Aegean Tale: Homeros & the Three Wishes, part 2
Two more wishes begin with another of Homer's epics.
This continues an Aegean Tale I published last week. To review part 1, go to this link.
Let’s start with the farewell to Hector that ended my first wish.
Hector arose on his horse again. He held above his head a gleaming bronze helmet and breastplate. Achilles’ armor, stripped from Patroclus’ corpse. The Trojans didn’t follow them across the plain. The great gate opened, and they filed into their city, assisting the wounded, carrying the dead.
Homeros and I didn’t follow. Instead he led me to a small door at the base of the city wall. My guide spoke to the door: “The wrath of Achilles.” It opened magically. He beckoned with an outstretched arm. “Welcome to Troy,” he said.
I walked through the door.
The Second Wish
I wasn’t in Troy. I was back at the Homeros Caves. “That was amazing!”
“Better than the book?” Homeros asked.
I laughed. “Nothing is better than the book. Still, it was amazing to experience that scene in person. With you. Thank you so much.”
“You have two more wishes.”
At that moment a breeze made its way from Izmir Bay up the Homeros Valley and brought a salt smell to the park. “The sea,” I said in recognition.
“The sea?” my guide repeated.
“I want you to take me onto a ship and guide me through the Aegean Sea.”
Homeros took a deep breath, closed his eyes, leaned back his head and grinned. “The sea,” he sighed.
Bright light poured through an opening in the cloud. We followed. Soon our feet no longer tread on cobblestones but on boards. We reached the end of a plank and hopped onto the deck of a bireme
A call from the rear set the ship in motion. Below the deck where we stood, we heard a drum beat and the groans of men. Oars emerged from the sides of the ship, tilted into the sea, and churned the water in rhythm. From the high deck, the ship seemed to crawl upon the water like a centipede. I looked around the harbor. Near the harbor mouth stood a huge, bronze statue, crowned with sunbeams, holding one arm aloft.
“Are we in Rhodes?” I asked my guide.
His face was turned to catch the breeze, which ruffled his beard and lifted his white hair from his shoulders. “You wish to see the Aegean,” he said. “And there is no better starting point than Rhodes, which lies near the place where the Aegean meets the great, white Mediterranean Sea.”
The bireme crawled across the harbor. Once on the open sea, however, sailors raised a wide sail which bellied out with a strong breeze. The oars retracted into the deck below, the drumbeat stopped, and the ship sliced silently through the waves.
We moved to the front of the ship, where we were baptized by the sea spray arcing over the prow. Dolphins swam alongside, their fixed smiles beguiling me, inviting me for a swim.
The Aegean horizon is always marked with islands. No matter where one sails, there is always an island – or mainland – in sight. The ship of Homeros shied from sailing the open sea towards Greece, instead opting to stay close to the eastern shore and glide from isle to isle.
A cave lay up the hill from the shore of the first island we passed.
“Watch this,” Homeros said. He stood at the prow, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “Hey look, it's Nobody!”
A figure appeared at the cave entrance. It filled the opening, ducked its head and emerged. It rotated its head from side to side, scanning the sea with a lone, blinded eye. “Nobody? Did someone call Nobody? Where is Nobody?” He spat in frustration, pushed away the idea, ducked, and re-entered his cave.
Homeros fell to his knees laughing, but something saddened me about the sight of the cyclops – or rather, the lack thereof.
We crossed a strait and sailed close to the mainland. A peasant girl appeared on the shore, guiding a herd of pigs who were gorging on seaweed and crustaceans. As the ship approached, she turned, and raised her scarf to cover her mouth. Her piercing eyes fixed on the ship – on me. Even from this distance, the eyes were green, alluring. I leaned over the gunwale for a closer look.
“Do you wish to become the next member of the herd?” my guide whispered behind me.
I held my hand to my lips, blew a kiss to the girl on the shore, and waved.
She dropped the veil from her face. Her lips returned the kiss, and she waved back. Then she reached forward with her staff and struck the lead pig, directing it up the trail that led away from the beach.
And so we drifted on along the Turkish coast, weaving in and out among the islands on our way. Homeros populated each island with a new monster or bewitching goddess. A few times, he invited me to join the game. “Why is the water color different in that cove?” he asked. “What might live in that small cave above the shoreline?” Soon I had populated deserted islands with my own menagerie of creatures.
A little ways north of the island of Samos, Homeros grabbed my arm. “This next isle is tricky. We won’t be safe on the ship.”
A song wafted over the waves. “Sirens?” I asked.
“The worst kind,” he said. “They only know sad songs. Songs so sad, the hearers wish to give up on life.”
