Royal Corps
of Signals
Dud's
Army.
Chapter
13
Paramali
Paramali,
I discovered, was both camp and village, the former assuming the name of the
latter. The Turkish Cypriot village lay about five miles west of Episkopi and
around half of that distance inland from the sea. The Royal Signals camp was
placed on a nearby hillside nearly a mile from a superb sandy beach with a long
jetty running seaward from it into the deeper water. The camp was exclusively
Army and contained some very large, sophisticated, “heavy,” radio
equipment housed in a high-ceilinged, air-conditioned building the size of a
small aircraft hanger. Nearby stood the pylon supports for the widely-dispersed,
rhombic antennas - sign of the installation‘s long-distance activity.
A single line of immaculately arranged, four-man tents faced the corrugated-tin
cookhouse. A modest recreation hall and gravelled square completed the picture.
The guarding of the camp was given over to a contingent of Sherwood Foresters
and their savage dogs. They patrolled the barbed wire perimeter through the
night. The camp population was a quarter that of 280SU, maybe less; I never
saw them assembled as a body.
There was nothing slack or sloppy about this camp, in fact,
it would be difficult to find a more serious place and work-dedicated bunch
of people. As soon as one approached the warily-guarded entrance it became clear
that one had better have the right credentials for entry. An incongruity at
the gate, however, was to invariably find the donkey belonging to the Mayor
of Paramali village tethered to a stake set there for this purpose. His Worship
would commute to the camp each morning, finding regular employment in the kitchen.
I suspect this arrangement was as politically convenient to the Army as it was
in practical terms to the cooks.
I was never told why I was sent to Paramali or exactly what
it was the equipment there actually did. By way of employment each day I found
myself taking a series of readings from the instruments mounted on the faces
of the eight-foot tall equipment cabinets, all the while covered in goose bumps
from the unaccustomed, air-conditioned chill in the air. By this time we were
wearing KD. It’s quite likely that the doings of Paramali were secret,
even top secret, so I’d be the last one to be advised on the goings on
there. But it was mind-numbing work for me; the donkey at the gate could have
done as much.
The two dominant recreational pastimes of the Paramali Signals
residents were chess and bingo, neither of which appealed much to me although
I joined in with a will. There was no place to play football. I did find one
bloke who would occasionally brave the one-mile hike to the beach to go swimming;
other times I went by myself. The path there was a dusty, stone-wracked track
with the odd carob tree marking the way. These trees, I discovered, sported
black, gnarled pods which proved very tasty to chew on. One needed to be wary
of the little black seeds within as they were as hard as the hobs of hell. It
wasn’t until much later I learned that the seeds were not only edible
but were frequently used for paternoster beads.
Paramali beach was about a mile long and as primitive and deserted
a shore line as one might ever find. Great banks of dried out seaweed and grasses
lay about all over the place. When there by myself I’d comb the entire
length looking for anything of interest or use. I swam from there, of course,
but it was invariably windy - exceptionally so, creating such a turbulence of
waves and whitecaps the business was rendered uncomfortably boisterous. This
kind of weather probably discouraged the majority of the camp people from going
there, although for sailing one could not have found better. The jetty was boring,
in that it was featureless and never attracted boats or any other kind of visitation.
One could always dive off the end of it but that was the extent of its attraction
for me. In the dozen or so times I visited that beach alone I never saw another
human figure there. It was the sort of place where if one ever found a footprint
in the sand one would have cast about for a Man Friday. The whole area seemed
to provoke a sense of loneliness.
The Sherwood Foresters were an interesting bunch and if I had
known there was such a regiment I would have put down to join them. Their dogs
were the kind one sees in illustrations of Hans Anderson’s “The
Tinderbox,” with “eyes as big as teacups.” They were all very
large-headed, ugly, coloured brown and black and of the mongrel variety. The
creatures seemed eager to display their fangs and tongue-licked jaws as though
fixated on the rending of flesh. Each Forester had his own dog, and on a daily
basis would spend some time goading and agitating the others to keep the creatures’
viciousness up to par. I visited the dogs’ pens, the one paramount thought
coming to me being heaven help the enemy if called to face such an animal. In
olden days, one supposed, soldiers could be equally savage, giving rise to the
expression “dogs of war.”
