A Designated Man E-Book

Moris Farhi

• Herausgeber: Telegram Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Osip returns home to a remote island in theMediterranean, hoping that it will provide hima haven after the traumas of war. On his arrival, he narrowly escapes death at the hands of Bostan, a supreme feudist. The island, he discovers, is still governed by the archaic code of honour which has condemned the inhabitants to perpetual bloodshed and obliterated countless families, including Osip's own. Helped by the aged Kokona, and by her earthy lover, Dev, Osip restores the watermill he has inherited. Soon, he and Bostan cross paths again. Beguiled by Bostan,Osip befriends him.When Bostan is ambushed by other feudists and left for dead, Osip rushes to his aid. While dressing his wounds, he discovers Bostan's true identity. When Bostan recovers, the two of them set out to end the eternal feuding. A deeply affecting fable that resounds with hope.

Leseprobe

Moris Farhi

A Designated Man

TELEGRAM

eISBN: 978-1-84659-116-7

Copyright © Moris Farhi, 2009 and 2012

First published in 2009 by Telegram This eBook edition published 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

TELEGRAM

26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RHwww.telegrambooks.com

To Nina, my eternal inspiration.

To Mai Ghoussoub, soul-sister and mentor, who believed in this work. I carry your beautiful soul everywhere and all the time.

And to Womanhood – the only blessing that can save the world from its armoured people.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With gratitude to my family for their love and support: Ceki, Viviane, Deborah & Yael Farhi; Rachel Sievers & Hamish & Zara MacGillivray; Eric, Danièle & Nathaniel Gould; Phil, Rachel, Samuel, Joshua, Kezia & Joseph Gould; Jessica Gould; Emmanuel, Yael, Noam, Amit & Adi Gould; Guy, Rebecca, Ela & Uri Granot; Sara, Christopher and Sean Coil; Nicole Farhi & David Hare; Dennis & Elizabeth Hull.

With gratitude to the late Asher Fred Mayer whose beautiful soul sustains me.

With gratitude to Barry Proner, purveyor of insights into the mysteries.

With gratitude to my brilliant and devoted editor: Rebecca O’Connor.

With gratitude to my friends and mentors for their guidance: Peter Day; Ahmad Ebrahimi; André, Lynn & Salwa Gaspard; Jana Gough; Agop Hacikyan; Dmetri Kakmi; Robin Lloyd-Jones; Christopher New; Sharon Olinka; Maureen Rissik; Anthony Rudolf; Nicholas Sawyer; Ros Schwartz; Evelyn Toynton; Rod Wooden.

With gratitude to my agents: Jessica Woollard, Paul Marsh, Camilla Ferrier & Caroline Hardman.

With gratitude to my kindred spirits for their unflinching support: Tricia Barnett; Selim & Nadia Baruh; Ian & Anthea Davidson; Marius Kociejowski; Julian & Karen Lewis; Sallie Lloyd-Jones; Robina Masters; Elizabeth Rosen-Mayer; Faith Miles; Richard & Ceinwen Morgan; Christa New; Ayşe & Mehmet Önal; Şafak Pavey; David Picker; Lucy Popescu; Nicholas, Maggie & Rosa Rankin; Paula Rego; Hazel Robinson; Elon Salmon; Enis Üser; Juliet Wedderburn; Ateş Wise.

With gratitude to my alter egos near and far for their solidarity: Ergun & Rengin Avunduk; Attila & Ayşem Çelikiz; Rajko Djuric; Semra Eren-Nijhar, Indirjit & Ilayda Nijhar; Bensiyon Eskenazi; Sylvie Finkelstein; Andrew Graham-Yooll; Brigitte Hacikyan; Bracha Hadar; Nina Kossman; Julita Mirkowicz; Hazem Saghieh; Saliha Paker; Donné Raffat; Mariantonella Saracino; Isabella Zani.

With gratitude to the other members of my dedicated ‘family’ at Saqi & Telegram Books: Ashley Biles, Rob Fakes; Rabi Fatihi; Lara Frankena; Amin Jawad; Lina Kayali; Safa Mubgar; Shikha Sethi; Anna Wilson; Rukhsana Yasmin.

1

KOKONA

Hungers are legion. Some, like the hunger in empty bellies, can kill; those that are weathered leave woeful scars. But there is one hunger – only one – that is gracious, that exhorts us to live, that gives meaning to our lives: the hunger of the flesh. It is Creation’s gift to us.

Many of you will be angered by this chronicle. You will want to ignore my words, ridicule them as an ancient woman’s prattle. But somewhere in your innards you’ll listen. Because you know that I, Kokona, am truthful as the sea. You know my memory is like the Earth’s and errs not. You know I bear this island’s history. You know I have never blinkered my eyes, never shielded my heart. Everything that’s happened in Skender is written on my body. And written in salt on open wounds.

No need to dwell on the other hungers. We’ve all suffered them, especially the fatal ones. They are the Earth’s ferrymen. They follow a timetable scrolled somewhere in the ether. If we survive, we survive only because Providence throws us a reprieve at the last moment. We’ve all buried kin who haven’t been so lucky.

But the hunger of the flesh, the craving to touch another’s body, to find a soul with whom to become one, is a hunger that must be celebrated with open hearts and minds. No one can live without love. Yet you’ve spurned it like martyrs spurn the bodies they inhabit. That’s why you’re so dead.

I sense scorn rising in you. I hear the adherents of the Law furiously rattling their bones in mimicry of cobwebbed Toma whom you still revere as your prophet. You’re primed to drown the music of the flesh with the carpentry of coffins.

