A devastating and soulful read is Menis’s Koumandareas’s Their Smell Makes Me Want To Cry. Full of retrospective look into Greek and Athenian life of fading foundations together with modern realities, and also some very unsettling stereotypes/cliches that make me uneasy… there are a few lines that gutted me, enough to reenact the lives of one of his characters. In role reversal, Cyrus brought the book along to read on our journeys at my suggestion.

In reading the author’s biography, he rarely left Athens, and I feel solidarity in how tied I am in rarely leaving New York City. But I write to bring you this.

Starting at page 245 English edition:

“What’s the story with your book?” I tried to cheer him up. “When are they going to publish it?”

He told me that the publisher had decided upon publication, but had not set the exact date yet.

“These people don’t even consider that a writer can’t wait forever,” he said to me as he leafed through a small tome that looked like a prayer-book.”Those days are long gone. We live in a different world now. That’s why I’m following my own schedule…”

It goes on:” In the afternoons I leave Athens and go out to the country. I read to the cows and the sheep….”

And so, I bring you in the same ethos, me reading an excerpt of The Funeral Singer perched on the rocks of the solitary beach of Agios Petros, Saint Peter in Tinos, a holy island in Greece. 

I read to the rocks. I read to the waves. I read to you. 

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