*****
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| Half Church Half Mosque - Nicosea |
As Easter neared, Lucky’s mood darkened. He
had the date firmly fixed in his mind – April 5, which was Easter Sunday in the
Year Of Our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty Three. To Lucky, the date was George’s
day. A day he’d stolen when he’d taken the egg. And in all the days that had
passed, there was nothing he could think of to make amends.
Looking for solace, Lucky attended Mass for the first
time in many months on Palm Sunday, March 26. It was at St. Andrews Church in
Nicosia and he went alone. His parents never went to church, although they
insisted on his attendance. His answer was to cheat – using the excuse of
church to disappear for several hours on a Sunday and do what he liked to do,
making sure, of course, that his adventures didn’t soil his dress-up clothes.
But on this particular Sunday he felt he needed heavenly guidance, so he went
directly to church, instead of stopping off at a bookshop, or a Sunday carnival
at Metaxa Square.
St. Andrews was quite old, its stone edifice as gray
and ancient as the city’s walls. The church had a Byzantine look, with
complicated stonework and Levantine spires that were quite unlike the plainer
edifices of Roman Catholic churches in America. The interior of the church was
just as strange, with many more statues and icons of the apostles and the
saints, and especially the Virgin Mary, than Lucky was accustomed to. They were
all gilded and painted in fabulous colors, with wide rows of candles laid out
in front of each statue and long sticks of incense arcing out from ornate
holders.
When the boy went to say his confession – again, it
had been many sinful months since his last – he was confronted with a priest
who spoke no English, but only Greek and a little French. Lucky tried to make
do in Greek, but when he encountered his lustful thoughts for Athena, he only
knew gutter words to express them, so all his good intentions went out the
confessional booth window. He fell back on the old Catholic schoolboy ploy of
making up his sins, enumerating so many lies, so many acts of disobedience to
his parents, etc., calculating the minutes of penance this would draw later. To
his surprise, the priest’s ordered Act Of Contrition was not that different
than the priests handed out at Our Lady Of Sorrows church in Maryland. This
made the whole experience oddly comforting. It made him smile as he recalled
conspiring with friends, figuring out how many and what sort of sins they’d
admit to – always being careful not to duplicate.
After confession, Lucky attended Mass. Once again,
everything was strange, but familiar. When the priest spoke to the congregation
it was in Greek. The echoes in the church made it difficult for Lucky to
understand everything he said, but it was easy to imagine that he was informing
everyone about parish events – church socials, fund raising, that sort of
thing. The Mass was in Latin and as a former altar boy Lucky knew exactly what
was going on. Armed with his missal, which was in English, he also knew that
Catholics the world over – from Cyprus to Rome to Philadelphia to the
Philippines - were all saying the same things and reciting the same prayers.
On this particular Sunday, however, the comfort was
short-lived. He kept thinking of the night George died. The curtained bed. The
harsh whispers from the doctors and nurses. The frantic activity. The eerie
glow of the portable lights casting the ghastly shadow show on the walls and
ceiling. Lucky wanted to tell George he was sorry. Not about the egg so much.
He was pretty much past that now. As the Latin Mass washed over him he thought
- So what are you sorry for? That he had lived and George hadn’t? No. Dying
wasn’t so bad. Perhaps he was jealous. Envious of George’s escape. Could that
be? Maybe. But he wasn’t so envious now that he was caught up in the adventure
of learning with Jim. Okay, so there was no reason to feel as he did. Harry and
the guys had said so, hadn’t they? Yeah, but why did he cringe, why did he
ache, every time he thought about George? Maybe there wasn’t an answer.
As he left the church the whole experience suddenly
rose in his gorge. He got so sick he could barely make it down the stone stairs
and then he had to duck behind an iron gate, where he fell to his knees. He
hadn’t eaten – it was forbidden to eat before Communion - and to his horror, he
saw the white wafer that was the Host lying in a mess of green bile. He heard a
deep voice behind him and he turned, wiping his mouth and saw a bearded priest
standing over him. He said something in Greek, but the boy was so sick and
confused, he lost all ability to understand.
The priest reached out to him – to help or to
chastise, Lucky couldn’t tell. Frightened, he jumped to his feet and fled, the
priest calling after him.
He dodged down this street, then another, imagining
he was being pursued. Finally, he came to a small café with a few tables set
under a broad fig tree. He was thirsty, but you didn’t dare drink water from
the tap in Cyprus in those days, so he asked for a Coca Cola. It was served to
him in the bottle, cold and smelling of the ice chest it was kept in. He drank
it down, the raw cola cutting through the bitterness that coated his mouth and
throat. He drank and drank and drank, swallowing the entire contents of the
bottle.