But, deep down, you know I’m right. You’re dead because you’ve chosen to renounce the ways of Creation. You’ve elected to bed not with love, but with hatred. You draw breath only to kill and be killed. And you’re doubly proud when your victims are lovers who want nothing more than to live with their faces upon each other. You’ve drained your cocks of sap, filled your amatas with stones. Only the sight of blood engorges your loins.

But I, Kokona, old as I am, still keep myself ploughed, like good earth. My body can still receive sky, water and fire. And before I end my days, I want to bring you to life again.

I want a future for Skender.

That’s why I’ve put this story together.

Our island is the furthest from the mainland, more than half a day’s journey from Turnu, the nearest headland. Though there are almost eight thousand of us, we don’t have an airstrip. Our only link with the rest of our country is the ferry. And that, much as we’re entirely dependent on it for medicine, fuel and other necessities, is always at the mercy of the Maritime Lines. According to them, the restricted service – once a week, if we’re lucky – is due to the vagaries of the elements. We Skenderis know better. We know, in this part of the world, that governments abandon certain regions like parents who desert their children.

So we’re isolated.

Our nation thinks we’re a colony of hydras.

Our government officials visit us once every forty moons – always escorted by a squad of gendarmes – only to fling scraps at us as if we were animals in a zoo.

Europe looks upon us as primitives who have never learned how to be a people – hence, lawless. And, except for a superpower or two who deem that, at some future date, we might have strategic value and so glance at us occasionally from their war-rooms – or so our government speculates – the rest of the world doesn’t even know we exist.

The lawlessness is both fact and fiction.

The fiction is that we have a legal system; it is called the Law and is based on the Kanun, that ancient charter of the Balkans, which raptorial warlords imposed upon us some two hundred years ago. And it is the Law, with its injunctions about honour and the imperative to redeem it with blood feuds, that makes us lawless.

Evil, we know, is a Trojan horse; it arrives at people’s gates wrapped up as a gift.

The warlords came, as warlords do, when this remote island was prosperous and harmonious. They came to protect us, they said, because the Ottomans had abandoned us. We trusted them. We were innocents. Infants. We swallowed their lies. They wanted privileges. So they blindfolded us. Poured poison into our ears. Abased our women to chattels. Preferring to save our skins rather than our souls, we scurried before them.

Those who had the audacity to challenge them ended up in limepits or over the cliffs. Strangers, immediately branded as threats, had their hides ruddled and were sent to slaughter. Bards had their tongues torn out because they dared voice the truth.

Then they forced open our gullets and goose-fed us with honour. With what we now call the Law.

Yet we knew, even as we slopped it up, that this deadly lotus could be garnished in countless ways to justify every wrongdoing. Mindlessly, we evangelized its brutal sacraments. Like memorizers of sacred books, we chanted that nothing had greater importance in life than honour – least of all, the miracle of life itself!

They stuffed us with this toxin so easily, our warlords. But then, over the centuries, we had laid ourselves bare for such conditioning. We had given credence to religions that glorified death. We had accorded loyalty to those who believed they could forge armour that could soar to the sun without ever melting. We had accepted doctrines that dispossessed women of their rights and of their femininity. And we had venerated the dust devils that fomented ancient grievances into tempests.

Thus, if our neighbour’s pig devoured our crop and we chased it away, we were reviled as a Muslim or a Jew! If we got tired of eating fish, we insulted the Christians! If our eyes fell on the rump of a shepherdess helping a sheep to lamb, we accused all womankind of prurience.

Quite simply, our superstitions made us easy prey to the warlords. Any idiocy became a good enough excuse to kill for honour. And when our turn came to die, we choked on our own blood, sad and bitter, not because we were giving up our life before its time, but because we felt we had not done enough to protect our honour.

So it went on.

And so it still goes on today.

Which explains why we have become outcasts. Why those Skenderis who left the island in search of better conditions came back, destitute and hungry. No one would give them work. Fortunately, even in its devastated state, Skender can still feed them. Money is scarce, but there is no unemployment and old-fashioned bartering, particularly with Turnu, meets our meagre needs.

Occasionally some mainlanders – youngsters mostly – take an interest in us. Thinking Skender is a lost Eden, they overlook our lawlessness. What do spoonfed youths from cities know about violence and the way it turns rabid? They think carnage is fanciful, akin to what they see in partisan films: flag-waving, drumbeating racists massacring their fellow men without once shitting in their pants. We’ve seen those youths, rucksacks on their backs, getting off the ferry. And we’ve seen them leave, not always alive, on the next ferry.

Other mainlanders – businessmen – thought they could bring in tourists. But since Skender has a cliff-gouged coastline with few beaches, they soon abandoned the idea. Some of them, too, left in coffins ... killed either for fear that they were allies of an enemy family or that their aims might threaten our way of life.

But, of course, there have been – and they’re still around – the invisible men. We call them Gospodins after the absentee landlords of the Balkans. Nobody knows their identity or where they came from or where they’re burrowed. Not even our very own Viktor Mikhail, who acts as their agent, as his father did before him. But we have come to think that these Gospodins are a cabal within the government. They bought – and still buy whenever they can, and very cheaply – the abandoned properties in Skender. There have been many suppositions – from drug smuggling to money-laundering – about their interest in this forgotten island. Those of us, like me, who are aware of what’s going on in the world, think that Skender’s so-called ‘strategic value’ is the cause of their speculation. I think they believe this island could be another Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, and hope that one day a superpower, wanting a military base in the Mediterranean, will buy those lands from them at a hefty price. That’s not too far-fetched a deduction. Skender was indeed used as a base by the Germans during the Second World War.

