The Golden Step (12 page)

Like the Byzantines before them, like the Romans before that, the Venetians' rule in Crete reflected the drift of affairs in the parent state, gradually turning soft, rotten and ripe for the plucking. And like the Byzantines, it was yet another upsurge of expansionist Islam that brought about their downfall. The Ottoman Empire's capture of Constantinople in 1453 was a giant blow to Christian security, and equally a formidable boost to Muslim self-confidence. Pirate raids by Turks and Arabs became the scourge of the Mediterranean. Not for nothing did the authorities in Crete engage the greatest Venetian engineer of the day, Michele Sanmichele, in 1538 to strengthen with mighty bastions the walls that had been built around the Cretan capital of Candia the previous century on the foundations of the Byzantine city wall. Rethymnon and La Canea (modern-day Chania) followed suit, to mixed effect – Rethymnon was sacked and burned in 1567 by Algerian corsairs. But wall upon wall could not keep out the Turks when they finally launched their invasion of Crete in 1645. Under Yussuf Pasha they took La Canea in their first eastward push after a bloody siege of 55 days, and Rethymnon fell to Yussuf the following year. With Candia things went less easily. It took an epic siege of 21 years, with many thousands of deaths and countless unrecorded barbarities on both sides, before the gates of the city were finally opened by the defenders on 5 September 1669. The Venetians remaining inside were the last unconquered of their era, and were allowed by the Turks to leave in peace the now subjugated island they themselves had dominated, exploited, influenced and made their own for over 450 years.

What followed was, essentially, 230 years of decline and neglect, a period still seen by Cretans as the nadir of their island's fortunes. Feelings run very strong on the subject of Turkey and the Turks. The surest way to catch it hot, verbally if not physically, from a Cretan – a small town or village dweller in particular – is to utter anything that sounds even remotely like approval for anything originating east of Greece and south of the Black Sea.

Turkish rule was characterised by long periods of laissez-faire and navel-gazing. Minarets and domes were grafted on to churches-turned-mosques, beautiful fountains were built, Moorish window arches and wooden balconies were added to Venetian town houses. Thick sweet coffee, honeyed pastries and the pleasures of the
narghile
or hubble-bubble pipe were introduced, as was the affectionate diminutive ‘-akis' – Theodorakis, ‘little Theodore', Kakoulakis, ‘little Kakoulis' – that ends so many Cretan surnames. But it would be hard to point to any solid, sensible, hard-headed benefits of those two and a half centuries of Turkish rule. The everyday business of agriculture and trade did not seem to interest the new masters, urban by inclination and habit as they were. Pashas or overlords ruled the three districts into which Crete was now divided, and these officials and their minions tended not only to spend their time in the three main towns of Megalo Kastro (Iraklion), Rethymnon and Chania, but to dismiss the ever-worsening financial and agricultural problems of the countryside as unimportant. Lack of economic vision and purpose meant that the coffers of this naturally fertile and commercially well situated island – coffers that should have been full to bulging – were too often depleted, and the temptation for the Turkish authorities in Crete was always to top them up by increasing taxes on a population that could not maintain the prosperity necessary to pay these levies.

Given the independent-minded and combustible Cretan temperament, it is small wonder that the era of Turkish rule was punctuated by ferocious uprisings based in rural and mountain areas. These were always guaranteed to fetch the authorities out of their lethargy with a bang, and to trigger savage suppression. The leader of the 1770 rising in the west, a learned Sfakiot nicknamed Daskalogiannis or ‘John the Teacher' who had counted in vain on Russian support in his struggle against their mutual enemy, gave himself up at Frangokastello Castle on the south coast and was brought for questioning in front of the Pasha of Iraklion. At first the Pasha treated the prisoner with courtesy, but when Daskalogiannis was bold enough to defy his captor he was taken out and flayed alive. The unfortunate leaders of some other rebellions were impaled, or dropped from poles onto boards stuck with meat hooks. Hatzimichali Dalianis and his followers were slaughtered wholesale at Frangokastello in 1828. Those who took up arms under the rebel leaders, and the people of the districts considered to have supported them, could likewise expect no mercy from a Turkish and native soldiery which gained itself a name for vicious behaviour, even in times of comparative peace. In the opening years of the 19th-century, for example, the French consul reported from Chania that the city's Janissaries – young Christian men who had converted to become elite Muslim soldiers – were casually shooting Cretan passers-by for fun, after making bets as to whether they would fall face down or up.

