The Island of Missing Trees(89)

Some day this pain will be useful to you.



I hoped he was right and that one day, not too far in the future, all this pain would be useful to future generations born on the island, to the grandchildren of those who had lived through the troubles.

If you go to Cyprus today, you can still find tombstones of Greek widows and Turkish widows, engraved in different alphabets but with a similar plea:

If you find my husband, please bury him next to me.





Part Six




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HOW TO UNBURY A TREE





Interview


London, late 2010s


On New Year’s Eve they had planned a quiet dinner, nothing too complicated, but no dinner could ever be simple when cooked by Meryem. Determined to end a difficult year with a bit of a sweet taste in their mouths, a warm feeling in their bellies, she used every ingredient she could find in the cupboards to prepare a feast for them. As the clocks chimed midnight and fireworks went off outside the windows, Ada let the grown-ups hug her, and she felt their love enfold her, soft but strong like a cloth woven from the fibres of sturdy plants.

The next day, Meryem started packing, though after all the shopping she had done in east London she was struggling to zip up her Marilyn Monroe suitcases. She spent the entire afternoon with Ada in the kitchen, keen as she was to teach her niece basic cooking skills and dole out some ‘womanly’ advice.

‘Look, Adacim, you need a female role model in your life. Now I might not be much of a model in your eyes, but I’ve been a woman for years and years, all right. You can give me a ring any time. I will also call you often, if that’s okay with you.’

‘Sure.’

‘We can talk about anything. I might not know the answers myself. As they say, if the bald man knew a remedy for hair loss he would rub it on his own head. But I will always be there for you from now on, I will never be away like that again, I promise.’

Ada gave her a long, thoughtful look. She asked, ‘What about the interview? Do you want to do it before you go?’

‘School homework? Yes, I forgot. Let’s do it now!’ Meryem unbraided her hair and swiftly braided it back. ‘But first let’s make tea, shall we? Otherwise I can’t think straight.’

When the samovar began to boil, filling the kitchen with wispy steam, Meryem took out two small glasses. She half filled them with tea, then topped one up with hot water, the other with milk, frowning slightly at this last addition.

‘Thank you,’ said Ada, though she had never been too fond of tea. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

Ada pressed the recorder on her phone and opened the notebook on her lap. ‘Okay, tell me what life was like when you were a little girl. Did you have a garden? What kind of a house did you live in?’

‘Yes, we had a garden,’ Meryem said, her face brightening. ‘We had mimosas and magnolias. I grew tomatoes in pots … We had a mulberry tree in the courtyard. My father was a self-made man. A famous chef, though he rarely cooked at home. That was a woman’s job. Baba was not well educated himself, but he always supported his daughters’ education. He sent me and Defne to the best schools. We had an English education, we thought we were part of Europe. It turns out the Europeans disagreed.’

‘Was it a happy childhood?’

‘My childhood was divided into two parts. The first half was happy.’

Ada tilted her head. ‘And the other half?’

‘Things changed, you could feel it in the air. They used to say, Greeks and Turks are flesh and fingernail. You can’t separate your fingernail from your flesh. Seems they were wrong. It could be done. War is a terrible thing. All kinds of wars. But civil wars are the worst perhaps, when old neighbours become new enemies.’

Ada listened intently as Meryem told her about the island – how they would sleep outdoors on the hottest nights of the summer, spreading their mattresses out on the veranda, she and Defne under a diaphanous white net to protect themselves from mosquitoes, counting the stars above; how pleased they were when their Greek neighbour would offer them candied quince dessert, though their all-time favourite was the New Year’s cake, vasilopita, with a coin hidden inside; and how their mother, convinced that a neighbour’s plate should never be returned empty, would refill it with mastic pudding in rose syrup; how, following the partition, there were sandbags and guard posts in the streets where they once played and hung around; and how the children on the streets would chat with Irish, Canadian, Swedish, Danish soldiers, accepting the UN troops as an inevitable part of daily life …

‘Imagine, Adacim, some pale-skinned blond soldier who has never seen the sun comes over from miles away and plants himself there, just to make sure you don’t kill your old next-door neighbour, or they don’t kill you. How sad is that? Why can’t we all live in peace without soldiers and machine guns?’

After she stopped talking, her eyes, distant for a few minutes, focused back on her niece. ‘Tell me, do they teach you about Cyprus at school?’

‘Not really.’

‘I thought not. All those tourists who travel to the Mediterranean on holiday, they want the sun and the sea and the fried calamari. But no history, please, it’s depressing.’ Meryem took a sip from her tea. ‘In the past I used to get upset at that. But nowadays I’m thinking, maybe they’re right, Adacim. If you weep for all the sorrows in this world, in the end you will have no eyes.’