I’m returning to old haunts today, villages and farmlands I visited several times each summer over fifteen years ago. Today I’m driving the 17 kilometer climb up steep winding roads to mile-high Aetomilitsa, in Epirus, Greece, the mountainous region that edges the Albanian border. It is one of my favorite villages in the municipality of Mastorahoria and I hope to deliver photos, dated 2009, recently discovered in the back of my photo closet.
Autumn has arrived and the village is quiet, many summer houses are shuttered but one taverna appears to be open. As I step through the entrance, suddenly fifteen years fall away and I am a younger me stranded in Aetomilitsa, my car several kilometers below parked by what seemed like an impassable dirt road. I struggled with my crippled Greek back then trying to make myself understood. I need a ride. Anyone going down the mountain—today? The rain came down outside and we seemed to be in another world immersed in high altitude clouds and unintelligible conversation.
And then from inside the kitchen, a young woman appeared like an angel speaking perfect English asking if she could help. She made a plan and an hour and several tsiporos later, Angelo, the shepherd, the village priest, Papa Cristo, and I all squeezed into the cab of Angelo’s ancient pick up truck. Off we went, careening down the mountain at breakneck speed barely negotiating the sharp curves. How happy I was to see my car parked several miles down the road.
On this day in September 2022, I take a seat by the fireplace as before and now begin talking with two women at the next table in quite passable Greek. I present three photos and yes, they know these men standing with shepherds crooks leaning toward the camera twisting their handlebar mustaches seductively. The older woman examines the photos and tears begin streaming down her cheeks. The handsome man with the white mustache passed on just two months before. He was both husband and father to these two women. Sadness now hangs heavily in the room. “Silipitiria,” my condolences, I say. We sip our coffees and gradually the conversation moves on as we chat about people we know in the village and places I had traveled in the subsequent years.
I leave and rain begins to fall. It seems an intermittent rain is always falling in Aetomilitsa. As I drive down the mountain, I am thinking that my belief in the power of delivering photos to my subjects—usually a joyous event—carries a risk. The faces looking out from my photographs may now be just a memory.