Hoopoes and Swallows, Asparagus and Taramosalata...

 

When Lisa wants to go for a morning walk, all winter I’ve been used to piling on whatever warm clothes come to hand, a woolly hat over unbrushed hair. But this morning I ran into several neighbours, two of them dressed smartly in black for church. It’s the start of Easter week and more people are back on the island.

Also back are the lovely hoopoes – I’ve seen several, not noticing the medium-sized brown birds until they take off in flight and show their flamboyant black-and-white-striped tail feathers. I’ve heard the whistling sound of bee-eaters – it seems early for them – but not seen one yet. Much more evident are the swallows, swooping low and fast, midnight-blue plumage on top and snow-white underneath, tail like two long, fine tines of a carving fork.

Yesterday morning, four young goats were playing on the old drystone wall in front of my house, two of them trotting over the rocks and head-butting each other. Despite the abundance of fresh vegetation everywhere, they stand at my fence and look greedily at the garden.

Goat farmers are much in evidence too, guarding their stock and fattening them up. ‘Don’t let the dog out of the car here!’ snarled one when, having seen him with his flock, I stopped to ask where it was OK to walk. We’re avoiding Plaka and Lethra until Easter is over, when there’ll be a lot of confused mother goats saying, ‘I haven’t seen young Johnny for days…’ ‘Meh, and my Matilda’s disappeared too… And what’s happened to that nice man who kept bringing treats?’

Livadia and Megalo Horio will also be off-bounds for the next week while firecrackers are exploding – I heard the first yesterday, while in between downpours we walked along Livadia seafront. More rocks had been washed up by powerful wind and waves from the south recently. As we walked around the bay, the pebbles looked brilliant white against a clear aquamarine sea and a brooding sky. Lisa, of course, went in for a swim.

We’ll stick to places far from firecrackers, the fields in the Eristos valley where Lisa loves to sniff for rabbits, occasionally making one leap out of a bush and safely away, while I keep an eye out for other prizes. Perhaps because we’ve had plenty of rain, or perhaps I’ve got better at looking for them, I’ve found more fresh wild asparagus than ever before, and more exquisite orchids – sending photos to my orchid-ID gurus Eleftheria and Gerry. And in the hillside terraces closer to home, I look out for tiny fragments of old pottery with an unusual pattern or glaze. Yesterday afternoon, I found a little of everything so didn’t mind that my feet were squelching in my boots from walking through wet grass. Lisa had a wonderful time, enjoyed a huge dinner and watched neighbours walk by while I pulled up weeds from the garden, enjoying the evening sunshine. By the time I lit a fire for a cosy evening, she was in a deep sleep.

 

I’ve been using the excuse of Lent and long walks to eat halva every day. My favourite from Drapetsona in Piraeus was made with carob syrup. During the ‘fasting’ periods leading up to Easter when some give up meat, certain traditional foods appear. After eating delicious white taramasalata at tavernas in Rhodes and then Astypalea during trips last month, I decided to try making my own. The pink packaged stuff is terrible in Greece compared to good supermarket taramosalata in the UK. For the first time, I bought the salted roe from the minimarket and got instructions: mashed potatoes (or bread), olive oil, lemon. Mine tasted bland until I added finely chopped onion. The ladies at the minimarket said not everyone likes it with onion.

Before this last rainy week, we had weeks of dry weather, good swims, even lying in warm sun. But the heavy rainfall this winter has been a blessing for the island.

Now big leaves have now grown back on my fig trees, and sparrows are knocking down the hard green figs, discarding them when they find they can’t eat them, looking instead for other things to eat in the soil, taking baths in Lisa’s water bowl.

For the last months, I’ve been working on revisions of the new manuscript. It’s something I was writing on and off for ages, and finally felt driven to finish last year. With the help of an excellent editor, I hope I’ve knocked it into shape. It’s about my adventures on Tilos with Lisa since we moved to this house at Ayios Antonis with its fig trees and vines, surrounded by mountains and sea, life in an amazing place with an amazing dog, woven in with stories of island life past and present. Maybe AN ISLAND HOME AND A SALTY DOG?

Ahem, says Fishbags, aren’t you forgetting someone?

