moments
For Business Day's monthly lifestyle supplement, Wanted
In a metallic bikini, Neyma curves her back, catlike, kicks her bare feet in the air and breaks into a frenetic dance, muscles taut and glistening, her voice rising to match the men on electric guitar.
A clutch of gyrating dancers topped with chiffon rosettes and impossibly high foot arches shimmies in front of a capulana kaleidoscope cyclorama - flowers and hearts and spinning discs of stars emerging from the smoke.
The crowd is entranced, the rhythm contagious, hips picking it out on wooden benches.
But it is the sweet old man in crimson Hawaiian print and low-slung dress trousers that brings them to their feet.
Dilon Djindji, a father of the genre, mic in hand, hopping from foot to foot in deliberate slow motion, in a matching marathon of hypnotic drum beats, the spotlight picking out the enormous whites of his eyes as he croons, eyebrows raised, raspy, soulful, seductive.
The melody picks up speed, intensity building to a climax. As bodies swing to the floor, a frantic saxophone solo cuts through the rumble. Then three deft bass drum thumps, and silence.
An intake of breath and the air is filled with the singing of the crowd, a song as if they’d agreed it prior. They sing of marrabenta, the music of their struggle, Portuguese fado given African heart and turned against their colonial oppressors.
A version of this feature appeared in Business Day's Wanted supplement, published December 2013.
Beyond tourist season, after the summer hordes leave, Patmos is reclaimed by those who love it best.
The terracotta floor of the tiny Ekklisaki tou Stavrou is indented with the waves of the bay, a wriggle echoed again and again and again on the baked tiles. Tonight, the ripples are interspersed with sprigs of white mersinya and lemon leaves, footstep-crushed and fragrant, sweet and citrusy acidic.
The air is warm with yeast, freshly baked bread, enormous rounds stacked in a tower encrusted with sesame, mingling with the ylang-ylang perfume of holy oil and wax.
Within the one-roomed church with its flat roof and single bell, the faithful light their slender saffron candles and kiss renewed frescoes of Jesus and Mary.
At Stavros Bay, the church of the cross has stood for 500 years; and for 500 years, on this, the eve of the rediscovery of the crucifix, they file in, one by one, to crown faded wooden relics of their Saviour with jasmine and marigold, laying their lips to glass.
They speak of pirates and adventure and sacrifice, of the maidens who took refuge here, saved by a young musician who gave his life for the rescue.
The colours of pennant bunting, flags, old, new and Byzantine, fade with the approaching dusk.
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The villagers have gathered where the smoke is rising.
An enormous man in a green Nike shirt is turning the souvla, floodlight backlit.
The taverna has run out of tables, so they have constructed more out of beer crates and tissue tablecloths. The feast spreads beyond the corrugated iron awning, across the dry grass, into the intoxicating waft of roasting meat and smoky coals.
Everyone is here for the music, to hear the band of local young men who have been practicing a 15-minute-long adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans.
They have already struck up: violin, bouzouki and two guitars. A barefoot drunk in blue checks and rolled trouser cuffs swings around the makeshift dance floor to rousing nisiotika, island music. A waiter scatters paper napkins from above, ridiculous confetti on the concrete, as another diner swings a leg over his head.
A whisper passes my ear. “When a man is dancing, the floor is his.”
The throaty young violinist with tattoed pinyin on his bicep smokes determinedly between sets.
As the music crescendoes, a balding punter in leather Mary Janes joins him in song, their voices meeting the sea breeze in unison.
The night ferry horn echoes across the bay.
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Across the hills in Chora, on the flagstones outside the Pantheon taverna, a gingerbread coloured mutt with two names leaps to his feet and howls.