Then, one day, to this aberrant island, he came.

Xenos.

One ordinary day, he washed ashore.

And, soon afterwards, he exposed our lifelessness.

You always called him ‘Xenos’, ‘Stranger’, even though he was born here. Son of a wealthy family that perished in the feuds. Some of you went to school with him when we still had a school. When I was the teacher.

Xenos. A man in search of a haven. Returning to an island that was itself in need of havens.

Dev and I were the first to meet him. We were on our way back from Turnu, where I had delivered a batch of my tapestries to the National Handwork Cooperative. Dev, as you all know, is my name for my man, Mordo. You refused to call him that. Instead you taunted him for being a dwarf. ‘Shrimp’, you mocked him to his face. But then you’ve never had eyes to see what’s in front of you. Compared to anyone in Skender, he was, true to the name I gave him, a giant.

Anyway, there we were on the ferry. For once it was a pleasant crossing. The gales they had forecast had run out of breath and the passengers had settled on the deck. Since Skenderis, unwelcome anywhere in our country, seldom leave their island, the only passengers, apart from us, were tourists cruising in the archipelago.

Dev and I noticed him immediately. Though of average height, he stood out like Triton’s rock. One arm resting on his duffle bag, he was sitting cross-legged on a bench, staring at the sea and smoking. A chain-smoker, his fingers had the colour of autumn leaves. And his moustache, no doubt originally as silvery as his hair, looked as if it had been basted in turmeric.

We had left Turnu late in the afternoon. The tourists were busy consuming their packed suppers. We brought out our meal – bread, cheese, olives, figs, wine. Then we saw he didn’t have any food.

Dev, who would feed the whole world if he could, fretted. ‘Shall I ask him to join us?’

I nodded.

He went over to him.

Xenos, surprised, hesitated a moment, then came and sat by us. ‘Thank you.’

He had a deep voice, but spoke almost in a whisper. He had the accent of the mainlanders, but clipped his words as we do.

I pointed at our meal. ‘Help yourself.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s your fare.’ Then he took a fig. ‘But refusing a fig would be against nature.’

I was intrigued by the fact that he knew Skenderis held figs sacred and mistrusted those who did not.

He toasted me with the fig. ‘May you live a century, Teacher.’

That took me aback. ‘How did you know who I am – was?’

‘You taught me.’

‘I did?’

‘I still remember your first lesson.’

I laughed. ‘I can’t believe that ...’

‘I know it by heart.’

Dev, always disposed to be joyous, clapped his hands. ‘Let’s hear!’

Xenos shook his head. ‘You don’t really want to ...’

Dev clasped Xenos’ arm. ‘Yes! I had no schooling!’

Xenos stared at him, charmed by his childlike excitement.

Dev insisted. ‘Go on!’

Xenos shut his eyes as if reciting a ballad. ‘Skender, an appellation that means “defender of mankind”, is an island as legendary as Odysseus’ Ithaca. It was named after Alexander the Great, who was sent here by his mentor, Aristotle, to study what was then the most peaceful domain in the Sea of Seas. And as he watched the way Skender’s yeomen – tillers of the soil – and her mariners – tillers of the waves – lived in harmony, the idea of marrying the East to the West arose within him. Though he failed in that, the gods were impressed with Skender for so inspiring Alexander. As a reward, they endowed the island with Olympian fruitfulness. That’s why our figs, olives and wine, our sheep, game and fish have no equal anywhere in the world.’

Dev swayed about in enchantment. ‘That’s the truth!’

I was astounded. That was indeed the first lesson I used to teach, almost word for word. ‘What made you memorize it?’

He smiled. ‘It was one of the few constants I took with me. It has been a staunch friend ever since.’ Then he held up the fig he was eating. ‘This is not a Skenderi fig.’

‘Sadly, no. From Turnu.’ I pointed at the wine. ‘But the grape is.’

This time he did not refuse. He picked up the bottle and drank a good mouthful. He nodded in recognition. ‘Definitely.’

‘Have your fill. We’ve got plenty.’

He bowed his head in thanks.

‘You know me, Xenos. But I can’t place you. Remind me.’

‘Osip Gora.’

‘Osip Gora ...?’

He nodded shyly.

Osip Gora! I should have recognized him. I had known him very well. And had thought about him for years. A restless boy. But with a mind as breathtaking as a peacock’s tail. Family dying fast in endless feuds. Father, an intellectual. And, unusually, a redoubtable gunman. Killed several feudists. But inevitably, eventually, he was killed too – trapped by four families in alliance. The boy, Osip – fourteen or so at the time – was next in line to take up the feud. He’d have been killed immediately. The family still had some money so I convinced his mother – a fearsome woman known as ‘Eleanora the Falcon’ – to send him away and so spare him.

‘Gone all these years ...? Fifty? Sixty?’

‘Fifty. Exactly.’

‘Seems longer since I put you on the ferry.’

He stared at me, surprised. ‘You put me on the ferry?’

‘Yes.’

‘No ... It was my mother ...’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Are you sure? It must have been my mother ...’

‘No. It was me.’

I had found him a place at a training school in the capital. He’d not wanted to go. He’d wanted to stay and avenge his father. He had wept frantically when I’d handed him over to the ferry’s captain – even though boys from feuding families are instructed never to cry.

