Note for the non- Greek speakers: Agoni grammi (άγονη γραμμή), literally barren line, sometimes translated as “non profit line” or “unprofitable shipping line”, is a shipping route that shows little commercial interest and therefore brings in very little profit for the ferry companies. It usually serves smaller or “lesser” islands, with limited tourism; Sifnos, in the West Cyclades, is one of them.
There’s a lot being written about Sifnos recently. There’s a lot being said. I go into facebook each day and see more articles urging those who know to get to know her, to discover this hidden secret of the Cyclades, treasure buried all this time along the barrenness of the agoni grammi. Magical, they call it, unspoilt, aristocratic, as if they’ve suddenly found a vein of gold and we’re all about to get rich.
And I remember when I was in school and we spent the summers here, and the other kids said to me, early June when the holidays began, “Sifnos? What is that?” and laughed. The other kids that went to Mykonos and Santorini, Spetses and Hydra, places known and accepted, of value, and they laughed at me for spending my summers here, in exile, on this barren place, on the barren line to nowhere. What Sifnos?
That Sifnos where they come to get married now, in Chrysopigi, with catering imported from Athens and local, traditional violins. The Sifnos of magazines, shiny like their pages, glittering somewhere between Serifos and Milos, on the οnce-barren line that’s become fruitful now that we have five ferries calling at her port each day. They discovered it, with private yachts and the SeaJet that takes a mere two hours from Piraeus, those who know.
And I remember when the monastery of Fyrogia was nothing but ruins and you took a boat to Vathy because there was no road and we washed with water drawn straight from the well, ice cold, and got our drinking water from the spring at Panagia tis Vryssis. I remember the campsite in Plati Yialos and when Botzi played rock and we emerged croaky at dawn to get sandwiches from Plaza in the square and the sunrise glittered off the whitewash walls and made us blind.
All that glitters isn’t gold. There was gold in Sifnos, once, but now there are other things. Not what they write about: more secret than that. And, at the same time, not at all. A mountaintop, a walk along a trail with a friend in November, a view you hadn’t seen before but had always been there, the nights when you can hear nothing but the wind. An empty beach and the restaurants that stay open through the winter. Soaking your chickpeas on a Friday and taking them to the wood oven on Saturday, and hearing people say hello as if they know you, those people that you thought you knew. Walking down the street and no longer being asked why you are still around.
When you love, you know nothing: Sifnos taught me that. There was a time when I knew, because I spent my summers here and we had a house of our own and I played on the streets with the other kids and because I remember, because I can tell you what Sifnos was like back then and how it’s changed. But Sifnos isn’t there, after all. It’s not where we look for it, but where we find ourselves. Not in how much it’s changed but in how much it’s changed you. If you forget all that you know and start to learn. How much treasure can be found in a vein of gold that ran dry. That magic is in what you love, and to love is not knowing. You know nothing, and that’s how you get rich: when you learn.
And I remember when I knew and didn’t love her. When I used to whisper it, that I’m going to Sifnos, and I was drawn to other places, full of light, shiny. And they made me blind. Until, one day, I found myself here and two winters had gone by and no one asked when I was leaving anymore and I understood suddenly what it means to love a place for what it is, not for how you imagined it. Not for what is said and the value other people give it and for what you tell other people that you remember. And to say it, that you live here, and if anyone asks what Sifnos? My own.
They know something, those who know. They’re right to come here. For weddings and christenings, for the weekend on the SeaJet, for the whole summer in overflowing cars. For the bars and the restaurants, for aristocratic Artemonas and cosmopolitan Plati Yialos and the quaint fishing village of Herronissos. For the ceramics and the exhibitions and the photographs they post on facebook, with Chrysopigi in the background. For all that everybody knows, by now, and all that’s secret and all that’s hidden and all that’s always been there but you hadn’t noticed it before. For all that you might learn. For those who know and those are searching and those who are looking for a place to stand, and those, like me, who found themselves here and are learning everything from scratch. There is Sifnos enough for everyone, it won’t run dry. There are riches enough for everyone, if you love her. And to love her without knowing: that’s where the magic is.
Daphne Kapsali lives in Sifnos. She knows nothing.
This post was originally written in Greek. Click here to read it.
