Tom Foran Clark

In the morning Emery threw open the shutters, letting in the late-March bright sun. He showered, dressed, and went out for a walk along the beach. When he returned, he saw Bergoo was up, having breakfast at a taberna -- feta cheese and rolls. For Emery he'd already ordered cuttlefish, swordfish, and octopus. Motorcycles roared all around. Children ran in the streets. Fishermen sorted their nets. Seagulls cried. Clouds rolled over. One nearby couple at a table -- genteel, polite, and softspoken, very careful to do everything right and proper -- enjoyed their meal in startling contrast to another couple, the husband barking into the sky, the wife about laughing her head off -- laughing and laughing -- quite drunk obviously, even so early in the day. The woman accidentally knocked a retsina wine bottle sideways on the table. The man set it upright. The woman stared at him smugly, without a word, then erupted into laughter once more.

Bergoo, finishing his meal, insisted he and Emery board a bus bound for the Arkadi Monastery, a 5th century holy site that had become, on November 9th 1866, a symbol of Cretan restistance to Muslim rule. Along the way, Bergoo told Emery of Crete, telling him the Apostle Paul had arrived on Crete in 64 A.D. to convert the pagan Cretans. Muslim forces arrived in 674. In 825 A.D., the island was seized by Andalusian Moors, who concentrated their Moorish authority at what was now Herakleion. Between 827 and 961, Crete was held by roaming Muslim pirates who used the island as a base for their raids. In 961 A.D., Byzantine Christians reconquered the island. Venetian bankers nextt sent crusading Frankish nobles to plunder the Byzantines. In 1204 A.D., the Marquis de Montferrat sold Crete to Venice for cash and a few territories in the Balkans.

Turkish tribes driven by the Mongols from the steppes of Central Asia, embracing Islam, had meanwhile settled in Anatolia. Organizing under the chieftain Othman, they organized an Ottoman confederation which, under Suleiman the Magnificent, grew into an empire comparable in size to that of the later Romans. Warriors for the faith -- Ghazis -- rode under Ottoman command. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In 1522, the Turks conquered Rhodes. Khair ad din, having conquered Algiers in 1529 A.D., sacked Rethymnon but Crete remained under Venetian rule. El Greco -- Domenicos Theotokopoulos -- born in Heraklion in 1541 and trained as an icon painter at a Venetian workshop on Crete -- left for Venice around 1568. Having no great success as a painter there, El Greco at thirty-six moved on, in 1577, to Toledo, Spain.

Though Venetian occupation had lasted more than four hundred fifty years, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek language were thriving on the island. Cretans -- and even the Venetian colonists themselves, long since settled on Crete -- were growing angry with the ruling powers. The Venetian Republic hardly put up a fight when, in 1669, the Turks re-conquered Crete. The Muslim authorities ruled over the Christian Cretans. The Greek-speaking Cretan Muslims -- officials, landlords, landowners -- exploited Greek-speaking Cretan Christians -- merchants, craftsmen, peasants, shepherds. It wasn't until 1821 that a people's revolution on the mainland of Greece inspired the Christian Cretans to rise up against the Turks. Anarchy ensued. In 1832, Egypt's Mohammed Ali restored order, putting Christians on an equal basis under the law with Muslims but, in 1840, Mohammed Ali was forced to relinquish Crete to the Turkish Sultan. Uprisings followed.

Christian Cretan conservatives favored autonomy under the sultan. Christian Cretan liberals sought annexation with Greece. Christian Cretan rebels despised conservatives and liberals, seeking an autonomous Cretan nation. In 1856 came insurrection. The Sultan, making concessions to the insurgents, ended the uprising in 1858.

The Arkadiou Monastery was founded in the early Byzantine period by a monk called Arkadios, and was dedicated to the first Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great. Completed in 1587, the Arkadi Monastery in the 16th century had a strong influence on the cultural life of the island. The Monastery was an important cultural center for Crete, hosting one of the most respected educational centers on the island. At Arkadi were were many copyist monks, a rich library, and a school.

