Pretty salt

We often wonder why there are so many rare birds to be seen on Lesvos. It’s partly because our island is on the geographical crossroad between the cold north and the warm south, the continents of Asia and Africa.

There is a special attraction for birds migrating back and forth: the salinas —salt flats — at Kaloni and Polichnitos. Black winged stilts and flamingos love these saline wetlands, as do ducks and other small water birds. Many of them are looking for food and nesting opportunities on their journey north in spring.

As long as salinas are well managed, the birds don’t impact the production of salt, and if salt producers take care that birds’ nests are not flooded and there are enough safe places for the birds to nest, then the industry is of ecological as well as economic value.

In the whole of Greece there are seven significant salinas with economic value: two on Lesvos. In Messolonghi-Tourlis the salt is manually harvested and in other regions (Kitros, Messi, Nea Kessani, Aggelochori and in Polichnitos and Kaloni) salt is harvested with the aid of machines. There are some small salinas like on Kythera and Mani where they do as well manual harvest and on some other places salt is harvested from small pools between the rocks at the shore line.

On Lesvos, as you drive across the island from Mytilini to Kaloni you can’t fail to notice the salinas and the huge white salt mountain at the head of the Gulf of Kaloni. Plenty of drivers are annoyed by the salt trucks which travel between Kaloni and the little port of Petra, where the salt is loaded into freighters for distribution to other parts of the Aegean. The salinas of Polichnitos are not so well known, probably because it is less likely to be visited by tourists.

Whenever you add salt to your food, you probably don’t realize how precious it is. Salt used to be even more valuable than gold. You can see the evidence at an antique market where ancient salt shakers feature, but the ordinary plastic modern version might never suggest just how salt once played a leading role in the history of food and civilization.

In his fascinating book ‘Salt, a world history’ the American Mark Kurlansky describes all the many possibilities of usages of salt. Without salt there would be no mummies, no salami, no salt fish, no cheese, no bombs and lots and lots more.

Starting in ancient China and the days of the Egypt’s pharaohs he tells us about civilizations that revolved around salt: wars were fought over salt, revolutions launched, governments became rich from salt taxes, houses collapsed, armies got lost. Kurlansky explains the role of salt in creating the old Roman sauce of Garum, the original recipe for tobasco sauce or a Breton Galette. He also writes about the history of salinas, salt mines, salt mountains and even a salt city and there are simple recipes to preserve fish, meat and vegetables.

Salt fish have always been important in the Greek kitchen. In antiquity fish was brought from the Black Sea to Athens in salt. That way it stayed edible for about a year. Soldiers got salt fish when they went to war and it was said that salt fish was a good appetizer, and so it was often served as a starter at dinners.

You still find salt fish on the modern Greek menu. The sardines from the Gulf of Kaloni are famous in Greece and so are salted tinned versions (which are a very good alternative to salted anchovy) both of which are important export products. I once heard a tourist say that the salted sardines (sardelles pastès) from the Gulf of Kaloni never needed to be salted because of the high level of salt in the water. The Gulf may not be quite as salty and buoyant as the Dead Sea where you can float almost on top of the water and although it is very salty, to make good sardelles pastès you will definitely have to add salt. People who like salted herring from Holland will love this recipe:

Sardelles pastès:
Put 1/2 a kilo of sardines in layers on a scale. Take a cup of coarse sea salt and cover every fish, and between the layers, with salt flakes. Leave them for 6-8 hours in a cool place. Rinse them clean, take off the heads and gut them, drizzle the fish with a little olive oil, sprinkle it with fine cut parsley and serve with two half lemons and a glass of ouzo. Use fresh sardines (caught the same day) and good olive oil. Enjoy!

Last weekend Athens celebrated the opening of the New Acropolis Museum. Of course, no museum on Lesvos is that sensational. But Lesvos can be proud of a lot of small and very different museums. The nicest is the Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest in Sigri and the most remote one is the Lakovidis Digital Art Museum in Xidera. According to the salt project ALAS a salt museum was planned for Skala Polichnitos in 2003, just next to the salinas. There’s been an exhibit but so far nothing else. So I can only wonder what happened to that project?

(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Under the mulberry tree

What was the most valuable thing that the Greek Desdemona Stephanides (a leading character in the book ‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides) took when she fled Turkey in 1922 with her brother? A little box with silkworms.