‘It’s all hazy in my mind – that day.’

‘You were a boy – and fearful ...’

He smiled bitterly. ‘I remember crying ...’

‘And many times after that, I imagine.’

‘No. Only once after that. Decades later.’

‘What about at the training school? Homesickness? Discipline?’

He drank more wine. ‘Easy. I took it like medicine.’

‘Doesn’t sound easy to me.’

‘It is. If you grow a shell.’

‘After the training school – where did you go? Somewhere vocational? University?’

‘Here and there.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Whatever came my way.’

‘Always on the mainland?’

‘All over.’

I could see my questioning was troubling him. That was typical of most of the mainlanders, particularly after the Peoples’ Wars. Minds trying to erase the horrors the eyes had seen. ‘Were you involved in the Wars?’

‘That, too. But they called it ethnic cleansing.’

I sighed bitterly. ‘The antiseptic names we give to slaughtering our own.’

To my relief, he nodded. His expression hardened.

Dev took some wine, then passed the bottle to him.

He hesitated. ‘I’ll get drunk.’ But he took the bottle and drank a good amount. Then he offered us his cigarettes.

We both took one. He lit them for us.

I inhaled deeply. Nobody’s better at smoking a cigarette than the aged; not knowing how many breaths we have left, we like indulging our lungs. ‘What brings you back to Skender? Revenge?’

‘Revenge?’

‘To take up your family’s feuds?’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Time means nothing when it comes to feuds. You must know that. They’re our way of life.’

‘I thought – expected – all that had changed.’

‘Change is not a concept in the Skenderi mind.’

He shook his head, dismissing my words. ‘Even so – there can’t be any enemies of my family left. And if there are, they’ll be disappointed. I won’t get involved in feuding.’

‘What brings you back then?’

‘Time to return, I thought. To end my days where I began them.’

I raised my eyes sceptically.

Then he added: ‘Also, in a way, to start living. I love water. I want the sea around me. And rivers running wherever I look. Water teaches us how to live. It’s time I learned.’

‘Life has a poor harvest in Skender. It has become a place for dying. Even our crops and animals – the best in the world – wither or die prematurely.’

‘When you taught us mythology, Teacher – remember telling us about sacred grottoes? Which the ancients consecrated as sanctuaries to water spirits?’

‘Yes ...’

‘A metaphor for withdrawing from an existence that man constantly despoils, is how you put it. That’s what I’m looking for. A place where I can start a new life. Where I harm no one and no one harms me. I thought my island – my wellspring – might be that place.’

The way he spoke so spontaneously impressed me. Skenderis, apart from Dev and me, seldom express their emotions.

‘You’re very frank.’

‘You’re my teacher. I wouldn’t hide things from you.’

‘What makes you think you might find this refuge in Skender?’

‘Well, I’ve got a water-mill to start with ...’

Dev, who knew every blade on the island, interrupted. ‘Only one water-mill. On the south coast.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Wasn’t it sold?’

‘No. It’s Gora property. All that’s left. Years ago a lawyer contacted me. I’m the only heir. He said there was a buyer, but I refused to sell.’

I chuckled. Skender, which suffers at least a couple of killings a week without regard for the country’s legislation, is as scrupulous on such statutes as inheritance and proprietorship as a weaver-bird building a nest. Of course, the real reason for this diligence is our infamous Law. Feuds must be handed down in perpetuity until the enemy family is exterminated. Thus anyone with blood links to a family, particularly an inheritor, is required, in the perverse logic of feuds, to uphold the honour of that family and take on the historic fight – whether he wants to or is capable of it is immaterial. That, of course, automatically makes him a legitimate prey for his family’s enemies.

I offered Xenos more wine. ‘Your family had feuds with several families. For all you know, there may be some descendants. They’d expect you to uphold the Gora honour.’

‘Honour has no meaning for me.’

‘That’s a grand statement.’

‘I mean it.’

‘How come?’

‘That’s something else you taught me, Teacher. It took me a long time to accept it.’

‘But your family’s enemies – they won’t accept it. That would be against the Law.’

‘I won’t get involved.’

‘Wouldn’t make any difference. You’d still be targeted. And before you knew it, you’d be sucked in. Until now only a handful have managed to avoid feuding. That, despite the fact that there are some who’d like the Law abolished. But, alas, honour has many crusaders.’

Dev muttered in disgust. ‘And a prophet – Toma!’

‘Toma? I remember him – vaguely. He and my father often clashed. He must be quite old now.’

I took some more wine. ‘He is. Older than me, in fact. Now known as “the Righteous”. Honour is his sacred hymn. And you’re right: he and your father were bitter foes. But your mother revered Toma, worshipped him as her mentor.’

‘I’ll steer clear of him.’

‘You won’t be able to – if you stay ...’

‘Are you trying to dishearten me, Teacher?’

‘I’m reminding you – warning you – how it is in Skender.’

‘I’ll keep myself to myself. That’s all I can do.’

‘You could sell the water-mill. The people who wanted to buy it – our absentee landlords, very likely – would still be interested.’

‘And then what?’

‘You could go back – with money in your pocket.’

‘I am back. Skender is where back is. There’s nowhere else.’

‘Then watch your step. And set your eyes behind you.’

Dev interrupted again. ‘The water-mill – it’s derelict.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘But you can restore it. Get it working again.’

Osip nodded. ‘That’s my intention.’