“I know some songs like that,” I said, remembering a recent heartbreak. The carefully balanced life I sought to live in Izmir was joyous, but it seemed so fragile, one sad song might wreck it all.”
The song was louder now. And words joined the music that now seemed to come from everywhere around us.
It’s all your fault
She made choices to hurt you
Betray and desert you
But oh, we know:
All your fault.
It’s all your fault
Run away to the world’s end
You’ll still be a scorned man
How well know know:
All your fault.
I raced from one side of the ship to the other, looking for a place to jump into the waves, but the oars of the bireme had appeared, and they were churning the water into white foam alongside the ship. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to get hurt. Not anymore. I returned to my place beside Homeros. His eyes were filled with tears. Mine were too.
“There can be no great journey without unexpected detours, no great plot without unexpected twists,” he said. “And there can be no great odyssey…”
“Without loss of loved ones and a longing for home.” I said, completing his idea.
He smiled at me and leaned his head against mine in the manner Turkish men greet one another. “Great minds,” he said, tapping two fingers to his temple.
Minds? I thought. My guide, Homeros, had said, “Minds”? As in him and me?
I could no longer hear the sirens’ song of sadness. My mind soared high with the compliment. Soon I heard the scraping of oars returning inside the ship and the cease of the drumbeat. We were out of range.
We rounded a peninsula and viewed another strait on the horizon, Chios Island on the left and the city of Çeşme to the right. The bireme veered to port. “Be careful,” my guide whispered, “and DUCK!”
We hit the deck, as six sets of jaws snapped shut centimeters above us. Scylla.
“The worst Greek islander you can imagine,” Homeros growled. “But Scylla isn’t the worst thing about Chios. They have the gall to call me a Chian there!”
I smiled. “That sounds bad.”
“I will always be a Smyrnian,” he said before correcting himself, “I mean, Izmiri.”
The oars rolled out the sides of the bireme again, and the drumbeat beat a double time. I noticed that the prow of the ship was pointed towards the open sea beyond Chios, but the ship seemed to be moving towards the Turkish shore.
Çeşme harbor slid into view of the starboard side, drawing closer and closer. I noticed that the harbor was filled with ships resting peacefully at anchor, but in the middle of the harbor, a great whirlpool had appeared. Charybdis. Yet ours was the only ship it had caught.
“Get ready,” Homeros told me, taking a strong grip on the gunwale. “This odyssey won’t end with a homecoming.”
The bireme entered Çeşme Harbor, traveling in tighter circles in the whirlpool. In the vortex, the prow of the ship pointed upward in a final pirouette. We let go of the gunwale together and fell backwards towards the sea.
We didn’t land in water. Instead, our feet met the cobblestones below the Homer Caves. Wafts of vapor left the cloud and blew past us in the sea breeze.
The Third Wish
I put my hands together and bowed to Homeros. “Thanks again. That was spectacular.”
“You’re good at this,” my guide replied. “The last guy I met settled for a team of six horses, a tripod full of jewels, and a golden fleece. It’s much more fun writing with you, Jay.”
“Thanks. I guess there is one more wish.”
“Yes.”
“But no more epics.”
Homeros shrugged his shoulders. “One can only write so many epics in a lifetime. I have hymns, if you’re interested.”
An idea occurred to me, and I clapped my hands in delight.
“I know. I want you to write an epic where I get to be a character. Grand adventures. Love. Victory. Beauty. Redemption. Inspiration. Let me have it all.”
Homeros studied me for a few moments. “That’s not what you really want.”
“What do you mean? I came to Tükiye for the epics, to see your home, to visit Troy, to see the wine-dark waters of the Aegean for myself. And you’re the world’s greatest storyteller. Surely, you can compose a tale for me.”
“You will need to write your own epic,” he told me. “I can’t do that for you.”
“Really?”
“Here’s what you do,” he continued. “Live the life you desire. Write about it. Embellish it a little – or a lot. And pay attention to the stories you encounter along the way. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Jay, tell me, ‘Homeros, I wish to write my life’s epic.’”
“Homeros,” I repeated, “I wish to write my life’s epic.”
He smiled. The cloud began to thin. “There you go. You will write. Good luck.”
“But wait a minute,” I said. The cloud was thinning, and Homeros himself was beginning to fade, too.
“I wish to find an agent and a publisher. I wish that it will be read widely and enjoyed by all.”
“Sorry, Jay.” I could no longer see my guide, but I could still hear his voice. “You’re all out of wishes.”
I was standing in the park below Homer’s caves, an empty bottle in my hand. I turned it over and shook it a few times. The bottle cap rattled inside.
I threw it into the metal bin and bent down to adjust the laces of my hiking boots. Once they were secure, I rose and set off on the next epic chapter here in Türkiye.