Anchors to home
A large heart beating for Kassos, and for youth
Photo credit ©Sofia A Koutlaki 2019
In an earlier post I hinted at the mementos that made the journey with me back to England. Anchors of previous lives, objects with stories of places and friendships were packed and shipped, to be ranged again as before around a new desk at the beginning of a new life in a ritual that makes the new place home.
The place that has the most anchors has always been my native island of Kassos, Greece. On a map of Europe, Kassos is slightly larger than a full-stop in the south of Greece, between Crete and Karpathos; on world maps it does not exist, as if the sea has swallowed it, that very same turquoise and emerald sea that is both her friend and enemy, connect her and cuts her off, takes people away and brings them back.
Kassos is a small, arid island at the meeting point of the Aegean, the Cretan and the Libyan Seas, where the waters are always rough. To earn a livelihood, her children tamed the sea, source of glory and source of destruction. Her name is as old as prehistory: it is listed in the Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships that took part in the Trojan War. More than two and a half millennia later, her strong commercial fleet was converted to military and joined the rest of the Greek forces in the uprising against the Ottoman Empire that occupied Greece for four centuries. Kassos’ reward was invasion by the Ottoman forces that landed on her, led by a local traitor. Some women, who hid in the Ellinokamara cave, in desperation to escape the Ottoman fury strangled their babies to stifle their cries, but they did not escape: they and their children were taken captives and sold as slaves in the Egyptian bazaars; the old men who had not been away at sea were slaughtered, and Kassos was torched. But the Kassiots, who were ploughing the seas when she was burnt, returned to soothe her and rebuild their livelihoods.
One of my anchors, probably the oldest and the one that established the habit (obsession?) of taking with me things with a story, is a touvras, a handmade leather bag in the shape of a bagpipe made from a whole sheep hide. These were used by shepherds and subsistence farmers, the other main occupation of Kassiots, when they went up into the mountains to tend their flocks and often spend the night in their stone-walled shelters. My own touvras was a present from my father, Captain Antonis, who did not miss the opportunity to spoil me to Mama's consternation. He ordered one to be made from the best leather available and paid the then exorbitant price of 5,000 drachmas. It was 1977.
Since then, touvras and I have been together. In the summer, when I would roam the Kassos mountains in search of a view, the touvras beads swinging on their long thongs would keep up the rhythm of my walk. In the winter, it hung over my bed in Athens. I looked at it and thought of Kassos before falling asleep. It has followed me since from Greece to England and Iran and back and forth, hanging there like a large heart beating for Kassos, Captain Antonis and youth.
© Sofia A Koutlaki 2019