In earlier times silk was produced in Greece in various places. Nowadays they only make it in the little town of Soufli in the North of Greece. Soufli has the only silk museum of Greece, dedicated to the memory of the craft the town keeps alive..

The Greek silk industry boomed in the 19th century but more or less disappeared halfway the 20th century, mainly due to World War II, and the Greek civil war that followed, and then, of course the introduction of synthetic materials on to the market.

Lesvos did not have a substantial silk industry, unlike the neighbouring island of Chios, where under the occupation of the Genoese (14th – 16th century) who established silk making. Athens and Thessaloniki also had silk factories and the the Byzantine town of Mystras on the Peloponnese also became known for its silk. In fact, the whole of the Peloponnese was famous for its silk. In the middle ages the Peloponnese was even named after the diet of silk worms: mouria — mulberry. However while some say it was because of the presence of mulberry trees, others claim it was because the shape of the Peloponnese, which on the map looks like a mulberry.

Anyhow, the silkworm eats white mulberry leaves, a tree that just like the silk industry which it kept going seems to have been forgotten in modern Greece. It used to be cultivated on a grand scale, to nourish the worms spinning the silk. It is stunning to realize that the very ordinary looking leaves of this tree are basis of the finest material ever made by humans!

On Lesvos there are just a few mulberry trees left. Even in the mountain village of Sykaminia, which is named after the old Greek word for mulberry (sykaminia — pronounced as “skamnia”), it’s hard to find a mulberry tree. So I was very surprised to find a mulberry shoot sprouting out of the ground next to our outside shower. And it turned out to be a white mulberry tree. So now we have this luxury: while we taking a shower, we can eat the fruit from the tree.

Besides white mulberries there are red (really dark blue) mulberries. It took me some time to find a tree in the right season to taste a red mulberry. Last week I finally found one — just in front of the little church of Liota (called as well Ligeri). My opinion? Red mulberries taste even better than the white ones. They are more fruity and less sweet.

But the fruit is not so well loved here on the island. I’ve never met a Lesvorian that offered me mulberries or anything made from them. They are hardly ever mentioned. Maybe there’s a reason, especially because the red fruit leaves stains that are very hard to remove. The effect of parking a car under a mulberry tree is a disaster because the red juice seeps into everything.

In the picturesque harbor village of Skala Sykaminia there is one enormous mulberry tree, under which is the famous restaurant Skamnia (I mentioned in my story about the Mermaid). The tree is so old that it no longer bears fruit. Good, because otherwise you would drink red tinged ouzo and eat octopus, squid, salade and everything else all coloured by mulberry juice from the tree, and you would best wear your napkin on your head in order not to leave as red as a Martian.

However in Turkey they still harvest these superb dark mulberries and so you could meet a mulberry tree filled with red stained women, who climbed into the tree in order to pick the fruit. I’ve never had the chance to enjoy a mulberry harvest, but it must be quite an event, thanks to all that red juice.

It is a shame that on this island mulberries are neglected. Mulberries are good for anemia, tiredness, stress and encroaching grey hairs. In China, Japan and Korea mulberry juice is a popular health drink, especially because it can be kept for three months in the refrigerator. Jam, jelly and ice are the products that are mainly made with blueberries.

The busy time of preserving has already started here. The strawberries are all harvested, eaten or preserved; the heat helps the cherries grow big and and fat quite fast; the cheeks of the apricots are showing their rosy tint; plums are changing from green into yellow; capers are opening their magnificent flowers; oregano and thyme are flowering and will have to be picked and dried now — and of course we have to harvest our white mulberries. I can perfectly well understand that in earlier times being a house wife with a garden, you had to eat a lot of mulberries simply in order not to get stressed.

But of course, it’s really the silk that has that magic appeal. The book ‘Effigy’ by Alissa York is a beautifully told semi-historical story about a Mormon family in the American West. One of the women has a room full of silk worms, and reading this story (and ‘Middlesex’) it makes you curious about how it would feel to weave silk. Sadly, I spend too much time preserving fruit, so I can only dream of making silk…

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Where is the queen?!

