All that remains…
Sevgul Uludag
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Perhaps it was the smell of apricot jam cooking in big pots; perhaps it was the bright oranges or the smell of delicate flowers… Perhaps it was the salty breeze constantly coming from the bathroom window where I would stand or go to sit on the balcony where the rails were painted a light green… Perhaps it was the goldfish, looking up from the pond when I leaned down… Perhaps it was all of it, the cookies my auntie would bake with crushed almonds melting in your mouth, the long walks on the sand, the colour of cream, the smell of coconut suntan oil and the colours on the beach… It was the dream place for me, Varosha… My auntie Fattush would be busy in the kitchen, making jams of all kinds, making preserves, cooking the best food – the women from our family would be perfectionists with food – they would want to do everything by themselves and everything had to be perfect… They knew the secrets of how to prepare food not just to eat but really to enjoy…
My mother would cook roast beef on a very slow heat together with carrots and celery and onions and tomatoes – the smell would fill the kitchen, go out the door and would fill up the whole street! Cats would come and go to check and wait with hope that perhaps they would get a piece! After three hours, she would take out the roast beef from the cooker and use the stock to make pilav rice. As the rice would boil in the stock, the smell would become unbearable, making me wait impatiently for it to cook… I would come and go, come and go and ask when it will be ready and my mother would laugh and joke with me:
`You want me to go under the pot? It won't cook quicker! Don't worry, it will be ready soon…`
Then she would cover the rice with a thick towel and let it rest for 5-10 minutes… Then we would eat, with yogurt as always… The roast beef would be so delicate, it would almost melt in your mouth and the carrots and the celery would be so tasty…
My mother would make date preserves and their smell too would be unbearable – I wouldn't care much about citrus preserves but dates? Are you crazy? Who can refuse to eat date preserves?
First of all the owner of the garden, Yuksel Hanim would telephone her that soon they would cut the dates. Yuksel Hanim is the daughter of `Biyikli` (`The One with the Moustache`) who had a big garden in Chaghlayan – he had been the first to come and settle here perhaps back in the 1930s, to grow vegetables and sell and everyone on Sundays my mother would tell me would go to the `Garden of Biyikli` to watch the mules taking out water from the well and to buy vegetables from there… They had very tall date trees in the garden and we would always go to buy dates or eggs or vegetables from this garden, close to our house.
Having agreed with the daughter of `Biyikli`, my mother would go to choose the best dates with her hand to make preserves… These would be long, purple coloured dates and while watching TV she would peel them, take out the stones, throw them in a pot filled with water and lemon – she would blanche the almonds in order to fill the dates with them. She would cook the date preserve and the smell and the taste would be amazing… She would fill jars and keep them at the back of our old Prestige refrigerator… Ready to be offered to the guests.
She would always have things to offer to the guests – walnut preserves, cookies she would bake herself, biscuits for the afternoon tea, coffee, lemonade made from our tangerines mixed with oranges and lemons. She would collect the tangerines, wash them, squeeze them and then mix the juice with sugar. One cup juice, one cup sugar, that would be the measurement and I would have to stir, stir for hours, my arm getting tired, for the sugar to melt in the juice and become `lemonade`, something we would drink all summer, adding water over the thick syrup, refreshing ourselves, dipping biscuits in it to eat, cooling off from the scorching heat…
The older I grow, the more I realize I am just like my mother… The behaviour, the way I move in the kitchen, the things I do and I don't do… Things I like and things I don't like… The only thing that remains are these memories… If she had been alive, a few days ago she would have been 96, almost a century old… But she died eight years ago and I still find it hard to believe that she is not here… When someone is alive, we do not think of death, perhaps it's the last thing we would think about… We live and believe that everything would be the same but no! Life happens and death happens and we remain left behind filled with memories – memories of happy times, of sad times, of childhood, of youth, of our mothers, our fathers, our aunties, our uncles, the food we tasted as children, the places we went, the beaches where we swam, the smell of the sea, the caress of the breeze, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the rain… All of it is there, in our memory, never to leave us even if people around us die and leave us alone on this earth, waiting for our own turn to go…
I visited my auntie Fattush from Varosha last year – she now lives in Famagusta… I had not realized how my mother and she looked so much like each other, it was a shock for me – she looked so much like my mother, her hair, the way she moved, the way she sat, the way she spoke. The resemblance was so striking, I held my breath and started crying, thinking of my mother… Of course, they had been sisters, what else did I expect? I could never visit auntie Fattush again because it would be too painful… While my mother was alive, they had been close to each other, my mother going to stay with her for a few days in Famagusta…
Everything has changed now – Varosha is there like a thorn in our skin, `Biyikli's Garden` has been demolished and new apartment blocks have been built there… My mother is gone – the only thing that remains is the things she taught me: How to love the earth, how to love people, how to love the trees and the flowers, how to look at the sky every evening searching for the stars, how to cook for my loved ones wonderful meals – she even wrote a cook book for me that I keep, to help me to learn… All that remains are the memories we have of our times together, a whole life we shared with times of happiness and times of sadness…
We should hug our mothers while they are alive – once they are gone, we become real orphans on this earth…
19.9.2013
Photo: With my mother on the beach at Varosha...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 13th of October, 2013, Sunday.
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