My Ikaria

by Tsintziras, Spiri;

  Niki says she has a surprise for us, and drives us to an isolated home with a massive terraced area. She then pulls up to a large taverna, which is closed. Out the back, there are blankets blowing in the wind, a few dogs, and a prolific garden. It looks down on terraces built into the hillside, which tumble almost all the way to the sea.

  Niki leaves us for a few moments and we hear laughter. She soon comes back and leads us into the back of the taverna, where the owners live. We walk down a dark, cool corridor into a chaotic kitchen, where Niki introduces us to her first cousin, Loni, and his wife, Lambrini. We meet their daughter and her fiancé, a handsome couple in paint-splattered clothes, who tell us they are renovating a part of their parents’ home to live in after they marry. They currently live in Athens, and have jobs there, but are considering moving back to the island.

  Niki and her cousins are ecstatic to see each other, their connection evident in their easy banter, even though Niki hasn’t visited the island for three years. Lambrini starts placing food on the table: dolmadakia (rice wrapped in vine leaves), wild greens, olives, and bread. Every dish is made from ingredients that Loni and Lambrini have grown in their garden. Lambrini serves us a piece of pasticcio which she cooked in their wood-fired oven. And tells us we must try the pickled kritano, a plant that grows by the sea. After pouring everyone wine, she finally sits down.

  Outside, I can see an elderly woman moving around on a walker. Lambrini says this is her 83-year-old mother-in-law, Irini, who lives in another part of the house.

  When we compliment the couple on the beauty of their property, Lambrini points to her husband and laughs raucously. ‘That’s the reason I married him.’ It’s clear as the discussion unfolds that they’ve worked the land together, built it up. Now it houses a taverna on the level above, and several rooms for extended family to stay in. Some time ago, they bought the land below from a neighbour and dug it up to create productive fields. Loni owns bulldozers, which he uses to help people around the island dig the hard earth to grow food.

  ‘We can’t just live from the taverna,’ he says. ‘That’s forty days of excitement each year, and then there’s nothing. We’ve got to do other things. But the important thing is, we do what we love.’

  When Niki tells the family what I am doing on Ikaria, I see Lambrini raise her shoulders as if preparing a speech.

  ‘It’s a strange island. I don’t know why people might come to Ikaria. If you stopped at the port only, you might turn back again – it’s as if there is nothing here. We Ikarians are quite mad. We’re always joking. You can’t take anything seriously with us.’ As if to demonstrate her point, she laughs raucously.

  ‘Ikaria is an emotion, as well as a place. That’s why people keep coming back. Ikaria is love,’ Lambrini’s daughter pipes in. I look at her and her young fiancé, their faces as yet unlined, looking forward to their future together. Their vitality, their energy, is contagious.

  ‘It’s a very erotic island. My yiayia said that my pappou, who was ninety-three at the time, still wanted it at least once or twice a week!’ says Lambrini, laughing again.

  ‘The women choose the men, not like in other parts of Greece. Traditionally, men had to cut a fig branch with an axe in one swoop to show that they were able to look after a woman. And so, if a woman wanted a particular man, she would present him with a fresh, young branch. If she didn’t, she would give him a dry, old branch, which was impossible to cut. And thus, she made the choice.’

  She talks about the many cultural traditions of the island that helped sustain it in times of poverty; how there was rarely an exchange of money. If you slaughtered your pig, you shared it with your neighbours in a celebration called heirosfagia, a communal slaughter. The neighbours would do the same when they slaughtered theirs.

  During the winter, villagers would rotate who would host dinner so that householders didn’t have to cook each night. You didn’t need to call ahead to visit someone. There was a practice of building a communal wall around the villages so that the animals would have a space to graze without getting lost.

  ‘People weren’t atomistes, individualists. They were socialists without the politics. Poverty makes everyone the same. Money breeds ego. The world would be a better place if more people lived like that. We were hopeful, trusting, looking after each other,’ says Lambrini. ‘When we needed hope, we went to church, we prayed. Our priests weren’t paid, they too worked the fields.’ She sounds a bit nostalgic for a time that is fast becoming a thing of the past.

