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| Navigate "HOMECOMINGS": |
| Issue #99 (January/ Febraury 2010) > HOMECOMINGS |
A special sojourn on Chios |
| By Nick Bohas |
| I always wanted to go to Greece, Chios, and Cesme to touch my roots but was unsure how to go about it. I remember my father saying how he felt as a boy, looking across the water from Chios to Cesme trying to see his home. My dream was to do four things: go to Greece, meet my family, visit Chios to stand in that spot, and find my grandparents home in Cesme. I was twenty-eight years old the first time we visited Greece in 1971. We toured Athens and the surrounding areas and took several boat tours around the islands. Although it was a good introduction, it was far short of what I wanted to experience. I still wanted to visit the places where my father and grandparents had lived and walked, and I certainly was not brave enough to visit Chios with my twenty-five word Greek vocabulary. After that first experience, I accepted the notion that it was not going to happen and set that dream aside. The years passed and realized again I had a cadre of relatives in the northeast that I really didn’t know very well. I was getting older and the need to reconnect had been growing in me for a long time. I remarried later on and continued to reconnect with my family. One of my family members takes an annual sojourn to Greece for a month every summer. One year my cousin’s wife, Vasiliki, asked if we would like to go with them to Greece. Since I never really gave up original dreams, my wife Daphne and I jumped at the chance to go. That decision turned out to be the trip of a lifetime! I had just turned fifty as we were getting ready for the trip and found myself thinking what a great way to begin the second-half of your life. Needless to say, we both had high hopes for this trip and I began allowing my self to think, this just might really happen. We landed in Athens and Vasiliki met us at the airport. She had a bouquet of flowers with a small Greek flag in the middle. That flag still sits on my desk today. Initially, Daphne and I first went on a cruise touring the Greek islands and getting a glimpse of just how beautiful they are. During this time, we promised to return for a longer stay and really take in what the islands had to offer. That was the first time we saw Santorini. The weather was absolutely perfect and the views took our breath away. No doubt about it—we would be coming back! We returned to Athens and met Vasiliki’s family and my family including Keti, a first cousin whom I heard about forever. We also met Keti’s husband, Apostolo, and their two children, Panagiotis and Christina, who were my second cousins. At this point I was beginning to feel that I really did have family in Greece. The highlight of the trip was the upcoming visit to Chios and Cesme. There were four of us flying over: Vasiliki, my wife Daphne, Feni, a friend of the family, and myself. We arrived on Chios and I met Stelio, another first cousin (Keti’s brother) for the first time. I had always heard about him but we never had met until then. He was formerly a tanker captain who didn’t want to travel any more and had decided to retire on Chios. Stelio took us all over Chios; Pirgi, Olympia, Mesta, and many other places, each with its own special significance. We went to Kardamila, where my father and grandparents first arrived after they fled Turkey in 1922. As we walked around the city, I found myself wondering, how close were my footsteps to following his. The next day, Stelio took us to the cemetery where my grandparents were buried. That was a major moment of closure for me. I was much more affected than I let on and was even surprised at my own reaction. Stelio told us he remembered as a child, his mother telling him to check the graves to be certain there was oil for the candle and see if the flowers needed to be changed. That was a memorable day! The next day we took the ferry across the Chios straits to Cesme. That morning, I went down to the port alone and stared across the water at Cesme and wondered where my father might have stood on this island when he was looking at his former home. We boarded the ferry at noon and started the journey. That ferry ride was almost surreal. I visualized doing this for so long; it was difficult believing this was happening. We landed, went through customs of a sort, had lunch and Vasiliki began the “pilgrimage”. We found where my grandparents’ home used to be, now occupied by a small multi-family building. We found the elementary school (still in use) that my father had attended. We also found the original location of the grocery store now owned by my other cousin, Stelio, Vasiliki’s husband. What an incredible pilgrimage! If the trip had ended at this point, I would have been more than satisfied. The ferry ride back to Chios was also very special. I watched Cesme shrink into the horizon and tried to envision my father’s thoughts as they left their home and fled Turkey. They were surely profoundly different than mine at that moment. That night on Chios, we talked about everything we had seen and done. We had dinner at the same taverna each evening going over the day’s activities and planning the next day’s adventure. We had spent almost a week on Chios and the next day would be flying back to Athens. That was the last time we would see Stelio. He died a few years later and never did leave Chios again. I remember looking out the airplane window as Chios was dropping away and feeling that I could not have done anymore to touch my heritage than what we did. That week in Chios would always be a vivid and cherished memory. After returning from Chios, we took a three-day road trip to the Peloponnese, visiting family and friends of Vasiliki in Sparti. We spent a memorable day and night in Monemvasia where I had my first introduction to what a Greek shower stall looks like. An absolutely breathtaking place to visit and someplace we hope to return again. The sun was setting and a bouzouki was playing in the background. We were standing high above the rows of rooftops and the tiles of the buildings appeared to have a thousand different hues of terracotta, incredible imagery. The next morning, Daphne and I woke to the sound of bells on the goats as they moved down the hillside behind where we were staying. When we returned to Athens, we did the full tourist gig and walked down every street and every store in Plaka and brought back over a dozen komboloi among other things to pass out back home. We spent almost a full day at the Parthenon just walking around the area and taking video and photographs. Some years later, we visited the full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee: impressive, but nothing compares to seeing the original in its own environment. Soon it was time for us to return to Texas. On the flight back, I remember thinking how glad I was that Daphne was with me and how forever grateful I would always be to Vasiliki who gave me the opportunity to touch my heritage and fulfill a life long dream. Every time I see that flag on my desk, I remember a very special time at a very special place. |
