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for the best in the end’, which was all he ever heard back home. The village was nestled amidst the hard stones of the mountains. Years before, the area had been a prime site for asbestos and chrome mining, but the mines had closed down when people realised why so many of their young men kept coughing themselves to death. The young men of the village were good at dying. They died doing many things: making a living, fighting wars. Statues and monuments from the various wars filled the village, which sat quaint and perfect beneath towering conifers and squat fruit trees. There were monuments from World War II, from the war against the British, the conflict with Turkey and a handful of other disputes to which Cyprus had committed the blood of its youth. Near his theo’s house was a statue to his papou’s twin, Dimitri, who had died fighting the British for independence in the 1950s. Shortly after, because everything reminded them of Dimitri, his grandparents had left for Australia with his infant mother. Many years later when Oliver was born, he would be given the middle name Dimitri in honour of his dead uncle.
    His theo Costa’s house was built on a ledge between two clear running streams, which – Oliver was delighted to discover – actually babbled. Pine trees swayed in the wind, scattering their needles across the paths, and on a quiet evening nightingales could be heard above the sound of the water. Each morning someone would offer to take him for a drive to show him the sights, hoping to receive an impromptu English lesson. Oliver would spend his afternoons ‘working’, which most days meant sitting in the little kafenio drinking strong Cypriot coffee and writing either ‘one hit wonder’ or ‘ βλακα ’ – the Greek word for moron – over and over again in his notebook. His sense of failure was compounded by the fact that this was one of the only words he knew in Greek. It made him feel like a stranger in this place that should feel like home, and this in turn made him feel like a failure in life. He kept these thoughts to himself, though, partly because he realised how absurd it had been to expect to find himself in a tiny village in the mountains halfway around the world, but mostly because he couldn’t speak Greek.
    One day he had been sitting in the kafenio with his theo Costa when a very old woman walked up to him, her eyes wide as full moons. She grasped his cheeks with her hands and said something wild and rambling. The only part he understood was the name Dimitri repeated over and over again. His theo had gently removed the woman’s bony hands and spoken to her quietly. She looked at Oliver with disbelief and backed away.
    â€˜She is not right in her memory. She thinks you are Dimitri,’ his theo said. He cocked his head. ‘You do look like Dimitri.’
    Oliver was going to say that he had always been told he looked like his papou Yianni but then realised how stupid this sounded, so he just nodded and thought about the man who had shared his papou’s DNA and been erased from this world decades before Oliver was born.

    Vespoula had been meant to marry Dimitri since they were both children. They were neighbours and best friends, and both were secretly excited when as teenagers they found out about the childhood matchmaking undertaken by their parents. But before they could marry Dimitri needed a job. They waited but work couldn’t be found. The war with the British was coming closer and closer to their village and Dimitri knew he would have to go join his cousins in the fight for independence. They found a sympathetic priest who married them in secret, and the next morning Dimitri kissed her goodbye and joined the rest of the young men. Not long after he was shot through the neck and died not far from the house that would have been theirs once the fighting stopped. When the fighting did