Coming to Aiaía: Part 1

A two-part story about the mythical island that time (and GPS) forgot

Dan wakes with a pounding headache and immediately vomits over the side of the lifeboat. Which is odd, because he doesn’t remember getting into a lifeboat. He’d started out the night before in a tourist trap town on the Aegean Sea. Pints, then shots. They’d moved a few times, gone down to a beach bar, met some girls - Italian, he thinks, but he’s not sure. They said they had a yacht. Did he board the yacht? He must have. He has some hazy memories of girls in bikini tops and hot pants dancing on a fancy private bar, wood-panelled. There had been whiskey too - good stuff, not that he’s an expert. Drinking games.

But that was last night. It’s morning now, early and chilly, and he’s in a boat on the water. Dan screws up his eyes against the blinding sunlight and determines that he is totally alone, not only on the lifeboat, but in the vast expanse of sea. Shit. He immediately pats down his clothes in search of his phone. It’s still there, in the back pocket of his shorts, but when he pulls it out there’s no signal. He tries it anyway - calls his mates at the resort, his mates at home in Manchester, the European emergency number. Every attempt is met with silence - there isn’t even a recorded message telling him his call cannot be forwarded at this time. Shit, shit, shit. Dan reboots the device, his hands shaking now. The screen goes blank and doesn’t light up again. He starts to sweat, pressing and holding the power button repeatedly, long after it’s obvious the phone isn’t going to restart.

He looks around desperately, and sees the shape of an island looming close. How could he have missed it? He is almost within the shadow of its bulk, the rising sun behind it. Land, ho. Dan scrabbles for the oars under his feet and gets them into position. He’s never rowed a boat in his life before, although he knows you have to face the stern, and his first few swipes at the water are pretty ineffectual. He manages to get the boat moving in the direction he wants, but it’s tough going with a hangover. Eventually, after what seems like forever, the boat makes contact with soft sand. Dan removes his trainers and socks and steps out into the shallows. He deposits his footwear on the sand and then drags his boat up the beach, high up to the treeline. The effort almost makes him puke again.

Photo credit: Lisa Fotios on pexels.com

Glancing up, he sees an elderly man ambling along the shoreline. He’s barefoot and has a wooden stick to support his weight.

“Hey! Over here!” Dan shouts.

The man waves enthusiastically. “Ypiaine!” he shouts, hobbling towards Dan.

“Kalimera?” Dan hazards, using one of the few Greek words he knows.

“Aspazoumai!” replies the man.

Dan is completely lost. “English?” he asks hopefully.

The man smiles broadly. “Hairai!”

“Greek?” says Dan, feeling desperate. “Uh … Ellada? Française? Deutsch?”

The man reels off a stream of words, all completely incomprehensible to Dan.

“English,” he says, pointing to himself. “England, Big Ben … Harry Potter?”

“Hairai polla!”

“No, Harry - never mind. England. England.” He is gesticulating wildly now, but the man remains calm, yammering away. “I - don’t - understand - you,” Dan says slowly, his voice rising in frustration. “What is that? Turkish? Arabic? Frickin’ Elvish?”

“It’s Ancient Greek.”

Dan spins on his heel to see a woman. He hadn’t heard her approaching - she must have come down out of the forest. She’s in her fifties, suntanned and slim, dressed in what Dan would call a toga. He knows that’s not the right word, but it looks like something people wore thousands of years ago; a sort of tunic cinched at the waist with a length of rope.

“You speak English!” he bursts out with relief.

“I speak several languages,” replies the woman. She pronounces the words with an accent that Dan thinks is French. “Luckily for you, one of them is English.”

She turns to the old man, who gabbles something at her. She nods and smiles, and the man continues his walk along the beach.

“Can you understand him?” Dan asks.

“Mostly,” she says. “In my previous life, I was a Classics professor, and living here has certainly helped me brush up on the language.”

“You live here?”

“We all live here. There’s no way off the island.”

“What?” Dan is incredulous. They’re surrounded by sea. “Of course there’s a way off the island. I just came here in a boat.”

“You came, yes, but you won’t be able to leave the same way.”

“What are you talking about? You expect me to believe this is, like, the Hotel California or something?”

“You have no idea,” she says.

