Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [14]
On Athos, even meals are a continuation of worship. A bell clangs in the courtyard. The monks file in, stand silently at long tables until the abbot blesses the food. After a communal prayer, all sit, and eat swiftly under the eyes of frescoed saints lining the refectory walls while a monk at the lectern reads from a saint’s life. A bell tinkles. He returns the book to its niche, kneels to kiss the abbot’s hand, receives his blessing. Then all file out silently. After Vespers, the monastery gates swing shut and everyone turns in, soon to rise for the night’s round of prayers, for the first hour of the Byzantine day begins with sunset.
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Pinpoints of lamplight in the cells silhouette monks in ceaseless prayers of repentance. Four hours of solitary prayer before the call to four hours of communal prayer. Bread and tea, a snatch of sleep, and then silent prayer continues as the monk goes about his daytime tasks, in the kitchen, garden, at manual labor.
One moonlit night at Dionysiou Monastery a howling wind rattled the window of my cell. Dawn disclosed gray clouds beetling the brow of the Holy Mountain, and the face of the sea furrowed in anger. Below, waves slammed over the landing. No mail boat today. To get to Gregoriou, next monastery along the coast, meant going by foot.
“It’s a very dangerous path,” cautioned Father Euthymios as we set out together. The gangling New York-born Vietnam veteran was coming from the “desert,” hermitages farther out on the peninsula, where he paints icons. “Part of it is along a causeway swept by the sea.” Then came an afterthought of small comfort: “Darius lost his fleet here in such a storm.” Three hundred of the Persian king’s ships and 20,000 men dashed on the rocks of Athos in 491 BC.
Pausing on a crest, buffeted by a devil of a wind, Father Euthymios said, “I always fear this next stretch. It’s along a cliff with a straight drop to the sea. But with God’s grace we will make it.” We did. And next day we again tempted fate.
The storm roared unabated. Winds clutched at us as we climbed and descended ravines, bone weary, wet through. Breakers roared as we leaped from rock to slippery rock at the base of sea cliffs. Too close.
If you must wait out an Athos storm, you will find no more dramatic haven than Simonopetra, high on a spur above the Aegean. It opens its dovecote of cells onto tiers of rickety balconies propped by aged beams. To walk along 108 feet over the sea in a storm is an act of faith. Clutching the splintery rail, stepping over a gap in the floor planks, I looked down mesmerized at walls of water battering walls of rock.
Next day Simonopetra no longer shook. The wind had lost its howl; the sea was flattening its crests. No more dodging waves. I had been lucky. Not so that boy who looked like my son. As he leaped across the rocks, a wave swept him away before his father’s eyes. When the boats ran again, they found his body and brought it in from the sea.
The year 1071 was a bad one for the Byzantines, East and West. At Manzikert, in the highlands of eastern Turkey, the multinational Byzantine Army, riven by dissensions and desertions and for once sloppy in reconnaissance, was annihilated by the invading Seljuk Turks it had marched east to destroy. Anatolia, breadbasket and prime recruiting ground for Byzantium, subsequently was stripped forever from Christendom, opening the way to later Ottoman invasions of Europe.
In Bari, port city in southeastern Italy, I saw blood on the pavement. Assassins had gunned down a political opponent, and grieving partisans marched around the stain in bitter memorial. Nine centuries earlier blood had flowed in the streets of Byzantine Bari, sacked by the Normans after