The Mosque of Timna

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A vignette, focusing on a British ex-serviceman, retired in Morocco finally going off the rails with dramatic consequences

The Mosque of Timna by Tina Bexson

David Skinner positioned his rifle between two jagged edges of lilac quartz rock and concentrated on calculating the lines of fire on a point below him. He had rec-ed this exact spot each day for the last two weeks, studying the lay of the land, the position of the morning sun, the direction of the wind. His preparations had been quite meticulous.

A stream of sweat began to sting his eyes and obscure his vision. Settling back on his haunches, he took an uncustomary rest. Although he had decided to save the soft water he had so lovingly collected from the spring during his climb up the slippery mountain range, he felt too weak, too parched to wait any longer.  Guzzling from a flask, he gazed down at the view and noted how everything looked just as it had done when he had first arrived in the Ameln Valley with his wife five years ago.

Immediately below, the villages were scattered haphazardly on the lower mountain slopes between the spring line and the valley floor. Where they followed the contour lines and irrigation canals, the sporadic orchards of almond trees appeared as thick clouds of camouflaging pink blossom. The houses which also appeared pinkish were constructed with layers and layers of red rock and sand, and fewer larger, thicker lines of white quartz stones to provide strength and stability. Some of the houses had delicate and intricate touches of Moorish influence but these he noticed were usually the oldest houses which had all too often began to crumble away. The mosques though continued to remain the best maintained and most brightly painted buildings in every village.

Hovering in the minaret towering above the mosque of Timna, the village nearest to him, David spotted the outline of a figure. He fitted the telescopic sight and zoomed in to find the muezzin sipping mint tea before he began adhan, the call to prayer.

He had always found the sound of the call soothing. He remembered the time his wife had laughed affectionately when he told her that the reason why he had thought each of the dozen or so villages calls for prayer began a few seconds after those of their neighbouring village was because the muezzins’had not set their watches in unison. When he realised it was because they were listening out for their neighbour’s crier’s chants as a signal to start their own, David had felt a moment of joy that he decided not to share with his wife. From that point on he always thought of the first chant as acting like an oratory version of a flickering beam gradually lighting up the whole valley. It meant each isolated village was in a regular stream of communication in a way a set time or a phone call could never produce.

By now, he thought, she’d usually have Houssine trailing behind her on her walk to the orchard, the ends of his djellaba caressing his ankles. But David had studied the Islamic calendar and knew today was Mouloud, the beginning of the festival to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. Equivalent to Christmas for Christians, it was one of the most significant dates on the Islamic calendar. Everyone would attend prayer at their local mosque instead of relying on the usual trusted spot facing Mecca in their houses or places of work. Houssine would be one of a few men present since most emigrated to work in the grocery and hotel trade in Casablanca or Tangier while the women stayed at home to farm the land. David used his sight to scan the fields beyond the village for clusters of women. Like majestic insects rotating in a near perfect circle picking lavender grass and depositing it in the baskets enveloping their backs. But the fields were empty. They must already be making their way along the track back to the mosque.

He knew that once midday had passed and the sun began its gradual tilt downwards, adhan would commence for the second prayer of the day. By then, he hoped, his wife would be on the outskirts of the village, safely tucked away in the orchard, ambling towards the spring. As she usually did with Houssine after they’d chatted and occasionally dipped into his copy of the Quran, she would be about to start the task of gently weeding and watering the circle of small flowers the villagers had planted next to the pounding water.

He had a while yet, but he would have to be prepared. He had not managed to get hold of a silencer, and although the call for prayer would camouflage the sound of the gun, it only lasted a few minutes.

He stood up to carefully re-position the Lee Enfield Mark 5 rifle between the two jagged edges of rock.

He had managed to steal the old British army rifle from an elderly farmer who left it unhidden in a tiny cave at the bottom of the mountain. It would have been used to shoot ground squirrels and he knew he was taking the man’s livelihood along with his rifle. The beautiful reddish-grey creatures with their single broad white stripe down their left side were on sale hanging from arms of children gathered at the roadside. Having survived on a diet of argon nuts, they made a succulent sweet Tagine as long as they were killed by a bullet to the head rather than the belly.

He could not concentrate. Something had hindered him and the task at hand had eluded him again. He re-adjusted the telescopic sight and re-calculated the lines of fire. He pushed the cartridges in, pulled the bolt back then moved it forwards. The clicks were reassuring. This methodical process of loading weapons had been missing in the army. There they had primarily used Self Loading Rifles though these had proven invaluable on the streets of Belfast and on the windswept islands of Las Malvinas. Exactly where he’d last fired a weapon, David was uncertain. He had started to recall many incidents during his last few years of active service but none of these recollections felt satisfying or substantial to him anymore. Instead, he found himself looking further back. To the time he took his first shot.