  The conversation moves on. They are interested in Australia, have several relatives living there. Lambrini says, ‘Now please can you tell me why our Australian relatives who come here, they eat at 6 o’clock and go to sleep so early. Don’t they know how to live?’

  I laugh, shrug my shoulders. I too have had to change my body clock to ‘Greek time’ and get used to not eating for long stretches of time. Eating in Greece is so fluid. Meals are guided by what is going on during the day and who you are with. Breakfast often comprises black Greek coffee. Lunch is usually a larger meal in the early afternoon. Dinner, if had, is generally a smaller affair, either at home or out. And it’s rarely before 9 pm. Snacking between meals is not common.

  I realise that at home I have a low-grade angst about meal times, generally making sure we eat regularly, that we don’t eat too late. Now, having meals at regular times now seems so predictable.

  ‘And Australians seem to have so many allergies,’ Lambrini complains. ‘We could be sitting around the table, and at least a few people have allergies – gluten, fructose, lactose.’

  I have often wondered if allergies are our body’s natural response to excess – to eating too much processed food made with wheat and sugar, overconsumption of milk and cheese, perhaps too many preservatives and additives in our largely Western diet. I shrug. Who knows?

  Lambrini brings an orange and olive oil cake to the table, and foinikia biscuits, also made with orange. Setting the briki (Greek coffee pot) on the stove to make coffee, she says, ‘In the winter when we don’t have eggs, we make foinikia without them. We listen to the seasons, work with what we have. This one has eggs thanks to our chooks.’

  We tell her that we are full, that there is no need to bring more food out.

  ‘Here in Ikaria, we never clear the table when we have guests. And glasses must always be full,’ Lambrini says with her trademark laugh.

  I spot Irini sitting in the afternoon sun on the terrace, and go outside to sit with her. I tell her I am from Australia, am here with her niece Niki.

  She tells me that while her husband spent many years in Cleveland in the US, she stayed in a remote nearby village, raising three kids. She says her husband is now ninety-three and is still working the fields.

  ‘It was hard work in those days, my life hasn’t been easy. Now I’m old, not so steady on my feet. I fell a few months ago, broke my shoulder.’ She points to her shoulder, to the walking frame that she needs to shuffle from her room to the terrace.

  She sounds sad, telling me that she hasn’t quite been able to recover from losing her eighteen-year-old grandson to a road accident. She looks at me philosophically. ‘No matter if you’re buried in gold, we all have to pass on sometime.’

  Dancing

  Over the next few days, I embrace the slower rhythms of the island, waking without an alarm, then indulging in writing in bed each morning. I breakfast on omelettes tossed with homegrown vegetables at Thea’s Inn and ring my family. Only then do I meander over to the girls’ apartment down the road, where we sit on their balcony, slowly getting ready to go out.

  Today, Isa is finishing a watercolour painting of the scene below: a flash of bougainvillea in the foreground and a line of water that winds past a bent tree and into the azure blue sea. We’ve just made coffee, and are in no rush to go anywhere.

  Niki says, ‘We need to get there quickly,’ putting her runners on and tying her hair back.

  We look at her, confused. ‘What’
s the rush today?’ Isa asks

  ‘We’re going to miss out on the soup,’ says Niki, looking at us impatiently, willing us to hurry up.

  Isa and I look at each other. It must be some soup.

  We are heading to one of the many the panigiria (village feasts) I’ve read about – this one is on the site of the church of Saint Isidoros, an isolated little outcrop in the mountains. Niki remembers that the route to the village is a little obscure and worries that our tiny hire car won’t make it up the rugged unsealed roads.

  ‘What’s so good about the soup?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s slowly cooked overnight, made from goat meat. And it’s delicious. If you go too late, they water it down to accommodate the many people who come. We need to go early.’

  Even after a few days, I appreciate how lucky I am to be travelling with a local.

  When we leave the apartment, the street below is frenetic with activity. It appears that most people in the town are heading up to the feast. Thea has closed the Inn for the day and arranged a bus to take the hospitality students up there. We find Ilias, who tells Niki that the roads to the feast are still unsealed, but assures her that the car should make it.

