Chapter 19
(Thessaloniki to Kastoria).















The coach’s hydraulic brakes let out stuttering hisses
to accompany the high beeps of its reversing alarm.
Sheref watched the silver dome of the Macedonia
Coach Terminal glint in the sun and slip away on
his right behind him. The ‘KTEL’ ticket office there
had informed him that the journey to Kastoria in
northwest Greece would take around four hours.
He knew that it would then be only a short taxi
ride to the nearby Albanian border. He reflected
momentarily on the morning. He had woken just
after 7.00am, paid cash and collected his passport
from the Hotel Persephone receptionist: she with
the cherry lipstick, who had again maddeningly
avoided eye contact with him. He had then waved
down a dark blue Mercedes taxi on Monastiriou
Street for the short drive to the terminal. He checked
his watch: it read 9.06am, Sunday, August 24th. The
coach was half full with passengers, all Greeks he
thought, and he had taken a seat over the rear left
wheel arch with no one immediately to his front or
right for removal from close contact with them. The
sun was already burning the left side of his head. He
drew the pleated orange curtain halfway across the
window for shade, and to psychologically fortify his
private enclosure.
















Sheref took out the road map and guidebook
from his backpack and tossed them on the empty
seat beside him. The coach began to accelerate past
tall cranes angled in the city’s port before the hazy
blue Gulf of Thermi, and billboards for concerts with
silver-moustached musicians, before filtering onto
the Via Egnatia Motorway. He slunk a little lower in
the seat and watched the oncoming flow of traffic to
his left.

A stretch of water flashed by below the roadside
fence and he checked his map. It was probably the
River Axios Vardaris, he thought. The coach shortly
began to slow and he sat up to peer forwards. Lanes
of traffic were queuing ahead into a wide row of
booths. Above them was a line of blue signs, each
with a white outline of a man wearing a flat-topped,
peaked cap like a French gendarme. He felt his
backpack pockets hastily to locate his passport. He
hunched his shoulders around himself a little and
pressed his fingers into the palms of his hands. As
the traffic edged closer to the row of rising and
falling barriers, he reassured himself that it was just
a road toll station. As they passed through, on the
right side there were parked lorries, and Kantina
vans smoking from griddle meat with chairs set
out on decks for customers. A Greek policeman
slouched on the front wing of his white car drinking
from a polystyrene cup. He rose and lifted his
mobile phone to his ear closely watching the coach
pass. When Sheref released his clench, rows of white
dimples were imprinted on his palms.

He took a gulp of mineral water from a small,
plastic bottle and splashed some over his face to
ease the heat. He ran his finger and thumb around
the edges of his top lip to clear off the sweat. He
watched the bushes blooming with pink flowers in
the lay-bys pass, and soon he was looking out across
orchards of peach trees dotted with the pulsing
sprays of water sprinklers. Away to the south, above
lower slopes darkened by forest, a high ridge of
jagged peaks rose up still tipped with snow. That,
I think, must be Mount Olympus, he observed
flicking through his guidebook: Greece’s highest
mountain, chosen by the ancients as the abode of
their gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. A pang of
yearning seemed to escape from some cavern deep
within him. His thoughts moved to Hanife and her
submission to the religion of his land, but he? Who
did he follow? Well, he had his path now with its
own motion and trajectory. Where was that coffee
shop hag’s guide: remote with Zeus, or with him?
“Haydi!” he whispered. She’d cheated him of two
good lira and laughed at his back! He took out his
camera, pointed it roughly at Olympus, and pressed
the shutter button a few times. He circled it with a
pen in the book. He glanced over the nearby entry
for the Royal Tombs of Vergina, the first capital of
Macedon, thought to house the remains of Alexander
the Great’s son, and where King Philip II was
assassinated. He circled that too for good measure.

He noticed a road sign for the town of Veria pass
on his right, and then the motorway began to climb.
The coach’s engine growled against the incline and
they passed into the shade of a road tunnel and then
another one. When they entered the third one he
began keeping count. His eyes passed over the green
lights and arrows above the lanes, the signs to turn
on headlights, and those with the tunnels’ length.
Still they kept coming and he saw that the tenth one
was 2.2km long. Here in the extended darkness he
watched the wall lights, white on his left and red
on his right, streaming past. Fans, like jet turbines,
fastened to the roof, seemed to him to be propelling
him forwards like a bullet down a barrel. Before the
thirteenth tunnel, he saw a sign saying ‘Call 1077 in
an emergency’.

The coach rocked along past a row of unmanned
tollbooths and the motorway began to descend
gradually into a wide, flat valley. They passed
under a line of pylons crossing the plain, their heads
horned and arms hanging at the elbows clutching
cables as they filed towards a distant power station.
He stared ahead. There detachments of them converged
to fetch and carry electricity. High red and
white striped chimneys rose among them, and from
a cooling tower a cloud of steam arched into the sky
like a giant question mark.

A rocky outcrop with a pinnacle like some
straying child below it passed by close to the motorway’s
edge, and soon it swept through a pass in a
range of hills running left to right. As the driver drew
off the slip road at Siatista, a squat factory chimney
made of bricks caught his eye. He checked the time: it
was just before mid-day. They now took a main road
that wound through woods and open country with
mountains, dry, brown and bare, to his right, and
hills lower and undulating to his left. He thought
he felt something like the brushing of silk pass over
the skin of his right arm. He touched it. Road works
and yellow earthmoving vehicles parked by a wide,
empty stretch of pristine tarmac came into view. A
strange new lightness of heart had come over him.
It was a feeling of wellbeing, an inner warmth not
sensed since childhood. He became aware that he
had been feeling like this for perhaps ten minutes.