‘My little warrior’, that’s what his father had said to wake him on that special day so many decades ago, his mouth still reeking of the night, his brown flying jacket freshly buttered with saddle soap. ‘How’s my fucking little warrior boy?’ Then, on a flat frosty shooting range in rural Essex, his father had leant over his shoulders and teased his thin arms and frozen hands over the Purdey double barrel. Once his reluctant trigger finger was re-positioned, the target – a solitary clay pigeon in the form of an inverted, fluorescent orange saucer – was thrown from an airborne styled ‘trap’. The ten-year old had experienced an unexpected excitement and unknown urgency. With the trigger pulled clear, David had reeled under the recoil, but kept focused, anticipating the pieces of pitch and pulverised limestone rock splintering and cascading across the milky dawn sky before tearing through the glistening white shrouds covering a cluster of elderberry trees. But there had been no cascade. The brightly painted ‘pigeon’ had continued arcing – uninterrupted. A member of his father’s entourage had hesitatingly called ‘Bird Away’ before scribbling, briefly, onto a hand-held score board.

Transfixed as he still was by his father’s suffocating sigh of despair from that day, he almost missed recognising the muezzin’s echoing bellows of ‘Allah’ as they began to emanate from the mosque of Timna. Within seconds though his telescopic sight panned in a perfect arch from the muezzin in the minaret to a point through which he swiftly picked up the orange glow of a head scarf gliding through the orchard blossom. He zoomed in on the spot between his wife’s beautiful blue-grey eyes. But his hands began to shake. And he could not understand why all of a sudden he felt so, so cold. Despite the over-bearing heat, it was as though his whole body had become encapsulated in a coffin of arctic sea ice.

To be continued.

© Tina Bexson

Jeffrey Masson and The Assault on Truth – Ars Notoria

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Tina Bexson investigates the authenticity of the work of Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis and questions its relevance in the psychoanalytic industry today

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Fifty years ago, (15th July 1974), Turkey invaded the northern part of the island of Cyprus in response to a coup against the democratically elected President, by the Cyprus National Guard who were under the command of the right wing Greek military junta in Athens

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The Sad Price of all this Beauty by TINA BEXSON

It’s springtime in Northern Cyprus and Zoro gallops swiftly through orchards of carob and olive trees, up onto the rocky paths of the Kyrenia mountains until the gothic remains of St Hilarion Castle become visible above. We catch our breath under limestone crags and look down on the lush seaward slopes where the palomino mare brings Ziya, my Turkish Cypriot companion, up to join me.

He points to a small village in the distance where Asil Nadir lived with his extended family and hefty bodyguards. The corrupt property tycoon remained a fugitive from British justice for almost 18 years. He could never once leave the island during that time. Hardly a major disaster – there’s beauty for miles in every direction – but as Ziya says, that’s not much consolation for the young pilots who flew him here. They have to spend every day of their substantially longer lives within this tiny state, populated by 160, 000 people, 40, 000 Turkish troops, a few thousand United Nations soldiers and around 17, 000 British troops along the Green line. No wonder it’s still known as a war zone in the western press.

But this tiny state is not even legal, and politically unrecognised by the rest of the world. Only Turkey provides economic support. She invaded Northern Cyprus, known now as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in response to fears of the Greeks forcing Enosis (union with Greece) after they had successfully staged a military coup on Cyprus in 1974. UN forces still patrol the length of the divide and the Turkish, and Turkish Cypriot Army are still ever present all over the north. Despite mutual empathy over earthquakes in Istanbul and Athens, no reconciliation of the Cyprus problem looks likely in the immediate future. As a result, mass tourism has yet to rear its ugly head, to the extent that most of the towns seem stuck in a time warp dictated by various stages of the conflict. There’s enough money coming in from foreign students, Turkish and UN soldiers and their visiting families to ensure things continue to tick over nicely. Most of Ziya’s family’s income is from taking soldiers out for rides at weekends.

We ride on silently, now side by side, hoofs trampling on turban buttercups glistening in the evening sun. Conversation resumes, and we are soon joking aside about all the butch soldiers falling off Ziya’s horses. Although Western women are still a novelty in the outer regions of this liberal Muslim country, they are not stigmatised, and genuinely respected by the locals, who are concerned to help as much as they can. There’s no need to rely on a shielding stream of backpackers for safety. In fact the island is refreshingly backpacker free.

