(Gulf of Kalloni)

Lesvos is a paradise for lovers of Greek cuisine. Most restaurants work with fresh ingredients that vary with the seasons. For example, in the autumn you might find wild mushrooms on the menu, in the winter there are shellfish like oysters and clams, and sardines are actually a summer fish.

I was first drawn to the charming, peaceful Greek life and the stunning nature of Lesvos, which, twenty years ago, was still a relatively unknown island, even though it is the third largest island in Greece by area.

In the past, eating out was an important part of Greek culture. The restaurants filled up daily with three generations of Greeks – sometimes even four – from small screaming children to crooked old folk. They congregated around long tables laden with fragrant bowls of vegetables, meat, fish and armies of ouzo and retsina bottles. When alcohol and popular old Greek songs stirred up the atmosphere, people’s feet left the floor; they danced with bottles on their heads, or squatted on the ground performing acrobatic moves, and those feelings of bliss were transformed into Greek dancing.  These were entertaining scenes, once very common, now a rarity since the Greek financial crisis.

The Mediterranean diet is considered super healthy, unlike, for example, the Albert Heijn  culture in the Netherlands. On the island, the fish jump straight from the sea onto your plate, the vegetables crawl directly from the fields into the kitchens, and fruit trees wave invitingly with a large variety of fruits. Despite this healthy cuisine, cancer is the number one cause of death in Greece.  Perhaps that’s due to the fact that Greeks, especially in the past, excelled at smoking, drinking and eating simultaneously. The long tables were shrouded in clouds of cigarette smoke and, as the evening progressed, the number of bottles surpassed the plates of healthy food. On Lesvos it is still whispered that a possible cause of cancer was the clouds of Chernobyl dust that lingered over Lesvos after the nuclear disaster in 1986.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from the Greek film Never on Sunday, in which Melina Mercouri, as a flirtatious woman, is sitting on her bed, a smoking cigarette in her mouth, while she puts a record on her small record player and then sings the famous song Never on Sunday  (Ta pedia tou Pirea). Yes, I drank and smoked like a real Greek and now would love to sit on my bed, just like Melina, with a cigarette and a little ouzo, while listening to Greek music and start daydreaming.

But unfortunately I’m now in the Netherlands, where Greek romance is nowhere to be found, neither is the blue sea nor the blue sky. The Mediterranean diet couldn’t save me from that well-known silent serial killer either. A cancer has taken over my lungs, which no longer have enough resistance to ward off or defeat the evil tumors. Despite my prayers to Saint George, who resides in the small church near where I live and who helped me quit smoking four years ago by giving me an abdominal aneurysm. While excellent doctors saved my life in Athens four years ago; this time when given a choice between examinations in Athens or the Netherlands. I chose the latter.

Between the scans, injections and spinal taps (lumbar puncture), I’m feeling down and my homesickness for the island is growing by the day. I hope soon to set foot on Lesvorian soil again, where I will engage myself in the battle with the cancer demons. I will be fine as long as I can smell the olives, see the sea, wink at Mount Lepetimnos, talk to my cats, wish Saint George a good morning and enjoy a Greek meal with friends – without a cigarette, but with a little ouzo or retsina.