Crete

by Barry Unsworth

  The path gradually levels out toward the streambed and the going gets easier. We were now more at liberty to study the walls of the chasm—sometimes looking as if they had been sliced with some unimaginably huge butcher’s cleaver—that rise on either side. Every layer of rock is delineated as precisely as if the lines had been drawn with a ruler, bands of green, purple, and gray limestone alternating with a whitish, flintlike rock known as chert. Perhaps a hundred million years of geological history here, from the time that the limestone mass that was someday to be Crete was thrust out of the sea.

  At times on this walk a feeling akin to dread seizes one, the scale is so enormous, the stream that runs through the cleft so narrow and bubbling and innocuous-seeming. At this season, using stepping-stones, you can cross and recross it without getting your feet wet. Could such a streamlet really have made this mighty ravine? In winter, when few see its rages, it becomes a torrent, perilous to anyone caught between the walls.

  The dread intensifies—or perhaps it could better be described as a feeling of intense wonder—when the sheer faces of the gorge draw together, a little past the halfway mark, at what are called the Sideresportes, the “Iron Gates.” The walls soar almost vertically on either side to a height of fifteen hundred feet and seem almost to meet overhead, shutting out the sun. There is less than twelve feet between them at the base. Some nineteenth-century travelers, more exalted in imagination than we tend to be now, claimed to have touched both walls at once with outstretched fingers. But this must be set down to the powerful atmosphere of the place: You would need the reach of an extremely well-developed gorilla, and then some.

  The awe we feel is chipped away by the throngs of people close before and behind as we proceed along the track. Instructive, and a bit depressing, is the way so many of one’s fellow walkers approach what is, after all, a unique experience. They seem consumed with haste. Some spirit of competitiveness comes into play, the inveterate desire to get there first. Those who have come in groups scramble to keep up. Possessed by the wish to overtake, people slither and slide dangerously on the loose stones at the edges of the track. Where the track narrows and there is no space for overtaking, one is aware of audibly breathing presences, close behind, impatient to get past. Remarkably few people seem to pause, slow down, take time to look around them. Yet it is the passing impressions that are the great attraction: the mighty trees, the scalloped rocks, the tumbling stream, the great heights above, slowly hazing as the sun climbs. Almost four hundred species of birds have been recorded here, among them magnificent birds of prey, like the bearded vulture and the golden eagle. There is a chance of catching a glimpse of the Cretan ibex, a splendid kind of wild goat, rare now and protected by the Greek state. The tremendous variety of plant life, orchids, bellflowers, irises, rock plants, and herbs, is found nowhere else. But no; head down, they career onward, only coming to a halt in order to stand in line at one of the infrequent and woefully inadequate public lavatories. The thing is to do the walk, to have done it, to tick it off. Goals and aims and objectives, the culture of achievement, will be the ruin of the human race someday.

  Samaria is the most famous of the Cretan gorges—hence the crowds. The numerous others are generally deserted and differ widely in character and constitution. Those who know them have their favorites, rather as is the case with Aegean islands or Roman fountains. For Rackham and Moody, the one best loved is the gorge of Therisso, a ten-mile drive from Chania into the northern fringes of the White Mountains, with its lush vegetation, its shaded, meandering course, and its walls like hanging gardens decked in a variety of endemic plants. For those with a taste for the bare and elemental, there is the gorge that lies behind the Kapsas Monastery in the coastal desert strip on the far southeast of the island, where the average annual rainfall is something like four hundred millimeters. (Compare this with an estimated two thousand millimeters at the highest points in the White Mountains to gain an idea of the range of rainfall from west to east, astonishing on such a small island.) This is a stark and arid landscape, one that the ascetic prophets of old might have felt at home in.

  My own favorite is the gorge entered near the village of Zaros in the province of Iraklion. It offers a combination of effects which I think of as essentially Cretan. A little to the west of the village a signed track leads up to the monastery of Agios Nikolaos, a distance of about a mile—on foot from the village it’s much less. The entrance to the gorge is higher up, so you can rest in the tranquil, shaded courtyard of the monastery or view the fourteenth-century paintings in the church before setting off for the walk. A climb of half an hour by a steep path brings you to the hermitage of St. Euthymios, a cave with a tiny church built into it and two fine wall paintings still surviving. So you have a monastery, a cave hermitage, and a splendid walk. The gorge of Zaros is short by Cretan standards, perhaps two miles in length, with a good, well-defined path and marvelous views of the Psiloritis mountains continuously before you as you go. This is one of those times on the island—and they are many—when the print of humanity blends in harmony with the unspoiled wildness of the landscape to make an impression quite unforgettable.

  However, Crete is rich in alternatives, and if the walk seems too strenuous or the weather too hot, a drive of a few miles west from Zaros, toward Kamares, brings you to another monastery, that of Vrondisi, one of the most beautiful on the island and one of the most important in the history of Cretan monasticism, a center of education and religious art in the period of creative vitality and renewal that took place in the final decades of the Venetian occupation.