But there are a number of expatriates, especially in the little fishing town of Kyrenia on the north coast which was a popular British resort of the colonial period. They now inhabit many of the homes that once belonged to Greeks both in Kyrenia and the surrounding whitewashed villages. Unsurprisingly, they are in no great rush to see any kind of reconciliation with the Greek side of the island.

Next morning driving south out of Kyrenia, through the deep green Five Finger Mountains to Nicosia, I’m met by a gigantic Turkish Flag painted into the hillside. Since Nicosia (Lefkosa to the Turks) is the capital of both the north and the south, and split through the middle by the Green Line, this flag is strategically placed to piss off the Greeks. There is though, one unique bicommunal village in the buffer zone called Pyla, where I’m told, Turkish and Greek Cypriots live side by side, how amicably is another question, so I’m trying to get a visa from the Ministry of Defence to visit.

Ushered into an under-secretaries office where the air hangs heavy with suspicion, I’m met by a man who says nothing but stands tall, self consciously pushing his jacket back to show me his enormous gun. His assistant, Gamze, says it will be a long wait.

With time to kill, I get out of tacky suburbia, and enter Kyrenia Gate, the classic entry into the traditional Turkish quarter of north Nicosia, where narrow winding streets are lined by palatial houses with their curved iron balcony’s hanging over huge doorways helping to create an atmosphere of the forties. Built after the British occupation in 1878 they now appear fragile and disordered surrounded by the wrecks of cars left from the invasion and a splattering of Ottoman houses. What wasted beauty. Many of these houses are completely shelled out, but they are still occupied, providing minimal living quarters for the city’s poorest families.

The Green line abruptly intersects one of these streets. An ugly mass of corrugated iron, bricks and barbed wire form a barrier adjacent to the dejected buildings like the Armenian church (now a military headquarters) with its bell tower protruding above the bombed out surroundings. A lonesome soldier guards this spot, lurking laconically with a big gun and a broad smile, waving to a group of his fellow men as they head off to Korhut Hamami, an exquisite fully functioning Turkish bath. Parallel to this, Turkish Cypriot teenagers crowd a little market offering very good fake Levi jeans for £6 and cut-price silver jewellery. They are unlikely to ever see the faces of their Greek Cypriot neighbours, currently playing slot machines half a mile away on the south side of the divide, amongst an array of more modern buildings.

The most magnificent building in town is The Selimiye Camii, originally a Roman Catholic cathedral and now a mosque. Clusters of the faithful congregate outside, while a few men silently and scrupulously clean their feet in a circular trough – a necessity before entering any Muslim place of worship. A soldier rinses each toe in a jet of water. It’s refreshing to see a man in uniform preoccupied with something apart from his gun. The distant view of all this from the café at the top of the Saray Hotel is enough to grab any indifferent mind. Izzet, a local shop owner joins me and speculates on the next generation soothing away the tensions. “The young have never mixed. They don’t go to school together, they don’t pray together, they are completely separate. All they know about the ‘enemy’ is the lies their parents have told them, and that goes for Turkish Cypriots too. They have also fed their children lies about the Greeks. If both communities are forced together on the rest of the island, the violence will just start up again.”

There was an attempt to let them meet back in the summer of 1997. The United Nations sponsored a bicommunal pop concert in the buffer zone to give young Greek and Turkish Cypriots their first shared experience, but it ended in total destruction. Tensions were stirred by the Greeks organising a counter concert on their side in protest at their top star performing with a favourite Turkish star. Then both sides rioted on their respective sides of the island. And due to doubtful political grumbling from both ‘parties’, the first ‘mixed’ football match in 40 years was cancelled.

The Turks blame the Greeks insistence on maintaining an air of superiority as being responsible for much of the psychological unease. Alex Chimer, a tour guide from Kyrenia blames the indoctrination of the Greek Orthodox church for installing in their children that only they can be true Cypriots. The Greeks are also accused of being intolerant of the principle of ‘live and let live’. The writer Lawrence Durrell referred to the different psychological differences in his book “Bitter Lemons”. “No Greek can sit still without fidgeting, tapping a foot or a pencil. The Turk has a monolithic poise, an air of reptilian concentration and silence.”

Durrell lived in the hillside hamlet of Bellapais when he was writing Bitter Lemons in the fifties. Its ruined Abbey is immediately striking. It is monastic, calm, and beautiful, surrounding a small courtyard lined with cypress trees where cooks are now depositing chunks of lamb kebab into clay ovens while wall eyed cats munch giblets to the soothing sounds of a trumpeter practising in the nearby church. After resting under Lawrence Durrell’s tree of idleness, I head for the mountains and the setting sun.

