REVENGE

GEORGE TSAPPIS For many years I wrote in Greek, my mother tongue. I began to write in English in the early eighties. The tragedy inflicted on Yugoslavia bears such a strong resemblance to the tragedy inflicted on another small country in the region, Cyprus, my birthplace, it brought back the bitter memories of one event which had taken place in my village, Akhna, during the winter of 1956. Revenge THE YEAR OF MY birth is not in dispute. And neither is the fact that I was born a British subject. What is in dispute is the day and month in which I was born. My parents, and everyone else who is old enough to remember, insist that I was born on the fifteenth of June 1938. My birth certificate, however, states unequivocally that I was not born until the fifth of September of the same year. This discrepancy is the direct result of his Britannic Majesty King George VI’s disinterest in one particular set of numbers: that is the number of subjects he had living in Cyprus at the time. If I was a house, a piece of land, or even a tree, my parents would have had to register me. The law required it: to establish ownership, pay taxes and avoid disputes between the natives of course. But since I was human, that was deemed unimportant. In 1940, however, the Colonial Authorities had decided that numbers were important and that they must know how many we were, of what age each of us was, and how many we were likely to be in the foreseeable future. So they made the registration of births and deaths compulsory. (This may have had something to do with the regulation of production and consumption of foodstuffs which were introduced at the same time- similar regulations were introduced in all the colonies, which resulted in high prices, hunger and at least three million deaths in Bengal- but that might be conjecture on my part.). Of course they could have counted heads, but that seemed to offend their fidelity to accuracy. So they thrust about to find any written records which might be available. And they found one: the Church Register. (Were there similar registers for the Turkish, Armenian and Maronite communities? I do not know for sure. But I suppose so.) So they copied it. But there was one small problem with this register. It was not accurate. Being compiled by the local priest, the date entered on that register was not the date that the event had actually taken place but the date that the priest got involved in it. Consequently, according to this register, a death did not take place until the day the body was brought to the church for the pre-burial ceremony, and a birth until the day of the christening. So, for all those of us who were born before 1940, we are the beneficiaries of the dubious distinction of having two birthdays. Shame my parents did not anticipate this and christened me at the age of five, then I would legally be under the age of fourteen and I would not have to go! These absurd, and completely irrelevant thoughts, were involuntarily flashing in my befuddled head as I sat in my bed, listening to the crackle of a loudhailer saying in Greek: "Women and children stay in your homes. All males over the age of fourteen must go to the square immediately. Women and children stay!" I knew exactly what was happening. I read about it. I heard about it. I felt it. The British army had thrown a ring around the village. They had done it to innumerable other villages and towns. Now it was our turn. There would be arrests, beatings, ruined houses, molested women, death! I gave a shiver. The cold, moist air of the pre-dawn, February morning, had suddenly jumped in from somewhere and glued itself on my bare arms and chest. Through the corner of my eyes, I could see my trousers, shirt and homespun woollen jumper still jumbled up on the chair beside my bed, on which I had thrown them the previous night. On the floor beneath them were my shoes with my socks sticking out of them, urging me to get out of bed, get dressed, prepare myself for what was to come. Yet I sat there, frozen, contemplating over those absurd thoughts and my father’s parting words before he escaped to London with my two elder brothers- ‘Now you are the man in the house.’ "Women and children must stay in their homes. All males over the age of fourteen must!" "You are awake!" The sound of my mother’s voice made me turn and look round with a start. She was glaring at me from just inside the door of my bedroom. Her face was still and pale, her eyes round with terror, her lips trembling. Huddled behind her were my two sisters and my two younger brothers. They too were glaring at me with round eyes and pale faces. My mother’s habit of getting up before dawn every day, had served them well. They were all dressed and ready. Except me. I was still in my bed. Until the harsh loudhailer sounded, I had no reason to leave my bed so early in the morning. Time was not important. I was behind with the payment of the school fees and I was sent home. My mother had written to my father asking him for the money. I had no idea when it would come or whether it would come. My education was disrupted. My future was uncertain. "Women and children stay in your homes. All males over the age of fourteen!" Now the crackling loudhailer sounder closer and more menacing. My mother gave a sudden jolt, the terror on her face compounded by an expression of frantic urgency. Still I could not move. My two brothers were twelve and ten. My youngest sister was only eight. All three of them would get a fright, but they were safe. But Christina was sixteen. And my mother was still young. They were not safe. They needed protection. I was the only one who could provide that protection. I could