Blood Feud on Crete

From Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper (New York Review Books, 2013), Kindle loc. 4340ff.

As Paddy and Joan proceeded on their triumphal progress through the villages, they saw that Cretan hospitality had lost none of its over-abundance, and only the long walks and mule rides from one place to the next gave them an opportunity to rest their digestions. Groups of armed mountain men greeted them outside each village, and welcomed them with volleys of shots fired into the air.

There was also another man with a gun, though he was not mentioned in Paddy’s introduction to The Cretan Runner, nor indeed in his notebooks. At Alones they had spent a few days with Father John Alevizakis and his sons, prior to attending a feast in Rethymno. They were warned not to go on: Yorgo, the son of Kanaki Tsangarakis, had heard Paddy was there. ‘He was waiting,’ wrote Paddy, ‘with rifle and binoculars, to pick me off when I left the village.’ The blood feud was still alive, and the only way out of the village was through a deep ravine.

Yorgo was on one side, our way out on the other . . . I asked whether he was a good shot and Levtheri, Father John’s son, laughed and said ‘Yes, the blighter can shoot a hole through a 10 drachma piece at 500 metres,’ which made us all laugh rather ruefully, including Joan . . . The only thing to do in such a case is to be accompanied by a neutral figure, head of a rival clan or family in whose company nobody can be shot without involving the whole tribe.

A suitably friendly figure agreed to accompany them to safety, and ‘under his protection Joan and I crossed the blank hillside, looking across the valley at Yorgo sitting on the rock, binoculars round his neck and gun across his knees; but unable, by Cretan ethics, to blaze away . . .’ In Vilandredo they were received like kings by Paddy’s god-brother Kapetan Stathi Loukakis. When Stathi heard that the Tsangarakis men were lying in wait for his guest, he too took steps to protect them. Joan noticed that when they left the village they were guarded by lookouts posted at key points, who could challenge anyone who came within firing distance.