With still no sign of a visa, its good to get a break from the politics and explore the Karpas Peninsula in the northeast, known as the panhandle, and begin with a quick detour to Kantara castle, the most isolated and spectacular of all four on the island. This is where Isaac Comnenus supposedly surrendered to Richard the Lionheart in 1191. From 940 metres in the sky and with the pastures thinning out so dramatically facing northeast, you can see the sea on both sides, and a glimpse of Syria to the east. Apart from the sporadic rumbles of cannon fire from an army camp in the distance, it is deadly silent. The air becomes thick with fog, I wait until there’s just a thick veil of creamy mist before slowly climbing down. The challenging rocks are enough to topple over anyone slightly vertiginous.

One of the few villages along the panhandle is Dipkarpaz. It’s almost entirely occupied by Greeks. The villagers’ relatives from the south side are only allowed to visit every six months when they bring over supplies. Just as the few remaining Turkish communities in Cyprus are, this remote Greek village is being squeezed to death in the slow process of ethnic cleansing. Their place of worship is the nearby Apostolos Andhreas Monastery, one of the few buildings still in Greek hands. There’s Turkish Cypriot police post here, but it consists solely of a little Turk sitting outside at a rusty table collecting visitors signatures in a shredded book while fifty cats scamper around his feet. The cats belong to the ancient Greek woman who, if she feels inclined, will take visitors down to the 15th c. Gothic chapel situated beneath the monastery right by the shore. With a gigantic key she leads me there and proudly points out a painting of the ‘apostolos Andhreas’ (apostle St Andrew who sailed along the coast of Cyprus during a journey from Palestine and saved a ship’s captain dying of thirst by directing him to a spring on Cape Andhreas. The Captain paid his thanks by building the monastery.) But I’m more interested in the effigies and could willingly curl up with them guarding me for the night. Dozens of these human and animal wax models line each wall staring at you from every direction. The effect is hypnotic. The old woman soon gets restless and mutters frantic prayers to St Andrew, perhaps apologising for my morbid curiosity.

The beaches on the final strip of the Karpas are splendid and completely uninhabited. Few bother to visit, apart from loggerhead turtles to lay their eggs. It’s easy to get stranded here, and with the dodgy assortment of hire cars on offer, is not worth the risk of driving back to civilisation at night. The solitary Teresa Hotel, is one of only two in the area, and the owner seems non fazed by a westerner’s inability to converse in Turkish. He ushers me onto a wooden stool in front of a roaring fire to eat the best meal I’ve had on Cyprus – red snapper fresh that day, with a basket of rich Turkish bread encrusted with sesame seeds, washed down with a wee bottle of Raki. I sleep to the soothing sound of a roaring sea in a gentle storm with a belly full of burning alcohol.

Next day is a mess. The storm had gathered momentum in the night so I drive back carefully hugging the south east coast, stopping off at Ayias Trias. The remains of this early Christian church stand amid foundations of a three-aisle basilica of the 7th century, and a well-preserved mosaic pavement with bizarre geometric patterns that shine in the splattering rain. Unfortunately, it is also being eroded. No EU money is available for preservation. The International Archaeological community boycotts Northern Cyprus.

With visa in hand, and Gamze by my side, the time has come to finally visit Pyla. Located in the buffer zone between the TRNC, and the Greek Cypriot Administration in the South, it is a remnant of the more than 300 mixed villages that used to exist at the beginning of the century. The cultural, religious and linguistic differences between the two communities eventually led to the gradual vanishing of bicommunal settlements. The differences also had an ingrained psychological element that is still evident in Pyla. However the Greeks solution to the islands troubles is another bicommunal federation, and they point to Pyla as a model of peaceful and harmonious co-existence.

The village focuses on a large square with predominantly Turkish Cypriot establishments on one side and Greek Cypriot ones on the other. A hostile ambience seems old and jaded. We head for a Turkish Cypriot cafe come craft shop to meet the owner, Sonbil Tselebi. As we chat, a number of tourists stroll across the square and head straight for the Greek cafe to enjoy shish kebabs with Greek coffee. Sonbil says these tourists, entered Pyla from the south. They flew to Larnaca to holiday on the Greek controlled side of the island that’s more popular with foreigners. (Since the north side is not internationally recognised as a legal state, no one can fly there without touching down in Turkey first). They didn’t enter Sonbil’s shop because, if they had bought anything it would have been seized by Greek Cypriot police as they passed back through the southern exit of the village into Greek occupied territory. They would also have been fined. If they were Greek Cypriots, they would have been imprisoned.

