Patrick Comerford
It is almost two weeks since I got back from Crete, having spent most of Holy Week and the Easter weekend in Rethymnon.
I suppose it was like a ‘mini-retreat’, with time for prayer and reflection throughout those five or six days. But there was time too for coffee with friends, and some long, lingering, late lunches in Iraklion and in Panormos, and for much-needed time for walks on the beaches or by the harbours and the shoreline in Rethymnon, Platanias, Panormos and Iraklion.
I had so missed being in Greece for a few years. I had planned back in Crete at Easter 2022, but circumstances caught up on me. I caught Covid, not once but twice; I had a stroke; I brought forward the date for my planned retirement from parish ministry; my marriage at the time came to an end; and then, after moving to Stony Stratford, Charlotte and I got married in November 2023.
I got back to Crete last year for Easter (April 2024), and now that I have been back again this Easter, I know how Greece, Crete and Rethymnon have become part and parcel of who I am.
For almost 40 years, Rethymnon has been like a second home to me. There are a few places I feel at home – Wexford, Cappoquin and Lichfield – and Rethymnon is certainly one of them. For half my life, I have felt at ease and at home there, and I have been in Crete 12 times within the past 15 years.
In the few years I was absent, I missed the colours, the smells and the sounds; I missed the tastes, the flowers, the Bougainvillea and hibiscus; I missed the scents, the sunsets, the sunrises, the blue skies and the blue seas; I missed the food and the wine; I missed the music and the poetry; I missed the olive groves; and I missed the people.
Year-by-year, I hardly notice the changes in Rethymnon and suburban Platanias and Tsesmes, or in Piskopiano and Koutouloufari. They have been natural, organic changes, and I realise and accept that life usually changes gradually and gently rather than forcibly.
But during these last two visits I noticed how many of the shops, bars and restaurants I have known over the years have changed hands or even closed: a friend’s icon studio in Rethymnon, Julia Apartments and the Taverna Garden Restaurant in Platanias and Lychnos in Piskopiano are long closed. Sarlo’s falafel shop on Paleologou street in Rethymnon has now closed too. A smallholding in Platanias, by a path I often walk to and from Pavlos Beach, has been ploughed up, and its vines uprooted, leaving only some fig trees that once sheltered the vines, and it looks like it is about to become another building site.
I can remember fondly and quite sharply each place I have stayed in over the years, so it jolts my mind to see how many of those places have closed too. Many restaurants in Platanias, like Finikas, Vergina, Myli and Merem, and hotels like La Stella in Tsesmes, were waiting until after Easter to open, but were busy with deep Springcleaning, repainting and decorating. It was good to here this weekend that Pagona’s restaurant in Tsesmes is going to reopen in the coming days.
I once asked how daily life would change on Tsouderon street without the kiosk or períptero (περίπτερο) beside the bank, with its unique character. But it too vanished with the passage of time, and yet life goes on.
As I was strolling through the side streets and back streets of Rethymnon in recent days, I found myself once again photographing a colourful house that in many ways tells the stories of how life moves on in Rethymnon over the years, and how life moves on in Greece.
For the umpteenth time, I climbed the steep hills up to the old Venetian Fortezza to enjoy the views across the town and out to the sea. Clustered around the base of the Fortezza, there are labyrinthine back streets with houses, each pretty and charming in its own self-contained way.
Over the years, one attractive house on a corner of Cheimarras Street, with its colourful façade, flowerpots and window has come to represent or symbolise for me what I find typical of the charm of the back streets on the slopes tumbling down from the Fortezza.
When I first noticed Marylee’s House back in 2012, a colourful but punctured bicycle stood outside, and it seemed then like a metaphor for the Greek economy – punctured and jaded, and waiting for someone to see that it could roll on once again.
The house provided one of my favourite images from Rethymnon that year. I had the photograph printed on canvas and mounted for a wall in the house in Dublin I was then living in.
A year later, the bicycle that had been outside Marylee’s house had given way to a motorbike in 2013. I suppose time moves on at a speed we never understand.
Then, in 2019, there was no bicycle or motor bike outside the house … once again, perhaps, a metaphor for the Greek economy and politics, as things stood still waiting to see whether the European election results that month were going to influence the choice of a date for a general election in Greece later that year.
Today, the house is colourful, there are plants and flowerpots on the window ledges, the steps and on the street outside. The door has been ajar, almost half-open, at times when I have walked by on my recent visits and a new café and set out tables across the street on this latest visit -- metaphors, I suppose, that Greece has always been open to me, and that I feel Greece is part of me and that I am part of Greece.
Marylee’s House stands on the corner of Cheimarras Street, a narrow street leading down from the Fortezza that takes its name from Himara or Himarë in southern Albania, known in Greek as Χειμάρρας, Cheimarras.
Since antiquity, the region of Himara has been predominantly populated by people who are ethnically Greek. Despite all the changes over time, that part of Albania has remained an important centre of Greek culture and politics in Albania, and the majority of people are Greek-speaking.
In classical antiquity, Himara was part of the Kingdom of Epirus, whose rulers included King Pyrrhus, who was a second cousin of Alexander the Great and who has given us the term ‘Pyrrhic Victory.’
The town revolted under Spyros Spyromilios in 1912 and expelled the Ottoman force in order to join Greece, and Himara was under Greek administration from October 1914 until September 1916, when it was occupied by Italy.
The region came under the control of the Albanian state in 1921, but there were revolts throughout the 1920s demanding respect for Greek culture and autonomy. During World War II, the town was captured briefly by the Greek army in December 1940.
Today, the people of Himara remain a majority-Greek population, but fear their culture, language and religion are constantly under threat.
An interesting Greek cultural figure from Himara was Pyrros Spyromilios (1913-1962). As director of the Greek Radio Orchestra, encouraged the composer Mikis Theodorakis to use his ensemble, along with the popular bouzouki instrumentalist, Manolis Chiotis, and singer Grigoris Bithikotsis, in the Greek radio premiere of the Epitaphios. This setting to music by Theodorakis of the epic poem by the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos was an innovative move at the time and has had a lasting influence on modern Greek culture.
Each time I return to Rethymnon and walk down Cheimarras Street from the Fortezza, I watch out for Marylee’s House, but also find myself listening in my mind to the melody of Epitaphios.
And when I come back again, hopefully sooner rather than later, Marylee’s House beneath the Fortezza is still there to photograph yet again.
