Though the waves leave the shore

Though the waves leave the shore, they always find their way back..

For 45 euros, one can take a large overnight ferry from the Athens port of Pireaus. One can sit on the deck, concurrently watching the sunset in the west while glancing at a disappearing Athens to the north. Eventually, when the novelty of watching seagulls soar over the wake of the ship has worn off, a passenger then has about ten more hours to fill aboard this florescent lit behemoth alone in a dark sea.

I imagine the sunrise was stunning over a clear sea, however, I missed it while hiding under a blanket that I had accidentally stolen from the SAS airline. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, Mytiline appeared all sharp, clean angles in the bright morning light. Mariza greeted me at the dock with her cheerful hat and little red car to drive me and my 22 ukuleles two blocks to my tiny home. (where I promptly fell asleep for 3 hours..) 

Lesvos is familiar this time, her turns and curves leading to places that I understand. My bed is the same. The same freakishly dull cutlery is in my apartment. Little decorations that I left last year are still in their place. The lamp that I bought and proceeded to knock over last year has been glued back together and placed cozily in the window.  The guys in the copy shop (that I go to EVERYDAY,) smile with recognition. The uneven stone streets do not trip me up and the food... ah, the food. I’ve managed to stay away from the ice cream shop on the corner, though I remember well the taste. I may give in tonight. 

After sleeping and showering off the overnight ferry adventure, I met Mariza and headed to Mosaik together, where we, along with Christina and a man who's name I have forgotten, would have two hours of children’s choir rehearsals. Mosaik’s beautiful courtyard and high ceiling airiness filled with the voices of kids anxious for the freedom of summer. Two sisters walked in, the older showing signs of becoming a young woman and the younger smiling with a mouth still half full of baby teeth. We recognized each other from last summer, exchanging rib crushing hugs before forming a circle for the start of class. As the younger sister, with her dark hair and freckle sprinkled nose, took my hand, she hugged my arm, sighing softly. “I love you,” she said.

Now, I am aware that there are countless studies on the effects of trauma on children with outcomes being that they form quick attachments or no attachments at all. I know these things. But this little girl?  She can have my heart. 

έχω χαθεί (I'm lost.)

έχω χαθεί (I'm lost.)

For the moment, Athens is the city that robs me of my equilibrium. I suspect that will change in the future, but for now, her streets veer off in directions unknown to me. In Chicago, I am one of those annoying people who gives directions using North and South, rather than right and left. But in Athens, I receive directions with a blank stare, unable to even pronounce street names as the Greek script is outside of my realm of Latin based languages. 

While Nadia was at work, I left her home to journey the six miles to city center to pick up ten ukuleles. I closed her door behind me and walked into a world in which I would be unable to even give my address to a taxi driver if necessary. (I considered stealing a piece of Nadia’s mail with her address) I headed towards the train station, an indecipherable fifteen minute walk, and I proceeded to double back multiple times. It did not help that up to this point Nadia had, without malice, managed to take a different way home from the train station each time we returned. My phone and maps sat uselessly in Chicago. 

The following night, after meeting up with Mariza and hearing Polyphonica, her Athens choir, sing, I stood alone at midnight near the tunnel of the Monastiraki train stop waiting for the next train north. The sound of clanking silverware from above mingled with the plaintive modal melody of a bouzouki as a dry wind passed through the tunnel heralding the arrival of the next train. Directly across the tracks from me, a couple made out voraciously.

Sometimes, getting lost is being found.

έφαγα (I ate)

έφαγα  (I ate)

We say that we travel for various reasons; a desire to explore, a willingness to experience new things, an ache to climb mountains, a hope to meet new people, a need to de-stress, a goal of trying to understand the world... etcetera, etcetera. But, if we are honest with ourselves, we would discover that the true reason we travel, is to simply eat. 

I ate. Each day in Athens, Nadia's father would ask, "Would she like stuffed peppers and tomatoes? Mushrooms? large beans soaked, simmered, drained and then broiled with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes? Would she like baked whole bass?"  Every lunchtime, I shamelessly and greedily ate while the hot afternoon sun shone into Nadia's cheerful orange kitchen. 

Last summer on Lesvos, I had felt incredibly isolated and overwhelmed. I had made a couple of friends who were truly amazing people, a young English woman and a very determined Iranian man. I also, befriended one tiny little puppy, Googool.  But apart from them, I felt very much on the periphery of life on Lesvos. So, in my last week on the island, I did what any musician would have done. I went to a community choir rehearsal. There I met Mariza, a powerful pixie of a woman, Christina with her valkyrie voice, Vagalis, Mariza’s guitar playing boyfriend and a choir full of some seriously warm hearted people. From that moment, my time alone changed into gatherings full of laughter, obscene amounts of food and a meshing of music, instruments always at hand. On one impromptu night of camping on the beach, I got to know Vagalis’s sister, Nadia, a woman impassioned by all things Rock and Roll. 

