Mountains and Orchard
The large mountains behind the city of Edessa intrigued us, and one afternoon, curious about what we might find, we drove west of the city and up into them. After leaving the main highway, we followed a smaller paved road through huge orchards of densely-planted, unfamiliar fruit trees with an upright habit of loosely vertical branches -- were they almonds? I got out to take a closer look, and decided they might be cherry trees, but there were more than we imagined possible, stretching for miles in every direction, the only cultivated crop in what appeared to be a rocky, dry wilderness.
After traveling along these orchards for a while, we came upon a small hill village. It was built of rock, and although we saw a few cars and motorcycles parked along the roads or in driveways, there were no people walking around, just a few stray cats and the occasional dog. The little closely-placed houses seemed well cared for, with tall, blooming rose bushes and sometimes a heavily laden pomegranate tree in a front yard. But the village streets were so steep that our underpowered car needed several tries to gain the top of one of them.
After leaving the village, all signs of habitation gradually vanished. The road, now unpaved, climbed and narrowed; the slopes became steeper and rockier, and the vegetation wilder. Figs and hop vines scrambled with abandon over every tree and rocky outcrop. Just as we were about to declare defeat and turn around before the road became impassable, we suddenly came upon a blue lake with a flock of large white birds on it, in the middle of nowhere.
We pulled the car off onto the non-existent shoulder of the road, and got out; the water wasn't far from the road itself and you could stand on the edge and get a good look at the birds, who seemed unconcerned about the presence of human eyes. All of the white, large birds were swans but, closer to us, we could also see a flock of small ducks that I couldn't identify. Wildflowers, some of which were familiar and others not, bloomed on the edge of the bank, and behind the lake, the mountains rose: dry, rocky, bare except for the occasional patterned rows of a vineyard or orchard. Just beyond them was the border, and North Macedonia.
After ten minutes or so, we heard a vehicle approaching. It was a small beat-up truck that stopped when it came around the bend in the road and saw our car, parked on the side. The driver peered at us out his window, and then pulled off in a nonchalant fashion which seemed to indicate both familiarity with the road, and that there was seldom any traffic to worry about. Both doors opened, and a middle-aged Greek couple got out and walked closer. Initially they seemed concerned that we'd had a breakdown, but they quickly realized, when we gently gestured toward the water, that we were watching something. I recalled "poulia" - "birds" - but couldn't remember the word for swan, which annoyed me because the word appears along with a picture of a swan on the red tins of the "swan" brand of Greek tomato paste and sauce. I had liked those tins so much that I had brought an empty one home, from our first trip here, to use in my studio.
But the couple now said "swans" aloud -- "keeknous!" - and nodded to us in some excitement. They walked over to the side of the road to get a closer look. "Mikres papies" said the woman, pointing at the little birds in the foreground, "little ducks." I nodded and repeated, "papies," which was another word I had learned and forgotten.
The four of us stood watching the birds on the blue water for a few minutes, and then they turned to us, quizzically. Both of them had open faces, and were dressed simply; they were probably local people who lived nearby. He was stocky, with a round face and short grey hair; she was short, smiling, and blond. "Tourist?" they asked. "Canada," I said, pointing at both of us. "We like your country," I managed to say in Greek, and in a combination of pantomime and words I conveyed that it was our third trip there. "How long?" they asked. "Three weeks." "Pou?" "Where?" "Edessa, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Athens..." I stumbled over the word "Chalkidiki", the peninsulas to the east of Thessaloniki, and looked to them for help, and they quickly pronounced it for me. We all laughed.
Before they had arrived, I had plucked a ripe fig from the tree growing wild on the lake side of the road, and the woman spotted it in my hand. Ah! she said, and told her husband to go look. She brought her cupped hand to her mouth and raised her eyebrows, then pointing at my hand, wanting to know if I had eaten one. I shook my head no. The man went over to the tree and rummaged through the branches, looking for the best fruit, and picking a handful. He held out his open palm to me, and to my husband, proffering the small, dark figs. We each took one, and he pressed us to take more, so we did. The man nodded slightly, pointing his index finger toward me and then toward himself in a gesture that said, "Look!" He took a fig between his left forefinger and thumb, and began to slowly but deftly peel off the skin with his right hand, looking over at me to make sure I was watching -- it was a lesson. Then he split the flesh, examined it to make sure it met his expectations, and handed the peeled fig to me, gesturing to me to eat it. I took the fig and ate it in two bites; it was delicious. "Nostimo," I said. "Efcharisto!" ("Delicious, thank you!") and we all began to pick and lazily peel and eat figs, keeping the unconcerned, floating swans in the corner of our vision. The woman split a fig open, laughed, and shook her head "no", making a wiggling gesture with her finger as she showed it to me -- that one had a worm in it. I nodded, and glanced at Jonathan, who raised his eyebrows and surreptitiously dropped the fig he had been holding into the bushes.
Swan and wild fig tree
After a little while, we felt it was time to leave, and I gestured to the couple that we were going back to our car. They had been talking together and grazing on the figs, while J. and I took some pictures of the swans and the lake, but now we approached them to say goodbye. I smiled at the man and put my hand on my upper chest. "Elisabeth," I said. He grinned and said, in Greek, "Like the queen!" I got it and laughed and nodded, then pointed to Jonathan and said his name. They shook hands. The man touched his own chest and said, "Konstadinos," and then turned to his wife, who was also smiling at us, and said, in halting English, "She is -- Chryseis. It means...gold."
We drove back through the endless orchards of fruit trees, down the winding roads through the stone villages, until we re-joined the main road that led to the Edessa highway. I couldn't believe I had actually met someone named Chryseis. At the beginning of the Iliad, a young Trojan virgin of that name has been seized by the Greeks and given to their leader, Agamemnon, as his slave and mistress. She is the daughter of Chryses, a high priest of Apollo, but Agamemnon refuses her father's pleas to return her. Chryseis, desperate, prays to Apollo. The god hears her and sends a plague that strikes the Greek camp...and sets in motion further events that alter the course of the war. (The name Chryseis literally means "of Chryses", and it is Chryses that means "golden".)
When we were finally back at our inn, we asked the innkeeper about the fruit trees we had seen up in the mountains. She asked us what towns we had been near. "Agras?" I offered. "Nisi?" She nodded, and answered, "Then they must have been kerasies. Cherries." She gazed at us calmly with that knowing, slightly sly smile we've seen on many Greek faces when suggesting something we must do or try: the special dessert they are offering "on the house", the free glass of homemade tangerine liqueur, the sight to be seen if we would just walk up to the top of the hill. "You must come back in the spring," she said, "when they are all in bloom!"
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