Janey Runci — Making the Children’s Kites

We sail out of Pothia, sliding along the steep rocky wall, only a thin necklace of miniature trees to mark the road above, and I am thinking of the family arriving, Charmian and George and the children seeking mermaids, and the divers leaving seeking sponges to feed their masters’ wealth, risking all with nothing to sustain but the promise of months of drunken oblivion back on shore.

The music on the boat finally shifts from Zorba to a more haunting melody.

‘This music is called The Kite,’ George says.

‘Kite, as in the bird?’ someone asks.

‘No.’

George raises both arms, threads his hands one over the other and again and again, a man with a kite string, and the kite tugs and I am thinking of Fotis up in the stony part above the town, back with his hungry wife, and his many hungry children, but this time he is nourished by an inner joy, a joy to hoard, to treasure and he knows what he will do, what he can do, he will make kites for his children. He will give his children those moments of ecstasy, willing the kite to climb to the sky, to dart and duck and weave and soar.

Is it the same longing that made us so happy to see the dolphins?

How many get the chance to go seeking mermaids?

Yesterday when we walked up above the town we saw between the buildings the narrow stairways winding up, and past that the stony part of the city where the poor women lived, the wives of the divers with their children.

Down these stairs Martin and Shane come running ahead of Charmian. The children delight in their strength and agility and the joy of hurtling down. Charmian follows more slowly, still seeing the woman they’ve visited, the starving children.

Charmian’s face is wet with tears.