Photo Vespa orientalis: Robin Edwards

The first heat wave of summer has started. That means that all kinds of insects are looking for a home inside our house. Spiders, ants and other creepy things will invade, looking for water and sweet things. It means we have to clean extremely carefully: leave no bread crumbs behind, tightly close the sugar pot and don’t leave out tea cups or coffee cups with sugar or sweetener in them. My house soon will be a Walhalla for entomologists, just like the modern Greek political world will be a Walhalla for Aristophanes…

Aristophanes was a Greek poet and playwriter who lived from 446 BC – 386 BC. He is known because eleven of his plays have survived. They were usually only once performed at a festival visited by the ‘jet set’ of ancient Athens. Its administrators knew no shame, and Aristophanes had no qualms about making fools of his high tone audience, the hot shots in the front row.

And now it’s the turn of the Greek administrators of today to once more be made fools of. The reason? Because nearly half the population of Greece failed to turn up and vote in last Sunday’s European parliamentary elections. Most Greeks thought it was more important to visit the beach than going to the polls. Sadly, the ruling Neo Demokratia party has proved that it is just as corrupt as its main rival Pasok, and so Greeks are fed up with politics.

The fact that the Pasok won the most votes was shaded by the low turn out. You can see it as an act of massive civil disobedience, because voting in Greece is compulsory — although nobody is ever punished for breaking the law.

If Aristophanes were alive now, he would have a lot of fun making fools of our contemporary politicians. If you read him you will see that in his day politics were also a mess. In his play ‘The Wasps’ he satirizes old Athenian men that played the role judge for money, but never delivered justice in a fair way. The man who governed Athens in Airstophanes’ time was Cleon, and the playwright certainly made a fool of him.

In this political comedy the old men who are the judges, come to help a colleague, but are shown to be a swarm of wasps with nasty stings. You can say the same today; our politicians are just the same dangerous swarm of wasps, and although the insects are essential to the cycle of life in nature, they can also threaten your life. It is very dangerous to try and destroy a nest of wasps because they get angry and attack, and that could be fatal.

The results of the voting for Europe in Greece was just like an attack on the nest of the Neo Demokratia. The leader and Greek premier Karamanlis will have to respond, but most people think he will just shuffle a few of his ministers. He is not a real ‘queen’ wasp, because it is the opponents of our political system that really might deliver the fatal sting: think of anarchistic youth and students who have not stopped their rebellion since the riots of last December. They are angry enough to keep on fighting, attacking banks and luxury shops with fire bombs and rocks.

So the wasp (Sfika in Greek) is very much alive in Greek life. Research on our neighboring island of Chios (by Mike Taylor of the Liverpool Museum in the UK) has found a big variety of wasp species, like the so-called spider wasp (Pompilidae), that hunts pseudo-tarantula’s (woaw, I can’t believe those creeps might be here as well…) and other big spiders on Chios.

I myself recently encountered a queen wasp in my house. She was at least 5 centimeters long and belonged to the hornet family, a Vespa orientalis (or was it a Scolia flavifrons?). Anyhow, these hornet wasps are huge, and just like some politicians they like to eat the bread (well, in case of a wasp it is meat or fish) off your plate (Dutch expression).

I am happy that I am not too afraid of this gigantic wasp species, because they are so big and noisy, you usually see or hear them coming first. So I gently put our royal flying monster out of the house. However, the next day she was back again, exploring our living room. I decided to evict her for a second time, but the next day again she got in through her own secret entrance and this time there was no way I could catch her.

I spent two days wasp-catching and on the third day it was too much, so I decided to ignore her. That wasn’t easy: try to concentrate while such a missile is flying around your head. But I managed; so well that I lost all trace of her. And now I am worried. I have no idea how wasps live, and so I can only hope that this great queen is not so sneaky as to brood (and breed) in complete silent seclusion in a secret hidden nest somewhere inside the house. Imagine if in a few weeks I enter my living room and am attacked by a swarm of colossal stinging beasts! Just like a lot of politicians, not all wasps are to be trusted…


(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Creative with bricks

Wherever you live on this island, it is impossible not to be intrigued by the stones, because they are everywhere. When you are at the beach, you find the most beautiful colored pebbles. Try to plant an elegant rose in the soil and you will meet stubborn stones which are very hard to be moved. Stones are part of your life: walls enclose gardens and orchards with olive trees are supported by stones; lots of traditional houses are built with natural stone; landscapes are scattered with big rocks, mountains show colorful rock formations.