not just abandon them. If only my parents foresaw this and christened me at! "I am not going," I cried. My mother pulled herself up, and fixed me with a severe stare. "What are you saying? If they catch you here they will!" She stopped abruptly, as if too frightened to put words to her thoughts. "Women and children stay in your homes. All males over the age!" The loudhailer broke the short silence, and revived my mother. "Come girls. Let your brother get dressed." There was no ambiguity in my mother’s voice. I had to go. After they left me I jumped out of my bed, got dressed and came out. The eastern horizon was crimson. The sun would not appear for some time yet. The cold February air was pinching my face and hands. My mother, brothers and sisters were huddled together in the middle of the yard, looking at me stupidly. There was no sound. Even the chicken coop was silent. From over the low wall enclosing our yard, I could see a man in a policeman’s uniform, a loudhailer obscuring his face, wading through the green wheat growing in the field stretching beyond the wall and advancing towards the house. Behind him waded a line of soldiers, with guns in their hands. Behind them was another line of men. These too were in military uniform, but instead of guns, they clutched heavy truncheons in their hands. They were the dreaded auxiliaries. Sticking out of the hollow beyond the green field were the hoods of military vehicles. Beyond them stretched the open countryside, flat, green, motionless, and deceptively peaceful. "Women and children stay!" "Don’t go into the house. Stay together in the yard. And leave all the doors open. They smash down close doors," I cried. I was employing the easy palliative of advice, to hide my fear, shame and humiliation for not standing by them. But there was nothing more I could do for them. I could not even tell them when I would be back, or even whether I would be back. In the year or so, since Eoka picked up arms to chase the British Colonialists out of Cyprus, the Greek Cypriots had ceased to be just recalcitrant subjects. We were now the enemy, and the old concepts of guilt, innocence, fairness, objectivity had merged so indistinguishably together they ceased to posses separate identities and, justice, always the domestic servant of the British was now a domestic servant with a gun in her hands, dispensing internment, judicial hangings, oppression of all kinds, violence and death. The future had become so elastic, arbitrary and violent, no one could say with any certainty what could happen to him from one moment to the next. "Don’t worry about us. Take care of yourself. And don’t try to show how big you are. Say nothing to them. Do as they tell you. Now go," she said and gave me a frantic shove. I rushed out of the gate, looking wildly about me. The line of soldiers and auxiliaries had already broken into groups of three or four, and were now advancing on individual households From over the low yard walls and thorn bush fences I could see women and children, running about in their yards, yelling with terror. But no men. It seemed I was the last in the neighbourhood to obey the order. "Run, run!" An angry bark suddenly broke behind me and made me stop and turn round. A soldier had broken away from one of those small groups and was advancing in my direction, his gun pointed at me, and with his finger on the trigger. I obeyed instantly, unthinkingly. Once I cleared the eucalyptus grove growing out of a hollow beside our house, and gained the metalled road going through the village, I saw ruffled young, middle aged and old men rushing out of their houses, fixing their belts or fumbling with buttons on their shirts. They were joining the others already on the road and making towards the centre of the village. Proprieties were kept. Greetings were exchanged. There were even bursts of laughter, but loud, exaggerated laughter, without humour or warmth, mingling with the thud of hurrying feet, and hanging in the moist, perfectly still air like hoarse barks of frightened dogs. Amongst them was my cousin Nicholas, a big, lumbering man in his fifties with a weak heart. He seemed to have had given up trying to keep up with the rest, for he was already falling far behind. Quickening my steps, I caught up with him. "What are you doing here?" he gasped, visibly surprised, in his habitually laboured manner. "Why aren’t you at school in Famagusta?" "I’ve had an attack of grippe and the headmaster sent me home to recover," I said, unwilling to tell him the truth and expose our financial problems. "But I feel much better now." He did not say anything more. The terror, cold and humiliation, seemed to have had stifled his capacity to speak. But I could not speak either. I was busy telling myself that my mother, brothers and sisters, were strong, resourceful and resilient, and that I should not feel guilty for abandoning them. But I could not deceive myself. They had no experience of such blind and irrational violence. They would not know how to cope with it. Suddenly out of side street in front of us emerged a string of running men. Some were fully dressed while others were partly dressed, with only a shirt and underpants on and no shoes. Mingling with them were soldiers and auxiliaries, prodding, kicking, shoving, and shouting at them to run. "Why do they have to do that!" Nicholas sighed angrily. I looked at him with alarm, intending to warn him to be quiet, but I had no time. One of those soldiers, must have had heard him for he suddenly stepped out of the melee and advanced menacingly on us. He looked so young, in his closely-cropped hair, blue eyes and pink complexion, and strange, unsolicited, thoughts