The amazing salty dog just came to look at me through the open kitchen door, suggesting it might be time for another walk or another breakfast. Ah, and the power’s just gone off again – for about the tenth time in two days – so this will have to wait until later…

Apokries

The year I lived in Athens after I finished university, I had my first glimpse of the Greek version of carnival or Apokries in the Plaka district; I remember Athenians in bright costumes, happily spraying one another with streamers. Then, with a few days off from teaching, I took buses north to Kalambaka to see the Meteora, those strange stubby rocks that rise so sheer from the flat plains that monks of old saw fit to build monasteries on top. On Kathari Deftera, Clean Monday, people picnicked outdoors although the snow was only just melting, and there was a whiff of ouzo on sunny café terraces, while at night the town smelled of woodsmoke from the roaring fires that made bars cosy and warm.

I’ve written before here about the Apokries, the three weeks (or Triodion) before Lent. This year it began on 21 February, and lasts until Sunday 13 March. Traditionally it’s a time for revelry and celebration; this weekend there will be parties where people wear funny or spooky fancy dress.

Here on Tilos, it began with the Gaitanaki, a dance around a pole with intertwined ribbons like a maypole. The event – which has only been brought back into practice in recent years – was scheduled to happen on the Sunday but delayed, perhaps because the strong winds made it impossible; it happened instead in a rather impromptu way a few days later, when the crew from Alpha TV were here getting documentary footage for their 60 Lepta Ellada programme (perhaps to be aired later this month). So the performances by the Tilos dance troupe and the schoolchildren were filmed by the drone flying overhead. It was a small but happy crowd gathered in the square, drinking red wine from Petrino and eating pork souvlaki sticks from the barbecue. For me, having missed Greek dance classes for a while, the best part was joining in a few dances again. Though once the firecrackers started going off, Lisa was shaking with fear so we retreated to Megalo Horio...

 

In the middle of the Apokries period is Tsiknopemti, a Thursday named for the smell of smoke from the grill; friends gather to enjoy meat before they have to give it up. The following week they can still eat cheese but over the course of the three weeks, people gradually abstain from animal foods. On Clean Monday, anything with blood or dairy is forbidden, so people feast on seafood such as octopus and taramasalata, which go so well with ouzo (ah, Yiannis just offered to cook mussels for us!). And then, finally, people are ready for a more austere diet of beans and pulses during Lent. Of course, not everyone observes the religious customs but many do.

While the religious festivals and the big, contemporary carnival parades that take place in certain cities have an appeal of their own – and in ancient times the worshippers of Dionysus would apparently run around waving giant phalluses to encourage the earth to be reborn after the winter, which must have been quite funny - I am fascinated by the pagan roots of these springtime rites. It’s all to do with driving out the bad spirits to make way for the good. It’s also to ensure health and fertility and the fruitfulness of the land. 

A century or so ago, the masquerades were darker and more raw and mysterious, with animal masks and fur hoods. And even today in some parts of the north of Greece it's still the same, in Kavala and Drama, where the masquerades happen during the twelve days between Christmas Eve and Epiphany, just before the winter equinox when the days are shortest. I first learned about these traditions at the Museum of Greek Folk Art and you can see a couple of costumes on their website (http://www.melt.gr/en/collection/the-collection/masquerades/, while I also found some wonderful photographs online by Georgios Tatakis:    

https://www.facebook.com/georgios.tatakis/media_set?set=a.10207923113453859.1073741978.1177445320&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/georgios.tatakis/media_set?set=a.10207942596900933.1073741979.1177445320&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/georgios.tatakis/media_set?set=a.10207916900858548.1073741977.1177445320&type=3

At Sohos, north of Thessaloniki, at Apokries people walk through the streets wearing long, twisted goat horns, bells and wigs, blowing horns. In Drama, they dress as ‘Arapides’ in fur and feathers, as I found in photos by Lefteris Zopidis:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10048955@N06/3331921207/in/photostream/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10048955@N06/3341217290

The ‘Karnavali’ character dresses in goatskins, a tall hat covered in streamers and a mask with a horse-hair moustache. In the final week of Apokries people roam the streets offering ouzo, dancing and jangling bells. Making a noise is important – to frighten off bad spirits, it seems, and awaken the sleeping earth.