Dev, being Dev, became animated. ‘I can help. I’m good with my hands.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ Osip stood up. ‘Thanks for the fig, the wine – and the advice.’

He went back to his seat and sat down again cross-legged. Except for the repeated movement of lighting cigarette after cigarette, he looked like an ancient statue on a remote, abandoned site.

The next time he moved was at daybreak, when we were approaching Skender. I had slept on a bench all night and was stiff all over – one of the joys of being old.

But Dev, who, though almost seventy, glides like quicksilver, went up to him. ‘Home. Recognize it?’

Osip leaned against the railings and gazed at the bay. ‘There was an old song: “Skender, the heaven of heavens, where dolphins teach gods how to swim and skylarks compose melodies for mermaids.”’

Dev offered him some wine. ‘We still sing it.’

Osip drank fretfully. ‘Looks more like Scylla’s perch.’

By then I had gathered up my bones and joined them. I could see what he meant. The sea-sated air that normally makes each dawn promise a better day was mottled as if stricken with blight.

Dev tried to be encouraging. ‘Wait for the sun.’

‘Ah, yes – the sun ...’ Osip looked like a sailor who knows he’s heading for yet another shipwreck. Or maybe like one who always expects to be marooned. Or even like one who, preferring the hazards of wreckage to the perils of sailing, feels grateful for any lesser misfortune. ‘But the sun always goes down. Then the demons come out.’

I looked at him. ‘Demons?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘You believe in demons?’

He smiled. ‘Don’t we all?’

‘I think you’re carrying too many troubles, Osip Gora ...’

He shrugged. ‘No more than most people.’

Dev tried to lighten the conversation. ‘Make things grow. Best medicine against demons. Skender has fine soil!’

Osip looked doubtfully at Dev’s stunted frame. ‘Make things grow?’

Dev grinned amiably. ‘I know. You’re thinking: make yourself grow first. I can’t. But everything else, yes.’ He pointed at our carpet-bag. ‘Asparagus – know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very popular now on the mainland. Not known in Skender. So I bought seeds. Next year, we’ll have a whole field.’

Osip smiled uncertainly. ‘You must be a very happy man ...’

Dev chuckled. ‘Yes.’

I nodded. ‘A fulfilled man, Dev is. If you want to know what life’s all about, he’s the teacher.’

Osip turned to me as if to say something. Instead he stared at me. His gaze lingered. I sensed a gust of warmth from a time long past. A boy-man gaping at a woman in adoration. For a moment I felt he was looking at me the way Dev looked at me when we first got together – the way he always did. I thought if I hadn’t loved Dev, I could be captivated by this man.

2

OSIP

The day, at least, was sunny and welcoming.

Save for an old boy whose frayed sailor’s jacket identified him as the harbour master and who supervised the ferry crew unloading barrels of fuel and bales of consignments, the pier was empty.

Kokona, Dev and I were the only passengers to disembark. The rest, the tourists, were returning to the mainland. Skender, I’d been told, was always excluded from sightseeing excursions.

Kokona indicated a solitary van parked on the main road. ‘We’ve got a motor. We can take you to the water-mill.’

‘Thank you but I’d like to walk.’

‘It’s some distance.’

‘I want to get a feel of the place. It’s been a long time.’

Kokona shook my hand. ‘I understand.’

A strong grip, in defiance of bent, arthritic fingers.

She smiled. ‘Our farm is just east of the Citadel. Visit us whenever you like. We’re old hands at chasing away demons.’

Her smile glowed and rose from her soul. Her eyes, now that I could see them clearly in daylight, had not been dimmed by the attritions of a long life: still inquiring, vivifying and self-assuredly female in the way a woman boldly assesses a man. Despite her years, despite being dressed in the shapeless shift common to Skenderi women – though in her case it was yellow instead of the usual black or grey – she was entirely feminine. Tall but earthy, as Aphrodite would be if she ever succumbed to time.

Why had she assumed the ancient name for grandmothers, Kokona?

When I was a boy, I was in love with her. Maro, her name was. Effervescent as sea spray, she imparted colour wherever she went as if she were a rainbow. ‘Almond Blossom’ was my secret name for her. Widowed three times before she was thirty. Husbands killed in feuds. But she never wilted. Battled like a Fury against the killings. That’s how she came to urge my mother to send me to the mainland. Don’t sacrifice him to what men call honour; there’s no honour in feuding, she told her. Boldly. And unmindful that I was in the room, begging not to be sent away. Surprisingly, my mother took her advice. Wept as she put me on the ferry as if tears could requite honour. Little did she know that if there really is such a thing as honour, it’s somewhere beyond the reach of mortals.

Ah – fickle memory!

It was Maro – Kokona – who put me on the ferry, not my mother. It’s time I stopped clinging to that lie.

I remember it clearly now. Mother had stayed at home, cleaning her gun. Father had just been killed and Mother, the formidable Eleanora the Falcon, could hardly wait to engage his killers. Feuds had priority over children’s welfare. Besides, appropriating my right to serve as the next feudist, she had already declared herself the family’s designated man.

Was it Kokona, then, who had wept for me? Yes, it was.

I’d sit at the front of the class and imbibe every word she spoke, worship every gesture she made. And at nights, in bed, I would fantasize about being her hero. I’d be the boy – braver than any man in Skender – who kept saving her. Not just from feuds and those islanders who tried to vilify her, but also from all kinds of perils like rapists, ferocious animals, sinking boats, fires, earthquakes and the rest ...

‘Good fortune.’