“No, I bloody well don’t,” Dan snaps. His head hurts, and he feels the woman is acting superior to him. She leans forward, her voice low, excitement dancing in her eyes.

“The local people call it Aiaía.”

She looks at him expectantly, as if this should mean something.

“So?” he says.

“You don’t know your Greek mythology?”

Dan stares at her, feeling stupid.

“Aiaía was the island on which the gods imprisoned Circe. You know Circe?”

He gives her another blank look.

“She was the daughter of the sun-god Helios, a healer and a powerful witch. She appears in Homer’s Odyssey, if you’ve read it.” Of course he hasn’t - she knows he hasn’t, the patronising cow. “But for all her power and skill, Circe was unable to leave the island. How do you think you can escape a prison that once held a goddess?”

Dan snorts.

“OK, OK. Maybe someone has had too much sun,” he says, mocking her, glad to have an opportunity to get back at her for the way she has been speaking to him so condescendingly. “I hate to tell you this, but mythology isn’t based on fact, love.”

He throws the endearment at her like a challenge - he’s trying to rile her. But she only gives him a half-smile.

“I have spent the best part of thirty years in academia,” she says evenly. “I have studied the rites and rituals of ancient people, their belief systems and stories. I don’t believe in magic and I am psychologically sound -”

“Sure about that, are we?” Dan mutters under his breath, but not so quietly she can’t hear him.

She gives him a withering look.

“I understand your scepticism. You are an empiricist. I am the same. We must see to believe. So why don’t you try to leave the island? You came here on a boat. Get back on it and row away.”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry.” Dan holds up his hands, he’s not sure why - maybe to ward off her crazy. “There’s no need for that. Look, can you just point me to somewhere I can charge my phone and make a few calls, maybe take a shower and get some painkillers?”

“Painkillers we have,” she says, “although they take some time to prepare. The rest of your requests are impossible here.”

“What? You don’t have showers? Electricity?”

“No electricity or running water, no internet connection -”

“What about a port? Food deliveries and pharmaceuticals? An airstrip?”

“You still don’t get it, do you? This island is not on any map. You can’t see it on Google Earth. No one can find it. Now you’re here, no one can find you either.”

Dan kicks the sand in frustration. Crazy old bat. She’s either mental or messing with him. Either way, he’s not hanging around here to listen to any more of her crap. He snatches his trainers from the sand, yanks on his socks and stuffs his feet into them, then turns and strikes off into the forest. There must be some kind of settlement here. The woman was mad, but she was clean. Somebody has to be looking after her.

He stamps through the forest, his head thumping. He needs water, and some paracetamol - and a fry-up if possible. If only his damn phone was working, he could see where the hell he is and locate the nearest pharmacy. He tries it again, but it won’t turn on.

He can’t see a trail anywhere, so he crashes through the undergrowth in his shorts, only remembering about snakes after he’s been walking for about twenty minutes. His throat is dry and it’s starting to get hot, so he stops for a second, holding a hand to his throbbing forehead. When he removes it, he sees there is an enormous cat staring at him. Not an overgrown house cat, a Planet Earth kind of cat. It’s about a metre and a half long, lying on the ground up ahead, looking directly at him with green eyes. It yawns, showing a mouth of vicious-looking teeth.

Dan is frozen. He’s never been into wildlife documentaries - he doesn’t know what he’s looking at or how he should react. Run? Stay still? Stare it down? Not climb a tree - cats can definitely climb trees. As he stands there, rooted to the spot by his indecision, a child barrels through the forest from his right. Dan shouts a wordless warning, but the kid pays no attention, taking a flying leap onto the cat’s back.

Dan flinches, forcing himself forward to - what? Intervene in some way, he guesses. Save the kid. But the cat hasn’t attacked. It hasn’t moved. The child sits astride it, stroking its head and chattering to it.

A man has followed the child and walks up to it now, ruffling its messy black hair. Dan wades through the foliage towards the man, skirting slightly to the right to be out of the eyeline of the cat. He still doesn’t trust that it won’t attack him, even if it’s acting like the kid’s pet. He hails the man.

“You speak English?”

“Yes. A little English. I’m Jamal and this is Samira, my daughter.”