The closest thing to mummeries on the islands seems to be on Skyros, technically one of the Sporades but far from Skiathos and Skopelos, nearer to Evia. It draws huge crowds from Athens for the celebrations; locals dress as ‘Yeri’ or old men, their faces blackened or hidden with goatskin or cloth, fur costumes, belts hung with huge bells which clang as they troop around the streets. There’s drinking and traditional dancing, of course.

http://www.travelsingreece.com/trips/carnival-in-skyros/

While researching all this online I learned of the festival of ‘Boules’ that takes place at Apokries in Naoussa, the well-known wine-producing region of Macedonia. Men dressing as women and women as men is a common element of the carnival, but it has a special twist here during the masked dance of the ‘Yanitzari’ or Janissary and the ‘Boules’, the Bride. Masks are made of cloth and beeswax with a horsehair moustache, and covered with a trailing turban; costumes are covered in jangling coins.

The Janissaries were soldiers of the Ottoman sultans. Greek boys were taken by force from their families when young and brought up as Muslims. Although the village of Naoussa was for a long while exempt from sending its sons to be Janissaries, in 1705 the Ottomans came to recruit from there too. The locals rebelled and killed those who had come to take away their children. It led to harsh and violent reprisals on the community by the Ottomans.

From then on, the masked dance had a special purpose among the people of Naoussa. It enabled them to hold secret meetings to plot their uprising against Turkish rule, since rebels could slip down from the mountains secretly in disguise. The event, dressed up as a wedding ritual, allowed people to slip money, food and messages to the rebels, and for others to join them. Naoussa rose up against the Turks in 1822 – and was totally destroyed in further reprisals. A sad tale, but one of courage too and the determination of the Greek people to seek their freedom.

Here on Tilos, it feels as though the dark days of winter are over – in fact, this year, we’ve barely had any. The sky and the sea are often blue - which is lovely, although locals have said if it doesn't rain more, animals might die, and we'll have a problem with our own water supply. The fields are full of flowers and awash with colours, red and purple, yellow and white; my favourites are the poppies that glow in the sunshine, and the white and pink spikes of cyclamen, though there are delightful splashes of mauve and pink everywhere you walk. 

Last week there was another celebration in the Dodecanese – the day of liberation when this group of islands finally shook off the days (the centuries!) of occupation and repression. After the Ottoman Turks, the Italians, and the Germans - then three years of transition under British rule after World War Two - the Dodecanese became united with Greece on 7 March 1948.    

 

I'd like to sign off here saying 'I'm off to put on my goat horns and bells, blacken my face and join the party!' But it's all quiet here on our little sokaki of Megalo Horio... 

Thanks to an article by Mela Kubara and to the ‘Dance Archive’ which I used as sources for some of this research, as well as the Museum of Greek Folk Art.

Apokries, or Carnival

This dog which I profess to love woke me at four thirty one morning recently. I tossed and turned for an hour, then, defeated, decided it would be light soon anyway, so I might as well take her for her morning walk. I threw on the two closest jumpers and a pair of jeans and wellies, and set off.

It was dark as we walked through the sleeping village. But when we reached the fields below, the songbirds and roosters were beginning to wake. And soon I could hear crashing waves down at Eristos, like a siren call… Lisa was pulling that way too, so we went. Walking at dawn is a nice way to wake up, I rationalised, while thinking about the cup of tea I’d make when I got back.

It was just getting light as we neared the beach, where waves were smoothly rolling in and crashing with white foam on the sand. I looked up to the sky to the southeast, where thick fingers of cloud had started turning a vibrant red, growing deeper by the moment. As it glowed crimson, I looked down and the sea was red, as if flooded with blood. It was an almost scary spectacle. Five minutes later, it was gone. The clouds became orange and then paled.

We turned back, taking the dirt track that passes En Plo, passing the chickens clucking around a field. Towards Profitis Ilias, the rocky hilltop was beginning to be touched by sunlight. Then the mountain seemed to receive the rising sun with full intensity; like switching on an electric fire, when the bar transforms from ash pale to bright orange-red. The top of the mountain was alive, while below and all around remained grey. No wonder the ancients came up with myths.

Again, it lasted five minutes and then faded as the sun rose higher, and as we returned to the village, the sky was blue with puffy pink and purple clouds here and there, a benign and friendly sunshine beginning to spread about generally, and no hint of the mysteries we’d witnessed in that witching hour.

