As I walked back up the road in the hills behind Gavrion, I could see Gavrion's main church. The Easter service was reaching midnight.

The sky suddenly lit up with fireworks and bangs and screeches as they flung themselves up into the air. We had reached midnight and Christ had risen, according to the Orthodox church. Now began the most pagan part of the ritual. Tradition states in many parts of Greece that on Easter you light a candle in the church and then bring it back home with you. If the candle stays alight all the way back home, then you will have a lucky year. Of course if it blows out (as it generally does,) then that doesn't mean you will have an unlucky year.
A procession of candlebearers snaked down the hill; it was a still, clear night so the candlelit procession moved forwards, sometimes uniform, sometimes haphazard, a random clustering of little lights down the hill. I stood at the top of the valley overlooking Gavrion and watched this impromptu slow wave swelling, diminishing, twisting and breaking up.
A few years later, once again on Andros, I attended the Easter Service. It functions both as a chance to worship and a chance to meet long-lost acquaintances, friends, and family. People smile, nod their heads to each other, give looks as if to say: "I'll buttonhole you immediately after the service," which they proceed to do. They come in and go out; there is a more informal air about these celebrations than in the Catholic church, though the priests are just as theatrical. Few people arrive at the start and stick around until right the end, most people come late. Icons are kissed, Byzantine Greek is murmured; it is truly a mystery to a foreigner, a heavily-lapsed Catholic/agnostic is no exception.
Back in 1990, I went to sleep that night with my head full of piano-playing, candlelit processions and the sweet aromas of spring.
I had been invited to an Easter party that day in a field near a beach. A lamb was roasting on a spit by the time I arrived. Andros does not follow the garlic tradition. Many islanders simply rub salt into the lamb while they roast it. This was a gathering of Athenians, and I am convinced they also added garlic, but memory plays strange tricks and I made no notes at the time of whether they followed the just salt tradition or the garlic tradition. The lamb was sliced stage by stage; chunks of meat were passed round, the next part roasted. It was a delicious feast in a field strewn with wild flowers. Two or three olive trees stood guard near the walls of the field, the adjacent olive grove waited for the arrival of cicadas, not in cry yet.
Petros discussed with me the effects of global warming. He was a man of the cycles theory, rather than the warming. Sophia discussed with me her family's origins in Istanbul. The Greeks call it Constantinople - its name when it was a Greek city - and until Athens came to dominate the Greek nation, it was known as 'the city.'(Maybe it still is, by some). Anyone who knows about Istanbul will know that the name is a Turkish corruption of the Greek 'stin poli' (in the city).
Many years later, (2000) I was on Andros with my Turkish girlfriend, A. An earthquake had devastated the area of Turkey near Istanbul, and Istanbul itself had been badly hit. Though this had been a big blow to both the self-confidence and the economy of the Turks, and more gruesomely had killed vast numbers of people, the one positive aspect of this disaster was that it had brought Greece and Turkey closer together. Greece had sent humanitarian aid, and Turkey had responded in kind when Greece suffered its own bad earthquake shortly after.
At first, people mistook A. - clever and beautiful, dark curly hair, almond eyes, olive-brown skin - for a Greek, and would ask her questions in Greek. She looked at me and I would translate into English (My Turkish was never that fantastic). Realising that she was a stranger, they asked her where she came from. She would say: "I'm Turkish - I'm from Istanbul". They nodded, or smiled. If they felt resentment, they did not show it. Once, she was talking to an old lady in a shop. It turned out that this lady's family originated in Istanbul.
"I went back there a few years ago," she said. "To see the family house. It was no longer there. The garden survived, but the rest of it had gone." They got on famously, in spite of this.
Of course, the Greeks were taking her as an individual first, but the thaw in relations must have helped. However, this does not mean that all the problems of Turkey have been solved. In spite of its democratic appearance, the military still hold the strings, and the Cyprus problem ,which still dominates the foreign policy of both countries to each other, has not been solved. Back in 1989, I only had to say the word "Turkish', and someone would spit. I don't think that is the case any more.
The Easter celebrations were larded with copious quanities of good Greek wine (not a contradiction in terms by then), a little raki, some headachey retsina (much more lightly-resinated than in the past), or Amstel Beer.
Feeling pleasantly drunk after this, I decided to take a quick early-evening Easter swim, before I went back.