At the Wall with Titos

While we are waiting for our check after lunch, Titos suggests we visit the place where he was to be executed. I’ve been translating the poetry of Titos Patrikios for almost ten years and we’ve become good friends, but I have only a vague sense of this period in his life—he really doesn’t like to talk about it—and am surprised by the sudden melting of his reticence. After an unusually dark and rainy spring, it’s the first warm day of... Read More

Taverna Makellos

Excerpted from Goats in the Ghost Towns of Chios. Pistacia lentiscus, cousin of the pistachio tree, grows everywhere in the Mediterranean, but only on the island of Chios does it weep. Only here will incisions cut into the shrub’s ragged bark make it drip a precious amber resin called mastic: chewing gum of the Byzantines, breath-freshener of the Turkish harem, and lauded medicine and culinary delicacy since ancient times. The flavor of mastic is... Read More