The Fruit of a Bitter Lemon
Paul Philippou
1974
The date is the 15th of July 1974. I, then a boy not yet eleven years old, run from the kitchen of my family home up floral carpeted stairs towards the bathroom wherein my father is bathing. I am possessed with a desperate need to recount that which I have just heard on the BBC World Service - to tell my father the latest news from Cyprus. I, then, not now, am described as small for my age - well below the median height and weight for ten years. Now, as then, I possess an olive complexion and dark-brown hair that displays my half-Greek origin, whilst masking the other half of my ethnicity. That day, there is only one country on my mind; and, then, as now, it lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
My father is in the only bathroom in a house which began life as a standard 1930s three-bedroom galley-kitchen semi-detached construct in the pre-war North London suburban growth burst. Thirty years later, the house, transformed into a five-bedroom double-extended property, with through lounge and enormous kitchen is the physical realisation of the Greek Cypriot motto: 'Eat like you might die tomorrow, but build your house as if you might live forever'. It is occupied only by my mother; I have grown to adulthood and left home; my father is dead; his coffin traditionally anointed with olive oil and water is covered with both London's clay soil and a handful of earth brought back from our land in the north of Cyprus.
The narrowness of the stairwell increases the speed of my ascent. I use my right hand to steady myself by dragging it along the wallpaper-covered sidewall; causing those dirty sweat lines that most homes containing young children display, whilst my left hand makes locomotive-like movements along the mahogany-stained handrail. I, then, did not know that one day I will walk down the stairs of my own house and be dismayed at the growing markings on the paintwork caused by my children trailing unwashed hands along the wall.
I am excited. In my possession is the latest development in the situation in Nicosia; breaking news on the fighting at the Presidential Palace. Within a minute of leaving the kitchen, I am standing outside the bathroom door. It is not the door with which the house began its life. The original solid-wood doors of the house, replaced under the code of the 1970s failed attempt at establishing a modern design paradigm, I last saw standing erect in a skip moving in the direction of the municipal dump. The new door to the bathroom is varnished with a dark-pine finish and dressed with gold-coloured ornate alloy handles. I knock on the door and tell my father that the BBC is reporting fighting at the Presidential Palace and it is believed that Archbishop Makarios is dead. My father listens to my sound burst of news, pauses to consider the information and replies.
Only one word propagates through the door. This is not because the door has critically dampened the sound vibrations that are other words he has uttered - that might have been the case with the original door, but not with this new plywood monstrosity. No, only one word travels across the wooden boundary that flimsily divides the ether inside the bathroom from that outside (from the space occupied by him to that occupied by me) because, only one word is spoken.
The word I hear (the word he speaks) is not the praise I am hoping for, neither is it a request for more detail. It hurtles through my soul like a Ninja's sword in a Tarantino movie not yet made; the sharpest of blades cutting one more of the uncountable but finite emotional threads that all births (unknowingly, unwittingly and uncompromisingly) bring into the world. It is a simple 'ok'. A trivial and significant acknowledgement that the information I have spoken has been heard, digested and then discarded. A whole sentence will satisfy my childish desire for paternal praise; no words will leave me with the hope of an affirmation to come; the audio transmission of this common two-letter end of a Scrabble game word simply signifies my continued failure to be noticed.
I, then, not now, do not really understand that which was occurring in Cyprus. The complexity of its post-colonial politic was beyond my comprehension. I am not yet a man. I then, not now, know nothing of real suffering: the pain at the loss of one's birthplace; the fear and impotence of being thousands of miles from family, friends and neighbours as silken-winged armed devils prepare to drop from the sky. I can only wallow in my disappointment.
I walk slowly down the stairs, this time at an unhurried pace, dragging my feet along each flat of the stairs. I return to the kitchen, sit back down at the kitchen table, turn the radio off and eat a second bowl of Corn Flakes covered with a heap of granulated sugar, finding solace, then, as now, in food intake above the needs of my metabolism.
As I stuff my face with milk and tear soaked cereal, I write a covenant in my mind, a declaration of intent: I will study history and politics so that one day I will not merely retell the news to my father, but offer real analysis, forged with knowledge and carved with careful understanding - 'prick up your ears' re-quotable words of wisdom that cannot fail to be rewarded with paragraphs of praise.
It is a day that I have never forgotten.
