I and my Greek-born wife Betty have been in Athens many
times for Orthodox Easter but we have never been on the Aegean island of Samos
for the great festival. This year we thought we would take our summer trip to
Samos early and on the Monday before Easter we embarked on the venerable (1974
vintage) Ro-Ro car ferry from Piraeus bound for Karlovasi in Samos. The
previous ferry (a 1968 vintage converted Japanese freighter) had finally been
pensioned off and although the European
Express is also elderly and not very smart, it got us there in the
scheduled 12 hours as we lazed in our cabin. The crew were unsurprisingly a
little distant, but so would we all be if we had not been properly paid for 8
months and only kept going by occasional employer subventions in the dire
ongoing Greek/EU crisis.
The ferry was packed with passengers as in Greece many
return to their family birthplace at Easter like so many instinct-driven salmon
– the Samiot diaspora was returning
to its ancestral home, a scene repeated throughout rural Greece. Our Karlovasi
friends gave us a warm welcome (chicken soup at 2am and an impeccably tidy house)
and we awaited the onset of Easter. Like all of Europe religious observance is
fitful in Greece but the priesthood maintains the unaltered Easter Liturgy, starting
on Monday, chanting the words rather monotonously from the Psalms and the
Gospels as did the Byzantines. Indeed on
Easter Sunday itself they sing the widely used Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
from the 5th Century.
Most Greeks at least observe Easter to some degree – not
eating meat during Great Week, but not actually fasting even on Good Friday. A
number pop into their local church and light a candle, kissing the icons and
admiring the flower-bedecked biers awaiting the body of Christ. On Good Friday
itself the atmosphere is sorrowful with a lone church bell tolling dolefully
all day. Much more impressive is the Good Friday Epitaphion, the funeral procession of Christ; in Karlovasi 4
churches carried their finely decorated biers through the streets, led by the
local brass band playing solemn music and followed by clergy in their
spectacular robes, icons, flags and crosses much in evidence. About 500 locals
followed the biers slowly in the dark and the proceedings end with a short
service at the war memorial. All generations partake in this ceremony but quite
a few resolutely ignore it.
On Easter Saturday the observant fast until midnight but I
confess to eating delicious octopus and squid and drinking cold local white
wine, but then I am beyond redemption – and it was our 45th wedding
anniversary too! The Easter Saturday service used to be well organised, but
organisation is not Greece’s strongest suit these days. What should happen is
that the populace assemble quietly in the dark in front of a church – we were
at the Panayia Cathedral – carrying
decorative unlit candles with wind covers. At midnight the priest carries out a
lone candle and cries “Christos Anesti”
(Christ is Risen): he passes on the supposedly “divine” light to all the
assembled who light their candles, making a suddenly delightful illuminated
picture, and it is good luck to take the candle back to their houses
unextinguished. For days the Paschal Greeting is repeated “Christos Anesti” answered with “Alithos
Anesti” (Surely He has Risen).
Sadly in Karlovasi, the script went agley: various members
of the congregation emerged well before midnight with lighted candles and
passed the light around. A cacophony of fireworks broke out prematurely so that
when the priest did eventually appear his words were drowned by bangers,
fizzers and rockets. The Greeks don’t really do dignity. Another tradition
perhaps fading is the breaking of the fast after midnight by eating mayiritsa, a nourishing soup made of
chopped lamb’s lungs and “lights” on a rice base. Many ladies dislike handling
these offally ingredients and we had to make do with a beef and rice soup,
perfectly palatable but not quite the real thing.
Easter Sunday is given up to feasting. Provisions have been
stocked up and kebabs prepared but left untouched all week. Red-coloured eggs
are boiled. With our ever-kind and energetic neighbours Theofilaktos and
Christina, we had organised a barbecue, attended by 11, on tables set out on
the Painted Courtyard (which I had written about on the Blog on 5.11.13). The
Courtyard was looking well – pansies tumbling from hanging baskets, the red
blooms of dipladenia, wild strawberries’ first ripening, fragrant hybrid
lemon-and-thyme, Busy Lizzies in profusion, winter basil and a whole selection
of cottage garden comestibles – potatoes, chili, lettuce, rocket and tomatoes
all adding to last year’s goodies.
The BBQ was stoked up with wood for its aroma and charcoal
for heat and slowly the meat revolved on the spit, lamb, goat and pork, to be
supplemented by piping hot garnished potatoes and grilled peppers. No guest
came empty-handed – George with home-brewed wine and bottles of beer, Michaelis
and Maya brought goat and chocolate cake, not to mention their splendid wines,
but all took along something. We started at 12noon and continued convivially
and tastily until 1am with many a toast, joke and uncontroversial discussion.
The party was a great success.
I wish I could say that it all ended happily, but it was not
to be. We were tidying up and leaving, when my lovely dynamic Betty returned to
the Courtyard to say her final thank-yous to Theo and Christina. She slipped on
the surface, earlier rain-watered, and could not get up. We called an ambulance
and eventually at 2am she was driven the 25 miles or so to the hospital at
Vathi. She had cracked a bone above her knee. Her fall was exactly on the spot
where an Evil Eye was painted on the floor, supposedly to ward off evil
spirits, but it had failed on this occasion. I am glad to report that yesterday
Betty had an op to mend her leg and all seems to have gone well, and we hope
she will be home next week: but she may not be walking properly for at least a
month. Such undeserved bad luck!
SMD
25.04.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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