Lesvos used to be a volcanic island and the volcanoes probably not only spewed fire but also threw out big stones all over the island. The plateau near Skalochori looks like a moon landscape with huge rocks scattered around, as if the Cyclops had been playing games with them. The famous Panagia Glykofiloussa Church in Petra is build on a huge rock (Petra in Greek means rock), mysterious small heaps of stones decorate the tableland of Michou, the Golden Beaches with black stones are very popular at Eftalou, but the beach with white pebbles in Skala Kidonia is less known. (The beach at Melinda is brilliant white with quartz and just a few meters into the water there’s a vast single stone like a small island TB).

The mountains above Plomari are known as the “crystal” mountains because they secrete crystal and other semi-precious stones. The southern beaches are the places to find the most colored stones. In the west there are petrified trees which have strewn the shore with multi colored stones — the slivers of million year old trees. The bare landscape is often crossed with long walls of stone that creep over the mountain slopes like arteries you find on stones. (Some of the island’s ancient walls are made of such large ‘polygonal’ stones you wonder how anybody could have lifted them TB).

So, it is normal that people that built houses here were inspired by the plethora of stones. The traditional houses of Molyvos, and of most other villages on Lesvos, are built from natural stones, and they are not painted chalk white and mostly they have red tiled roofs. A few have upper storey closed verandas made of wood but nowadays modern houses are built with concrete blocks and are plastered and painted. Although some house owners might add a natural stone wall for decoration, fewer and fewer people choose the traditional stone style for the structure of a new house.

Some traditional walls were made with bricks. In the Ypsilon Monastery close to Sigri walls and chapels are decorated with lines of bricks. (The handsome old olive press buildings (and chimneys) were usually built of brick TB) and in the mountain village Ampeliko, below the Olympos mountain, towards Plomari, the priest of the Saint Nicolas Church has been going crazy with bricks. The porch of the church displays the creative wedding of natural stone and brick, and so do the arches of the public building/museum and the fountain and other small decorations nearby.

In earlier times the country houses were built with little towers, in order to watch out for the pirates. These are the famous Tower Houses of Lesvos. You can find them around Mytilini. When you approach the village of Sigri, on your right you see the arches of bricks of a Tower House nearly hidden behind trees and a hill. Each time we visited Sigri we notice an arch or another tower has been added. Last year thanks to the internet I found out that this is the Tower House, a hotel that has 4 apartments. The owners, Evangelia and Dimitrios Komninos started building some eleven years ago: it’s like a castle with towers, patios, and covered balconies hidden under arches, all built with wood, natural stone and a lot of bricks that have been used to decorate the walls and terraces. Evangelia and Dimitrios are not afraid anymore of pirates, they just love the old architecture of their island.

Dimitrios, a renovator of old houses, has not finished yet. Next to the main house he is adding the finishing touches to a large, luxurious apartment. It seems that the more he builds the more artistic he becomes, because this new building is a showpiece in how to be creative with brick, inside as well as out. The wood and stone of the interior play a tremendous game together. Dimitrios has even made two inside wall decorations with stones of petrified wood. All Tower House apartments are fancifully furnished: heavy wooden pieces, some antique, some from India, with white lace curtains and classic tapestry. Their most beautiful item of furniture is in the new apartment: an antique wooden bed, which was once used as a seat by a rich Indian raja (even though now it’s a bed) on the back of an elephant.

The garden has a magic view over Sigri, its harbor and the island Nissiopi opposite of the harbor. You will find romantic seats, strange formed stones that are worth a place in a modern museum, a swimming pool with a bar, an outside oven, a barbeque, (all of course, fully decorated with bricks), a lookout post and a small place for children to play, fruit trees, flowers, waterfalls, all designed to give a pleasurable time in the garden. Together with the new apartment (another one is planned above), Dimitrios is also building a little church that is, no need to say, fully decorated with bricks.

Whenever you want to spoil yourself by staying some days in this fairy tale-like Tower House I have another tip: the best place to watch the sunset over the sea at Sigri is from the café-par (no spelling mistake) Etzi, which is in the fields behind the sandy beach of Faneromani, a few kilometers out of Sigri. With a little bit of luck you’ll get your retsina served in glasses owned by the grandmother of Nondas, the owner. And when you get to know him, you may even have a chance to have a ride in his home made automobile. I had no time to test his motorized pedal boot. Just as at the Tower House, and in the fascinating environment around Sigri, where the mountains still hide hundreds of petrified trees, you could stay forever in the bar Etzi…

