fig, split it open and spread it directly onto buttered bread.
Ithaca. It was there, throughout the ceremony. In the eulogies. In our remembrances. In the Cavafy poem that we recited as the coffin was lowered: âWhen you set out on the voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey will be long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.â
It was obvious. Lilyâs ashes were buried in Melbourne, but to find her we knew that we had to return, once again, to the ancestral isle.
Dancing towards the End
Zachariah Moraites aka Jack Morris aka Sugar lives in a dream. At the age of ninety-four he follows the same route, twice a day, seven days a weekâcome hail, wind, winter frost, or sun. At ten in the morning and four in the afternoon he makes his way down the steps of his two-storey house to the green Skoda he has driven for twenty years. He hoists himself into the driverâs seat, backs away from the wall, and begins the long descent from Ayia Saranta, on the northern heights of Ithaca.
For three kilometres he meanders past olive groves, forests of cypress, white-stone cottages, and abandoned homes crumbling into rubble. Above him, on the highest ridge, can be seen Exogi, the village that Lilyâs father last saw as a sixteen-year-old boy, on the morning he set out on his journey to Australia. And disappearing behind him is Ayia Saranta, the village that Lilyâs husband Athanassios was raised in.
The Skoda lurches around the sharper bends, occasionally nudges a perimeter wall, miraculously dodges stray goats and passers-by, and rolls down the final descent into the village of Stavros. Sugar brings the car to a halt beside the kafeneion . With determined little steps, arms akimbo, his body bent forward in a walk that is but a fraction short of a stagger, he enters, orders a coffee, and loses himself in a game of patience. His cards are worn, the numbers and suits barely visible, but he will not play with any other pack.
Sugar is small and getting smaller. He wears a baseball cap with the word âAustraliaâ embroidered across the visor. He set sail for the great southern land in 1924, and returned to Ithaca fifty-two years later. All this now appears to have been a mere wink in a passing dream. Yet he can enumerate all that he created and left behind: the five houses he built, the ten shops he bought, ran, and sold; the various coffee shops scattered across the city, the milk bar, the fish shop, the restaurant near the beach. âI left my mark,â he says with pride.
Yet never once did his yearning for his native island cease. So he returnedââbecause it was my home, my history, my birthplaceâ. In his ageing, Sugarâs life has been reduced to pithy comments and an ironclad routine. For an hour he sits in the kafeneion , hunched over the cards, reshuffling the pack, weaving in and out of conversations with ancient friends, before wending his way back home where his wife Maria awaitsâas she has, day after day, for many years.
Maria is a gentle soul who keeps her feelings to herself, except for an occasional glimpse. âI carry Australia in my heart,â she tells me, as she taps her chest. Unlike Sugar, she lives with regrets, surrounded by mementos of the country she had come to love. On the wall hangs a photo of Uluru struck by lightning. Jagged streaks of silver blaze over a monolith glowing red. On the mantelpiece, a boomerang occupies centre-stage. Maria serves coffee on a tray bearing photos of the city she had once lived in for so long. In the middle of the tray there is an image of a tram.
âThis is the tram that would take me home, every night, from work,â she says. In fact, it is one of many trams that conveyed her to the various houses she shared with Sugar in suburbs scattered throughout their adopted city.
Maria recalls the exhilaration she felt when she first set foot in Melbourne, some time in 1947. In contrast to Ithaca, which had been
Ithaca. It was there, throughout the ceremony. In the eulogies. In our remembrances. In the Cavafy poem that we recited as the coffin was lowered: âWhen you set out on the voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey will be long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.â
It was obvious. Lilyâs ashes were buried in Melbourne, but to find her we knew that we had to return, once again, to the ancestral isle.
Dancing towards the End
Zachariah Moraites aka Jack Morris aka Sugar lives in a dream. At the age of ninety-four he follows the same route, twice a day, seven days a weekâcome hail, wind, winter frost, or sun. At ten in the morning and four in the afternoon he makes his way down the steps of his two-storey house to the green Skoda he has driven for twenty years. He hoists himself into the driverâs seat, backs away from the wall, and begins the long descent from Ayia Saranta, on the northern heights of Ithaca.
For three kilometres he meanders past olive groves, forests of cypress, white-stone cottages, and abandoned homes crumbling into rubble. Above him, on the highest ridge, can be seen Exogi, the village that Lilyâs father last saw as a sixteen-year-old boy, on the morning he set out on his journey to Australia. And disappearing behind him is Ayia Saranta, the village that Lilyâs husband Athanassios was raised in.
The Skoda lurches around the sharper bends, occasionally nudges a perimeter wall, miraculously dodges stray goats and passers-by, and rolls down the final descent into the village of Stavros. Sugar brings the car to a halt beside the kafeneion . With determined little steps, arms akimbo, his body bent forward in a walk that is but a fraction short of a stagger, he enters, orders a coffee, and loses himself in a game of patience. His cards are worn, the numbers and suits barely visible, but he will not play with any other pack.
Sugar is small and getting smaller. He wears a baseball cap with the word âAustraliaâ embroidered across the visor. He set sail for the great southern land in 1924, and returned to Ithaca fifty-two years later. All this now appears to have been a mere wink in a passing dream. Yet he can enumerate all that he created and left behind: the five houses he built, the ten shops he bought, ran, and sold; the various coffee shops scattered across the city, the milk bar, the fish shop, the restaurant near the beach. âI left my mark,â he says with pride.
Yet never once did his yearning for his native island cease. So he returnedââbecause it was my home, my history, my birthplaceâ. In his ageing, Sugarâs life has been reduced to pithy comments and an ironclad routine. For an hour he sits in the kafeneion , hunched over the cards, reshuffling the pack, weaving in and out of conversations with ancient friends, before wending his way back home where his wife Maria awaitsâas she has, day after day, for many years.
Maria is a gentle soul who keeps her feelings to herself, except for an occasional glimpse. âI carry Australia in my heart,â she tells me, as she taps her chest. Unlike Sugar, she lives with regrets, surrounded by mementos of the country she had come to love. On the wall hangs a photo of Uluru struck by lightning. Jagged streaks of silver blaze over a monolith glowing red. On the mantelpiece, a boomerang occupies centre-stage. Maria serves coffee on a tray bearing photos of the city she had once lived in for so long. In the middle of the tray there is an image of a tram.
âThis is the tram that would take me home, every night, from work,â she says. In fact, it is one of many trams that conveyed her to the various houses she shared with Sugar in suburbs scattered throughout their adopted city.
Maria recalls the exhilaration she felt when she first set foot in Melbourne, some time in 1947. In contrast to Ithaca, which had been
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