You know I never knew I had a sea view till today and I’ve been living here for ten months. It’s odd. The table where I worked before I suppose was by the kitchen, near the door I keep most of the day open to view the birds coming onto the terrace and eating my plants’ flowers.
It’s a strip, about my hand’s width when I hold it up to the window and half a nail thick, but blue amongst the Islamic clay rooftops and high rise buildings coated a beige. Once yellow and acrid smelling, the air rises to a purplish blue sky.
I’m reminded of a Cypriot who told me when the island was invaded her dad stayed in his house, saying they’d have to take him first before taking it, the rest of the family fleeing to the mountains where the villagers and townsfolk scurried to too. He owned a restaurant and unlocked the pinball machines emptying coins into bags and into his pockets. Years later when they were able to visit, the kitchen was as they’d left it: dishes lined on the draining board, crockery—glass—the table.
My dad said he was so glad his mother passed two years prior so she didn’t have to cope with that, and I was talking with my husband yesterday about Beijing, our lockdown there, in separate rooms, my view: workmen filling concrete paths like bees in a hive with dedicated precision.
Perhaps ‘rupture’ has always been part of our lives and why it’s portrayed, indeed in literature persists, and the idea to mend something which once was or should be to bring equilibrium —but for whom? And at what cost?
In Pearson’s The Last List of Mabel Beaumont, she sets out to ‘fix’ everyone around her now her husband is dead:
- Help Julie get her husband back
- Help Patricia get her daughter back
- Reunite Kirstie with her family.
Olivia Albiero— literature and narrative scholar— links these inevitable ‘moments of rupture’ to past traumas, in Mabel’s case a longed for relationship she couldn’t have, but for sixty long years another endured, compromising her identity, because it was the ‘right thing’ to do, and by setting up Julie for pub drinks with her ex and conning both Pat’s daughter and Kirstie’s parents into returning, masking her texts and their own, forcing them to meet, she’d hoped to erase the sadness behind their eyes that only the elderly can sense and see. Shock, first, uncomfortable exchanges, and for a while, to Mabel, at least, they seemed busier, and she lonelier.
Two nights ago a siren sang over the buildings here shocking us into fight and flight, abandoning our food … confusion in the hallways, families, backpacks, lifts full and to the mall, traffic, fear, car parks unusually empty—we gathered in the entrance, security guards on phones, people crouched by shop windows boarded up. We called our families. They said get out as fast as you can. The flights: suspended. Our group chats soaring with messages from embassies. Videos of people in different malls and parking lots: Where’s the best place? Get away if you’re near the bases. Where to? Our neighbours say they’re staying at friends in the next town. A work colleague has evacuated staff to… we didn’t catch the building. Foggy brain. Should have left earlier, should…
Security guard says it’s ok to go home now—leave—Sure?? Yes, come back again if you hear the siren. Ok. Will be open. I don’t want to sleep by the window. Said glass would shatter if anything happens. See a couple in the lift—they’re on floor 3, and News, the news. That blow up road picture and mall/run video on repeat, repeat.
In Cyprus in 2022, I was at an open air concert by Paphos harbour where Melina Aslanidou with a voice echoing the Pontic region sang and chanted Ki afta tha berasoun –and these things will pass. We felt it unbelievable, for so long had it gone on.
I’ll leave you with a song of hers and Yiannis Parios, and—wherever you are, I hope you feel home safely.
Video Yiannis Parios, Melina Aslanidou, tha s’agapo courtesy of Greek songs Dim, Youtube, 2016
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