THE CYCLADES

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The lemon trees of Sifnos

The island of Sifnos has, low season, a respectable amount of tourism: many walkers use its «kalderimi», paved paths which are, even now, used by the peasants with their donkeys or mules, to transport various materials and to get along alleyways too narrow for vehicles.

On the first day, I started by visiting Apollonia, the capital, where I slept: architecture typical of the Cyclades, terraced houses, white with blue shutters, ever present on tourist posters. I strolled, intoxicated, without knowing why, by the heady fragrance of lemon blossom, trees which bear fruit at the same time. I’ve never seen so many as at Sifnos. At one point I came across a woman of my age ; she was in rambler’s clothes so she had to be a tourist, because few Greeks are walkers.

I started a conversation : she lived in Germany and spoke several languages, including French and Russian, of which she had been a teacher. But she did not know Greek ; thus, when a resident of the village came out to sweep her doorstep, I acted as interpreter. That still thrills me and is ample reward for my assiduous efforts to learn. As I rhapsodized ( in Greek ) on the perfume of the lemon trees, this « Sifnian » told me that, returning by boat from the mainland, before even seeing her island, she discerned its scents from afar : « It’s the perfume of my birthplace » she told me. Soon I was swamped by a wave of memories : of my home in Algeria, which I left when I was ten, where I used to pass the afternoons reading, perched in the branches of a lemon tree.

The baker of Naxos

When I landed on the island of Naxos, I found a gite immediately, in the church square: Hotel Anna, the owner of which, a lady in her fifties, even spoke a little French, something unusual. I asked her the price of a room; she gave me a quick glance and said « twenty euros ». I inwardly laughed, congratulating myself for having the look of a traveller and not of a well- heeled bourgeoise.

As it was nearly two o’clock, I quickly set about finding a snack, knowing that, after this, the shops are closed until the end of the afternoon, the siesta being sacrosanct. Spotting two grandmothers with their baskets, I, asked them for the baker’s. It was too complicated to explain and they led me there, through a maze of alleyways. Greeks being curious by nature, I was entitled to expect regular interrogation and they rhapsodized about my numerous trips, they who had never left their island.

The bakery was like those of the villages: no refrigerated showcases but large cement stalls and some loaves on a wooden shelf. It was the workshop, with the stove on a throne at the back. I sat down for a moment. The baker talked about his island, and also about Milos, whose natural harbour, the biggest in the Cyclades, had sheltered the entire German fleet for the whole of the war. Then the conversation faltered a little; he took up his newspaper, abandoned on my arrival, and gave me a running commentary on some articles.

How much quality of life we’ve lost, with our enormous supermarkets where the poor check-out girls are reduced to the level of machines and cannot risk exchanging more than a few words with a customer without getting withering looks from the next ones!

The grandmothers of Ano Sagri

On the heights of Naxos, not far from the village of Ano Sagri, I went for a picnic near a little temple to Demeter in white marble, scarcely mentioned in my guide, at the end of a dirt road.

I was back at the wheel of my hire car when I came across two women dressed in black, as they often are in Greece at that age, weighed down by heavy backpacks full of wild plants. I stopped to greet them. They told me sheepishly that they were in a spot of bother : as their mobile was out of range, they couldn’t phone to get someone to fetch them. I burst out laughing because, in those days, I did not have a mobile, to the chagrin of my friends, who considered that highly imprudent when one travels alone ! Of course I offered to take them home, where they gave me a delicious meal of rice with spinach.

We chatted a long time in front of a Greek cafe ( with them one never says «a Turkish cafe » ) and I parted, dazzled as usual by this welcome, me coming from a country where one very rarely invites a stranger into one’s home.

In French we use the word « xenophobia » but the Greeks say on the contrary « philoxenia », « love of foreigners », much stronger than our insipid word «hospitality ».

The Italian of Paros

 

My trip to the southern Cyclades finished at Paros. The evening before my departure, at Perikia, the «capital», I settled myself in the square of a tiny 11th century chapel overlooking the port, to contemplate my final sunset.

Suddenly I heard an anxious voice shouting «Josephine!». It concerned a little cat whose mistress, having found her, took her up affectionately in her arms. I said to the lady, in Greek: «That’s a happy cat». She replied in English (which always irritates me, because I find it difficult to accept the hegemony of that language), then came to sit by me. As she spoke it with an accent, I asked for her nationality: she told me that she was Italian, but had been married for a long time to an Englishman, who had been dead six years. She had hit upon Paros, where many British live.

So I asked her to talk to me in Italian: four years studying this language, and teaching Latin all my career, allowed me to understand easily. She told me, sadly, that she had not had reason to use it for a very long time. «Non si dimentica la lingua materna!» (One never forgets the mother tongue) I said, to encourage her. She gave me a long account of her life, in an Italian interspersed with some English words. She had lived in Egypt, in Syria, in India…. And I immersed myself in this musical language slightly disappointed that I understood her orally much more easily than with Greek, which I had been struggling to learn for five years.

I found it such a shame to no longer use it, that I immediately decided to take it up again and then to go to Sicily for my next trip.