@ Smitaki 2009

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

The secret of Ikarian life

Can you imagine: being a hundred years old on a Greek island? No stress, to maintain a little vegetable garden, looking out over the bright blue sea, taking a stroll through the mountains, picking wild vegetables, figs, walnuts, drinking a glass with your friends in the cafenion, taking a nap each day and eating according to the Ikarian diet…

This is the secret of the Ikarian life, which, according to the American health guru Dan Buettner, gives you a better chance of a long and healthy life. Buettner has named four regions in the world he calls “blue zones” (http://www.bluezones.com/about), all of them places where the environment is conducive to old age. Besides the Greek island of Ikaria there are Nicoya in Costa Rica, Okinawa in Japan and Loma Linda in California, United States. Buettner published his findings last year in the book: The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest.

These regions all have their secrets, and on Ikaria it’s not only diet, but social life and exercise. The Ikarian diet is a variant different of the classic Mediterranean diet: lots of vegetables (amongst them plenty of wild vegetables and beans), a little sugar and meat, fewer grains and less fish and more potatoes, goat milk, with regular doses of honey, herb tea, a glass of home made red wine and, of course, olive oil.

And do no think that all people from a little Greek village exercise daily on a home trainer, or do gymnastics together in the village square like they use to do in Japan, or that they are all member of a football club.

Greeks are known for doing very little exercise: everything that can be done by car, even if it means a few dozen meters to the shops, is done on four wheels. Here on Lesvos, the locals are amazed that so many tourists come to the island just to walk. And there is many a Greek who will stop and offer walkers a lift – a generous habit that will only change if and when the Greeks realize walking is healthy.

The tourist part of Lesvos in the north might still be almost as healthy as on Ikaria, but not if more and more people decide to ‘walk by car’. Many Greeks in the villages here have heart diseases and will not reach the age of 60, whereas in the north of Ikaria a third of the population reaches the wonderful age of 90.

Although Molyvos is a village with steep slopes and plenty of steps, whenever and wherever you step outdoors on Ikaria you have to either climb or descend through the village streets. I am always full of admiration when I see the old people doing their daily shuffle up and down the stairs – while their younger neighbors do it by motor. (A former mayor of Molivos once said that he was against building a new road down from the town to the port because it was healthier for people to walk TB).

Keeping a garden is also a very healthy way of life. Not only for the homegrown vegetables, but because it means lots of exercise: digging, sowing, weeding, harvesting. Daily walks and gardening will keep you in shape.

Another factor of the good Ikarian lifestyle is the afternoon nap, the famous siesta. All Greeks used to take a nap in the afternoon but especially in the tourist areas, this is disappearing. When you walk around in Molyvos early afternoon, you will always see some life, but on Ikaria you will not meet a soul. It has to be said that the Greeks have their main meal of the day in the afternoon and after such a dinner a nap is more than welcome.

The curious factor of the Ikarian good life is the social side of it. Here in Greece the family ties are very important and houses are shared by more than two generations. Old people’s homes are practically unknown in Greece. Grandparents play a key role in the upbringing of their grand children and the household, so the old people have an active social role. According to the Ikarians, living alone is very unhealthy, and there’s an old Greek saying: if you go to church regularly you’ll live longer. Maybe it’s the walking as well as the prayers.

Concerning the food, the “blue zone” message is clear: eat fresh food, lots of different dishes and eat what’s in season. The Ikarian diet is full of home products — as it is on Lesvos — although here we eat more according to the usually Mediterranean diet — with more fish and grains. Lately, scientists have been alarmed by the impact modern life has on our diet as we move to frozen and fast food, especially in the tourist areas. (Last year it was revealed by the international Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that of all EU citizens, the Greeks now have the highest (and unhealthiest) body mass index (BMI) The reason? Because they have largely abandoned the traditional diet — and the Ikarian variant — in favor of food with too much fat, salt and sugar. Sad but true. TB)

Happily enough, though, the modern food style has not yet conquered Lesvos, and even the tourists tend to eat the real Greek food that is served in nearly all the restaurants. Maybe not so many Greeks here on the island reach the age of 90 as they do on Ikaria, but I am sure that in the Lesvorian mountain villages where the traditional life continues like in the old times, a third of the people will easily reach the age of 80. So, I bet Lesvos qualifies as a light Blue Zone…

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki, 2009

High Heels Forbidden

If you organized a race for women wearing high heels to see who could run fastest down from the castle above Molyvos, through the cobbled streets to the village, I bet the winner would be Greek.

