Free The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell Page B

last Turkish soldier left the island in 1896. The intervening years were years of fragmentation and neglect; they were pawns of the great powers and Crete was split up, as Berlin is now, into sectors and sections. The transition was abrupt, and today one sees new and old rubbing shoulders everywhere. The costumes in the market, at the airport, in the harbour, are a wild mixture of ancient and modern; the music of the juke-boxes is similar, pouring out bouzouki music and modern jazz.
    Four mountain clumps loom around if one comes by plane into the modern airport. (‘Bones of the elephant and the pygmy hippopotamus have been found in geologically recent cave-deposits while deer only became extinct in historic times.’) What must it have been like in Homer’s day? About this we know a little from the way he doffs his hat to the island in the Odyssey , hailing it as a land famous for its hundred cities, its rich and numberless buildings. But the feeling he conveys is that he had not personally touched down here, that he was citing a ready-made descriptive compliment: a tourist handout of the day perhaps?
    On the other hand, St Paul (who got into trouble almost wherever he went) had a particularly hard time in Crete, for he told Titus (the first Bishop of Crete) that, to quote a poet, the islanders were ‘always liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies’. It is clear that he had gone into a bar in Chanea for an ouzo , with a mass of contentious epistles under his arm, and had naturally received what the New York bartenders would call ‘the bum’s rush’. Much the same thing happened in Cyprus. As for thephrase ‘slow bellies’, this needs checking with the original; it surely must be a bad translation. How could the saint so assail the digestive tract of the Cretans? Cretans eat faster and more than most islanders. I suspect the passage means something different – perhaps that they were slow to kindle to the faith. At any rate, it is clear St Paul thought the Cretans had not been sent on earth to charm; which suggests he must have been badly treated. The truth is that the Cretans are the Scots of Greece; they have lived through countless crises to emerge always just as truly themselves – indomitable friends or deadly enemies. If their hospitality wavered under the scandalous begging of the hippies, it soon reasserted itself. And even today it is dangerous to express admiration for something, for you will certainly find it in your baggage as a farewell gift when you leave. You cannot refuse. They are adamant. I knew a lady who got a baby this way.
    Everyone will have special corners of Crete to which he or she is specially attached, but I think the travel-people are right to insist that the three atmospheric places which one would most deeply regret missing are Knossos, Phaestos and Mallia. The shipping companies have worked out an ingenious weekend manner of ‘doing’ the two former and finding yourself back in Athens the Monday morning after, but this is only for people in extremis . Crete is a big island and deserves at least several days, not merely for ruin-hunting, but also to appreciate its own fair landscapes and enjoy those encounters in remote villages which make all the difference to one’s ‘feel’ of a place. The ideal thing is to rent a small car, for though the new road system only dates from about 1946, parts of it are excellent and almost everywhere is now accessible to the visitor. Of course, the southern coast remains a little remote and out of reach because the mountains run from left to right; but the whole inner coastal run from Chanea right down to Sitia is bothpossible and thrilling in its variety and ruggedness. Thus you will slip down through four counties, each with its capital town, and glimpse the variety of landscape which exists within this one island – quite apart from catching a sudden sight of a sacred place like Mount Ida, with its white crown. Chanea, Rethymnon, Heracleion,