  As our car leaves the bitumen, it bumps wildly on the rocky unpaved roads. Meanwhile, the landscape changes from lush green forest to a barren moonscape peppered with huge Neolithic-style boulders. In the distance the blue sea contrasts with the grey stonescape, stretching out into the horizon. We park behind a long line of cars and start walking down a rocky hill towards the panigiri. As I slip and slide down the hill in my open-toed leather thongs, Isa supporting me, I see why Niki wore runners. She walks quickly, her tread as steady as that of a mountain goat. The soup is waiting.

  We enter the churchyard through a gate, passing dozens of tables where family groups have already staked a spot. Making our way to the tiny whitewashed church at the end of a path, we light some candles and kiss the icon of Saint Isidoros on his horse.

  On the way out of the church, Niki greets the local priest. When he looks at me, as if to question how I’m connected to Niki, I explain that I am a friend, visiting from Australia. I want to ask what the legacy of Saint Isidoros is, what he did, but I’m not sure if it’s rude. Instead, I ask if I might take a photo – he cuts a striking figure with his dark, worn robes, standing on top of the stairs smoking a cigarette. He agrees begrudgingly but says that I shouldn’t put him on the computer. And though he laughs, I know he means it.

  There’s already a mass of people, with tables set up in every available space. Niki suggests I find a table while she and Isa get the food. I sit down at a table set out further back in the courtyard, and soon Niki and Isa arrive with a tray laden with forks and knives, plates, a paper tablecloth and a waxed paper package of stewed goat meat, bread, salad and wine. Niki instructs us to put the goat meat on our plates ready for the soup, and soon a smiling man in hi-vis overalls arrives with a metal bucket and a huge ladle. He spoons a fine broth over our meat, all the while chatting and laughing.

  I see a few pieces of fat floating around in the soup and the former vegetarian in me cringes. But I needn’t worry; the broth is rich and meaty, the flavours deepening with each spoonful. It’s comforting, in the same way that the fish soup I ate at the wake after Katerina’s funeral was comforting. This is food for the soul. Niki looks at Isa and I expectantly. We nod – it’s good. Very good. She looks satisfied. Soon, the man with the ladle comes around again and we fill our bowls for a second time.

  I ask Niki if she knows who Saint Isidoros was, what miracles he might have performed. She shrugs. More people arrive, and we move along the benches to accommodate them. I’m squished closer to an elderly gent to my left, and we start talking. His name is Yiorgos, and he asks where I’m from, where my family is from. The man next to him, Antonis, overhears. He’s delighted to learn that my father was from a village close to where he was originally from. His whole face lights up, and over the course of the next few hours, he sings out my name periodically, as if I am a long-lost friend. He has married a woman from Ikaria, loves the island dearly, but is clearly proud of his hometown, considers us patriotes, compatriots.

  I chat with Yiorgos, who tells me how here in Ikaria they travel slowly. And they laugh a lot. ‘Why not?’ he asks rhetorically. Why not indeed?

  The orchestra has started up and I ask Yiorgos if he wants to dance. He says he’s probably not up to it; there are too many people on the dancefloor. He tells me about an elderly friend of his who is famous for dancing at the village feasts, putting the young people to shame with his stamina. But this year he was ill. Perhaps if his friend was here, he might be coerced to get up.

  ‘You forget the stress in the dance. But today, I’m happy to sit. But you should dance.’

  Squeezing out of my seat, I make my way to the dusty patch of earth that is the dance floor and see that there are a few young women doing the tsiftedeli, a belly dance with Balkan and Anatolian influences.

  Several of the American students are sitting along a ledge, watching them, wine in hand. It appears they have already had a fair bit to drink, making the most of the more liberal drinking laws in Greece. In the US, many would have to wait until they turn twenty-one. I smile and hold out my hand to them but they shy away, saying they don’t know how to do this dance.

  ‘Just feel the music and wiggle your hips,’ I say, holding out my hand again.