Dev had taken my hand with both his. Farmer’s hands, strong and calloused. Hands too big for a dwarf. Hands, I imagined, that protected lame deer from jackals. I felt glad he was Kokona’s man – even envious of their natural intimacy.

My hands clasped his. ‘Thank you.’

I watched them walk to their van – Dev adjusting his pace to Kokona’s. They looked like a mother and her child, an image embellished by Dev’s opulent ebony hair, which I secretly admired because it still gleamed like a young man’s.

I surveyed the harbour as they drove away.

Both my father and Kokona had taught me that Skender had been an important commercial outpost in antiquity, a free port for Hellenes, Illyrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Romans and Etruscans. Its prosperity had reached its apogee under the Ottomans’ liberal rule. Thus Turks and Greeks, Armenians and Jews, Serbs and Croats, Dalmatians and Albanians, Macedonians and Bulgars, Saracens and Arabs, Berbers and Egyptians, French and Italians, even Germans and Russians had traded with their word as their bond. Then, late in the eighteenth century, after one of the countless wars Europe had waged against the Ottomans, its sovereignty had passed from one warlord to another. Thereafter it had plunged into the Dark Ages.

When I left fifty years ago the harbour had an array of historic monuments: columns of Greek and Roman temples on the cliffs; Ottoman mosques with arrow-thin minarets on the hillocks; picturesque churches on the slopes; small homes for artisans along the bay; and, by the waterfront, hugging the Divan – once cherished by the islanders as a depository of historic artefacts – residences and warehouses in vivid colours, like a Gypsy tapestry, for notable merchants. And all of them imbued with a pastoral tranquillity as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and geese moved freely through the human throng.

Could I trust my memory here? Might I be idealizing the time of my boyhood?

Now, wherever I looked, I saw discolouration and rubble. Temples, mosques, churches, houses and the Divan pockmarked by history’s debris and dust. The famous stone and wood pier that had introduced European engineering to the Balkans, and had then been reinforced with iron around the time I was born, stood encrusted with algae and rust. A reef formed of refuse, sewage and bloated animal carcasses barricaded Homer’s wine-dark sea. Even the sand on the nearby beach sprawled lustreless as if long untouched by children’s games. And those buildings that had remained erect stared eyeless at the world with scorched windows.

This was a landscape I had come to know well. After the Peoples’ Wars, we had reduced the mainland to a similar state. This was desolation that only man could wreak. After which, inevitably, nature had taken over.

Yet Skender, by virtue of being remote and isolated, had not been touched by the Peoples’ Wars. So what had happened? How had these stones crumbled so rapidly?

Should I have returned?

The harbour master came running up to me. ‘Looking for a bus?’

‘No.’

He chuckled. ‘That was a joke. No such thing. Hardly any vehicles here. A few belonging to tradesfolk. And a handful to the well-to-do – like the couple who arrived with you.’

‘I see.’

‘Maybe you want a hotel?’

‘No.’

‘That was a joke, too. No hotels either.’

‘Why?’

‘No one lives here any more. Want a telephone?’

‘No.’

‘Third and last joke. What lines we had are long dead. You’ll need a radio if you want to reach the mainland. A few people in the Citadel have one. So do I – thanks to the Maritime Lines.’

‘You said no one’s living here ...’

‘No one. Except me.’ He pointed at a derelict shack near the pier. ‘That’s my palace.’

I indicated some of the houses that were still standing. ‘They look habitable.’

‘Yes. But they’re ghoulish.’

‘Ghoulish?’

‘The killings ... Everybody moved inland. Easier to hide there. Hills, woods ...’

‘I thought the Peoples’ Wars hadn’t reached Skender ...’

‘We have feuds. Just as bad ...’

His words roused the ancient bitterness in me. ‘Haven’t people had a bellyful of that? Aren’t they worn down? Don’t they shout: enough?’

‘They haven’t so far.’

I pointed at the barrels and bales that had just been unloaded. ‘What about these goods? They must be dependent on them ...’

‘The consignees pick them up on truce days. Usually the second morning after the ferry’s arrival. That’s how long it takes to organize them.’

‘It’s hard to take in.’

‘Yes.’ The old sailor offered me a cigarette. ‘Where are you heading?’

I offered him mine. ‘Try these. Stronger.’

He took one. ‘Ah, the expensive kind!’

I lit his and mine. ‘The water-mill – on the south coast.’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t know it. Barely moved from here since I got this job – ten years or more now.’ He waved the cigarette. ‘Good stuff.’

‘Keeps one going.’

He gestured towards his shack. ‘If you want to rest your balls, you’re welcome. Haven’t had company since Noah sailed past. I’ve got a hammock you can use. And flagons of rakiya.’

I heaved my kit onto my shoulder. ‘Thank you. I must be on my way.’

He smiled to cover his disappointment. ‘Course. Mind how you go. Here they kill you for a fart.’

I walked in a trance.

When eventually I surfaced I found myself on the eastern cliffs.

There were no sheep grazing. And the few goats were emaciated; judging by their hides, which bore no brands of ownership, they seemed to have been living wild.

All through my childhood, this part of Skender had been my favourite haunt. Gazing at the horizon from here, with only sheep and goats for company, I could see the Earth’s curvature. This had been my captain’s bridge where I had strutted about and imagined that I was a great explorer defying storm-tossed seas in order to discover lands where no man had yet set foot.

Equally important to me, these were the cliffs where, in late spring, colonies of Eleanora’s Falcons came in to nest and breed. My father and I would spend much of the summer watching them. One year, we even tried to tame an injured fledgling; but he recovered and flew off. That pleased us even though we missed him.