"Are you sick, English boy?" the taverna
owner asked in Greek. Lucky blinked. He could suddenly understand the language
again. "I’m American, not English," he said, "and yes, I’m sick
to my stomach." He patted his belly. "Do you have something that
would help?"
The man pulled at his chin, clucking sympathetically.
"A little ouzo, I think," he said, parting two fingers slightly to
show just how little. "It’s better for you than Coca Cola."
He brought Lucky a glass of the milky liquor. The boy
sipped it tentatively and nearly got sick again. "Don’t surrender, my
young American friend," the man advised. "Drink a little more and you
will soon feel well again."
Lucky drank more and this time it went down smoothly,
spreading gentle warmth through his stomach. It tasted quite nice – a little
like licorice.
The man motioned, putting fingers to lips and tipping
his head back. "Finish it," he said. "And then I will bring you
some bread and cheese and a little olive oil. You’ll feel strong as a
bull." He threw out his burly chest and flexed his arms to demonstrate.
Lucky did as he was told, polishing off the ouzo. The
man patted his shoulder, as if congratulating him. Then he brought a plate with
a hunk of black bread, some pure white goat’s cheese and a bowl of olive oil.
He took the ouzo glass away. "No more of that," he said. "Or
else you will become sick all over again." Instead, he brought Lucky a
small glass of retsina – resin wine – to wash down his meal. It was an acquired
taste – having a turpentine bite – but Lucky had been introduced to the wine by
Andreas and Sandros and had grown to like it.
While he ate, feeling better with each bite and sip
of wine, he glanced about the taverna and noted that the only other people
there were a group of elderly men, sitting around a table sharing a water pipe
and playing tavali - a board game similar to backgammon. The men were intent,
taking a long time over each roll of the dice. He saw stacks of copper piastras
on the table and knew they were gambling.
Church bells started to play, very deep and melodious
and so loud that they drowned out the sounds of the traffic. Obviously the
bells were quite large. He looked up and saw a fabulous Greek Orthodox
cathedral at the end of the street. It was incredible that he hadn’t noticed it
before – he must have been really sick. There was something odd about the
church and for a moment he couldn’t figure out what it was. Then noticed that
on one side of the church there were traditional Orthodox spires. But on the
other side, where spires should have been, were the minarets of a mosque.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be seeing things. But when he looked again
the odd architecture of the church or mosque or whatever it might be, was quite
evident.
To the left, he could make out the big bells rising
and falling in the church belfry and he could imagine a sturdy monk, the
sleeves of his robe rolled above his elbows, gripping the ropes and hauling
down with all his strength. If he didn’t let go, he’d surely be lifted off his
feet, so large were those bells. And the sound of them was fantastic – Bong!
Bong! Bong! Rolling along the street and resounding over the taverna like waves
splashing against a ship in the open sea.
A speaker crackled into life, startling Lucky. It
came from the right – from the minarets. And then he heard the amplified voice
of a muezzin wail: "Allah illahah illah 'lla…, la illahah illah
‘lla…" Followed by a second cry: "Wah Mohammadan rasulu 'llah… Wah
Mohammadan rasulu 'llah."
It was wild, haunting refrain that Lucky knew was a
prayer that was chanted five times a day in Moslem towns and villages and
neighborhoods all over the world. He’d been told that the prayer was called the
Shahada, consisting of the first words of The Koran, the Moslem bible. In
English, the words were: "There is no God but Allah. And Mohammed is his
Prophet"
Lucky cocked his head to listen to the next cry, but
as the muzzein audibly drew in his breath to continue his prayer – the speakers
crackling weirdly - the bells rang out even louder than before and at a faster
pace: Bong! Bong! Bong! And Lucky could imagine the monk working harder,
pulling on those ropes with even greater strength to make the bells sound out.
Then the muezzin’s voice was back, higher and louder,
the words drawn out in a long wail: "la illahah illah ‘lla." Followed
by a second cry: "Wah Mohammadan rasulu 'llah… Wah Mohammadan rasulu
'llah."
Here came the bells again, even louder and faster
than before. Lucky could see them swinging so hard one of them nearly flipped
end over end. Plainly, other monks were aiding the first. At the same time, the
volume of the mosque speaker was cranked up as high as it could go, sound waves
straining the speaker fabric to the breaking point.
The whole square was filled to the overflowing with a
crazy cacophony of sounds all mixed together: Bong!… La illahah Bong!… illah
'lla… Bong!… Wah Mohammadan… Bong!… rasulu 'llah… Bong!