And so this summer, I found myself in a bustling Athens, in the northern neighborhood of Nea Filadelfeia, in Nadia's homey apartment in the same building with her parents, with two talkative cats and twenty two recently purchased ukuleles..  And I ate.  

Someone I tell you, in another time, will remember us

Someone I tell you 

In another time

will remember us

-Sappho

There are echoes of footprints all across this island as humanity has traipsed back and forth for thousands of years, marking a shifting balance of East and West. The weary traveller touches feet on the dusty shores while clutching equally to dreams of an unknown future and fears of an all too familiar past. Some stay, making a home and building a community, blending recipes, rituals and songs until the origins are indistinguishable. Others stand on this island with raised heads, their eyes lifted and scanning for a far off destination, always just beyond the horizon. And still others will return back the way they came, overtaken by a past that they race against. 

I swim one last time with the kids at Pikpa. There is laughter and splashing as an evening sun paints everything gold and pink. There are crying babies and sea salted cheeks kissed by little girls all too accustomed to saying goodbye. Later, Nadia, Vergelis and I, sit outside an ice cream shop, contemplating round two as passer-bys with familiar faces join our table to chat. Two hours later, my hands are coated in grease, ketchup and mustard and I dust off my last gyro. A patient dog lies next to my chair, as Nadia’s laughter echoes off stone walls lit by the florescent lights of the gyro shop. In the small hours of the night, Kini and I make a trek on quiet hilly streets to her home, carrying the contents of my packed up temporary home; potatoes, cheese, an oregano plant, a bedspread.  

After a frantic morning and a bag haphazardly packed with half opened eyes, I kneel down in Sappho Square where Arash sits vigil. His skin is darkened by a merciless sun and his movements lethargic on the dawn of the third day of a hunger strike. We say goodbye and I head off to freedom while he remains chained, waiting only for a chance to live free with his brother and attend university. Where will he be in a month, a season, a year? 

My footprints are echoes interwining with the familiar ghosts of all those who have come before and will come after. By the time I return to this island, the smiles of many who I have known in Mytilene, will have moved on to new lives and new dreams all across Europe. But I know that this island is not done with me. Her siren song will call to me in the dark of winter when I will find myself seeking her warmth and searching airfares at 2am. There are plans to make and work to do.

(Postlude: Arash held out and abstained from food for an unfathomable 41 days before his brother and friends were released from Moria's jail. Arash continues to fight for the rights of all refugees. In the meantime, I am solidifying plans and will be returning to Lesvos for two months next summer.)

A mingling of all kinds of colors

Robe
colored with saffron

purple robe

cloak

garland crowns

beauty

Phrygian purple

rugs

A mingling of all kinds of colors

-Sappho

Avyalik Turkey lies just a four kilometer ferry ride away from Mytilene. The market offers up every color in the rainbow and the people offer up smiles. As we crossed between, I marveled at how easily I could straddle the line between east and west. I could skip back and forth at will, yet another is in the forest, waiting for a boat on the Turkish coast, willing to risk her life for a future. 

Why can I cross and she cannot? 

Flaming summer charms the earth

Flaming summer 
charms the earth

with it’s own fluting.

-Sappho

Children squeal wildly, their skin flashing through the water, sure as seals. Bright toys and towels lay scattered across the waters edge. “Look me! Look me!” they shout, desperate to show off underwater flips or unsteady dives. One new mother dips her toes hesitantly into the water as another mother has water to her neck and is tightly holding the hands of a volunteer. An older devoted couple float lazily, their feet intertwined, her hijab contrasting brightly with the water and pool noodles holding them to the surface. Splashing is inevitable and one little boy tries at least twenty times to sit on a raft. The water shines so brightly that one must occasionally look away. 

I stand momentarily off to the side with an older Spanish man, his tall posture bending slightly with age. He tells me of his organization based in Spain, Proem Aid, which serves as search and rescue on the water, bringing boats to shore. “Yes, we take them out of the water,” he says. “but then we must help them reconcile with the sea.” Each day, he makes a trip to Pikpa, walking the one hundred meters with all the children to the sea. He crosses the street with care, scans the water and sends them in, purposefully stationing volunteer lifeguards around them. 

And, with admirable patience, he teaches them. He gives them joy and he helps them to find their own power.

And the squealing continues...