Joanna Kakissis

Every time I go to Evros, I always think about her, even though she’s likely dead now.

She was a woman who loved my paternal grandfather Fotis when he worked as a prison guard up north during the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars. Based on what my Uncle Thanassis, then a small child, overheard his father tearfully telling a friend about 75 years ago, Fotis loved the woman, whose name was Maria. She had black hair and pale skin and wanted to marry him, even though he was an impoverished and undereducated farmer from the Peloponnese.

He thought she was beautiful and intelligent, but one morning, he left her and this flat, fertile and long-forgotten section of northeastern Greece. His family had sent him a letter to come home immediately. His older brother had died in the war, and now he had to take charge of the family.

He did not say goodbye. On the long journey home, he decided he would never contact her again. So he returned to his western Peloponnese village, married a pretty young local girl named Amalia, and started a family. But he apparently never forgot Maria. The way my uncle remembers it, Fotis cried when he talked about her.

Why do you still think about her, my uncle remembers a friend asking Fotis.  Because, my grandfather said, I am afraid she hasn’t forgiven me.

My grandfather died a year after this conversation, and, six months later, so did my grandmother. The word in the village was that Maria had cursed Fotis for leaving her. It was the easiest explanation for the God-fearing locals, but it wasn’t the only one. Another story that also lingered was that Maria, in her bewilderment over Fotis’s unexplained disappearance, had drowned herself in the nearby Evros River.

But I still wonder if there was another ending. I still wonder if she went to the river, so wild and reedy, only to cast away that little portion of her heart that still believed he would come back.  I can almost see that shard of her broken heart sinking into the currents, and Maria, pale and black-haired, walking home in the foggy marshland.