Urban and lowland Cretans who lived cheek by jowl with the Turks had to learn to get along with them. Mostly they did. There were large-scale conversions to Islam, some perhaps from sincere motives, many to ensure an easier life. But up in the back country and the mountains it was a different story, especially after mainland Greece broke free from the Ottoman Empire in 1832 after a ten-year war of independence. Emboldened, the islanders mounted rising after rising. In 1862 rebels fired the powder magazine at Arkadi monastery in the mountains behind Rethymnon, killing 2,000 friends and foes. The outside world began to take note and apply pressure on Constantinople.

The next uprising, that of 1878, was supported by Greece. This was the rebellion that formed the backdrop to Nikos Kazantzakis's greatest novel,
Freedom and Death
, with its ultimate palikare of a hero in Captain Michales, who goes down fighting for the glory and freedom of Crete along with the cream of his men. The 1878 rising ended with the establishment of Crete as a semi-autonomous state, and like those that followed in 1889 and 1896 forced more concessions from the Turks. As the Cretans sensed that their Turkish rulers were reaching the end of the road in the island, the four Great Powers of Europe – France, Italy, Russia and Britain – brought their diplomatic weight and the threat of their warships to bear on the Cretan rump of the tottering Ottoman Empire. In 1897 the Greek flag was raised on the hill of Profitis Ilias outside Chania in a protest organised by the man destined to become Greek Prime Minister and Crete's greatest political hero, Eleftherias (‘Freedom') Venizelos. Its pole was shot away by the gunfire of naval units of the Great Powers at anchor in Suda Bay, but the Cretan patriots streamed the flag out manually and continued to fly it by hand, a bold gesture which brought spontaneous applause from the gunners in the ships. Finally in 1898, between diplomacy and threats, the Great Powers imposed a settlement. Unlamented, the Turks at last quit Crete.

That was not quite the end of the road, as it happened. The people of Crete did not only want freedom from the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Empire. They also craved
enosis
, or political union with mainland Greece; and the Great Powers were opposed to the idea, for fear it would provoke the Young Turks at that time revitalising the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps set all the Balkans aflame. Eleftherias Venizelos convened a Revolutionary Assembly in 1905 as a ginger group to push for
enosis.
Five years later he was elected Prime Minister of Greece; and three years after that, on 1 December 1913, the Greek flag was again raised in Chania, above the Firkas fort on the harbour. This time it remained proudly flying from its pole, a symbol of
enosis
achieved.

On the morning after St George's Day I got up early and did my daily washing in a cold and slippery stew of blue suds. This mundane operation, generally carried out at the end of each day's march, had been an essential part of the routine since my decision on Day One to sacrifice half the contents of the pack to the god of lightness. My total clothing commissariat now consisted of: 2 walking shirts, cotton, long-sleeved, with breast pockets to hold sunglasses and specs; 1 set of thermal underwear; 3 pairs of light socks and 2 of heavy walking socks (these now full of
astivitha
prickles inextricably interwoven with the wool); 2 pairs of trousers, washable, one torn at the knee and crudely stitched; 1 light sweater; 1 handkerchief; 1 anorak; 1 fleece; 1 pair of shoes, light, canvas; 2 pairs of underpants, post-pristine. A simple piece of hard-learned advice to anyone thinking of following in my footsteps – take dark-coloured underpants if you wish to avoid hotel balcony drying-line mortification.

My friend the Psalmist had his own, not dissimilar concerns today. ‘My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart … I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.'

Hmmm, yes. What else at this stage, roughly a third of the way into the walk? A plague of boils on my back, probably the result of sweating all day, every day into a shirt impregnated with the previous day's salt sweat, the previous night's unconditioned soap suds. Feet a bit of a mess, and stinking like a Psalmist's wounds, but negotiable with Compeed and cold water douches. Spirits fine. I wish, I wish, but it's all in vain; I wish I was a maid again … or at least that I had prepared a bit better. Slopes, stones, screes – all were finding me out. On the plus side was the gradual acquisition of a tongue and the courage to use it. In the bank at Kastelli the girls had gathered round, smiling and astonished to hear the
tourista
speak Greek – not so much at its quantity or quality (I was still at the stage of recycling words or phrases picked up as I went along), as at the strange phenomenon of an Englishman making an effort.

