Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Doina RuSti

come to leave. With two of his cousins, his father bought a second-hand boat. A wreck. Anyone could tell that they wouldn’t be able to catch fish in it. This ruin of a boat would crash into the rocks one kilometre off the port. That was it. That was its role. Ioanis and his second cousins would already be aboard Lambros’s galleon, dressed in fustanellas and wearing tsarouhia on their feet. All three in a row, nose to nose, that unmistakable nose of Milikopus, sometimes broad like the blade of a scimitar and at other times suddenly swollen like an ocarina. Of the heirlooms that he didn’t like, this nose was the very first. Especially when he was upset, all his anger went into his nose, making him

look like a raven. The of becoming a warrior was dire, clouding his future, which up to that point was all milk and honey. Careworn by the upcoming departure, he went to his teacher’s doorstep. Okimon had taught him to write. He had given him The Balavarani, with the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. He wasn’t a true Greek, but half Sephardi, and this helped him greatly. He knew lines by heart from the Iliad but he also read parables from Me’am Lo’ez . Ioanis expected the best advice from this man. Okimon believed that the father’s decision should be respected. No other action would have been better perspective

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