The girl looks up at the sound of her own name, and Dan waves awkwardly at her.

“I’m Dan. I’ve just arrived here -”

“Welcome!”

“Uh - thanks. I’m looking for a pharmacy, and a place to charge my phone.”

“My friend Dan, we have no such things here as pharmacy and phones. This is Aiaía. You know the story of the goddess -”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.” Christ, was everyone here mental? “Look, there must be someplace where you guys live. Like, your … house or whatever. Can you take me there?”

“Yes. You follow me. Taeal alaa huna, Samira.”

The girl clambers off the cat’s back and takes her father’s hand. To Dan’s dismay, the cat gets up and stretches and begins to follow them as they walk back in the direction Jamal and Samira came from. Jamal sees the look Dan gives it.

“Mountain lion,” he says. “Very tame. Very good girl.” He ruffles the fur on the lion’s head in the same way he rumpled his daughter’s. “Where are you from, Dan?”

“Britain - England.”

“From Syria,” Jamal says, gesturing to himself.

There’s an awkward pause.

“I’m sorry, man,” Dan says tentatively, not sure if it’s the right thing to say. “Shit’s been ugly there.”

“Yes, very ugly times. Very sad times,” Jamal agrees. “But we are here now. On Aiaía, we are safe.”

“You … came here on a boat?” Dan is curious, but he doesn’t know if it’s bad form to ask.

“Yes, before our daughter was born. Small boat - too many people.” Jamal lowers his voice so that Samira, who is skipping ahead, can’t hear. “Too many and it sinks. We swim, my wife and I.”

“And - the others?” Dan’s voice is hushed too.

Jamal shrugs. “I pray a ship find them out there in the sea. But Aisha and I, we are the only ones who make it to Aiaía.”

“And … have you ever tried to … leave?”

Jamal stops walking.

“Leave?” he says. “Why would I want to leave? Here, I have a home. No bombs are falling from the sky, there are no soldiers, no guns. My wife is not hungry and my daughter is not sick. Ah, my friend Dan, we are not the same. To you, this is a desert island like the one of Robinson Crusoe, yes? But to me, this is paradise.”

Dan nods, chastened, feeling the weight of his privilege, born in a country at peace, with a healthcare system and free education. The phone in his back pocket suddenly feels very heavy, and he takes it out and looks at it.

“Ah, the phone,” says Jamal, in the same tone Dan might use if he came across a stomp rocket. “Very nice. Completely useless to you now, Dan. Never work again.” He drills a finger into his temple. “Mind is free here.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes. Dan reflects that Jamal doesn’t seem insane. Neither did the possibly-French academic, for that matter. But they’re definitely delusional, the pair of them. Perhaps they’re part of a cult to this goddess Circe. He can’t rule it out - the world is full of weirdos.

“Here is home,” says Jamal proudly, gesturing to the top of the hill. It is ringed by the forest, but on the summit there are no trees. Instead, there is a collection of mud brick huts, thatched, all around a wooden longhouse. “No pharmacy, but my wife can help. She learns from the people here. What is your illness?”

“A hangover,” says Dan absently, still staring at the little village. “A headache. I drank too much last night. Beer. Whiskey.” He mimes drinking. Jamal clicks his tongue, but Dan is thinking of Lost and The Beach and Lord of the Flies. “Who’s in charge here?” he asks.

“Charge?”

“Who’s the leader?”

Jamal shakes his head. “No leader on Aiaía. Only people.”

“You know, that doesn’t work -”

“It works, my friend Dan. The island, she keeps us safe. Now, we will ask Aisha to make your hangover go away.”

Jamal calls his wife’s name, and a voice replies from behind one of the mud brick buildings. They walk around back and see a woman kneeling on the ground in a herb garden. It is partitioned into sections by stones, and in each section something lush and green is growing. Next to her is a basket, and she is filling it with leaves and stalks, each one carefully selected.

Samira launches herself at the woman, and Aisha catches her daughter in an embrace, burying her face for a moment in the child’s hair.

Aisha is wearing a tunic not unlike the French academic. Her hair is wrapped in a scarf, but her arms are bare. Her eyes shine as she looks up at her husband. Dan can’t say why, but he thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He wants to tell Jamal what a lucky bloke he is, but he thinks maybe it’s not appropriate. Instead he dips his head to Aisha, mumbling, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” she says. “Welcome to our home.” She has only the faintest accent.

