Sparta, Peloponnese, Greece
11th of July 2006
Only days. It has only been four days since I last saw their smile. I know they are behind this. Our family ravaged, gone.
The Venetians held the Mani peninsula for centuries, this arid dry land.
My grandfather used to say: the only thing that grows here, is stones. They held this land just to prevent our ancestors from pirating their ships. And today Italians think they brough us the notion of Vendetta. Heh. As though we needed them to teach us to kill each other in a land so devoid of everything that removing a person meant one less mouth to feed. I caress my grandkid’s hair. He is the last Liakogkonas apart from me. He is named like me. Lefteris Liakogkonas. Like my grandfather before me, too. The vendetta with the Christeas family has run since before his time, but I do not know if the names of my kin were the same back then.
A vendetta is not something you casually walk into. Rather, you are born into it. Your parents are farmers wetting the land with their sweat day in, day out. You hear tales of cousins and grandparents dead by the filthy Christeas family. Then, one day, your father does not come home, and you learn that on that day, the Christeas family chose to make your father wet the land with his own blood.
