Greece’s age-old obsession with fire

While green Rhodes and greener Corfu burn away, arid Patmos remains fireproof because rock and soil do not a bonfire make. The Almighty granted some islands plenty of water, and other ones no H₂O whatsoever. Most of the Cycladic isles lug in drinking water from the mainland, and make do with treated unsalted seawater for planting. The Ionian isles have springs and rivers and also fires, some of them started by firebugs who hope to gain – I have never figured this one out – from the blaze. It’s all very confusing, especially as the temperatures are rising and the energy to party diminishes by the hour.

The Greeks have always been obsessed with fire. We worshipped Hephaistos, god of fire, and his temple northwest of the Acropolis was the scene of ferocious fighting between nationalists and commies back in 1944. I was eight years old at the time, but members of my family, including old Dad, made up for it. If anyone is interested, the good guys won with help from the Brits, and the bad ones retired to the mountains up north and eventually went over to the Soviet Union where they learned to speak Russian fluently. The winners chose capitalism and you can guess the rest. As a famous wit once remarked, had the commies won, he didn’t think Aristotle Socrates Onassis would have chosen the widow Khrushchev for a bride.

Never mind the witticisms, Patmos is as hot as it gets without the Hephaistian orgies that took place on Rhodes. However scary a fire can be, it is somehow less frightening when on an island: one can always plunge into the blue Mediterranean and give the god of fire an old-fashioned middle-finger salute.

I first came to Patmos when visitors – all on their boats, naturally – had names like Guinness, Guest and Goulandris.