Sonbil is also chairman of the Pyla Turkish Football Club. He has few members, but all are determined not to be intimidated by their sneering Greek peers. Sonbil is a huge football fan and distressed by the sporting sanctions against the TRNC. “The situation is very demoralising for our men – knowing that they cannot take part in any international sporting events.”  80-year-old bachelor, Mehmet Sakalli has lived in Pyla all his life. He can’t see how any future agreement will change anything because, he says, “No one knows how to mix. Even within Pyla, where I have been living side by side with Greeks all my life, no deep friendships have emerged. There are no mixed marriages; we never visit each other’s cafes; or have any deep conversations.”

None of the Greek Cypriots in the village will talk to us. As we start to wonder off to see the rest of the village, a stout Turkish woman emerges from her antique shop. She has been watching us since we arrived. She says everyone immediately knows ‘whose side you are on’. I had entered the village from the Northern side and had a rental car from Kyrenia (the number plate gave this away), so the Greeks would not trust me. The Turkish Cypriots of Pyla were so willing and almost desperate to talk since they only trusted visitors coming from the TRNC, of which there seems to have been very few.

We leave the cafe and have a final wander around the village. There are no separate living quarters in Pyla – only a Turkish street here and a Greek street there. Even the two ethnic schools are right next to each other and so to the infrequent visitor this reinforces the Greek depiction that Pyla is a worthy example of ethnic mixing. But an eerie atmosphere hints of things not quite being what they seem. It’s difficult to imagine how the more psychological splits between the two communities will ever be sealed.

Gamze suggests we meet her ‘friend’ Hasan for lunch in Famagusta. Gamze was married with a child up until two years ago. Then her brother died of a brain tumour and the trauma subsequently destroyed her marriage. She is now divorced. Hasan is an old family friend and her gynaecologist. He delivered her daughter by caesarean section. He is twenty years older than her. He is also her lover. This is a massive taboo within Muslim society, she says.

Hasan the secret gynaecologist lover looks old, but not tired. He is small, tanned, with a round mischievous face sporting the obligatory Turkish moustache. He drives us back to Famagusta via the Monar orange warehouse which belongs to a relative of his. He is proud of this small enterprise where we watch a gaggle of giggling women pack thousands of oranges into crates for export to Russia, via Turkey of course to avoid the international embargoes on exporting and importing. It seems ironic that the Russians are simultaneously purchasing Northern Cypriot oranges while selling hi tech weapons to the Greeks to empower them in the ongoing struggle with Turkey.

Between Pyla and Famagusta, lie the excavations of Salamis, a sprawling mass of Roman baths, columns, the tiers of an amphitheatre, and the glistening stone of an ancient harbour shimmering beneath a shallow sea. The latter are the least obvious remains, but they most lend themselves to the imagination.

Overdoses of history always draw you to reminders of the 21st century, so I bypass the ancient walls of Famagusta for the pink and white solitary concrete mass of the Palm Beach Hotel, Asil Nadir’s only profitable business, infamous for its casino. The lobby is crammed with trolleys of cream cakes, which tend to go stale as the clientele here are hungry only for gambling. I blag my way onto the roof to catch a glimpse of Varosha, the forbidden city that now marks the divide from the east.

Right across the island, cities and villages are stuck in various time warps dictated by different stages of conflict. Varosha is nothing more than a stranded Greek tourist town of the seventies, steadily crumbling onto the beach in no-mans-land. Since the 1974 Turkish Peace Operation saw it sealed off, the world’s press has only once been granted permission to prowl around this ghastly ghost town. Stories abound of plagues of mutant rats and snakes now occupying the empty buildings, many of which still contain all their previous owners’ possessions exactly as they left them the day they fled. Rotting pots of honey, cracked crockery, and withered plants litter the breakfast tables, while insect infested clothes still hang in closets.

Its time to visit Northern Cyprus before any agreement brings with it the inevitable destruction of a place that is still largely undiscovered.

(ENDS)

Recommendations and tips:

Flight via Turkey. Be prepared for a long journey to Northern Cyprus. Since the TRNC is only recognised by Turkey, there are no direct flights. All flights stop at Istanbul first and are thereby transformed into international Turkish flights. Or fly to Nicosia International Airport, get a taxi to the Ledra Palace/Lokmacı Crossing which allows pedestrians to move between the Republic of Cyprus-controlled south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus-controlled north. It is open to pedestrians only.

Try to learn the Turkish names of places on Northern Cyprus as well as the Greek. It goes down well with the locals if you remember to refer to Nicosia as Lefkosa, Kyrenia as Girne, Famagusta as Gazimagosa.