began to flash through my mind. Without that gun and that uniform, he could be just another young man, perhaps even a fellow student. We could have talked about girls, debate Demosthenes’ rhetoric art, go for a walk on the beach, even go swimming together. Instead his blue eyes were full of suspicion and fear, the kind of suspicion and fear that breeds violence, and I knew that he was quite capable of hurting us, even killing us, at that moment. "Run! run," he growled at us, lifting the gun in readiness to deliver a blow. His voice sounded so thin and childlike, it belied its own harshness. "What did he say?" Nicholas inquired stupidly in Greek. "He’s telling us to run." "Who me, run? I can’t run." The gun suddenly jumped higher in the air then fell with a dull thud. "Holly Virgin!" Nicholas gasped, as he was collapsing to the road. I looked down on Nicholas’s convulsing body, then at the soldier furiously. He blinked defensively, then stepped back and levelled the gun at me. I saw the dark hole at the end of the barrel, the sharp, shinning blade attached to it. Is it going to be a bullet, or a stab in my belly? Will I feel the pain? I froze, staring blankly at that dark hole and the shining blade attached to it. Yet, inexplicably, I could also see, with perfect clarity, the soldiers and auxiliaries prodding, kicking, shoving, and their victims jumping about and trying to escape from the blows, as well as the men who were running furiously down the metalled road. Is this how everyone feels as they are about to die? Suddenly the soldier shifted, dropping the gun and the steel blade attached to it a little lower, and made me look up. The menacing fear I saw in his blue eyes was now masked with indecision, giving me the distinct impression that the mortal danger I was in had now passed. "Get up. Get up!" the soldier cried, and thrust his foot out as if to kick Nicholas. Again that thin, unlikely voice belied the harshness of his command. It gave me courage. Stepping purposefully forward, I placed myself between the menacing boot and my prostrate cousin. "He’s my cousin. His heart is weak. If he runs he will die," I heard myself say in English. The soldier blinked with surprise. Whether it was the sound of my bookish English or the discovery that I could speak his language which surprised him, I could not tell. He then looked round and said, "Sarge. This man says his cousin’s got a bad heart. What shall I do with him?" "Tell him to lift him up and carry him," came the impatient answer from amongst the milling crowd. Immediately, the soldier swung back to face me, his posture stiffening, that menacing fear returning to his eyes. "You heard what the sergeant said? Lift him up and carry him," he said stepping back and bringing the gun and the bayonet up again. Once on his feet Nicholas felt much better. Nevertheless, I insisted that he should use my shoulder for support, explaining that that might save us from more blows. As we came closer to the centre of the village, the soldiers and auxiliaries seemed to be everywhere. They were on the streets, in the yards, in the houses, chasing, shouting, kicking, shoving and beating every one who did not run. From the houses came women’s laments, children’s shrieks, the barks of dogs. Yet Nicholas and me went through that mayhem and joined the small queue waiting at the northern entrance to the square, completely unscathed. Through the gaps of those standing in front of us, I could see that the square was already crammed with people: some fully dressed, others in their underclothes and barefoot. The entrance at which we were waiting our turn, as well as the other three leading into the square, were barred with rolls of barbed wire, leaving a narrow opening. In front of each of those openings stood two soldiers with guns, and an auxiliary. On the inside of each of those narrow openings, stood a small tent, an officer with a baton in his hand and a group of auxiliaries. As the man standing at the head of each queue was signalled over by one of the soldiers, the other would step out and bar his way in with his gun. Then the auxiliary would search him, then push him to the other soldier who would drive him thought with either a kick or blow from the gun. Once inside, the man would then be picked by the arm by one or two of the other auxiliaries, and made to go and stand in front of the small tent for a second or two. Then the officer would signal with his baton and the man would either be released into the square, or driven to the line of men who were already facing the police station wall with their hands raised above their heads. Strolling behind that line were soldiers with thick canes in their hands, which they freely used against anyone who moved or whose hands began to slacken. And this process continued with cold efficiency, augmenting both the line of the men facing the wall and the large crowd of fully-dressed, half-dressed, or barefoot men who hanged listlessly about in the square, slapping their thighs or stumping their feet, trying to keep warm. "Are they going to shoot those men on the wall?" Nicholas breathed beside me with a alarm. I did not think so. I could not see a firing squad. Yet I was not sure. So I did not answer. "Are they all Eoka men?" Nicholas asked again, after a short silence. I thought the same thing. That there were Eoka fighters in our village, it was beyond dispute. But since I was not one of them I could not tell for sure who they were. But we lived in a small community. There were rumours, and signs. So I had a good idea who they were. But even a plain yes or no would indicate positive knowledge. And that could make me a target for both sides. So