DAY 73

Thursday 22 September 2011

The Big Question: what would the van look like when Charles picked it up? Would Fanouri follow through, do the right thing? Could he do the right thing? How could the little ol' communist mechanic in the tiny town on the small Greek island have the resources to do the body work and do the painting, which by itself sometimes takes two days to dry, and hand it over perfect, before Saturday, when he's just a mechanic, not Earl Scheib, not Rosie the Riveter?

David called first thing in the morning, per instructions. It's done? Great. -- but we can't come over till noon? .... ?? ....OK.

An Ikarian Sky

All this has to be handled culturally delicately. It wasn't  Santa Monica, it wasn't even Athens. Ikaria has been inhabited for seven millenia and they had their own ways there, still mysterious to our friends despite four years residency and speaking pretty good Greek.

Apples for making apple sauce

At last visit to turn the van in to the mechanic, the one where Charles learned of our van's sideswipe mishap (but not how, who or when), Fanouri called Charles "my friend" (about 20% of his English vocabulary) and gave him the Greek Communist Youth posters off his wall that Charles had been coveting ("the best mementos of this whole trip, if I could have those") and his too-cool red commie lighter right out of his own pocket. Those were rare and generous gestures, the kind of exchange you can only hope for in a culture this insular and so foreign in its nuance to outsiders, in a place where they never say I'm sorry and rarely thank you. Even for a guy who maybe knew who scraped the van but wasn't saying, maybe a friend or even his own employee -- Americans want to know that stuff, need to know, but on Ikaria it didn't matter. What mattered was he was taking responsibility, and if he smoothed the dents and matched the paint, that was the bottom line, and all would be right in the world. And the Yank had a new friend.

Viola! -- perfect match! No dents or ripples! Bravo, Fanouri!! We took pics (Charles was again wearing his Budapest Communist t-shirt) in front of other posters. When Charles expressed interest in the story on the posters, Fanouri rang up a friend, Yorgo, who spoke some English, and within a few minutes he was there, proudly filling Charles in on a lot of history he was unaware of, of the Greek revolution after WWII, the attempts of the British and then the Americans to install their puppet governments, and more. Fascinating, even though possibly not completely accurate, or at least biased... of course, like when Americans speak about world history from the only perspective they know. But would your mechanic make such a gesture, in the middle of the workday? They had different values there for what was important.

Nicole and Dian getting facials from Robyn

Hooray!!!

Charles left with the van looking the way he had brought it in but with a full tune-up for which he was way undercharged (cost of parts only, probably), and a life experience money couldn't buy. It was hard for him not to say efcharisto, but the handshake was worth a thousand of them.

Preparing dinner