  This time they allow themselves to be drawn down from the ledge. Their eyes shine as they try the moves, swinging their hips to the tribal beats of the music. Two young girls sidle up to us, and I watch them smile encouragingly at the students and show them how it’s done.

  I’ve heard so much about the panigiria in Ikaria, which now attract tourists from around the world. Urania tells me that traditionally, panigiria served to raise money for projects for the town, and everyone came to support them. The rich villagers would generally pay for a simple feast of roast meat, and the poor people would eat. It was a chance for enemies to make peace.

  Panigiria occur on the name day of the church to which the village is attached. The villagers give their time voluntarily to support their local panigiri. Following the panigiri, villagers agree how the proceeds might be best used for a common cause – to help someone who is in hospital or a poor family, to fix part of a road, or to support the school, for example. People from around the island try to come to as many as they can to support each village and town. As well as raising money, they are a chance for villagers to socialise and celebrate. When I spoke to Thea about them, she said that it was remarkable that, what with so many people drinking and dancing all day and night, you rarely saw anyone drunk or fights breaking out. She feels this epitomises what Ikaria is all about.

  The number of panigiria has grown, with more than two hundred now held on the island. I see myself that there is an atmosphere of joy here – with bands of kids climbing the hill, women chatting as they wait in the queue for the toilet, hundreds of young people talking, laughing and eating. I can’t see a single person checking their phones. The only people taking photos are the small number of tourists. The locals are too busy having fun.

  Walking up to an area where a band of men – young and old – are cooking, I smile and introduce myself in Greek. ‘My name is Spiridoula. I’m from Australia. Do you mind if I have a look?’

  Several men hold out their arms in gestures of welcome. They pull me into an enclosed space where a vat that reaches to my shoulders houses the soup we have been eating. They all talk at once about how they have relatives in Australia, mostly in Sydney or Adelaide. It’s midday and they explain that they have been at it since the early hours of the morning.

  One of the men introduces himself as Yiannis, and I say they are doing great things here.

  Yiannis, who has mischievous blue eyes, wipes his brow with a tea towel, looking serious for a moment. ‘There’s lots of economic problems here in Greece,’ he says. ‘But we can’t put our heads down and get de
pressed about it. We’re fighting it.’

  He smiles again, his handsome face crinkling.

  I wind my way slowly back to my group, the available space between tables now almost unpassable due to the number of people. Niki is talking to a beautiful young couple, who are here with their two-year-old daughter, Daphne. They tell us they have moved from Athens to Ikaria to give their daughter a simpler life. The young woman has picked up odd jobs, like cutting rags for Ioanna the weaver. She says they are largely vegetarians, but indulge in a little meat on special occasions such as today.

  Daphne sits on her mum’s lap, picking at the fava, a split pea dip they have brought along. She uses her little fingers to pick at the food, like a miniature adult, feeding herself while her parents talk and laugh. I pass her some paper, and Isa gives her some coloured charcoals. Then I draw a picture for her – her own face with huge eyes. She tries to copy it. She shyly makes her way to my side of the table, where I play ‘This little piggy’ on her fingers. She is delighted.

  A tiny friend joins her at the table, and they draw together. Daphne is prolific in her cuddles for her companion, but her little friend pushes her away after one too many. Daphne wanders off to the next table, where more people offer her attention. Her parents are watching out for her, but others are looking out for her too. After more than an hour, Daphne comes back to me and points to her hand. She remembers our game, wants me to play again. As I watch her try and mouth the unfamiliar English words, I marvel at how quickly children learn. Not for the first time, I envy how children grow up here, running and riding their bikes in the countless village squares, organically slotting into the rituals of island life. Daphne’s parents echo my thoughts, saying she may choose the excitements of city life later, but they want to offer her a more modest start, so she can learn to appreciate simple things.

  It’s now late afternoon and I am wedged intimately between Isa and Yiorgos, who insists we must come to his place to eat some fish he’s caught himself. Antonis calls out my name – Spiridoula, my friend, my compatriot. We all drink more wine, share in the baklava, galaktobouriko (a custard-filled filo sweet) and bobota, a cornmeal and honey sweet I have bought for the table.