  The monastery is dedicated to St. Anthony, patron saint of hermits. The outer courtyard, before the main gates, is full of the sound of water falling from the mouths of lion heads sculpted in relief on the fountain, and a plane tree with the dimensions of a cathedral arches over the whole area. It was at Vrondisi that Damaskinos, one of the most important of Cretan religious painters, did some of his best work. Six of the icons he painted here are on permanent display in the gallery of the church of Agia Ekaterini in Iraklion.

  On the day of our visit, one of the two remaining monks was sitting in the shade of the fig tree at the entrance, talking gravely to local people. He greeted us with a kind of dignified courtesy. There was no attempt to ask questions or sell us anything, no obtrusive presence making sure that we obeyed the prohibition about taking photographs inside the church, where the rows of frescoed apostles and the Christ of the Last Supper in the apse presented the same grave dignity as they regarded us in the dimness.

  Coming back to gorges, that of Samaria has the distinction, together with some smaller ravines that run parallel to it, of giving access, at its southern end, to the sea. So having completed the long, hot walk, emerging at Agia Roumeli, you are presented with the prospect not only of a cold drink but also a refreshing plunge.

  This, however, presents you also with a choice as to which first. To reach the shore you have first to pass the bars. We had been distinctly thirsty for quite some time, having foolishly neglected to bring anything to drink with us. Also, the idea of simply sitting down for a while was one that had considerable appeal. The struggle was of the briefest. The bar won hands down. I don’t think cold beer has ever tasted so good. By the time we had each had a liter of it, all desire for a refreshing plunge had left us. It was all we could do to make the walk to the boat.

  The boats from here go in either direction along the coast. Generally, people take the one going westward to Souyia, thence returning to Chania by road. But going the other way, to Chora Sfakion, and using it as a base, one can see the mountain villages on the southern side of the White Mountains, the region known as Sfakia.

  This is a wild and remote region where roads are few, the climate unrelenting, and the living conditions harsh. The atmosphere of abandonment and desolation one sometimes feels here is in a sense the price the people have paid for their indomitable spirit, their refusal to accept a foreign yoke. This has meant that their villages
have been devastated again and again. Through all the centuries of occupation the Sfakians were never completely subdued, resisting Venetian and Turk and German from their mountain fastnesses, and, when for the moment these invaders did not threaten, turning on their own neighbors with equal ferocity. To give one example among many, the people of Zourva were attacked from the rear by the Sfakians in the revolution of 1866, thus saving the Turks from defeat—an attack due entirely to resentment against their fellow countrymen for assuming the leadership of the revolution, a privilege which the Sfakians regarded as exclusively their own. If ever scientists succeed in identifying a warrior gene, it will certainly be found in the people of Sfakia. Their lawless and rapacious spirit is illustrated in the local version of the Creation. This, as related by Adam Hopkins, begins with an account of the gifts bestowed by God on other parts of the island:

  …olives to Ierapetra, Agios Vasilios and Selinou; wine to Malevisi and Kissamou; cherries to Mylopotamos and Amari. But when God got to Sfakia only rocks were left. So the Sfakiots appeared before Him armed to the teeth. “And us, Lord, how are we going to live on these rocks?” And the Almighty, looking at them with sympathy, replied in their own dialect (naturally): “Haven’t you got a scrap of brains in your head? Don’t you know that the lowlanders are cultivating all these riches for you?”

  It is entirely appropriate that the most splendid of all Cretan heroic legends of resistance against the Turks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should center on the exploits of a Sfakian, Daskaloyiannis, who was born at Anopolis, a village in the foothills behind Chora Sfakion. Also appropriate, since the Sfakians are great singers and storytellers, that he should have found a chronicler from among them. Sixteen years after his death, his story was dictated in a thousand lines of epic verse by an illiterate bard named Pantzelios, a cheesemaker by trade. The scribe was a shepherd. He took down the story slowly and probably painfully—it is hard to believe that he was much accustomed to writing. Here is his description of the process, as translated by Michael Llewellyn Smith who includes an account of the Daskaloyiannis Revolt in his excellent study of the island:

  I began, and wrote a little every day.

  I held the paper and I held the pen

  And he told me the story and I wrote it bit by bit.

  To this poem, despite mistakes and heroic exaggerations, we owe most of what is known about the celebrated revolt of Yannis Vlachos, otherwise known as Daskaloyiannis, “John the Teacher,” a title of respect rather than a literal description, as in fact he was a ship owner and one of the wealthiest man on the island. It is difficult to imagine anyone less like the Cretan rebel chieftain of tradition. He dressed generally in European clothes, spoke several languages, and had traveled widely in the Mediterranean region. And his political aims went far beyond the usual narrowly territorial uprisings of the Sfakians. He dreamed of freeing Crete and all Greece from the Ottoman occupation and returning her to the comity of Christian nations.

  Naturally enough, he turned to the Russians, his co-religionists, for help, and they found in him a useful ally. In fact, from the Russian point of view his appearance was providential. The Russo-Turkish war had just broken out, and it was the job of Count Orloff, Catherine the Great’s minister, to foment rebellion against the Turks wherever possible. He found in the enthusiastic and credulous Daskaloyiannis a perfect pawn.

