My grandfather's village

Amy Brill tells the poignant tale of a search for her grandfather's village on a Greek island.

By Amy Brill

Apr 7, 1998 | You should try to remember the name of the town you're in. I learned this one summer, island-hopping in the Greek Cyclades, browning in the sun and telling people I was there to find my grandfather's family. It's my mother's father I was talking about. He died when she was 9, and I don't know anything about him. I have several dead relatives I know nothing about, but only this one was from a balmy, languorous island set like an emerald in the clear Mediterranean. The rest were from Poland.

My search was not what I would call thorough. I didn't make inquiries before I arrived. I don't speak a work of Greek. I came armed with his name, the dates of his birth and death and the town he was born in. I could, at least, pronounce that. I had practiced. In fact, if I said only that, people sometimes thought I was from there -- an illusion that didn't last long.

It was midafternoon before I'd made it over on the ferry, gotten a bus into town and found a place to stay. I'd parked my bag on some nice woman's porch, and when I went back for it, she was sitting with somebody who looked like her father, or maybe her grandfather. I asked her, just for kicks, if she'd ever heard my grandfather's name.

"Makris," she repeated after me. "Makris."

It sounded different when she said it, and I tried to memorize the rolling "r" she put in.

She shrugged in my direction, but didn't look finished. People did that. If you didn't wait around, you missed the important part that was coming, and too bad for you.

"It was my grandfather," I said. "I'm looking for his family."

The woman looked at the man. She spoke to him in Greek. I understood "Makris."

He took a drink of something with ice. I heard it. That's how quiet this town was.

He spoke, then she turned back to me.

"My father says the name is from Galanado. You should go to Galanado."

I squinted at her.

"Galanado," she repeated. "Is here, is up there." She pointed up, toward the hills. I nodded and tried to repeat this word, so I would remember where I had to go.

She grinned and said it slowly: Ga-la-na-do.

She waved at me from where she stood on the porch. By the time I got back to the room I'd haggled for, I couldn't remember what she had just said. I went to the beach.

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