Learn Greek with Comprehensible Greek Audiobooks

---

PATROLOGOS edutainment

When the sun 
began to bend, 
the scarce wind that was blowing during the day 
had ceased. 

Clouds were not travelling on the sky, 
and the leaves of the trees 
were not moving in the olive grove 
that covered the whole mountain, 
on the east side of Lesvos island. 

The night of the Resurrection 
was coming calm and clean. 
Vasilis Varkas 
is the only soul tonight 
on the mountain. 

He worked all day pruning the trees. 
When he finished 
he withdrew in his hut. 

He cleaned the small yard, then 
he washed his hands and his face. 
When this was done as well, he went and she sat 
under an old tree. 

He lifted his eyes slowly, 
he turned them around 
to the east and to the west, 
then he let them touch the horizon, 
towards the sea that was not moving. 

He is now very old. He doesn't remember, 
but he must have passed the seventy years. 

He came in the island 
from his fatherland, the Anatolia, when they happened 
the persecutions of the christians, in 1922. 

One lord took him 
as a guard in his lands, 
and since then he lived peacefully on the mountain. 

From his own people, his family, there is no one remaining alive. 
One boy, that he had, the war took it. 
He got lost in Anatolia. 

His days now 
on the mountain with the olive trees are quiet, 
always the same, one day from the other. 

During winter, when it rains, 
he doesn't ever leave his hut. 
He burns dry logs in the fireplace 
and stares many hours at the fire 
as it becomes slowly ashes. 

When it gets better the weather 
he is used to go down to the river 
that flows to the sea. 
He listens to the roar the waters make 
and remembers the life that he lived, 
the big forests and the rivers of Anatolia. 

Thus one day the end will come. 
He says now that it will be soon. 
They will bury him in the small yard. 

There he has dug the soil 
and has planted a cypress 
that grows day after day. 
There he says he will find peace, 
when it will come the end. 

The night of the Resurrection is clean. 
The stars are trembling. 
They have passed many hours. 

Old Vasilis calculates that down there, in the village, 
the people must have gone to the church. 
It is very quiet. 

Suddenly 
the old man thinks he is listening a light noise, 
like steps of a man who approaches. 
He took distance from his thoughts 
and fixed his eyes in the night. 

In a while 
a figure started to appear. 
Continuously it kept coming, 
it appeared now clearly. 

-Akif, is that you? says the old man. 
- I, replies the other voice. 

- Why did you come up here? 
The road is long. 
- I came through the pathway. 
I thought that tonight also 
you 'll be all alone. 

A light wind blew 
and touched the leaves. 
There was silence again. 

- Have a seat, said old Vasilis to Akif. 
He sat silently. 

Akif must have the same years with old Vasilis. 
He is Turk, born in this part of the island. 

Most of the days in his life he passed as field guard, 
guarding the lands in these mountains. 
He knows the land step by step. 

When it took place the interchange 
of the turkish populations of Greece 
with the christians of Anatolia, 
the Greeks kept Akif 
in order for him to show them the lands that the Turks were abandoning. 

Thus he remained in the island, 
him alone 
from all of his race who had to leave their birth land. 

In the beginning it was terrible, 
his life was unbearable. 

The place was filled up with refugees from Anatolia 
who came after the disaster of 1922. 

Everyone was cursing him when he was passing by, 
and they used to spit the soil that he stepped upon, 
in order to demonstrate how much their hate was for his race. 

The children were following him from behind 
and they were teasing him shouting: 
- The snake Akif! The snake! The snake! 

Akif, by listening to these, 
he would run like hunted animal who goes to hide in its cave. 

This story about the snake of Akif was like a myth 
that they were saying the christians of the land. 

The story was saying that when Akif was young, 
while trying one day 
to unclog a tube that was leaking water, 
he saw coming out from inside the tube 
a huge beast with black scales 
and big eyes like those of the ox. 

They came face to face, the snake and Akif, 
but the Turk managed to hit it with a shovel 
before it came out the whole of it from the tube. 

The snake launched against him and, 
with the strength that remained in it, all frothing, 
it fighted to put him down. 

They fighted. 
But the snake, injured as it was, 
didn't manage to endure much. 

Akif on the same night 
fell sick with fever. 

He stayed in bed 
for one entire year. 

He was talking nonsense, and in his dreams 
he was seeing every night the black scales 
and the eyes of the snake stalking him. 

He was moaning, 
the sweat was running from his body and was soaking it. 

Nobody would say that he would last to the end. 
Nevertheless his strong health won. 

But from the previous Akif there was nothing left but a poor frightened animal 
who feared its own shadow. 

Since then nobody dared 
to talk in his presense about the snake. 

Only the mothers 
were saying to their babies the story, 
as a myth. 

However, when the Turks left from the island 
and he remained all alone, 
the kids took courage. 

By seeing also the older ones cursing on him, 
they were running behind him shouting: 
- The snake Akif! The snake! The snake! 

And then they were laughing 
as they saw him all frightened running 
to disappear from their sight. 

Who would help Akif now? Who would fear him? Where would he find protection? 
He is alone and desolate. 

