How do you love a place you have never been to? How do you long for a home that only exists in the faded photographs and paramithia (tales) of a dying generation? How can I be nostalgic for a place that might as well be on a distant planet?
For me that place is Politsani, the town where my grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents, called home. The first time I saw the mountains of Northern Epirus was in the early morning light standing on the deck of a ship traveling from Brindisi to Corfu, over twenty five years ago. The sun slowly rose in the distant east, bathing them in a golden haze crowned by a bright halo. A soft, warm breeze blew against my face as if my ancestors were caressing me and whispering "welcome home."
Years later when Politsani still lived under the heavy yoke of Communist tyranny, I traveled to the border station at Kakavia, drawn there by an unknown magnetic force, hoping to get as close, physically, to Politsani as I could. So close yet so very far. Since then I have often dreamed of making the pilgrimage but life has a funny way of keeping things out of one's reach. Maybe this year I will finally be able to walk up its steep, rocky streets in the footsteps of my grandparents and light a candle in the Church of St. Nicholas in their memory. I want to drink water pouring into a cupped hand from a village water fountain and play backgammon at the kafenion while I sip a demitasse of thick, dark coffee. Perhaps I will be able to look up and pay my respects to Nemertska, the mountain range that overlooks Politsani. The same mountains that generations of my ancestors, whose dust is now mixed in the very soil and whose blood courses through my veins, gazed upon every morning, come what may, during the good and bad times.
Politsani is a piece of me. It's like a bad habit that I can't break. Its ghosts haunt me. No matter where I go and where I live, it still beckons like the Siren's song. During my sojourn in Greece years ago, I had an old photograph of Politsani, taken before the war, reproduced as an oil painting. The anonymous artist, sensing the importance of the image to his Greek-American customer, took particular care to meticulously include every detail. That painting now hangs over the fireplace in our living room, staring down at me like a transplanted piece of Nemertska, asking the perennial question: When?
Maybe, this year, God willing.
For more photos of Politsani and its people, visit my friends over at www.Politsani.com
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