Moon Over the Mediterranean. G J Maher

      CHAPTER ONE

      Let me tell you a story, one full of learning and intrigue, travels and inspiration. It won’t take long. Sit back and relax. Make yourself comfortable. Perhaps you could close your eyes and dream a little as I relate the story of someone I met a long time ago, a dear friend of mine. Imagine an ever so gentle breeze touching gently on your face, the aromas of sage, chamomile, wheat and barley in your nostrils, aromas so prevalent in Greece and her islands. Just sit and think for a moment as you read these words. Imagine the sounds: the chorus of the cicadas, their song reaching your ears in waves, a distant horn from an arriving ship, birds singing in the shade of the sparsely positioned trees. Look at the colours that might catch your attention: the delicate mauve of the chaste tree whose stems have been used for centuries to make wicker items for the home and market; the bright red of the cherry tree loved not only for its tangy fruit but also for its prized wood; the pomegranate, pear, apple, fig and olive and of course the grapes, and a thousand herbs, bright colours and subtle ones too, colours of the entire spectrum amidst the brown, often dried earth of the islands of the Aegean.

      The year is 1967 and Alexander was yet to discover any of this. He was on board a small passenger ship, the Portokalis Ilios, on her maiden Greek voyage departing Piraeus and he was bound for Santorini eventually, although he would have to change ships to get there.

      It was 9 am and already the sun was hot. It’s like that in a Greek summer, always hot, the sky always blue. Alexander had never been to Greece before. He had also never been on a ship, so everything was new. Alexander was born in a little village in the south of Holland. His family had been cobblers for generations. His father and grandfather ran the family business there, but Alexander didn’t want any of it. He found shoes boring and couldn’t imagine making them and repairing them for the rest of his life. If anything, he’d have preferred to follow in his mother’s footsteps as a cook. Her stroopwafels, oliebollen and poffertjes were simply exquisite. Dutch cooking was not known for being the best in Europe, so Alexander’s mother, in her patisserie, specialised in German and French sweets and had become so well-known that she supplied other patisseries in a hundred-kilometre radius around her shop. At the end of her fifth year in business, she had eleven staff, and now, ten years later, she had a factory too and employed fifty. But Alexander didn’t want this to be his job either.

      In fact he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, apart from travel and see the world. At 19, he could wait no longer, and so here he was after a bus trip from Amsterdam to Athens, leaning on the railing of a ship with the wind in his hair, heading to an island he knew nothing about, Tinos.

      Why, you may ask, had Alexander chosen this island? It’s quite simple really. When he had reached the port of Piraeus early that morning, after journeying from Amsterdam to Athens, Tinos was the only island with a ferry leaving for it that morning. Remember the year. In 1967 there were far fewer ferries travelling around the Mediterranean than there are today. That changed in the decades that followed, but back then, Alexander’s ferry was one of only three leaving on that day, and it was the first.

      The month was June and, as I said, it was already hot, in the thirties in fact and not a breath of wind. The Portokalis Ilios was a slow boat and it took all morning to reach the island, but when it did, Alexander was greeted with something that would mark him forever.

      Ropes were skilfully tossed ashore by hardened sailors whose facial features and gnarled hands told a thousand stories. Slowly the hydraulics of the ramp kicked into action and Alexander watched from behind a small crowd of locals as they prepared to disembark. Vehicles started up and belched choking smoke over the passengers as they moved toward the sunlight which drenched all those out on the wharf, bright sunlight, Mediterranean sunlight.

      As Alexander himself disembarked, a small group of island folk greeted him and the small group of other travellers with hand-written signs on cardboard reading ‘rooms’. The Greek word ‘thomatio’ was one of the first words he therefore learned. He chose the oldest lady and went with her through the narrow streets lined with white-washed houses to a simple home in a garden full of mature fruit trees: peaches, pears, figs, apples and oranges. Her home reminded him of a doll’s house. The old woman showed him all the rooms and he decided upon one with a glimpse of the harbour for 40 drachmas a night, which at the time was about a dollar. She brought him a Greek coffee and spoke in high-pitched fast-paced Greek interspersed with lots of smiles and gestures. As he sat sipping his coffee listening to this old woman chatter, he began to realise that his life was changing right then, right there. Greece does that to people. It changes them deep within.

      He felt something he’d never felt before … an ease, a contentment, a relaxation like no other. He had very little idea what the words being uttered from this old woman were, yet it didn’t seem to matter. He finished his coffee, thanked the woman, briefly held her hand, smiled his infectious smile and said farewell. ‘Yassu,’ the old woman replied as Alexander walked off towards the harbour.

      The ship by then had gone, the few vehicles too had dispersed and just a handful of fishermen remained, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes as they repaired their worn nets and spoke

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