How nice would it be 
if they would let him go as well to the foreign land, 
on the other side, at Anatolia, 
where the others fled from his nation. 

This would be the only happiness, 
the last one, that he could expect from life. 
They didn't allow to him the people, this happiness either. 

When he saw some christian 
whom from his appearance he would guessed him to be a man of good will, 
he would fall to his knees, 
over the soil, and would beg him: 

- Help me, 
and Allah is great and he shall pay it back to you. 
Help me go 
where they went my own people. 

He was telling him that in the east his brother is buried, 
whom the big war took away. 

He will ask where is the strait of Çanakkale. 
And certainly they will tell him. 

He will go to the strait of Çanakkale 
and of course he will find 
the tomb of his brother. 
There he will find rest, 
on the same soil, with him. 

These things he was saying, 
and the tears were running from his innocent eyes, 
and were tangling on his white beard. 

But, no matter how much he pleaded, 
it resulted impossible to let him go. 

Thus little by little he made the decision 
that his destiny was to die alone and desolate 
in his birth land. 

And, as someone can get accustomed to everything in this world, 
he got accustomed to this as well. 

On the other side 
the christians also little by little they got used to him, 
they stopped molesting Akif 
and to spit on the ground that he had stepped. 

In fact, over time they went even further: 
they started to understand him and to feel compassion for him. 

The joy is a sharp tone 
which extends like a neuron in the air, 
a rare tone within the generic symphony 
- it provokes the humans like a conceited voice. 

With the sadness it's another thing 
- so much they are accustomed the humans 
to listen to the symphony of the sadness 
and to feel it. 

Day by day the christians of the land, 
poor people of the earth and of the sea, 
and the christian refugees who came from the east 
they started to approach the misfortune of Akif, 
to understand it. 

They were getting together, they were talking about their troubles 
one to the other, 
and they were all weeping for their fate. 

Once Akif made an mistake calculating the dates 
and he fasted two times for the ramadan. 
When this was known 
no christian thought of laughing. 

A christian said: 
- His prophet has forgotten Akif. 
What matters if also Akif forgot 
what was the right moon in order to worship him? 
The prophets forgot of the humans. 

On the mountain of Lesvos, which is full of olive trees, 
tonight, during the clean night of the Resurrection, 
the two men 
- the christian Vasilis Varkas and Akif the Turk - 
desolated they have come together, they are sitting 
one next to the other 
and they don't speak. 

Above them there are the stars. 
And the leafs that don't move. 

One after the other 
they start to come the things that they have lived, 
to pass through their minds and to disappear. 

In a gorge of Anatolia 
there is a hut. 
At an hour like this, on a night like this, they would knock on the door. 

One would notify the other, 
the shepherds, in all the huts, 
that the time had come to come down for the Resurrection. 

They would descend all together to the nearest village, 
and if it were a very dark night they would illuminate the path 
with lit torches that they were holding in their hands. 

Still in those times there was no war, 
and within the hut of Vasilis Varkas 
there was a child with hard black hair 
and face in the color of the wheat seed. 

Old Varkas is watching tonight for a long time 
this pair of eyes while they are filling the night. 

He sees them on the path of the gorge, 
on the light of the lit torches. 
One moment. One moment more. 

Then, slowly, 
the shine begins to fade away. 

There is no more gorge, there is no hut, 
- neither from the child's face 
remains anything that exists. 
Everything is desolate. 

- What was our blame?... - What was our blame?... 
mumbles in low voice 
the old man from Anatolia, 
and the tears soak his face. 
What was their blame? 

There alongside, in another old heart, 
another child's face 
tries to remain for one moment, 
the same way that the lighting passes and then disappears. 

He had no more than twenty years when he left 
and disappeared for ever from his life. 
Just when facial hair was growing on his face. 

- What was our blame?... 
mumbles now Akif too. 
- What was our blame?... 

And the tears are ever running from their eyes, 
a protest profound and sacred 
like that of the children who don't understand why they embittered them. 

A long time passed. The two old men on the mount of olives 
little by little start to calm down. 

- Look down, said Akif. 
Down, on the plain where the village is, 
there appear now many small lights. 
They must be the christians 
who came out for the Resurrection. 

Old Vasilis kneels down on the ground, 
he makes a penance, he kisses the ground, 
and then 
he remains like that praying. 

Akif stares in the middle of the night 
the dark volume of his friend 
who tries to find the peace 
by talking with his God. 
One moment. One more moment. 

And Akif, for not being alone, 
little by little, without thinking 
he kneels too and he begins to pray, 
in the night of the Resurrection, to his own God (ecumenism). 

For quite some time on this mountain with the olive trees 
there is nothing more than this silent conversation with the two distant Gods 
who turned their faces away (blasphemy) from the humans. 

The night had come a long way. 
The morning mist started to fall. 

- I am cold, said Akif. 
- In a while it's going to dawn, 
said the old christian. We must sleep. 

He gets up. Akif also gets us. 
He makes a step towards the hut. Uncertain. 
His knees are shaking. 

- Lean on me, 
said the christian to the Turk. 

END