The Mediterranean summer heat was dry and burning.
Even here, in this shady, dusty olive grove in the back-lots of a remote village in Cyprus.
My father's village.
There was a stillness and silence, yet... I could hear a faint, spasmodic, low-fi buzz: maybe flies, or beetles. Or even the stinging gamma rays. I felt the sweat trickling down my back, like small cold slimes. Soon the buzz weakened and I refocussed on what I was seeing in front of me, not three feet away.
A songbird.
Trapped.
Entangled - in a vast fine- mesh fishing net strung across rows of olive trees.
That's what I was hearing: The aggregate death-hum of it's wings vibrating through the nylon fibres.
The bird was a tiny Black Cap Warbler - you could hide it in your fist: delicately built, shaded in every kind of grey, a short beak, white underlined black eyes.
It was desperate to extricate itself from the net, twisting and shuddering pitifully.
But I just stood there, alone in that section of the grove, unable or unwilling to act, burning with shame, watching the creature struggle, in a kind of paralysis of conscience.
I was in an invidious position.
That year, my eighty five year old father was deteriorating, and he asked me to take him back to his homeland of Cyprus for one last visit.
There were two things he ached for: the first, was to swim again in the clear Mediterranean waters of his youth, a place called Governor's Beach near Larnaca.
When we got there, it didn't go well. He was now too frail to swim, and the beach was rubbish-strewn and it's waters cloudy.
We left in a taxi to go back to the village, his silence heavy, I couldn't find any comforting words to assuage his disappointment.
There was now a focus on enabling the success of the other thing he longed for:
Governor's Beach near Larnaca. Source: iStockphoto
To eat something he hadn't tasted for over half a century: the local delicacy called "Ambelopoulia". Songbirds.
However, because of species devastation and international pressure from the European Union, the cruel practice of trapping and eating them was banned by the government.
When I told him, he plunged into despair. He wanted to leave and go back to Australia. There was nothing else for him, here, he said. He had no family or friends left - they had long passed away, or had scattered to America and Europe. Within days he started to turn into a shadow- self, weak and quiet, until I thought he wouldn't even make it on the plane.
So, I asked around.
There was this olive grove that someone owned in the hinterland, not far. We could go there. The season was finished, but the nets were still up, and you never know, there could be a straggler songbird somewhere amongst the nets. Might even be dead, so you wouldn't have to pierce it's throat with a toothpick, as was the local practice. Any restaurant or Kafeneion would know how to prepare it. Job done.
And now there I was, overheating and anxious in the olive grove, confronted with my worst fear -
And my father's heart's desire:
for me, his only son, to kill this bird and ritually present it to his deteriorating father.
A classical gesture. A rare gift. A beautiful songbird.
The only songbird in the grove.
I tried to call out, to tell my father who was searching nets in another part of the plantation, that I'd found a bird!
I'd tell him to grab it, that I couldn't kill it, that HE had to please do it. I envisioned he'd then put it in his pocket and we'd go back to the hire car and drive to the nearest grill house.
But the heat, and my mounting panic had made my throat parched and voiceless.
I heard a sound - and looked up:
My father was standing at the end of the nets in my row of trees, looking at me. Looking at the songbird.
His face broke into the widest grin, like I'd never seen before - his eyes went moist, as if he just saw his salvation and was assured. I wondered how he appeared so suddenly, at just this time. Maybe, he felt the desperate quivering noise, the humming of the wings, then the awful silence.
I loved my father, not because he was a terrific bloke, or a good provider or even a good person. He was one of those men, who were so uninvolved with the mystery of life, so indifferent to the idea of his own marriage and so lackadaisical with having a child of his own, that I found him wonderfully equipped to process a revolutionary idea of identity and status.
A songbird, a local delicacy. Source: iStockphoto
In 1989, I came out as gay and infected with HIV. At that time a fatal diagnosis. He looked at me and said:
"It's OK".
That's it. His tone was warm and... wise. I felt safe.
In his empirical universe, I imagined, disassociation, non violence and a quiet but compassionate regard (to every thing) was the default setting and I found this strangely comforting. Grounding. And kind of peaceful. Because no one else was peaceful with it in 1989. So I cut them off. All of them. Except my father. We kind of 'got on'.
He never interfered in my private life, never made adverse comments about my lack of ambition, never judged my
appearance, sex life, or attire. Instead of scorn, I found myself admiring his maverick and unique perspective.
It was a very anodyne and secure dynamic between us.
Like two chairs placed next to each other 'just so'.
We'd often sit together in his backyard garden, he'd smoke and drink the Turkish coffee I'd brew for him, and he was content to watch the trees and flowers.
For half an hour, he once studied a paper daisy I plucked from the lawn for him!
Really, I think all he ever wanted was to be left alone to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes in a nice garden and immerse himself in clear seas.
And eat a songbird one last time.
As his life was coming to a close, he wanted to go back 'home'. In the end, I think, we all end up back home, whether we want to or not.
So there we were in Cyprus...
But, when he grinned that hot afternoon, upon seeing the dying beautiful songbird, it was the only time I seared with a hatred for him. I felt somehow betrayed. And stupid.
I thought THIS TIME, his reaction was monstrous.
I saw in that moment, that at his core, there really was no humanity, no empathy, no understanding. A hollow man.
I felt like I reached the nadir of my existence amongst those sad trees that afternoon.
I had nobody left.
He, on the other hand, reached a kind of feverish happiness - the intoxicating thought of tasting that delicate once-in-a -lifetime birdy flesh!
He looked at me expectantly, shiny eyed and damp with sweat.
"Do the honors for me, son, would you? I think I'd fuck it up, my hands are shaking."
I didn't blink. I acted. I took a step, untangled and grabbed the songbird from the net, and snapped it's neck. Click! Dead. Tiny.
Soft. Like holding a bunch of cotton balls.
It lay in the palm of my hand, still unbelievably a thing of great and exquisite beauty......
There's this effect in Chekhov's famous play , The Cherry Orchard, where the sound of an axe finally felling the ancient, noble cherry orchard is a symbol of a breaking with the past, with a severing of the status quo. With a terrible revolution. Death of an empire.
As my father came over and we both gazed with awe at the little dead creature in the palm of my hand, I came to a realization:
With my cowardly and cognisant act of killing the songbird, I was truly lost.
This is the joint runner up of the 2021 SBS Emerging Writers' Competition, chosen from nearly 4000 entries on the topic of 'Between Two Worlds'.
