September 2018

It is hard to admit and we often don’t want to admit it, but human life and memory move on, and so the general Greek public has resumed what passes for normality in the wake of the Attica fires. But I am pleased to note that an eminent Australian plastic surgeon came to Greece in order to donate his services, and that an Australian assessment team has also been over. Let us now hope that this dreadful experience has taught those in power some lessons in how to avoid a recurrence. Those who had done their homework, so to speak, reaped a miraculous benefit: a children’s holiday camp in the Mati area was evacuated without mishap. 621 children were taken to safety and reunited with their parents simply because the people in charge were efficient, and had had a drill only a few days before.

But on to more cheerful things than fires, as I promised. The Cretan wedding is now over, but is filed away in the section labelled Happy Memories. The bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, the families proud, and the very many guests exuberant and extremely pleased to be attending. Food kept coming, and drink kept flowing. And then there was the dancing, with Psarantonis, the internationally famous exponent of the Cretan lyre, performing.

I was a proud grandmother/yiayia, as Orestes and Natalia, now 5 and 2, were junior attendants to the bride, their aunt. Orestes wore a bow tie for the first time, and Natalia was a mini-vision in a floaty white dress. Orestes had his moment, or more than one, as he held the bridegroom’s hand while the wait for the bride went on. Natalia had much more than mere moments, as she danced solo on stage for simply ages, accompanied by the aforesaid Psarantonis. This performance went on for so long that my Australian friends, both doctors, wondered aloud as to whether amphetamines were part of her diet. But no: she loves music, and has great stamina.

The wedding day was also my birthday: Orestes was very intrigued by this coincidence, clearly impressed by the fact that two such momentous events should coincide. At my age there is always the feeling that birthdays are a non-event, and occur every six months in any case. So it was a great surprise when a birthday cake, complete with candle, appeared at my table. Not only that, I was sung to! Needless to say, I was both touched and flattered.

The wedding was held at a venue outside Heraklion, but I stayed in the centre of town. So of course I did a great deal of walking: one cannot really get lost in old Heraklion, because one almost inevitably fetches up near the well-maintained Venetian walls. It is at a spot in these walls that the great Cretan writer Nikos Kazantzakis is buried. After a great deal of wrangling, the Orthodox clergy of the time of his death in 1957 permitted his funeral to be held in the city’s cathedral of St Minas. But they would not consent to his burial in hallowed ground, hence the resting place in one of the bastions. (The day after the funeral, a leading cleric thundered, ‘Yesterday we buried the AntiChrist!’ The church resented Kazantzakis’s challenge to its power, and mistakenly considered him an atheist, which was simply not the fact of the matter. The church went so far as to charge him with blasphemy, but the case never went to court.)

Kazantzakis’s grave is simply constructed out of blocks of granite, and a large cross is at its head. A plinth bears the declaration that has become famous: I hope for nothing/I fear nothing/I am free.A short distance away lies the great man’s second wife, Eleni. She lived to be a hundred, and her whole life, from the time she met Nikos, was devoted to him. During the long decades of her widowhood she devoted herself to his memory, and to the project of publicising his works. 

While in Heraklion I also undertook what could be described as a church crawl.Well, that’s so much more acceptable to my grannies (who are never far away) than a pub crawl. Greek towns and cities have an inordinate number of churches, as the average philhellene will know. In Heraklion I visited the churches of St Minas, St Titus, St Matthew of the Sinaites, St Mark, which is now an art gallery, and St Catherine, which is now the Museum of Christian Art. This last contains old and splendid icons by Michael Damaskinos and other luminaries. And then I discovered the Catholic church of St John the Baptist quite by accident.

One is always learning something. I learned, for example, that the islands of Syros and Tinos have villages that are wholly Catholic, and that the Catholics on the islands are descended from the Venetians, as Venice held control over large swathes of Greece from 1204 until 1669. I also learned that St Minas is an Egyptian saint, and El Alamein, the place of Minas/Menas, is directly connected with him. On the eve of the decisive battle in the Second World War, it is said that a vision of St Minas, complete with his camel train, appeared in the German camp. The sight so demoralised the Germans that they did not fight as they might have done, and so the vision contributed to the Allied victory. Well, it makes a good yarn.

The doings of the next month may be a little late in breaking on a waiting world, as I am set for further travel adventures. Stay tuned!