again I did not answer. When our turn came, Nicholas and me went to the opening together. That seemed to make the soldiers angry. "Esi (you)," one of the soldiers spat, and pointed at me He sounded as if that was the only word in Greek he knew. I hesitated. Going in tandem, had saved Nicholas and me from a lot of blows. "Esi, ela (you come)," the soldiers cried impatiently, waving his gun at me. I gave a quick wipe to my mouth with my hand, to hide my laughter. I had done him an injustice. He knew at least two words in Greek. Somehow my mistake struck me as hilarious. "Go. I’ll be all right," Nicholas breathed, pulling himself apart from me. By the narrow entrance, I was searched and kicked though like all the others that went before me. And like the rest, I too was taken hold of by one of the auxiliaries, and made to go and stand in front of that small tent. I drew myself straight in front of that tent, suppressing a sudden laugher. What I suspected so far was now a fact. On the side canvas of that tent were two small holes, peering at me. But I was not particularly threatened by them. Though I hated the British Colonialists for what they have done to us in the past, and what they were doing now, and I had taken part in many demonstrations against them, I had nothing to do with guns, explosions and the killing. And that was well known in my village. So I was sure that whoever was inside that tent would have known this also, and that I would be released into the square. Suddenly I saw the officer’s baton drop. I took it to mean that I was being released into the square. But as I made to go the auxiliary pounced on me and grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back. I was unjustly being driven to the wall. Wait, he made a mistake! I wanted to cry. But I could not. At best it would have been futile and stupid. At worse it would have exposed me to the eyes of my fellow villagers as weak. And there was the pain on my arm and shoulder. It was so fierce, I could not even breathe let alone articulate speech coherently. Anticipating the push, I moved unresistingly. This softened the pain somewhat. As I was being driven closer to the wall, and I could recognise each of the men on that line, all my previous assumptions were suddenly shattered. Up to that moment, I shared Nicholas’ opinion, that the purpose of that dragnet was to discover illegal guns, explosives and to net at least some of the Eoka fighters in the village. But not a single one of the dozen or so men lined in front of that wall was reputed to be an Eoka man. Then what was their purpose? "Terror? Revenge?" I asked myself bitterly. On approaching the wall, two of the soldiers came to us. By now I was so weakened by the experience, I could not have offered resistance even if I wanted to. Yet the soldiers pounced on me, twisted both of my arms behind my back and literally threw me against the wall. "Put your arms up," one of them growled, thrusting his open palms into my armpits and pushing my arms up. I stood motionless, staring at the wall, with malicious satisfaction. The fresh coat of whitewash had failed completely to obliterate the old slogan on that wall and I could still clearly make out the Greek words: Eoka. Freedom or Death. Dighenis. From behind me came the stamping of feet and the subdued murmurs of the incarcerated crowd, as well the crunching footsteps of the patrolling soldiers. Through the corner of my left eye I could see the police sergeant and a couple of constables, looking on sheepishly from beside the sandbagged entrance of the police station, Greeks, collaborators, part of the oppression, looking jumpy and ill-at-ease. They had good reason to be nervous. From the onset, policemen were the first to die. I thought it wrong. But now I wished I could kill them myself. Through the corner of my right eye, I could see Michalis, a lad of sixteen, a farmer’s son, and the rest of the other victims. Beyond them, the other side of the barbed wire and blocking the street, stood the menacing bulk of an armoured car, bristling with soldiers. The lowering of my arms, even the slackening of my posture would have earned me a swift and painful blow on my back, shoulders, buttocks, legs, arms. But it was not fear of that blow which kept my body straight and my arms stiff and motionless above my head. It was hatred, pride and the cold determination, to show my oppressors that I was not going to be defeated by them, that they were not going to win over me. This was such an effective antidote, it sustained me for an hour or so. But then the pain came, on my arms, shoulders, chest and back, a slow, spasmodic but remorseless pain against which my antidote was proving progressively useless. Then came that moment when not only my body but also my brain had slipped into their own natural rhythms and functions, demanding respite and relief from that relentless pain and I could think of nothing else except of how to lower my hands. This was the last stage before my brain clouded, my body had become completely independent of my will and my arms dropped. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon, when the barbed wire was pulled apart and we were allowed out of our prison. How many times I let my arms drop and how many blows I received, I was not sure. Not that I cared. My first concern was to get home as quickly as I could, to make sure that my mother, my brothers and sisters were all right. As I limped past the eucalyptus grove, I saw my mother, brothers and sisters waiting for me by the yard gate. Physically, I could see no wounds on them. But I knew that there were other, hidden wounds, which would take a long time to heal, if ever.