I realized why, seemingly inadvertently, I had come up to these cliffs.

Memories.

But not the memories of the countless villainies that haunt me. Nor memories of Sofi that assail me day and night. Specifically the survivor’s memory, the one I’d assured myself I’d cauterized years ago, but which is still sitting, immovable, on my shoulders.

It was here that my father, Anibal, had been killed. Right there, by that rock cluster, I watched as they gunned him down. He’d pushed me behind a boulder to protect me from stray bullets. That had given his killers the few seconds they’d needed to open fire. They had continued firing into his body long after he was dead. Then they had left, courteously nodding at me, as decreed by the Law. And intimating that we’d meet again, no doubt soon, when, as expected, I’d be appointed my family’s new feudist.

My father died because of me. I’ve never been able to accept that. But surely it’s time I did.

Is that why I’ve come back – to make amends?

I advanced to the edge of the cliffs and scanned the sea. And there, where water and sky blended their different hues, was the Earth’s curvature: a gentle blue arc, perfectly defined. I was transfixed by it – as when I was a boy. Also, boyishly, I felt that at the point where the arc disappeared there was an abyss, the edge of the world from which, as the ancients thought, we would tumble into infinity, some to spin into hell, others to land airily in heaven. This feeling was powerfully enhanced by another stirring view: the refracting silhouettes of five countries in the far distance, like the last formations of land before nothingness.

Then my ears recognized the harsh kee-kee-kee sounds. I spotted them immediately: dark brown; the chin, throat and face buff; the underside chestnut with streaks of black; the tail with dark grey feathers barred rufous here and there; the cere and feet pale yellow – Eleanora’s Falcons. In my father’s judgement, the most beautiful bird in the world. The bird that Icarus had sought to emulate.

Some were settling on cliff ledges; others, on the open slopes, under rocks. True to their Spartan habits, using no nesting material. This being early May, the beginning of the breeding season, they would still be coming in. Those that had already arrived were either solitary or in small groups. By July, when they’d start laying eggs, they’d flock into larger groups. Then they’d hatch, fledge their young and by October they’d be on their way back to the other end of the Earth, to Madagascar.

Much as my father and I loved all birds, we had a special affinity with Eleanora’s Falcons. After all, they migrate all the way from another hemisphere, and, although the Mediterranean is dotted with islands where they could breed just as easily, they choose to come to Skender. That’s a tribute to us, Father had asserted, because seeing how our cliffs reflect our rugged selves, the falcons consider our island as their rightful place; that, in turn, gives us an idea why they were named after Eleonora d’Arborea, Sardinia’s fourteenth-century legislator and greatest heroine: these eminences of the air possess the same passion for independence as their namesake who fought off the invading Aragons.

Nor is it surprising, Father would wryly add, that my mother, the staunchest defender of the family honour, should have borne the sobriquet of a bird of prey. True, it had been my father who had jokingly dubbed her so because of the shape of her nose, but the fact that all Skenderis had found the designation apt proved what a daunting person she was.

I had come to realize, over the years, that my father would have preferred a less potent woman for a wife – one less fanatical about honour. For, though he had been the best feudist in Skender, he only killed when he had no other choice. Given that he was swift enough to take his prey on the wing, it should have been my father who carried the falcon’s name. Maybe if he had had a gentler wife – say, a woman like Kokona – his life might have been different. Certainly my life would have been.

I spotted a newcomer alighting on the rocks. A large one, therefore a female. She strutted around, cursorily marking out a patch for her nest. No sooner done than off she flew, no doubt in search of a mate.

Dawn or dusk was the best time to watch them, my father had instructed me. That’s when they preferred hunting. Ready to start roosting and breeding, they needed all the food they could get. In the fading light, they surprised other migrant birds exhausted after their long journey from wintering lands by swooping upon them over the open sea.

Unfolding reminiscences of my father compounded my own exhaustion. Wasn’t I a migrant bird, too – a migrant all my life? And the question remained: much as I maintained I had to come home after my relentless journey, would fate be clement enough to allow this migrant to roost?

I perched on a boulder. And this time dared face the memory of my father’s death.

The excitement of watching the falcons’ return – such a natural, innocent thrill for a child. Yet it had killed my father. Knowing what a precise timetable the falcons kept, he had worked out the day they would be arriving. On that day, at dusk, we would go to the cliffs and welcome them. Keep it a secret, he had cautioned, it’s best that people don’t hear about our excursion; otherwise God knows who might come and spoil our day. But I’d become so excited that I had blurted out our secret to some classmates. They must have mentioned it to others. Eventually word had got round to Father’s enemies.

And so, on the set day, as we reached the cliffs, they had appeared. Four men. Each from a different family. Four men I should eventually have had to kill by becoming the Gora feudist, but who, I learned in due course, had been killed by my mother, the self-appointed designated man. Not long after that she’d been killed, too, by one of the sons of the four men.

Why did I come back?

To atone for running away?

I wouldn’t know how to atone ...

That fantasy I told Kokona about a new life in a grotto? Do I believe that?

I do, in a way. But I also know, in my bones, that if Fate allows a person a new life, she never lets him enjoy it.

As for finding a grotto, that’s just a dream – harmless. But at least I can still dream.

Why did I come back, then?

To die?

That would make sense.

And yet ...

I left the cliffs and took the main road again.

