumping from heights.
They never went hungry as there was a lot to munch on in a once-palatial hotel – peeling wallpaper, mouldy carpets, damp plaster. The architect who had designed the building had included a spacious reading room at the back, which was piled with books, magazines and encylopaedias. It was in this library that the mouse passed most of his days, chewing his way through pages, leaving his teeth marks on scores of leather-bound tomes. He nibbled through the twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, savouring the burgundy buckram binding with its gilt lettering on the spine. He also devoured the classics: Socrates, Plato, Homer, Aristotle … The Histories by Herodotus, Antigone by Sophocles, Lysistrata by Aristophanes.
There the mouse would have stayed until the end of its life if it had not been for an unexpected flurry of activity in the premises. Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots had begun to meet on the ground floor of the Ledra Palace under the auspices of the UN contingent located in the hotel. For the first time, the two communities were making headway towards peace and reconciliation.
The members of the CMP sat in designated rooms, listening to each other, debating who to include in the statistics of violence. Neither side wanted the numbers to rise, for what would that say about them when the world was watching? But then the question remained: would Greek opponents who had been murdered by Greek ultranationalists be counted among the missing? Likewise, would Turkish opponents who had been murdered by Turkish ultranationalists also be included? Could communities that had still not come to terms with their own extremism ever be ready to acknowledge what they had done to their own dissidents?
I learned from the wood mouse that Defne, too, had participated in these meetings, which had been essential groundwork to build intercommunal trust before the excavations could begin in earnest.
After sharing all this with me, and gorging on my figs, the mouse went on his way. I did not see him again. But, before leaving, he mentioned that the last book he had munched his way through had been by someone named Ovid. He had enjoyed his words and, of the thousands of lines he had come across, there was one in particular that had stayed with him: