Songbirds Read online

  Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. She is a lecturer in creative writing at Brunel University. Her previous novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, is an international bestseller, selling over half a million copies worldwide.

  For Marianne

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  Letter from Author

  Reading Group Questions

  Copyright

  1

  Yiannis

  O

  NE DAY, NISHA VANISHED AND turned to gold. She turned to gold in the eyes of the creature that stood before me. She turned to gold in the morning sky and in the music of the birds. Later, in the shimmering melody of the maid from Vietnam who sang at Theo’s restaurant. Later still, in the faces and voices of all the maids that flowed along the streets like a turbulent river of anger, demanding to be seen and heard. This is where Nisha exists. But let’s go back. We need to go back.

  2

  Petra

  T

  HE DAY NISHA DISAPPEARED WE went to the mountains. The three of us put on our hiking boots and waited for the bus that goes up to Troodos, which comes just twice a day. Nisha would normally go out on her own on Sundays but this time, for the first time, she decided to come along with Aliki and me.

  Oh, it was beautiful up there! The autumn mist mingled with the ferns and pines and twisted oaks. These mountains rose from the sea when the African and European tectonic plates collided. You can even see the Earth’s oceanic crust. The rock formations, with their veins and lava pillows, look like they are wearing snake skins.

  I love thinking about beginnings. Like that story my aunt used to tell in the back garden: When the Creator finished his creation of the world – Petra, are you listening?! – he shook the remaining clumps of clay from his hands and they fell to the sea and formed this island.

  Yes, I love thinking about beginnings. I don’t like endings, though I suppose I’m like most people in that. An ending can be staring you right in the face without your knowing it. Like the last cup of coffee you have with someone when you thought there would be many more.

  Aliki played with leaves as Nisha and I sat beneath the heater at one of the small taverns on the trail we were taking, and drank coffee. I remember the conversation we had.

  Nisha had been unusually quiet, stirring her coffee for some time without drinking it. ‘Madam,’ she said, suddenly, ‘I have a question to ask.’

  I nodded and waited while she shifted in her seat.

  ‘I would like to take tonight off to—’

  ‘But Nisha, you had the whole day off !’

  She didn’t speak again for a while. Aliki was gathering armfuls of the leaves and placing them on a bench. We both watched her.

  Nisha had decided to spend her free day with us, to join Aliki and me on this trip. I shouldn’t be expected to give her more time off.

  ‘Nisha,’ I said, ‘you have all day off on Sunday. In the evening, you have things to do. You need to help Aliki get her bag ready for school, and then put her to bed.’

  ‘Madam, many of the other women have Sunday night off too.’ She said this slowly.

  ‘I know for a fact that other women are not allowed to go gallivanting around at night.’

  She acted like she hadn’t heard this and said, ‘And I don’t think madam has plans tonight,’ giving me a sly look before returning her gaze to the coffee. ‘So maybe madam could put Aliki to bed just for tonight? I will do extra duties next Sunday to make up for it.’

  I was about to ask her where she intended to go; what was so important that she was willing to disrupt our routine. Perhaps she saw the disapproving look in my eyes, but there was no time for either of us to say anything because at that moment an avalanche of leaves was released over our heads. Nisha screeched, making a pantomime of it, waving her hands in the air and chasing Aliki, who was slipping away down a path that led into the woods. I could hear them after a while in the forest, like two children, laughing and playing, while I drank my coffee.

  *

  By the time we got home that evening, Nisha hadn’t mentioned again taking the night off. She made dhal curry, and the house filled with the smell of onions and green chillies, cumin, turmeric, fenugreek and curry leaves. I looked over her shoulder as she sautéed the onions and combined the spices with the split red lentils, finally adding a splash of coconut milk. My mouth was watering. Nisha knew this was my favourite dish. I lit the fire in the living room. It had rained earlier that afternoon and from the living-room window I could see that Yiakoumi opposite had his canopy open, and the cobbled streets glimmered beneath the warm lights of his antique shop.

  We do not have central heating, so we sat as close as we could to the flames with the bowls of dhal curry on our laps. Nisha brought me a glass of sweet zivania – the aromatic type with caramel and muscat, so warming on this chilly night – and tested Aliki on the nine times table.

  ‘Seven times nine?’ Nisha said.

  ‘Sixty-three!’

  ‘Good. Nine times nine?’

  ‘Eighty-one! And there’s no point in doing this.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘But you haven’t practised.’

  ‘I don’t need to. You just have to see the pattern. If you ask me what seven times nine is, I will know that the answer begins with a six. I know that the second number is always one lower than the previous one. So, eight times nine is seventy-two.’

  ‘You’re too cheeky for your own good, you know? I’m going to test you anyway.’

  ‘Go ahead. If it helps you.’ Aliki sighed and shrugged as if she had resigned herself to this pointless fate of learning something that she already knew. She had every bit the spunk of a nine-year-old girl.

  Yes, I remember it all very well, the way that Aliki was munching and yawning and shouting out the answers, the way that Nisha kept her attention on my daughter, saying hardly a word to me. The TV flickered in the background. The news was on with the volume turned low: footage of refugees rescued by coastguards off one of the Greek islands. An image of a child being carried to the shore.

  I would have forgotten all of this, but I have been over it again and again, like retracing footsteps on the sand when you have lost something precious.

  Aliki lay on her back and kicked her legs up in the air.

  ‘Sit up,’ Nisha scolded, ‘or you will be sick in your mouth. You’ve just eaten.’ Aliki made a face but she listened: she perched on the sofa and watched TV, her eyes moving over the faces of people as they trudged out of the water.

  Nisha refilled my glass for the third time, and I was starting to get sleepy. I looked at my daughter then; a monster of a child, she’s always been too big for me, even her curly hair is too thick for me to get my hands around. Curls so thick, like the tentacles of an octopus; they seem to defy gravity, as if she lives in an underwater world.

  In the light of the fire, I noticed that Nisha’s face was pale, like one of thos
e figs blanched in syrup that have lost their true colour. She caught my eye and smiled, a small, sweet smile. I shifted my gaze over to Aliki.

  ‘Do you have your bag ready for school?’ I asked.

  Aliki’s attention was on the screen.

  ‘We are doing it now, madam.’ Nisha got up hastily, gathering the bowls from the coffee table.

  My daughter never really spoke to me anymore. She never called me Mum, never addressed me. At some point a seed of silence had been sowed between us and it had grown up and around and between us until it became almost impossible to say anything. Most of the time, she would talk to me through Nisha. Our few conversations were functional.

  I watched Nisha as she licked a handkerchief and wiped a stain off Aliki’s jeans and then took the bowls and spoons to the kitchen. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the trip up to Troodos, but I was feeling more tired than usual, a heaviness in my mind and my limbs. I announced that I was going to bed early. I fell asleep straightaway and didn’t even hear Nisha putting Aliki to bed.

  3

  Yiannis

  T

  HE DAY THAT NISHA VANISHED, before I even realised she’d gone, I saw in the forest a mouflon ovis. I thought it was odd. These ancient sheep, native to the land, are wild and rare. With a yen for solitude, they usually roam secluded parts of the mountains. I’d never seen one on flat terrain, never this far east. In fact, if I told anyone that I saw a mouflon on the coast, nobody would believe me; it would make national news. I should have known at the time that something was wrong. A long time ago, I understood that sometimes the earth speaks to you, finds a way to pass on a message if only you look and listen with the eyes and ears of your childhood self. This was something my grandfather taught me. But that day in the woods, by the time I saw the golden ovis, I’d forgotten.

  It began with a crunch of leaves and earth. A late October morning. I’d returned to collect the songbirds. I’d driven out to the coast, west of Larnaca, near the villages of Alethriko and Agios Theodoros where there are wild olive and carob groves and plantations of orange and lemon trees. There is also a forest of dense acacia and eucalyptus trees – an excellent spot for poaching. In the small hours of the morning, I’d put out the lime sticks – a hundred of them strategically placed in the trees where the birds come to feed on berries. I’d also hidden amongst the leaves devices that played recordings of calling birds, to lure my prey. Then I found a secluded spot and lit a fire.

  I used olive branches as skewers and toasted haloumi and bread. I had a flask of strong coffee in my backpack and a book to pass the time. I didn’t want to think about Nisha, of the things she had said the night before, the stern look on her face when she left my flat, the tightness of the muscles in her jaw.

  These thoughts fluttered around me with the bats and I waved them away, one by one. I warmed myself and ate and listened to the birdsong in the dark.

  So far, it was a normal hunt.

  I fell asleep by the fire and dreamt that Nisha was made of sand. She dissolved before me like a castle on the shore.

  The rising sun was my calling. I had a last shot of coffee to wake myself fully and threw the rest on the fire, then stamped out the remaining flames and forgot about the dream. The thick woods began to stir, to wake. I usually make more than 2,000 euros for each hanging, and this one was a good one – there were around two hundred blackcaps stuck on the lime sticks. They are worth more than their weight in gold. Tiny songbirds migrating from Europe to Africa to escape the winter. They fly in from the west, over the mountains, stopping here on our island before heading out to sea, towards Egypt. In the spring, they make the return journey, coming from the southern coast. They are so small that we can’t shoot them. They’re also endangered, a protected species.

  I was always frightened at this point, looking over my shoulder, expecting that this time I would be caught and thrown in jail. I’d be totally screwed. This was always my weakness – the fear, the anxiety I felt before killing the birds. But the woods were quiet, no sound of footsteps. Just the birdsong and the breeze through the tree branches.

  I removed one of the attached birds from the stick, gently prying its feathers from the glue. This one had tried hard to free itself, it seemed. The more they try to escape, the more stuck they get. I held it in my palms and felt its tiny heart racing. I bit into its neck to end its suffering, and dropped it, lifeless, into a large, black bin-liner. This is the most humane way to kill them – a quick, deep bite to the neck.

  I’d filled up the first bag and begun to remove the feathers and berries from the lime sticks with my lips so I could reuse them, when I heard the crunch of leaves.

  Shit. I froze for a moment and held my breath. I scanned the surroundings and there it was, in a clearing between the bushes. The mouflon was calmly staring at me. It stood in the long shadows of the trees and it wasn’t until the light shifted that I saw the most extraordinary thing: instead of the usual red and brown, its short-haired coat was gold; its curved horns, bronze. Its eyes were the exact colour of Nisha’s – the eyes of a lion.

  I thought I must be dreaming, that I must still be asleep by the fire.

  I took a step forward and the golden mouflon took a small step back, but its posture remained straight and strong, its eyes fixed on mine. Moving slowly, I removed my backpack from my shoulders and took out a slice of fruit. The mouflon shuffled its feet and lowered its head so that its eyes now looked up at me, half-wary, half-threatening. I placed the slice of peach in my palm and held out my hand. I stayed like that, as still as a tree. I wanted it to come closer.

  Seeing the beauty of its face, a memory came to me, sharp and clear. Last March, Nisha and I had gone to the Troodos mountains. She loved to go for long walks on Sunday mornings when she wasn’t working. She’d often come with me into the forest to pick mushrooms, wild asparagus, blue mallow or to collect snails. On this day, I had wanted to see if we could spot a mouflon ovis. I hoped that we would see one in the depths of the woods or the verge of the mountains, at the threshold to the sky. We were so high up and she slipped her hand in mine.

  ‘So, we’re looking for a sheep?’ she’d said.

  ‘Technically, yes.’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty of sheep.’ There was a mocking smile in her eyes.

  ‘I told you, it doesn’t look like a sheep! It’s a magnificent creature.’

  ‘So. We’re looking for a sheep that doesn’t look like a sheep.’ She was holding her hand over her eyes, scanning the area around us, pretending to look.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, matter-of-factly.

  This made her laugh and her laughter escaped into the open sky. I felt in that moment that she had never been a stranger.

  We’d been walking around for hours and were about to turn back, as the evening was closing in, when I suddenly spotted one standing at the edge of a steep cliff. I could tell it was female as it had smaller curved horns and no ruff of coarse hair beneath its neck. I pointed so that Nisha could see.

  The mouflon saw us and faced us straight on.

  Nisha stared at it in amazement. ‘It’s so pretty,’ she said. ‘It looks like a deer.’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Nothing like a sheep.’

  ‘See!’

  ‘Its fur is smooth and brown . . . and such a gentle look on its face. It’s like it’s going to speak to us. Doesn’t it look like it wants to say something?’

  I didn’t reply and instead watched Nisha watch the animal, her face bright with curiosity.

  There was a flash in her eyes, as if the colours of the forest shone through them, as if some secret energy, some nimble animal hiding amongst the trees, had suddenly come to life. She let go of my hand and took a few steps towards the mouflon. Strangely, it stepped away from the edge of the cliff and came slightly closer. I had never seen one approach a human before. Nisha was so gentle in the way she stretched out her hand, in the way she waited for the animal. But there was tension in her. This was all in her eyes:
they burned with an emotion that I didn’t recognise.

  In that moment, I felt such a distance from her and the animal, like they shared something I couldn’t understand.

  However, in the next moment she turned to kiss me. One soft kiss.

  *

  Now, dawn in the forest, and the memory of that day brought a sharp pain to my heart. The mouflon ovis gazed at me, transfixed, tilting its head slightly, making a sound which was like a question. A question of a single word.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ I said, and realised suddenly how loud my voice was in the woods, how it disturbed the peace. The Ovis shook its head and took another step back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to it, this time softly.

  For the first time, it broke its gaze. It seemed to rest its eyes on the bucket of birds beside me.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame you. I’m basically a murderer offering you a peach.’ I laughed a bit, at the irony of it, as if the Ovis might share the joke.

  I threw the slice of fruit on the ground, and this time I walked backwards, retreating into the shadows and the trees. I continued to watch the mouflon from there for a while, this incredible animal, strong and beautiful. It was very still, then it looked at something over to the left and turned its back to me and walked away, into the forest.

  I removed the rest of the birds from the lime sticks as quickly as I could, so I could return home and find Nisha. I couldn’t wait to tell her what I’d seen. I was hoping that perhaps this story about the mouflon would make her shine again.

  4

  Petra

  I

  WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE of the night because something broke. I heard a crashing noise, loud and clear, like a window smashing or a glass dashed on the floor with force. The sound had come from the garden, I was sure about that. The clock on my bedside cabinet showed 12 a.m. Could it be the wind? But the night was still and apart from the sound I had heard, there was a deep silence. Maybe it had been a cat?

  I put on my slippers and opened the shutters, then the long glass doors to the garden. It was a clear night with a full moon. My house is a three-storey Venetian property in the old part of the city, east of Ledra and Onasagorou, leading to the Green Line that has divided the island since 1974. Sitting in the crystal blue waters of the eastern Mediterranean, our small island has long felt the influence of both Europe and the Middle East. We have been occupied by the Ottomans. We have been colonised by the British. And then we became a battleground between the Greeks and the Turks, our population split, until peacekeeping forces stepped in and, literally, drew the line. This partition continues to hold our island in a tentative peace, although missives about reunification are constantly in the news. Our city of Nicosa, on the Greek side, brushes the Green Line right where I live. When I was a little girl, I thought the end of our street reached the end of the world. There is no violence today with our Turkish Cypriot neighbors in the north, but it is an uneasy peace, to be sure.