It was so loud Lucky had to cover his ears. He
laughed and looked around to see the old men with their ears covered as well
and this made him laugh even more. Suddenly both the bells and wailing stopped
and the silence was so great that it was if it were a sound itself, just as
loud as what had gone on before. Lucky called for the taverna owner. As he paid
for the meal, adding a generous tip, he asked the man about what had just
happened.
The man started to speak, then shook his head.
"Englishmen no like," he said. Then he made a motion with his hand,
as if cutting the air. "Englishmen no like," he said again. Then he
shrugged. "It isn’t good to speak of," he said. Then he turned and
went to the old men and refilled their glasses from a bottle of yellow liquor.
The mystery of the odd church/mosque plus the food
lifted Lucky’s spirits and as he exited the taverna it was if he was leaving
his troubles behind. He was about to hail a taxi to take him home, but then
heard someone shout his name. He looked up and saw Andreas leaning out the
window of a bus, waving.
"Where are you going, Lucky?" he called.
"Home."
"Come. We’ll go together."
Glad for the company, Lucky sprinted for the bus,
which was just about to drive away. Andreas shouted for the driver to wait, which
the man did, grumbling with much bad humor as Lucky climbed aboard and paid up.
The boy looked about curiously – he’d never been on a Cypriot bus before. It
was only half full and most of the passengers were in their Sunday best, so it
didn’t have the same raucous air of other buses Lucky had seen during the work
week. There were no chickens or other animals and everyone seemed to be
carrying string bags of food – off to visit relations, no doubt, for
after-church meals. The bus seats were wooden benches and the floor was made of
ill-fitted narrow planks that let in light, dust and diesel fumes.
Andreas, pale as ever and dressed in a shabby brown
suit, sat near the front. He made room for Lucky to sit. The young Cypriot
guessed correctly that Lucky had come from Mass and said he had spent the
morning visiting a cousin who was having difficulties at school.
"I tutor him - like Demetrakis tutors you,"
he said with a grin.
Lucky told him about the strange happening in the
square, with bells ringing and the muezzin shouting all at the same time, as if
they were competing. "I asked the man at the taverna, but all he said was
that it was because of the English. And he went like this…" Lucky made a
chopping motion through the air.
Andreas laughed and clapped his hands together.
"Oh, he was afraid for nothing," he told Lucky. "It’s a famous
story and everybody knows it."
"Tell me," Lucky urged.
"Well, that um… ekleeseea … um…"
Lucky helped him find the word. "Church,"
he suggested. "But it’s so big, maybe it’s a cathedral – an ekleeseea,
like you said."
Andreas made motions that it didn’t matter.
"Church is easier for me to repeat, so we will call it a church. And it is
a very old church as you could probably see," he said. "But when the
Turks grabbed us…." He made grasping motions, clutching the air then
squeezing his fist, then tossing an imaginary object away… "they threw all
the Cypriots out of the church and made it into a… Tzamee… what’s the English…
Oh, yes… a mosque. It remained a Tzamee… a mosque… for many years.
"Only Turks could go there. And people were
angry because Turks were doing things – Moslem things - where the Christ above
should have had his place. Then the English came, and the Cypriot bishop
complained. He wanted the ekleeseea – the church - returned to the Christian
people. But the Turks didn’t like this idea and they refused. Soon there were
fights in the street…"
He searched for words. "Riots," Lucky
suggested.
"Yes… riots," Andreas said, nodding.
"Rock riots and stick riots. Many heads broken riots. So the English made
the decision. Like old King Solomon they cut the church in half. One side for
Greek Christians, the other for the damned Turks. But nobody liked this
decision very much. The priests and mullahs hated it more than anyone else. But
there is nothing they can do, because the English army will come with guns if
they have the riots again. Now sometimes they have the…" Andreas laughed
as the phrasing occurred to him… "They have the bells ringing riots… and
the…" he cupped his hands to his mouth like a megaphone… "the big
speaker riots instead of rocks and sticks."
Another thought came to him and he made a gesture.
"So maybe the English decision wasn’t such a bad thing in the end,"
he allowed. "Ringing bells and shouts are better than broken heads,
yes?"
Lucky agreed that it was, although he giggled as he
thought of what he had witnessed – the bells tolling versus the "la
illahah illah ‘lla" wailing. His teenage giggle was catching and the two
boys joked for awhile, laughing so hard that some of the other passengers
hissed at them to behave.
Chastened, they settled down and caught up on each
other’s news. The most interesting item of gossip was that Sandros had gone
into hiding.
"What did he do, try to blow up the police
station or something?" Lucky asked, only half in jest.
NEXT: Jim's
Boyhood And Lucky Encounters A Leper
*****
LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
 |
Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
|
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four episodes. Here are the links:
REMEMBER - IT'S FREE!
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