  The plans were laid. The Cretan uprising was to coincide with a revolt in the Peloponnese. Orloff undertook to support the rebels from the sea. Armed with this promise, Daskaloyiannis was able to carry the Cretans along with him. The flag of revolt was raised in March 1770. The Sfakian force, probably no more than a thousand men, marched on Chania, the idea being to keep the Turks bottled up inside the walls until the Russian fleet arrived. But the days passed, and no ships were sighted. Without the Russian guns the rebellion was doomed. By May the Turks had entered Sfakia with a force of twenty thousand troops. Heavily outnumbered, the rebels were compelled to retreat to their mountain fastnesses. Still no help came from the Russians.

  The Sfakians fought with astonishing bravery and endurance, but by the following spring the situation was desperate, their last lines of defense had been crossed. At this point the pasha of Iraklion wrote to Daskaloyiannis inviting him to give himself up.

  Trust my letter, whatever they may tell you,

  And so leave Sfakia with men to live in her.

  When you come and we talk together

  All will be settled and we shall be friends.

  With this letter another arrived, this one from Daskaloyiannis’s brother, who had already fallen into Turkish hands. In it he urged Daskaloyiannis to accept the pasha’s invitation. But he managed to insert into the letter a prearranged code signal indicating that his brother was to take no notice of either letter. In spite of this, Daskaloyiannis decided to surrender. He knew now, after his brother’s warning, that he had small chance of saving his life, but he thought he might get better terms for his followers. He made his farewell to wife and children:

  Come to my arms, children, for me to kiss you,

  And be wise until I return again.

  Listen to your mother and to your own people—

  You have my prayers.

  He gave himself up and was taken to Iraklion. The pasha greeted him with every appearance of friendship, offered him food, wine, coffee, and tobacco, then began a polite interrogation. What was the cause of the revolt? Why didn’t you bring your complaints to me?

  The cause—you are the cause, you lawless pashas.

  That’s why I decided to raise Crete in revolt,

  to free her from the claws of the Turk.

  Hardly the most conciliatory of replies. But then, he hadn’t much hope of clemency. And when the pasha, still courteously, asked him for the names of the ring-leaders among the rebels of the Peloponnese, he proudly and angrily refused. You are wasting your breath, he said. Your net has a hole in it, do not hope to catch any fish. This defiance was the end of him. On the pasha’s orders, he was taken to the main square of Iraklion and flayed alive. According to the poem he endured this frightful punishment without uttering a sound. But his brother, tied up and obliged to watch the hideous spectacle, could not endure the sight and lost his senses. According to the traditional version of the story, he died mad. The remnants of the Sfakian force, after some years of captivity, returned to the desolation of their ruined villages.

  It is difficult to associate the Anopolis of today, the village of the hero’s birth, with those desperate and sanguinary days. The thriving village rests quietly in its fertile upland plain, surrounded by fruit trees and fields of wheat. Sfakia as a whole has changed a great deal. The people speak the same language and wear the same style of dress as other Cretans. They are more prosperous now, generally speaking, and more peaceable. They are not always very communicative, but they don’t carry weapons anymore—not openly, at least. Communications are better, but the mountains on this part of the south coast plunge abruptly down into the sea, the coastal strip is extremely narrow, hardly more, in many places, than a rocky foreshore. From east to west there are no good roads, and often no roads at all. Those that run north to Chania skirt the White Mountains on either side; there is no way through the heart of the range. And one does not need to wander far from what few roads there are in Sfakia to encounter a landscape that in its bleakness and remoteness recalls the savage past.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The MUTABLE FORTRESS

  Eastward along the coast from Chania, the main road keeps close to the shoreline of Souda Bay until it reaches Kalami, then veers south, turning away from the sea for a while, joining it again as one approaches Rethymnon. Near where this change of direction occurs, on a plateau overlooking the bay, a mile or two inland, lie the ruins of Aptera, once one of the strongest Greek city-states on the island. Of very ancient foundation, going back to at least 1000 B.C., its time of greatest splendor was during the Hellenistic period, from about 500 B.C. onw
ard. The city was severely damaged by earthquake early in the eighth century A.D., and in 823 it was sacked and more or less completely destroyed by Arab invaders, an event from which it seems never to have recovered. Excavation—which still continues on the site—has uncovered the remains of massive stone walls, nearly three miles in length, enclosing a wide area, evidence of the importance the city once enjoyed.

  After thirteen centuries the evidence of violent events is half buried, grassed over, softened out of recognition, whether it is the violence of natural forces or the savagery of human beings. We had the site to ourselves; in the two hours that we spent there we saw almost no one. We felt a great sense of peace, though we didn’t talk about it until later, in this place of ancient battles and dead passions. Perhaps, in my case at least, a kind of acceptance or resignation: All the works of man will in the end be a wide plain, empty of all but stones and flowers, like this one.