This time of year is known here as Apokries – the Greek version of Carnival. I first started being intrigued by the Apokries customs after a visit to a museum in Athens which displayed some of the freaky traditional costumes, some with animal fur covering their heads. In the Christian calendar, this time of year is all about the giving up of meat for Lent; apokries combining the words ‘away from’ and ‘meat’. Though clearly, it’s all wrapped up with ancient pagan customs too.

There was a party at Bozi on Tsiknopempti, the day for gorging on all the meat you’re about to give up. We arrived when a group of children in fancy dress were dancing zumba. It was entertaining, but the end of the event, and we were left standing in the aftermath of a kids’ party: paper plates, streamers, and little people in fancy dress running around fighting with balloon swords, while tired parents and relatives wandered zombie-like in their wake.

So, we asked anyone who’d listen: if Tsiknopempti is the day for feasting on sizzling barbecued meat before Lent, why are there another ten days before Kathari Deftera, Clean Monday? There are three stages, it turns out. The following week you can still eat animal products.

We hustled a souvlaki from the grill. I’d gone there with Sibylle, our good friend from over at The Island Bus. She’d been over to the house to use the internet that afternoon. Recovering from being loved-up by Lisa, she went to make herself a cup of tea. I turned around to see water streaming out of the kettle, and I had to apologise. You see, I bought that kettle in a supermarket in Rhodes about a year ago. As soon as I got it home I found out that it leaked from the handle if you filled it with water for more than one mug. If I lived in Rhodes, of course, I’d have taken it straight back to the shop. But when you live in Tilos, and the choice is taking it back on the ferry next time you go, and in the meantime living without a kettle… Well, you just keep it. I think of it as an eco-friendly kettle, as if you boil more water than you need for one cup, you’re at risk of electrocution.

A few days later, clearly she had forgiven me, as I was deliberating where to take Lisa for her afternoon walk when a message arrived from Sibylle suggesting we go to the Apokries festivities in Livadia. So that became my destination for the walk, and we arranged to meet there. The weather was cloudy, but hot when the sun peeked out; so, arriving early after our walk, Lisa and I went for a surreptitious dip in the sea.

The festivities began with dances by the young children; then by women wearing brightly coloured flowers in their hair. Then what looked just like a maypole with a mask on top was carried out into the square, and a dance followed with twelve women weaving the ribbons around it. This Greek carnival custom is called the gaitanaki; the twelve ribbons relate to the months of the year, while the interweaving of the ribbons, or gaitania, symbolizes the circle of life and death, winter and spring. This springtime tradition, which occurs in May in northern Europe, happens in late February here when the flowers are already blooming.

Then the dance floor was opened up to all, and we danced. One dance seemed to go on forever, and as the line of dancers got longer with more women joining in, it was a pleasure to see the sea, and the late afternoon sun on the hills; so few festivals take place in daytime, as in summer it’s too hot to dance in the midday sun.

Just as dusk was closing in, there was a commotion and the maskers arrived: villagers dressed up with masks and scarves covering their faces, carrying kitchen tools to clatter and shake in our faces: comical but sinister. Someone had the face of an old man and wore a flowery house-dress. Another wore a pink evening gown and gloves, with slippers and a pink wig, carrying a ladle.

After watching for a while, I decided to do something I haven’t done for ages, and walk home across the island in the dark. Soon Lisa and I were leaving the noise of the music behind, and the lights of the bay; and there were just the high-pitched piped notes of the birds; the different smells as we passed different terrain; and, especially right in the middle of the island, utter calm, with layers of stars up above in the clear gap between the clouds. Only four times in the whole hour was the peace disrupted by a car driving by; the rest of the time, we had the island to ourselves. And when we reached the last quarter of the journey, I could hear the waves down at Eristos. The journey of a few days came full circle with that sound in the darkness. 

The big Apokries celebrations happened this weekend, with more partying and parades. But I’m observing my personal ritual of being borderline antisocial in order to recharge my batteries. Lisa and I have been walking and swimming, and I’ve been celebrating spring by marvelling at the mauve flowers on the sage bushes, the yellow spiny broom and the new, pale green leaves on the trees.

As I started writing this, after an afternoon’s walk to Plaka, I realised on doing some online research that it was good that I had just cut myself a meze plate of graviera, as it is 2 March, tirofagis, the day for eating cheese. Tomorrow is Kathari Deftera, the start of fasting for Easter – which starts, of course, with a feast of seafood…