“You speak very good English,” Dan says.

“Thank you. My father was a professor of English. He always spoke the language to me. When I was a child, he read me many English books: The Hobbit and Roald Dahl, and very many Enid Blyton books. I wished to read them to my children too, but by the time we left, they were gone - my father’s house was gone.” She sighs, then adds practically, “We couldn’t have brought them with us anyway.”

Dan shifts uncomfortably.

“Dan needs your help,” Jamal says. “He has a hangover.”

Aisha doesn’t click her tongue at him like Jamal did, but a small smile plays about the corners of her mouth. Dan is amazed by it. After everything she has been through, everything she has lost; after swimming here only in the clothes she had on, how is it that she still has such an easy smile?

“Come with me, Dan,” she says. “Come inside.”

He follows her into the mud brick house. It’s not bare and squalid inside as he had expected, but cosy. There is more than one room. In this one, the kitchen, there is a rug on the floor and a wooden table, a sideboard and shelves. There is also a tall cupboard, like a larder, which Aisha walks over to and opens. Dan cranes his neck, trying to see how you make a cupboard in a place where you can’t buy hinges.

Aisha selects several items from the cupboard, and lays them on the table before Dan. There is a piece of bark, a handful of dried leaves and a bunch of something that looks like lavender.

“Each one of these will help make a headache better,” Aisha says, pointing at them one by one. “But these are not for you. You have a special headache. For self-inflicted headaches of this kind, there is only one cure. Follow me.”

She leads him back outside again. He is fully aware that she is toying with him, but he finds he isn’t annoyed, even though his head is aching worse than ever. She takes him a little way back into the trees, to a well. It’s just like the one in a picture book he had as a child - a stone wall around it, and a wooden structure over it with a handle, spindle and bucket attached.

“Here is the cure for a hangover,” says Aisha. Her smile is infectious, and Dan finds himself grinning inanely at her for no reason at all. “This way, the bucket goes down. This way, it comes up.” Aisha demonstrates, turning the wooden handle first one way then the other. “Drink half a bucketful, and then come back to the house and I will give you some food.”

She turns and walks away through the trees, her hips swaying. Dan watches her. He notices that she, too, is barefoot. Isn’t anyone in this place worried about snakes?

He lowers the bucket into the well and raises it again, the action of turning the spindle making his head thump. Once he gets hold of the bucket, he pulls it towards himself and, perched on the edge of the well, he inspects the water inside it. It looks clean - it’s crystal-clear, at least, but then you can’t see bacteria. Still, it’s the only fresh water Dan has seen all day, so he takes a tentative sip.

It’s probably because he’s dehydrated, but it seems like the best water he’s ever tasted.

He takes several greedy gulps, water running down his chin, then he lowers the bucket and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. From the trees, someone is watching him. A bare-chested boy about his own age, olive-skinned with a head of dark curls.

Dan raises a hand in greeting.

The boy steps forward.

“You new here,” he says in faltering English.

“Yes,” replies Dan. “I arrived a few hours ago. I’m not staying though, just passing through.”

The boy frowns.

“Everyone stay.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Water?”

Dan proffers the bucket, but the boy shakes his head.

“You are danger,” he says.

“No kidding - I saw some massive lion-type thing earlier, and I bet the place is crawling with snakes.”

“You not understand me,” the boy says. “You are danger - danger to us, danger to you.”

“Me?” Dan grins. “I’m not dangerous, man. I don’t even know kung fu.”

The boy looks at him, guarded and suspicious.

“It’s a joke, man. Lighten up. What’s your name?”

“Damoleon.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“It is not nice for me,” replies the boy.

Dan shrugs. “Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine, Damoleon? It’s really made my day talking to you.” He gulps down the rest of his water quota in one go, like chugging a pint, and lets the bucket swing back into place above the well. “I’m going to get some grub. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

He heads back up to the settlement without a backwards glance, but Damoleon stays where he is, watching him go.

“Hieros,” Damoleon mutters at Dan’s retreating back. “Pig.”

To be continued …