CHAPTER 43

I Am Philothei (8)

Every time there was a harvest, we would give the first-fruit to a neighbour, and it so happened that since I was betrothed to Ibrahim, his family would give things to us and we would give things to them, and fortunately they often sent Ibrahim with the gifts, and so I would know that if I was in the right place Ibrahim would pass by, and in this way I would be sure of seeing him. This is how I got to see him on the first baking of the new wheat, and on the day of St. Theodoros when he came round with lokma, and on the afternoon of the Holy Cross when we broke the fast with grapes and olives and koliva.

And this is how I saw him on Holy Thursday, when some of the Muslims joined us and sent yeast, salt, eggs and bread to the church, because Jesus Son of Mary and Mary herself are also theirs as well as ours, and these things were placed by the icon and then Father Kristoforos would read the gospel over them and then we had to fetch them home again, and we threw the salt into our larders, and the yeast we put back with the yeast, and the eggs we put among our own icons for the sake of Easter, and we all ate a little of the bread and kept the rest in tiny portions so that we could eat of them when an animal was sick and needed a cure. I saw Ibrahim during all these errands.

I remember there was one night when Ibrahim showed how great his love was. It was at three o’clock in the morning on the night of the service for the Resurrection, and the town crier had come round and roused us by knocking on our doors, and we said the Jesus Prayer, and we were going to the church in the dark, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving in the shadows of an almond tree, and it was Ibrahim who had got up in the coldness of three o’clock in the morning on Resurrection Day even though he was a Muslim, and he did it just to catch a glimpse of me in the dark, and that is how much he loved me.

All in all I was grateful to God for ordaining us so many feasts and obligations, because that was one way in which I often saw my beloved.