Accidental Tourist: Casting beady eyes on a Greek Isle

20 February 2015 - 16:00 By Michel Muller
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Michel Muller explores Aegean superstitions

There I was, on my way to the plateia, the village square, in Eressos on the Greek island of Lesvos.

My laptop bounced behind me on a small trolley I'd bought at OR Tambo airport. The contraption's little wheels fought with the cobbled stones, and it lurched and swayed in its frenzy to stay upright and mobile.

The sound made the 'walruses' turn their heads and look up from their tiny coffee cups. I smiled and waved my panama hat at them but these denizens of the drachma were unmoved. Nothing stirs them, not even the cars scraping past the tables at which they wallow under cover in front of Kolones, a taverna on the edge of the square.

They sit there, rotund in their retirement.

I learnt to say kalimera, good morning - rarely would they respond. If they did, their grey heads would nod and, for a second, they'd interrupt their reverie. The click-clack of their kombolois would stall and lapse into a short silence, a hiatus of the hand.

Worry beads are a ubiquitous part of Greek culture, for the men. They hold them in one palm and flick them over their fingers to pass time, to relax, and never look at the strings of amber beads whipping back and forth. There is the noisy technique and the quieter technique. It depends on the location or mood.

Amber is the real McCoy, not synthetic tourist mementos. But what is this all about, this clickety-clack? And the no eye contact?

I found a book in the Eressos library, The Komboloi and its History by Aris Evangelinos. It tells a fascinating story from the point of view of a boy who inherits his grandfather's komboloi and how he searches for its root, its source. He finds that they were born as prayer beads for people who could not count.

Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, they all used prayer beads or rosaries. The first ones were made of pips or dried legumes. For Greeks, though, the komboloi has evolved into a leisure accessory.

I read that there is a komboloi museum in Nafplio in the Peloponnese peninsula, about two hours' drive from Athens, founded by Evangelinos. It holds a comprehensive collection of these beads and has its own workshop.

I couldn't find a komboloi in the village but in Skala Eressos, at the beach, 4km from the mountain outpost, the kombolois droop, like tired bunches of grapes, in the tourist shops.

They're poor imitations of a noble accoutrement. I didn't buy one.

Next to them are examples of the evil eye. They are predominantly blue and white, unlike the komboloi, which are made of a spectrum of organic material, such as bone and shell.

Now the evil eye, the matiasma,I've got a talisman hanging in my house in Eressos to protect me from curses, it is also an integral part of Greek lore.

Misfortune, the Greeks say, is the result of a hostile glance, one of which you will not be aware.

I could wear a bracelet too or a necklace bearing this charm, even a ring...or stick one on my car's dashboard; all in the name of attempting to ward off jealousy, envy or any inexplicable physical or emotional blight that suddenly manifests.

Once it does, and there's no mistaking it, apparently, there's a process that involves cleansing - with water and olive oil, and spitting sounds and incantations and signs of the cross.

The ritual is usually performed by an elderly woman, who knows about these things. It's a belief and practice that's existed since about 600BC, when the evil eye was emblazoned on drinking vessels. Even Plato mentions it and it exists in many cultures.

In the Aegean, people with lighter coloured eyes, blue - and green eyes, as I have - are said to have the ability to cast this curse, because in the Aegean most people have dark, swarthy brown eyes.

Is that why the 'walruses' wouldn't look at me?

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