Archanes offered two fine archaeological outings, the perfect excuse for a day off to let the sun get at my salt-stiffened clothes. I climbed the little hill just north of the town and steered for the ancient burial ground of Phourni, which looks out to the twin-peaked bulk of Mount Iouchtas. This is one of the most remarkable cemetery sites anywhere round the Aegean. So often it is luck as much as good judgement that drives our archaeological understanding. The Cornish fisherman shoots his net a couple of feet this way or that, and the corner slides across the golden cup from famed Atlantis. Manolis, feeling the need for a cigarette, climbs out of the ditch he has been digging and crushes with his boot a tablet of clay stamped with hieroglyphics that match those on the as-yet-undecipherable Phaistos Disc. So many accidents and happenstances to break the spinal cord of history; so many gaps to be filled in with educated guesswork. But at Phourni one sees a complete picture, an unbroken succession of Minoan burials, a millennium and a half that stretches from the early era, around 2,500
BC
, down to the end of the Minoan age and the rule of the Myceneans after the destruction of the great palaces. All sorts of grave-goods have been found here: large clay
larnakes
or coffin-chests painted with vivid scenes of burial, bronze vessels, imported treasures including an Egyptian scarab, gold and silver jewellery, remains of a horse sacrifice, the skull of a bull, and a Minoan ossuary packed thickly with human skulls and bones. Several
tholoi
or circular tombs with vaulted ceilings stand on the site, those from earlier Minoan times containing multiple burials, later ones with single occupants.

I wandered among grey chambers of massive squared stones where burials in
larnakes
and
pithoi
(the classic large earthenware jar) had been discovered stacked up to 18 deep. Most of these chambers were close-packed to form the familiar Minoan nest or labyrinth of buildings, their compartments interconnected with doors, tunnels, passages, openings, other secret little rooms. Off to one side, near a big stone beehive-shaped
tholos
where the remains of a high-ranking priestess had been excavated, seven neat rectangular Mycenean graves lay cut out of the solid rock, three of them still bearing an erect slab like a tombstone. Out at the southern end of the site I sat in the shadow of another ring-shaped tholos, picturing the moment when its excavators uncovered the body of a Minoan lady, maybe a princess, with her jewels around her and her mirror of polished bronze placed so that she could contemplate her own beauty for ever more. On this cool, cloudy hilltop with its grey rocks and grey stones, the Minoans seemed only a breath away.

Back in Archanes I dug out the
philakas
or guardian of the Anemospilia and got him and his key into a taxi. I wanted to have a look at the ‘Cave of the Winds' up on Mount Iouchtas from close-to. ‘Don't miss,' I'd been urged in the taverna last night by Zpiderman, who'd taken the trouble to lay out the story for me in his effortful English. The cave lay a 15-minute car ride off, not far below the Minoan sanctuary at the northern peak of the mountain, commanding a stunning view – east to the Dhikti Mountains, west to snow-backed Psiloritis, north across the lowland olive groves and vineyards and on over Iraklion to Dia Island lying out in the Cretan Sea. Inside the fence the site was small – three simple stone rooms side by side, each opening onto a short corridor that ran east and west. The tale, however, was both complicated and, when unravelled, marvellously intriguing – a triumph of educated guesswork.

When the Cave of the Winds was excavated in 1979, the archaeologists found the remains of three humans in the most westerly of the three chambers. One was that of a man in his thirties, the ring of iron and silver and the agate seal he wore suggesting an elevated social position, perhaps that of a priest. With him was a slightly younger woman. On top of a stone altar nearby lay the skeleton of a youth of perhaps 18, curled up in the foetal position, with a 16-inch-long bronze knife on top of him. Forensic examination suggested that he had bled to death just before being burned in a fierce fire. Outside in the corridor lay the crushed skeleton of a fourth person, a man, along with the remains of a ritual vessel.