It’s a beautiful country, depending on how you look at it. There is a corner from which you will see a woman who looks like a rock serving in one of the few cafes. Summer smiles and holds up a tray and a vetex, which she clears from the tables. During the winter, he keeps bags from the island’s only mini market. He goes out in front of the town hall on the main avenue and looks to see if the lights are on, if the shadow is walking in the wind, if the hall of headless statues in the archaeological collection is still in place, if the ambulance is still parked at the Health Center, if the candles are flickering in the cemetery in the schoolyard.

He is standing in the middle of the street and suddenly instead of bags he is holding two children. A small boy clings to her chest, and a five-year-old girl hangs on her left arm. She is 22 again and leaves the orphanage in her village, unaware that all the other women have already left. How did they not get the news? Even today, 20 years later, he cannot explain it. She remained among several old men who look at her with dull eyes and are perplexed along with her. Why didn’t he leave?

The surrounding forest is plunged into thick darkness. Mines and soldiers covered in smoke await her at night. He is back in Ossetia. They catch mothers and kill children in front of them, and then themselves. She thinks what trick she’s going to get them to kill her in front of the kids if they stop her. He spares her. He leaves forever and arrives in Anafi, as the Argonauts once arrived, in the midst of stormy seas. “Suddenly,” they said, “suddenly,” she said, “a new life, another chance at sea.”

In the summer it’s all right, it’s a beautiful country no matter how you look at it, but in the winter, when it comes out on the main road, into the wilderness, when the wind throws it to the edge of its world, the question returns. What is his business here? Are the kids still hanging on to her? Is Argo leaving or coming back? Is the island moving or staying still? He can’t say for sure. “You should only come to Anafi in the dark,” he tells me. And this is the only way to get there from Piraeus. Shortly before engraving.

I am arriving at September Island. It’s Kalamiotissa’s feast, and a Georgian woman walks beside me as we leave abandoned dwellings, crazy prickly pear, thyme, beehives, scattered vaulted tombs and ovens, and climb up to the terrifying giant, which is the island’s iconic landmark and the second largest monolith after Gibraltar. “Even snakes don’t live here,” he tells me. “And snakes live everywhere.”

Reaching the summit of an undivided megalith that seems to have fallen from the sky, at the easternmost tip of the Cyclades, we are struck by the surrounding awe, the towering void, the still and unmoving rock. “An intact monolith, without members and parts, without fragments that could split and break the whole,” as M. Glezos described.

“You should only come to Anafi in the dark,” he tells me. And this is the only way to get there from Piraeus. Shortly before engraving.

Climbing up to the dome of the church, a typical example of local architecture, I learn an amazing story. On the evening of the feast of Our Lady of Kalamiotissa in 1887, who was then at the top of the monolith, lightning struck during the liturgy and killed the rector, the monk and three laity on the spot. Since then, the monastery has been moved to Kato Kalamiotissa, where the temple of Apollo was located. The small stories are ground into a big story about an island that was a place of exile and isolation.

“No one is safe anywhere,” the woman says pointedly. “No one knows whether he will be in heaven or hell from one moment to the next.” The universal, indivisible, inseparable whole, rock, water and air scatter our conversations into dust. Caught in their human measure and our darkness, the stories dissolve at dawn. The sun illuminates the whole and eliminates the part. The island spread out under our feet.

“If you could choose where would you like to live?” I ask the woman. “Of course, in my country,” he says, “but now I can’t leave anymore.” We are leaving. It’s a beautiful country, depending on how you look at it. There is a corner from which you will see a woman who looks like a rock serving in one of the few cafes.

We left. Night.

* Mrs. Eftichia Giannaki is a writer.