Free The Fig Tree by Arnold Zable

impoverished by years of war and civil conflict, and by the demands of village life, Australia was a land of space and infinite horizons. In the months after her arrival, she walked the streets, elated. She had been elevated, overnight, from a village girl to a lady of the city. It was an affair of the heart that was to persist for the twenty-eight years she lived in the promised land.
    Maria’s dream ended abruptly in 1975 when she returned to Ithaca with homesick Sugar. And, for over two decades now, she has lived in the house in which she was raised, surrounded by ancestral presences she has never been able to escape.
    This is the fate of many first-generation migrants. It is the curse of being torn between coming and going, between new worlds and ancient longings. It is the state of mind in which one ponders, ‘Where do I belong? Where is my true home?’ It is the state of spirit in which one oscillates between confusing dreams and an uncertain reality. There are many variations upon this theme, countless tales that are aching to be told here, on this island in the Ionian Sea.
    Take, for instance, eighty-five-year-old Cassie Kostopoulos. She lives alone in the lower end of Ayia Saranta. Her house sits opposite mountain slopes that were once alive with toil and laughter. On clear days the neighbouring island of Lefkada glistens like a stage backdrop, while the crumbling windmills on the higher ridges of Mount Marmaka flash fleeting reminders of the pre-war past.
    Cassie’s husband died a decade ago. Her three sons have long departed for lives of their own. She has done her duty. But at night she lies in bed, sleepless, counting the hours, taking accounts. She interrogates the past with a stubborn regret. Again she returns to that defining moment, in 1926, when her parents took her back to the island, from Sydney, to be brought up by an aunt, while they returned to Australia to lead their own lives. She never saw her father again. He died in 1945. And when her mother returned, in 1961, she was a stranger. To this day Cassie cannot understand why her mother left her on the island. To this day she feels stranded.
    Cassie was thirteen years old at the time. Over seven decades later she can recall in photographic detail those early years in Newcastle, where she was born, and in Sydney, where her parents managed a fish shop. She describes the epic grandeur of the harbour, the neighbourhood streets, the rooms of her childhood home. She recalls the countless penny’s worth of chips she wrapped in newspaper. ‘I gave my customers lead poisoning,’ she laughs. She talks of her kindergarten and primary school years as if they took place yesterday.
    And she continues to oscillate in her allegiances. Her teenage years on the island were good ones, she insists. She recalls the celebrations, name-days, and picnics accompanied by the village band. There was Christos on violin, Mikhalis on lute and Vasillis on the clarinet. They would dance from sunset to sunrise: waltzes and mazurkas, tangos and polkas; and the graceful tsamikos and the sirtos —circular dances in which the villagers were enclosed in a communal womb.
    There was La Romanza cafe on the road to Stavros, the place to go on a Sunday afternoon, the men and women dressed in their elegant best. And the boat excursions to neighbouring islands, with flagons of homemade wine emptying under turquoise skies; and there were each other’s homes, with the doors always open.
    â€˜The old ways were good ways,’ says Cassie. ‘We carried our best shoes on celebration days, and left our walking shoes at the door. At weddings, the bride would be led from her house through the village streets. The musicians headed the procession. After the church service the procession continued to the groom’s house. The groom’s mother stood at the door to welcome the bride and guests. Again we danced until dawn, and well into the next day. We knew how to