 

Dancing at Mega Livadi

The arrival by boat in the bay of Serifos affords one of the most beautiful panoramas of the Cyclades, with the white houses of Chora rolling right down to the sea on the barren outcrop which carries them. I devoted the

first day to visiting this village.

The next day, having done the island tour, I stopped at Mega Livadi where exist the vestiges of the port constructed in the 19th century for the neighbouring iron-ore mines: gangways, trucks, tracks, eaten away by rust since being abandoned half a century ago. These places witnessed the first successful strike in Greek history, in 1916. The workers, infuriated by their inhumane working conditions and led by the anarchic trade unionist, Speras, attacked with women and children the gendarmes sent against them by the German owner. There were seven deaths, but the miners obtained satisfaction.

Not far from an imposing neo-classical building in ruins, which had sheltered offices, was, standing on the beach, a tavern, the only one open at that season. I heard snatches escaping of a type of traditional music. I approached. A group of mixed generation were sitting round a table after their Sunday meal. It was a family or a « parea » ( bunch of friends ), the two main components of the social fabric in Greece. A violin and a bouzouki played a popular dance executed by three persons weighed down by their years. Traditional dances are always very lively in this country, even amongst the young, and not only in the country. They are danced at the time of certain religious or family festivals. I took advantage of a pause to tell them that I was French and belonged to a Greek dance group in my country. Triumph !

Before leaving, I said to them, by way of Adieu : « You Greeks are a happy people : you have known how to preserve your traditions ».

The miscreant of Ano Syrus

Ermoupoli, the « City of Hermes », capital of the Island of Syros, disdained by tour operators, has the largest population in the Cyclades. In the 19th century its port was the principal one in Greece. It conserves from this period some fine neo-classical mansions and an impressive town hall in the same style, designed by a German architect. Also one must not miss the Orthodox cemetery: the tombs are so ostentatious that they could be deemed beautiful!

The old town consists of two hills, the one Orthodox, Vrontado, and the other Catholic, Ano Syros ( Upper Syros ). Much in the minority in Greece, the Catholic religion was implanted everywhere in the Cyclades due to the Venetian occupation. Its relation with the Orthodox Church, often conflicted in the country’s history, are quite good in Syros, where mixed marriages are frequent.

I climbed the second hill, by a maze of alleys and deserted stairs, right up to the Capucin convent which crowned the summit. On descending alongside shuttered houses I came across three elderly people taking the air on their doorsteps. I paused, happy to escape the silence at last. I discovered that their quarter was gradually emptying, the young not wanting to live in places inaccessible by car. One of the men spoke a few words in French. He was born in Greece of Italian immigrants, where having been orphaned, he was brought up at the Capucin’s. He invited me into his modest apartment to show me his books in Italian about the Second World War. Seeing that I also spoke his mother tongue, he profited by sharing with me confidences which the others could not understand.

Whilst the mention of religion on the identity card has been compulsory in Greece up to 2006, and whilst very few people dare call themselves atheist, he admitted to me that the daily practice of Mass during his childhood left him disgusted with religion and added, laughing up his sleeve, « It’s good enough for stupid old women ! ».

 

 

 

The Mykonos nun

I had a prejudice against this island, as against all the places polluted by mass tourism. I can’t stand being harpooned as I pass in front of shops and restaurants, particularly as I have a different approach to the country. However I still wanted to know the place and especially to visit the neighbouring island of Delos, sacred in antiquity, where one does not have the right to be born or to die. However the main town of Mykonos is agreeable out of season and offers some curiosities : the houses of Little Venice with multicoloured balconies, the rows of windmills and the fortified church of Paraportiani.

As I had no wish to see the beaches with their brochettes of hotels, I set out for the heart of the island which harbours two monasteries. The second, that of Palaiokastro, left me with an unforgettable memory. It appears at a fork in the road, an immaculate fortress of an epoch when the frequent attacks forced the peasants to shelter behind its walls. I rang the bell at the massive main gate : it was opened by a tiny nun, quite young, who took me into a garden paradise. She was living alone in this building intended for dozens of nuns.

She told me her history. From a modest background, she had chosen between the only two ways for a woman like her : marriage and children or the monastic life. The third, that of independence, which I had taken, was no doubt unthinkable for her and I avoided mentioning it. When she asked me for my religion, I did not dare reply that I was an atheist and not even baptized ; I contented myself by saying, a white lie I dare say, that my family was catholic. She explained that monasticism is based on obedience, to God, to rules, and to the hierarchy. Originally from Northern Greece, she had been sent to this island, very far from her family, and she had had to submit. I talked to her about other nunneries I had visited where, generally, the nuns sell products which they have made. She told me that the « Pullmann monasteries » were not to her taste. When I revealed that I had never conversed at such length with a nun, her expression brightened, as if I had made her the chosen one. I had permitted her, for an hour, to escape far from her hermitage.

Descending back to the town, I meditated about the amazing contrast between this place and the rest of Mykonos, temple exalting the body : alcohol, night clubs, and sex everywhere. I suspect the Orthodox Church had sent this little woman there to occupy the only enclave outside the devil’s clutches ! Across all the differences between us, I felt a very strong link uniting us : a similar liking for solitude.