It was thanks to the Foresters’ sergeant that a dozen
of us were invited to attend a wedding in Paramali village. A heifer there had
been in a difficulty delivering her first calf and the sergeant, from a farming
family in Nottingham, had saved both. The invitation to the wedding was by way
of a thank-you. So one evening a bevy of Paramali Camp’s finest piled
into the back of a ghari and set out for the village. We had an officer up front,
adding prestige to our company but probably along to keep the lid on any mayhem
that might break out from a squad of cabin-fevered, chess and bingo players.
If we were armed in any way I was not aware of it; this was exclusively Turkish
territory.
We climbed a steeply-winding, irregularly-cobbled road to enter
the village. The stone houses were small, shabby and huddled uncomfortably together
on either side of the lumpy road. Not one person was about, not even a dog.
As the grade levelled out our transport came to a stop. We were at a junction
of narrow roadways surrounded by a jumble of houses, their windows either shuttered
or curtained. No-one was about. A weathered door set in a stone arch opened
and a small, grey-headed man, his face and hands lined and burned dark from
the sun, wordlessly gestured a greeting as we climbed down from the ghari. He
smiled and nodded at us as we filed past and through the arch. Over a collarless,
white shirt he wore a tan-brown, check jacket of the sort the least fashion-conscious
of my Welsh uncles might wear while gardening. Below the belt, so to speak,
our host sported the traditional, baggy-black, salvar trousers and sandals.
Passing by one caught the faint smell of mothballs.
We were ushered into a narrow, high-walled courtyard down the
middle of which was set a sawn-board, trestle table with rough benches alongside
to sit on. The only other person there was an ancient lady. She was dressed
in an all-black dress and headscarf, seated apart at the far end of the yard.
As we filed in she took up a violin from her lap and began to play “You
Are My Sunshine.“ Eyes closed, she smiled, turning her face to us as she
played. Her music was curiously flavoured, the melody proving something of a
passenger borne along by an eastern caravan. But what a thoughtful gesture of
welcome, charming us all. One saw the lady was blind.
Following the officer’s lead we seated ourselves around
the table. Our check-jacketed host indicated we should help ourselves from the
dark brown bottles that stood on the table. He gestured, nodding and grinning.
It was clear he had no English, and equally clear we had no Turkish. The bottle
label declared the contents to be Ouzo brandy. As I poured, the word “dynamite”
was murmured, circulating zephyr-like in cautionary tones around the table.
Our host busied himself lighting and placing several paraffin lamps, their smoke
scenting the air. One drank, choked and drank again. The brandy was strong and
burned on the way down. I suddenly became aware of being a very long way from
home. I was definitely abroad.
The violin music changed to something wholly of the bazaar,
sinuous and measured, and with the violent clash of a tambourine in came a veiled
and beaded dancing girl, moving in a fashion one knew right away she would have
no trouble operating a kayak. One eased down more Ouzo and the whole scene began
to slide about in defiance of focus. That the girl favoured the officer above
the rest of us was clear, shamelessly plying her eyes and body for his attention.
We had Ouzo and he had her, confirming the theory that whether the girl is from
Darlington or Paramali she’ll spot a nig-nog from a mile away. We cruelly
enjoyed the discomfiture of the officer, encouraging the girl with our hoots
and cheers and consoling ourselves with the brandy.
We removed ourselves to the village tavern. I have no memory
of how this was effected, but all of a sudden I was there, drinking more Ouzo
brandy and dancing within the embrace of a line of white-shirted, moustachio’d
Turks. There were no ladies. We caroused there with shouts, laughter and fierce
vows of everlasting friendship. I was then ushered into a room where the wedded
pair stood, it being clear one must pin some money to the dress of the bride.
By this time I was flanked either side by fellows whose legs had not turned
to rubber and whose vision did not provide whirling kaleidoscopes of fractured
colours. The memories fade to dark.
I was loaded into the back of the ghari and clinging to the
rim of the tailgate like Chad himself, was driven back along the rocky road
to camp.
Home
. 