We stood on the southern tip of Attica looking North. The sky ahead was clouding over, replacing the blue skies that had been with us for the week of our holiday. Temperatures had been steadily rising by a couple of degrees every day. By Monday we were facing 40 plus in the shade. The air was thick with haze. I could almost see all of the available moisture being evaporated into the sky. The clouds were dirty. “That’s pollution from Athens” she ventured. I wasn’t so sure. The discolouration was faint. I thought Athens was too far away and maybe it was a nearby fire. Something small.
We played the tourist game. Strolling around a 2500 year old world heritage site, looking at yachts passing by on blue seas, sitting at a cafe lamenting the existence of ready salted crisps, drifting through gift shops idly gazing at reproduction artefacts. We moved on, driving up the coast looking for a good spot for a late lunch, arriving at a seaside town filled with large hotels ringing a beach. One side formed an isthmus. A hotel’s wall ran down the divide but it contained a window to advertise what you could pay to enter. Today was different. Beyond the wall was on the windward side and it was a completely contrasting scene from ours. The wind was very strong with waves crashing with repetitive fury. People were streaming out through the gate to get off the beach. Meanwhile our view from the restaurant verander was significantly calmer, with only a duckling chain of dinghy's tippling over further to suggest any strength in the wind out of the shelter of the shoreline. As the evening approached we headed to the airport for our flight home. The wind continued to grow. Navigating through Athens’ suburbs, gusts moved the hire car across the lane. With each shudder I reapplied my grip ever more firmly on the wheel. Crossing east from the undulating topology next to the sea the landscape opened up as we approached the airport. A smoke cloud was streaming down the eastern coastline, filling the sky. Landing airplanes had to fly through it, their eddies making only the briefest of swathes on the churning smokestack . The decks of the airport compressed the wind, pushing metal benches down the walkways. We dragged ourselves and our luggage against the wind and on entering the departure gate crossed into the artificial reality of airports, all delayed passengers, duty free shops and near infinite opportunities for queuing. Joining in the standard ceremonies we drank coffee, played cards and waiting for our late departing flight. Fires were burning across the hillsides as we took off that night. There were no other details, just the bright flames in the darkness.
We arrived home, slept and woke to learn that Greece has suffered its worst wildfires for a decade, with 85 people dying at one site alone. So far so goulish observation. The hotel we’d checked out of on Monday was in Mati, the village at the heart of the fires on the east of Attica. After leaving the hotel we driven up to Marathonas to do some more sightseeing. We’d driven through Mati again around 13:30 before heading south. The roads in the area had always been busy. The main roads the steady concertina between junctions of any built up area. The side roads were very “Greek”, all double parking and negotiated weaving to get from one end to the other. Maps drawn up in the days that followed showed that our hotel had survived but the fire line was only metres away. A charred landscape ringed it. Further south on the coastal back road to Rafina lines of burned out cars filled our news screens. We’d driven that road to have dinner in the port at Rafina on Sunday night. The hotel we’d left had been standard holiday fayre, canned music, poolside sunbathing and a walkway out to the beach. It’s hard to reconcile these memories with testaments of the survivors, some who had fled into the sea from the flames and the smoke, guilty at being unable to protect those that drowned.
We were fine. Unscathed but struggling to reconcile that we’d been close by at best a couple of hours from being involved in something devastating. Life is filled with the calamities that don’t happen. The blown tyre on the drive home. The faulty gas boiler. The drunk driver in the other car….. These remain hypothetical. Monday was all too real….meaning nothing and everything. Greece, never universally affluent has endured years of financial hardship since its debt crisis. Our travels across the country highlighted both its inherent beauty but also the poverty that has impacted on the population as a whole. Not that any county does but Greece didn’t deserve this. Not my Greece. A country of family, of kindness, of not worrying about locking your doors, of friendship.
Crops will be sown in the fields and grow again. Houses will be rebuilt. The people will mourn. They will remember. We carry on. πάθει μάθος.
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