They come like flashes. Images, scenes, colours, and scents. They haven’t faded. These are the same memories, replaying like a movie trailer every time I recall Varosha.
After all, I was only five years old in 1974. “It’s a good thing you remember even that much,” my father says whenever we bring up the topic. A true Famagustan, with generations going back, the city is etched into his DNA.
He was a doctor at the hospital back then, one of the last to leave the city amidst bombings, and even the mention of Varosha scratches old open wounds.
“I remember doing this and that… I remember when so-and-so came and this and that happened…” His gaze drifts as he recounts stories from a lost era, pulled from the dusty shelves of his memories.
Flashes, images, scenes, scents.
I remember. A garage beside the house that, instead of housing the brown Ford Escort, was the racetrack for my little dark green tricycle, my childhood paradise. Racing up and down, full of joy, as if there was no tomorrow.
In the back, a turn to the right led to the garden with the lemon trees. Or were they orange trees? And the stray cats basking in the sun. The smell of blossoms was overwhelming. “George, come lick the chocolate off the spoon!” I can recall my mother’s voice like an echo, just having made a sweet treat.
Her figure faintly visible through the tree leaves. Stirring and singing, probably a song from an Aliki movie, completely unaware that this carefree time—hers and mine—would soon give way to death and destruction.
“I’m coming, Mama! Put a chair so I can reach the counter!”… I leave the keyboard for a moment. My eyes have blurred. Sorry, but when I was asked to write a few lines on the occasion of the fifty years since the invasion, I thought it would be easier for me. The avenue of memories is, unfortunately, strewn with pain.
I returned once. When the checkpoints opened. The images and colours faded along with the memories, like an old photo album. Two Turkish Cypriot women lived in my house. “We were expecting you. Come in for a coffee.”
Everything seemed smaller to my adult eyes, as if time had shrunk it. I hesitated to go to the yard. Could my tricycle still be there, or was it lost along with everything else? Are the trees still there? They were. Taller, untended, with rotten fruit scattered among the weeds of the neglected yard.
To the left, the living room, at the back to the right, the bedrooms… I didn’t need a guide. In this very bed, I once hid under the covers to shield my face. My siblings teased me because I had chickenpox. The echo of their laughter bounces from one cracked wall to another, and I gaze at the emptiness.
The windows are closed, a sunbeam pierces through the rotten wooden shutters, but it’s not enough to wake me from my stupor.
Five minutes have passed since I last took a breath.
On the hallway wall, opposite the front door, still hangs my father’s graduation photo. The black-and-white relic was the only thing that survived. My tricycle was nowhere to be found. It vanished along with the city I will never live in again.
It vanished along with the hope of returning. I stopped hoping long ago. It’s less painful that way. I’m tired.
And then there’s the sea. My buckets must be buried somewhere there. Oh, that sea…