The Ottoman Turks had controlled Crete since 1669. The Christians on the island of Crete regarded their Turkish rulers with hatred. There were frequent bloody uprisings by Cretan rebels determined to win independence and union with Greece.

Christian raids from the Sfakia in Crete's White Mountains led the Ottoman Empire to consider all Cretans as hated Sfakians. When promised reforms failed to be promulgated by the Porte (Ottoman government), the Sfakians and city dwellers rose up simultaneously in 1866. Crete's Pasha (governor) in Rethymnon gained aid from Constantinople (Istanbul).

For the Cretans, uprisings had become the norm. Under the Turks, the Cretans suffered fiscal oppression, judicial inequality, with no educational opportunities. The Cretans revolted in1841, shortly after the island was transferred back from the Egyptian pashalik to direct Turkish rule, and again in 1858, when they secured the removal of the governor and the promise of a degree of self-government. The promise was not fulfilled.

And so came the revolution of 1866, instigated by a 16 member revolutionary committee. Insurgents forced the surrender of an entire Turkish army on the plain of Apokoronas. The insurgents then dispersed. The Turks attacked the fortified monastery in Arkadi for revenge. Owing to its central position on the island and strategic location atop a craggy inland gorge, the Arkadi Monastery had become the rebels' headquarters.

At dawn on November 8, 1866, the Arkadi defenders awoke to find the monastery surrounded by 15,000 Turkish soldiers armed with 30 cannons. The monastery walls were manned by only 259 armed men, including 45 monks and 12 of the 16 revolutionary committee members. Here were also nearly 700 unarmed women and children from nearby villages, who had taken refuge from the encroaching Turks. The Turkish commander's demand for surrender was answered by gunfire. Turkish troops stormed the monastery. Hundreds were mown down by heavy fire from the defenders. As night fell on the first day of the battle, the fields around the monastery were heaped with Turkish corpses. But still the gate and walls held.

The second day of battle broke with a bang, as the Turks opened fire with two heavy artillery guns they had dragged up the gorge from Rethymnon during the night. As the walls and gate smashed and crumbled under the incessant pounding of the shells, Abbot Gabriel, standing in the open in black, flowing robes, opened fire on the Turks. A bullet caught Abbot Gabriel just above the navel. He fell dead -- but not before he had given his blessing to a desperate plan hatched by an imposing rebel fighter named Konstantine Giaboudakis.

By the afternoon of the second day, the Turkish heavy artillery had pulverized the outer walls. The defenders killed hundreds more invaders, but the end was clearly near - ammunition was running low and the gate was almost breached. As darkness fell, the Turks launched a massive final assault, pouring through the gate into the inner courtyard, where the rebels fought them hand to hand. When the walls came tumbling down, Giaboudakis led six hundred women and children into the monastery's gunpowder storage room, where they said their prayers and waited. Hundreds of Turks swarmed over the roof and rammed the bolted door. Giamboudakis put a spark to a gunpowder keg. The explosion reduced the monastery to a pile of rubble, killing all the refugees, along with several hundred Turkish soldiers. When the smoke cleared, 864 Cretan men, women and children lay dead, along with 1500 Turks. News of the slaughter shocked the rest of Europe and won support for the Cretan rebels' cause. In 1898, with help from Greece and the Great Powers (England, France, Italy and Russia), Crete won its independence. The Turks withdrew from the island.