The streets of Molyvos are surely hell for heels but, I am always flabbergasted and filled with admiration when I see the Sunday processions with the priest in front of a flock of women, some on stiletto heels, walking gracefully in their high heels down the narrow streets of the village as if they were walking in bare feet.

I used to walk high heeled all over the world. I even walked parts of the leveda’s in Madeira on high heels. But I do remember that taking them off to walk in the ancient town of Rhodes. I didn’t do it because I was afraid of damaging the warm grey medieval stones there. At that time I still was young and unconcerned, but although I was used to the badly paved streets of Amsterdam, the stones of Rhodes felt better in bare feet.

Those medieval streets were really made for leather sandals. In ancient Greek and Roman times, high heels were barely known. The heel came really in vogue in 1533, after the wedding of Catherine de Medici and the French king Henri II. The bride was a little short and that is why she appeared at her wedding in Paris on a pair of quite high heels, which immediately made her famous with the ladies of the court. England’s Mary Tudor soon followed the fashion and wore the highest possible heels.

Since I now live in in the country and warmth, I wear flipflops in the summer and in the winter I wear clogs, like plastic sabots. I know, they are not the most elegant kind of footwear, but there is nobody here I should parade for, although whenever I go into the town or for an evening out, I take my heels out of the closet.

Lesvos really is an agricultural island. You realize that as soon as you arrive back at the airport in Athens, and see plenty of well dressed people and lots of women struggling on all heights of heel.

The Central Archeological Service of Athens wants to ban these high heeled ladies (and gum chewing people) from its archeological sites, like the Acropolis and the Epidavros theatre. The Service says high heels (just like splats of chewing-gum) are bad for the old marbles and stones.

I doubt this ban will ever extend to Lesvos which does not have that many grand archeological sites. The petrified forest can never by threatened by high heels — and how would you dance on those petrified trunks? And anyway it is already forbidden to touch the exposed trees. The castles of Molyvos and Mytilini don’t have marble floors that could be spoiled by stilettos and the early Christian church of Georgios Demetrius close to Ypsilometopo does not even have a floor to damage. This nearly forgotten little church has already been got desecrated by cattle using it as a cowshed. In one corner you will find a tiny fragment of what once must have been a splendid mosaic floor. The rest has been destroyed by the hooves of hundreds of goats and sheep. I said it was an agricultural island.

Instead of measuring the damage caused by high heels the Archeological Service should pay more attention to neglect of so many of its archeological sites, some of which are not yet unearthed. Lesvos has plenty of lost treasures: the ancient towns of old-Antissa and Pyrghi, the ruined castle of Sigri, old watermills, the unknown graves at Palios, the old Roman waterways and so on (12 churches of Lesvos are listed on the 100 most endangered sites by the World Monument Watch). If we read the story of Peter Green about the history of Lesvos ‘Lesbos and the genius loci’ one of the chapters of his book ‘Classic bearings’, it is clear that there are still plenty of archeological treasures hidden beneath in the Lesvian earth.

I have never seen the castle of Mytilini from the inside, so I do not know if the concert there on the 4th of July by the German pop group The Scorpions will be performed on an earthen ‘floor’, like the floor of the open air theatre within the castle of Molyvos. Actually, it is a small field of grass on which they place a podium and a stand for concerts. Maybe this place once had stone or marble floors, but they were removed a long time ago to build houses and other buildings in the town. So, you are welcome there in your high heels, but leave the chewing-gum at home. However, a warning for the high heeled tourists who think Molyvos is quite a challenge: take a shoe repair kit with you, because the nearest shoemaker who can fix your heels is in Kaloni.

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

The mermaid of Sykaminia

One of the most touristic and popular places on Lesvos is the little coastal village of Skala Sykaminia. The harbor with the little white church on a rock looking out over its colored fishing boats (and beyond to the coast of Turkey) is so picturesque that none of the kafenions around the harbor have trouble getting all their tables occupied during the summer months.

For the Greek tourists there is another reason to visit this place: it is the village of the ‘Mermaid Madonna’, the title is of a well known novel by the Lesvorian writer Stratis Myrivilis. Myrivilis was born in Sykaminia – the village up the hill from the ‘skala’ - in 1892. He went to the gymnasium in Mytilini and then to Athens to university. But when the Balkan war broke out (in 1912-13, after which Greece was expanded to include most of Macedonia) he signed up as a soldier, but did not return home to the island for ten years, by which time he was a pacifist. His first novel was about Sappho - The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes – but his best known work, The Mermaid Madonna, was written in 1949 after he had moved to Athens, but it was all about his unforgettable home island.

