To my grandpa, Philippos.
The person who inspired it and can never read it.
My mother’s side of the family was born and raised in Cyprus. My father’s too, but we’re not talking about them now.
Grandma Froso and grandpa Philippos had three children and lived in Avlona, a village halfway between Nicosia and Morphou.
In July 1974 the Turkish invasion in Cyprus began, and a quarter of the island’s population had to move from the north to the south. My mother’s family suddenly became immigrants in their own country.
Everyone had to leave their homes in a rush, leaving behind all clothes, belongings, everything. Luckily for my mother’s family, Nicosia to my grandparents my great-grandpa had given a house in the center of for their wedding as a dowry. Unluckily, the family that was renting did have another house but since it was close to the borders, theywere scared and wouldn’t leave for months.
My mother’s family lived in tents and school classrooms with thousands of other Cypriots, until my grandparents decided it was safer to sent my mom and aunt to an orphanage in Greece for a year.
I’ve heard countless stories about the invasion, but I can never get close to imagining how it was like living it.
The house in Nicosia wasn’t big, but had the biggest garden surrounding it. It was and still is filled with trees, plants and flowers. There’s this olive tree at the back of the house, that was planted in 1973, and is the oldest and biggest tree in the garden.
At the back of the house there was an outer house, with three small rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and another room we use for storage now. When the family moved there, my great-grandma used to live there until she passed away.
My grandma still uses that kitchen to make ‘pourekia’, small fried pastries with either hallumi or anari cheese filling and ‘kattimeria’ that are like cinnamon rolls but flat and folded.
I remember that I really enjoyed going through the things that were in the storage room. The room was filled with suitcases, boxes, shelves full of things. I loved opening random bags and finding my mother’s old clothes, or going through the rolls of maps my grandpa had or discovering his insect and rock collections.
In the garden, there are another four olive trees planted at the front of the house, three lemon trees on the left side, a tangerine tree, an apple tree and a pomegrante tree at the back. There was also a vineyard on the right side of the house, where my grandpa would park his car under.
Once a year, when the lemon trees were loaded with lemons, we would spend days filling bags with hundreds of them. I remember always insisting on climbing on the trees and picking the lemons but my grandma was never happy with the idea of me falling off and breaking my neck.
We weren’t always able to pick the ones on the top branches, even with a ladder or my two meter tall dad, but my grandpa was clever. I remember he used to take a stick from a broom we didn’t use anymore and a plastic water bottle that he cut in half. He then taped the top of the bottle, where the lid was, on the broomstick and made a small cut on the plastic bottle. That way he could reach a lemon from the ground, place it in the bottle, and use the small cut to snap the strem off the fruit.
My grandma used to gift the lemons to her children, her neighbours, any person who wanted any, just as she did with olives. With the remaining ones, she used to make lemonade. She kept the bowl with the mixture in the parlour, the biggest room in the house, and would stir it a few times a day until it was ready. I remember sneaking in the room and stirring the mixture with the big wooden spoon, because it felt so satisfying to feel all the sugar move at the bottom of it.
We always had homemade lemonade at home. It was the one drink we used to have the most.
My parents meeting is a whole other story. Really. They got married the day after the Christmas of 2000. Then they had me and a year and a half later, Theano, my sister.
My mum, Skevi, had a gym. She used to teach afternoon classes there, but in the morning, she was teaching high school P.E.
My dad, Andreas, had opened his own little shop as an IT technician.
Since they were so busy with working, we spent much time with the grandparents, my sister and I. Everyday after school, dad used to pick us up and we would all meet for lunch at our grandparents. My grandma would cook the most delicious food and bake the most amazing cakes. After lunch, my parents would leave for work again and leave us there.
Our afternoons were filled with joy. My sister and I would help our grandma tend to the garden, bake cakes and bread, eat lots of fruits, we would ride our little pink bikes around the house, draw on the cement floor with chalks, read books, watch old Cypriot series on the tv, the list is endless.
I remember by the time we would have a shower and have dinner, I could already smell the scent of blooming jasmines overfilling the house. On the humid nights before our parents picked us up, we used to sit on the porch and sing to the moon.
My favorite thing we did in the summer was making bracelets with jasmine flower buds. I remember my grandma showing me how to thread a needle and sew the flowers.
The biggest room in the house was the parlour that we used when the whole family was gathered. One of the walls was covered by my grandpa’s bookcase.
It was the room I loved the most, there were tons of books, encyclopaedias, maps, finished sudoku books, family pictures, objects obtained in travels.
This room is where my curiosity went wild, and the one person who was always willing to answer my questions was always there, sitting on the couch he was always sitting, solving his sudokus.
I learned so many things at that house. My grandpa taught me how to read the time, make paper boats out of newspapers and junk mail, how to recognise patterns in things, he taught me how to find weird solutions to common everyday problems.
My grandpa was curious, loved to learn and was extremely inventive.
I like to believe I inherited those traits from him.
My grandpa managed to study, at a time when people were too busy with farming and the need to keep their children around. He was one of the few people in his village to go to university.
My grandma’s mother didn’t let her go, she wanted her to stick around. Her brother managed to study in America and Germany, my grandma didn’t have the same luck, I think she didn’t really want it either.
My mother always called my grandpa very smart, but he was way more than that. It was the little things he did, that made him so special.
Whenever my grandma cooked lentils, he used to get an onion slice that he would thread on a fork so he didn’t have to use a spoon as well and then got to eat the onion as well.
In the summer we used to listen to harvest flies making this loud shrill droning noise, they were very annoying, but he used to pick them up and hold them in his hands.
When a pencil was getting too small, he used to cut and empty old markers and attach the plastic tube at the end of the pencil to make it longer.
He was so quiet; I don’t remember him talking much.
I like to remember he loved me much and I think he did.
It always felt we were the same, he had so many things in common with my mother, but not as many as he did with me.
I liked hanging out with him, I believe he enjoyed my company as well. I remember being angry one day because my sister left all the toys everywhere, and he told me “Don’t worry, other people are just not as tidy as you are.” I think this is when I understood that not all people are the same.
I will always remember him sitting on his couch watching an old cowboy series, wearing his white sleeveless shirt, solving a sudoku in silence.
He will forever live with me. I could never forget such a person. I wish he could have been here today, to see me grow, become a person, see how I developed my talents. I bet he would’ve been very proud of me.
The last day I saw him in the hospital, before his lungs gave up, I gave him a drawing. I was almost 11. He liked my drawing a lot, and I cried twice as much the next day when they told me he’d passed away.
“My photograph when you arrive, know how to talk, tell my brother we love him a lot.”The back of a photograph my grandma sent to her brother in 1958.
