Long Weekend

As it is Good Friday it is a long weekend for most. To avoid any confusion and be complete: Passover this year falls on April 22, while Ramadan ends on April 9. Not unimportant to note these dates as they will no doubt interact with what is going on in the Middle East.

We’ll keep it light today. It was nice to see the readers with a Greek background yesterday weighing in with their comments on Wednesday’s post. I have had a long and deep relationship with Greece, close to the one I have with Israel. Yes, the cradle of democracy and the cradle of the Abrahamic religions are alike in many ways and have a similar feel and pulse.

For Greece, the best way to put it into words is to experience entering the place from abroad. There is something so unusually alluring when you are flying or ferrying in, preferably early in the morning, and see the barren rocks emerge from the blue sea while the sun is gearing up to deliver another day of blistering heat. It transcends you and it has an almost spiritual feel to it, at least for me. Some people are turned off by the heat and sparse vegetation on this dry archipelago, but that is what makes it all so profound. For thousands of years people have eked a living out here while all the storms of history razed over that rough landscape. Persians, Romans, Ottomans, Nazis and even civil wars. And yet they’re still here, the Greeks. That experience is set to the tones of its music, from the traditional and beautifully haunting zebekeiko to present day Paola (where the audience is of course part of the show). If you hear the latter it will also become so much clearer that when you enter Greece you are no longer in Europe, no longer in the West: you’re in the East.

I will leave you with this. Enjoy the long weekend and see you next week.

Photo: Pothia the main city on Kalymnos which is part of the Dodecanese group of islands not far from the Turkish coast.