From the Arkadi Monastery, Emery and Bergoo took a bus back to Rethymnon, then traveled southwest to Chora Sfakion, with its seaside taverns, hotels, souvenir shops and pebble beaches. At one time Chora Sfakion was said to have a hundred churches, enabling the townsfolk to gather at seemingly harmless paniyeria every two or three days to plot the next moves of a revolt. Chora Sfakion was well-known for its boat terminal, where walkers to and from Samaria Gorge arrived and departed. The mountainous Sfakia area was famous for its gorges and caves. In ancient times, especially during the Roman period, there were many flourishing coastal and inland settlements: Poikilasos, Tarrha, Phoinix, Aradin, Anopolis. In the Byzantine period, Chora Sfakion was the bishopric of Phoinix or Aradin; under the Venetians it was not a castellany, but was governed by a Provveditore. There was constant rebellion. An insurrection against 0ttoman rule had come in 1770.

One of Crete's most celebrated heroes, loannis Daskalogiannis, had hailed from Sfakia. Daskalogiannis had led the 1770 Cretan insurrection. When help promised by Russia failed to materialise, he'd given himself up to the Turks, to save his followers. As punishment, the Turks had skinned him alive. The Turks never succeeded in controlling Sfakia. The story of the resistance lived on in the form folk tales and rizitika -- local folk songs. One of the most popular was the Song of Daskalogiannis.

From the harbor quay at Chora Sfakion, the two took a ferry heading for Agia Roumeli, which stopped, along the way, at the seafront village of Loutro, at the end of Cape Mouri, where ahd stood the ancient city of Finix. The village was named after legendary baths (loutra) in the area, from which water was directed to nearby ancient Anopoli. Loutro had served as the port of Anopoli. With its mountains rising straight up from the sea, deep wooded gorges, ravines and valleys, Loutro couldn't be reached by a road, but only by boat from Hora Sfakion and the other villages on the South coast -- or on foot.

A combination restaurant-tavern-inn there, called The Blue House, was well-known for its fine Cretan cuisine. For many years, there had only been one telephone in the entire village of Loutros, and it had been at The Blue House. Now there was a second phone -- at the Hotel Porto Loutro. There was a cramped pebble beach right in the middle of the village. Other beaches were within walking distance -- one hour each way -- Sweet Water Beach to the east, and Marmara Beach to the west. The long beach at Sweetwater and the small sandy beach at Marmara could only be reached by boat or by walking on precarious, narrow paths. The nearby, equally remote village of Finix had two hotels, both owned by one family. The Old Phoenix hotel and restaurant was about a 15 minute walk from Loutro. The area around Loutro and Finix were dotted with the remains of ruined Byzantine churches and crumbling Venetian and Turkish castles.

Between Loutro and Finix was an artist's colony. Late in the nineteenth century, a bunch of Danish artists had discovered Loutro. Its unique location, nestled between the hills and the ocean, made it one of the most exquisite spots on Crete. Despite the inherent difficulties of living in Loutro, the sparse population was nothing if not independent. Its climatic extremes, relative inaccessibility, and undeveloped beauty and charm fostered their artistic spirit. "Art historian Karal Ann Marling divided art colonies into the following two kinds," Bergoo illuminated: "those evolving naturally from groups of visiting artists who were drawn to an area primarily for the scenery, and those intentionally planned in hopes of creating a specific political or social environment to foster the creative arts. The novel idea of forming an art colony had its roots in nineteenth-century France, in Barbizon, where artists began in the 1820s to congregate outside of Paris to paint outdoors in a natural setting. By the end of the century, several French colonies, such as Giverny and Grez-sur-Loing, were well established and attracted numbers of European and American artists. The appeal of such colonies was largely twofold: they provided a lifestyle alternative to urban living, which in America was coming under deep scrutiny at the turn of the century; and they were located right in the heart of the Impressionist pictorial motifs in favor at the time. Artists could gather to paint out-of-doors, living together in a relatively relaxed community while being free to roam the countryside in search of their inspiration."

It was also here, in Loutro, that the first revolutionary government had met in Loutro -- in 1821. "The Sfakia and Loutro region has been the site of heroic deeds, ancient civilizations, and constant intrigue for thousands of years," Bergoo told Emery. "This is the home of some very brave, tough people."

Here, in the village of Loutro, was Frida. "Here she is," Bergoo said.