The story starts around 1922, when a captain is living in the little church on the rock of Skala Sykaminia. One day he disappears but leaves behind, in the church, a wall painting of a Madonna with a fishtail. The inhabitants of Sykaminia are surprised but soon get used to this new goddess whose icon they begin to worship with prayers and incense. However, one day, boats full of refugees (Greeks expelled from Asia minor in the ‘Great Catastrophe’) fill the little skala of Sykaminia. No-one says a word about their horrible experiences in their beloved homeland of Anatolia. Most of them were fishermen and when new houses are built to accommodate them, they demanded to live near the harbor, which is how Skala Sykaminia came to be. The huge mulberry tree which shade the terrace outside what was the kafenion of Smaragthi’s godfather is still there — it’s now a restaurant called Skamnia (what means mulberry).

The story continues with the fisherman Varouhos going one day to Hora (Mytilini) and when he has done with his business and drunk a little too much, he sets off to row back home around the coast, but, astonishingly, he discovers a tiny baby in his boat. It’s a little girl with green eyes, a flower amongst the weeds, whom the villagers immediately realize cannot be ‘one of them’. An ancient lady, Permahoula, more than a hundred years old, understands well enough who the girl is —the daughter of a mermaid who, she says, must have seduced a fisherman.

Mermaids are lovely creatures but when you get seduced by them it is as good as signing your own death sentence. Permahoula knows this and for sure, one stormy night she hears a mermaid singing a lullaby. She recalls the many stories of fishermen who, once having heard the song or meet a mermaid, are never the same again.

In Greek mythology (which is so intertwined with the real life of the village in The Mermaid Madonna) there are also Sirens, half woman half bird, that seduce seamen with their sweet singing, like they tried with the Homeric hero Odysseus in his travels back home from Troy. Odysseus knew about the danger of listening and succumbing to the exquisite song, but wanted to hear it for himself, so he forced his crew to block their ears with wax and tie him firmly to the mast so that he could enjoy the beauty without being able to cast himself into their arms. The Argonauts also encountered Sirens, and their method of escape was to ask one of their party, the musician Orpheus, to play his lyre and sing loud enough to drown out their seductive wails. As time went by, artists depicted Sirens as mermaids.

So Skala Sykaminia is the village of the mermaid, who in modern times, continues her ancient craft, by seducing tourists. It is not difficult to fall in love with this little sweet fishing village, where the water laps gently against the harbor walls and the tinkling of the masts of the fishing boats brings you back immediately to the story of Myrivilis and his girl with the green eyes. Myrivilis knew how to describe the old life of the village, the beauty of the island and the nature of its people, the Greeks. In the course of his life, Greek ways probably didn’t change very much, and as the schoolteacher Avgustis in the book says wistfully: “If one bit of Greece remains uncorrupted, it will be due to the simple, uneducated folk.”

Standing in front of the little church of the mermaid Madonna (if the painting ever did exist, it now is lost) you can look dreamily out over the crystal clear blue Aegean sea, and, if you are lucky, see not mermaids, but dolphins breasting the waves. The only ‘real’ mermaids are in the souvenir shops.

There are other magical apparitions. When a strong wind blows from the north, and the waves crash on to the beach, with a little bit of imagination you can also see the hippocampus —the half-horse-half fish that towed the chariot of the God of the Sea Poseidon. And when the wind blows really hard it turns the water into a spray of mist through which you can just see the Nereïdes, the daughters of Poseidon, who ride the horse-fish.

Real seahorses got their name from the hippocampus, but for a long time I thought they existed only in fairy tales. However, they are real enough and swim freely in warm seas and oceans. The Chinese catch them for a love potion and here on Lesvos they float in the sea-grass of the beautiful Gulf of Kaloni. A friend who is a fisherman regularly brings them in by accident in his nets. Even if he were to put them back in the water, they are too delicate to survive, so now he dries them in the sun and I have a small collection of seahorses. So magical is their appearance, I still believe they must have come out of a fairy story.

PS English paperback versions of the novels were published in 1998 by Efstathiadis, Athens

(with thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki, 2009