He turned to see a man sitting in the aisle seat
on his right. His arms flinched slightly into his chest
with the shock. How long had he been sitting there?
How could it be that he had not seen nor heard him
come? The man was staring straight ahead and did
not look back at him. He wore a plain white T-shirt
and light fawn trousers. His black hair flowed onto
his shoulders thick and fragrant with a sweet aroma
that Sheref now breathed in. He found himself
staring at the man’s face: a strong and shapely nose
and eyes with a beauty that was almost feminine.
His nationality was not apparent: Greek, Turk or
Albanian, nor his age. Then he thought he heard the
words: “Go back to your father.” A feeling of cool
air being blown onto his cheek made him touch it.
He lifted his head to check the air-con valve but it
was off. As he did so it was as if he rose outside of
himself. Questions about what he was undertaking
seemed suddenly to touch him. Where am I going?
What is this I’m doing? Light, like the reflection of
the sun flashing off a mirror or window, caught his
eyes and dazzled him momentarily. He covered
them with his hand and then removed it. He turned
his head again to the man. He was no longer there.
He yanked himself up by the seat in front to see if
he was moving down the coach. There was no one
in the aisle.

He saw a sign with ‘Kastoria’ written on it, and
soon the road was skirting the shore of a lake on his
right-hand side. A couple of smart hotels passed by
and a warehouse with an illuminated sign above it
where a model pressed a thick fur coat to her neck.
Through gaps in the buildings he caught glimpses
across greeny-blue water to a peninsular of land with
white houses stacked up its steep sides. He scanned
the guidebook entry for the town. Kastori was Greek
for beaver, once central to the local fur trade. He
took out a pen but somehow did not follow through
in circling it.

The coach pulled up in a car park by a taxi
rank and a row of quiet shops and cafes. He looked
keenly for the man with the feminine eyes as he
disembarked, but he did not see him. He bought some
pastries from a baker’s and ate them as he stared
across a children’s playground to the lake. A couple
of swans skimmed over the water’s surface as they
landed by a patch of reeds. Wooden rowing boats
bobbed at their moorings there, one striped with the
blue and white colours of the Greek flag, with green
fishing nets draped across them.












Sheref walked to a cafe and sat in the shade of its
canopy on a low, leather sofa. The waiter set down a
bottle of mineral water, cool with condensation, on
the glass coffee table before him and he ordered an
iced latte. His mind kept returning to the man on
the bus. An odd, yet pleasant, bemusement lingered
from the incident that he was trying to process. He
took out his mobile phone and turned it on. He then
fiddled with it a little; the back light was now flickering
and the 7 button was functioning only intermittently.
He shook it and tapped it. Why had he not
fixed it? The latte was brought and he sipped it a
little and drank a glass of water. His phone began
to vibrate, rattling loudly on the coffee table glass.
It was Hanife! He looked at it for a few seconds and
then picked it up.
“Sheref! Where are you?” he heard her say anxiously.
“Why was your phone off? I’ve been trying to call you!”
“I’m in Greece…” An answer came to him: “You
know what roaming rates are like!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just drinking a coffee. There’s a… nice lake
here.”
“Don’t be angry with me… I told baba that you
were going to Albania.”
“Why did you do that?” he shouted curtly.
“He’s here.”
“What? No I don’t want to...”
“Sheref?” The sound of his father’s voice made
him screw up his eyes tightly. He’d said his name
softly, without accusation or reproach, for the first
time in so long. Sheref lowered the phone to his
chest for a moment. He swallowed. A tear welled
up and it fell with a ‘pat’ onto his thigh. He could
hear his father saying his name repeatedly, anxious
they’d been cut off.
“Yes?”
“I have… this fine new samovar… at the Bazaar.
It makes good tea… that is to say… when you have
seen those Arnavutlar.” Sheref understood what he
was trying to say.
“Yes baba,” he said. A few moments of silence
passed and Sheref pressed the red button to end the
call. He lowered his head and his shoulders shook as
he sobbed. He brushed his cheeks quickly with his
fingers, checked the receipt, and left his unfinished
latte and three euros on the table.

He walked over a patch of dry grassy ground and
then across a road to a pavement along the water’s
edge. He followed it thinking. The trees by the shore
had been painted with skirts of whitewash. There
were more cafes here with their tables arranged
under the shade of canopies, mobiles tingling above
them in the mild breeze. He passed a small boy with
a face smeared with pink ice cream rocking happily
on a child’s ride. White, timbered mansions rose
up the hillside on his left, and conifer trees clung to
the rocky hillsides around. He sat down on a bench
affected by the peace of the place. There he watched
a man casting his rod and line out across the water
and he thought of the Galata Bridge and the waters
of the Golden Horn. The high, afternoon sun blazed
off the surface, and a white sail turned slowly in
the shimmering glare and moved back towards
land. He had made a decision. He would stay here
tonight. Tomorrow, yes, let it be so, he would return
to Istanbul.











Paul Alkazraji.
Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.






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