Inland, Skender’s desolation was even more evident. Every stretch from the cliff-top to the Citadel’s walls, visible in the distance, had been abandoned and was withering. No cattle or sheep grazing; vineyards dried into dead wood; terracing crumbled from disuse; orchards and olive groves forlorn, their ungathered fruits rotting on the branch; and many irrigation canals, which had been the islanders’ pride in Ottoman times, clogged and stagnant.

Striding through this landscape, I felt as if I were the last man alive: that Proteus whom even Charon wouldn’t take into his boat and row to the underworld.

Yet I had spent most of my life stomping through lands more desolate than this. And had often contributed to the devastation myself. Lands that, during the Peoples’ Wars, we had denuded of populations whom unprincipled politicians had decreed to be not of our kin, hence vermin. Lands where every person screamed for a final solution. Where, overnight, friends and neighbours became barbarous foes. Where the ghosts of the unburied hung around like low clouds. Where bellies of pregnant women were thrown to the dogs. Where men and boys were tied up like bunches of flowers and either scythed with machine-guns or drowned in rivers. Where children’s clear blood ran in confusion like streams barred from a river.

Why did the destruction of Skender affect me more than the horrors of the Peoples’ Wars?

Was it because this was my crucible, and the Skenderis, though I’d forsaken them all these years, were still of my own ethnicity?

Or because I knew there was no reprieve for me and, therefore, to perish under the same sky as my people, indeed, as my father, Anibal, would be my most honest achievement?

Sofi always disagreed when I told her we’d all been allotted a decaying star at birth.

But Sofi, I am right, I am right.

So I trudged on. An Odysseus praying for the sleep of the earth.

I banished the thought. I didn’t want oblivion. Not yet. I wanted wakefulness, awareness. I wanted to embrace life. And to live it decently, truthfully. If I could turn myself round a few degrees and raise enough pith, I might become what I would have wanted to be; or, at the very least, discover whether, as Sofi once told me, I could have chosen a finer path out of the forty allocated to every person.

I started to feel uneasy. One of those churnings of the stomach I’d acquired during the Peoples’ Wars warning me of impending danger. I surveyed the area. My neck, an equally dependable antenna, sizzled.

I’m not afraid of dying. I know that large parts of me have already died. So I can think of death as the polarity of my unlived life. I am even inclined to imagine it as the woman of my fantasies who would make love to me for all eternity, living and dying with me time after time after time. What makes that illusion ridiculous is the fact that Death is never merciful; it never shrouds a person without humiliating him.

But I have accepted that paradox.

There is beauty in the world. And where there is beauty, there is goodness. And though that world of goodness has never opened its doors to me, I believe it exists because Sofi assured me it did. I’ve had intimations of it – even the odd glimpse.

I walked more quickly. Despite my years, I’m pretty fit – thanks to the Peoples’ Wars. Not long ago, a woman I slept with said I looked ageless, like driftwood.

I love women. If I could, I’d give all I have to a woman.

But what would I be offering her? How can I say: take me; have all of me? What is there in me of any worth? What I’d really be saying is: please, make me live; I don’t want me for myself; I don’t know how to live. What woman would want such a burden? When I was still a doctor, when I treated wounded soldiers, and some of them looked upon me as God – waited, with unwavering faith, for me to heal them even when Death was closing their eyes – I persistently buried my feelings. All that interested me, I admonished myself, were their broken bodies and the possibility, if any, of repairing them.

What woman would want a man so lost to life?

Sofi. Sofi would have.

She’d have said: what sense is there in a life without feelings? What’s more sublime than being able to give yourself to another so that you can receive all that the other can give? That’s what bestows meaning onto Creation.

The presentiment of danger flared again. Instinctively, I dropped my bag, threw myself to the ground and rolled to the side of the road as a shot whistled past.

I scrambled towards the fields.

Instinct rather than good judgement propelled me to dive into a ditch. I swallowed mouthfuls of slime. I had taken cover in one of the abandoned irrigation channels.

When under fire, both the best and the worst move to escape from the enemy is to seek cover in water. A deep stretch gives some chance of swimming away from danger. Conversely, water is also the first place attackers search. And heaven help you if you’re caught wading; there’s no way you can dart out of the water and rush at your pursuers.

I had no choice. Keeping my head just above the slime, I moved away from the direction of the gunfire.

I trundled about fifty metres.

At a point where a cluster of bulrushes rose from the channel, I paused. There had been no other shots so I raised my head and looked about me.

There wasn’t much to see. The fields had been reclaimed by coarse grass.

In the far distance, a man on a horse was galloping towards the Citadel.

I assumed he was the gunman. But why had he fired on me? Perhaps, as Kokona had suggested, an enemy of the Goras, pursuing a feud? But how could he have known I was back? Or known who I was? Even Kokona hadn’t recognized me.

I turned round to climb out of the ditch when I became aware of a presence: a sheepdog, crouched, panting and alert as if it were ready to herd a flock. Next to it, I saw a man’s legs in loose pantaloons – the sort Skenderis prefer – but with smart, shiny city shoes.

I looked up.

The man was pointing his rifle at my head.

Fine-looking, fair-haired despite his severely cropped hair. Unusually for the islanders, no moustache. Though there were some deep lines on his forehead, he had the smooth, effeminate skin of the bald. About mid-thirties. He was wearing a striking coat, the traditional garb for funerals, black but elaborately embroidered, which, as with his shoes, looked new. And he had a large poacher’s bag slung over his shoulders like a bandolier.

I raised my hands.