The three goats were orange, piebald and black. They were having a stand-off over some carrots strewn beneath a table on a beach in Symi, a mountainous Greek island in the South Aegean that is probably closer to Istanbul than Athens. The black goat had black eyes and a black temper. He kept headbutting the piebald goat, who ignored him and continued to rub a knob of carrot affectionately with its snout. This senseless conflict ended in a stalemate. So, the black goat began to turn its eyes on us: five tourists – an American, a Greek, an Italian and an English couple. I retreated, wary of the creature, understanding Sun Tzu’s maxim that it is better only to fight when victory has been assured before battle is even joined.
The black goat trotted briskly ahead of me, away from the carrots, towards our supplies of beer and spanakopita. In what can only be described as the greatest physical feat of my adult life, I rushed after the goat and courageously patted it on its arse with a bamboo stick. This had no effect at all on the goat, which stared at me incredulously. One of my companions, a Greek woman known for her indiscreet and entertaining Substack, took up the stick and screamed something at the goat. He crabbed backwards up the mountainside, just as Xerxes I had done several centuries earlier when confronted with similarly well-armed Greeks.
An idiot abroad
Life in Symi is seasonal. The one town – a spread of neoclassical homes, bars and stores that sell sea sponges – swells in size during the summer and empties during winter. My impressions of it were those of a tourist: stupid. I spent too much time drinking Mythos to understand the town or its inhabitants. Whenever I holiday like this – a trip booked late in the day, with no prior knowledge of where I am going – I think of those lines on tourism in Don DeLillo’s chilly seventh novel, The Names: “You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it… There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.” So I walked around Symi confused, entering and exiting taxi boats, eating formerly sentient crustaceans, struggling to understand my pompous beach read, Herodotus’s The Histories.
An unstoppable traveller, Herodotus may have been the least stupid tourist of all time. Nothing appears to have been lost on him, from the mating practices of the cave Ethiopians to the art of scalping perfected by the Scythians. He had a genius for assimilating knowledge, hearsay and gossip into narrative. Much more accurate to call Herodotus the first journalist, not the first historian.
From protest to psari plaki
Our Airbnb was jammed into the side of the hill overlooking the harbour and owned by a French couple. (Symi is immensely popular with the French – our cousins across the Channel must have a rarely discussed need to buy sea sponges.) They were pushing 70 but in explosively good health. They moved sprucely up and down the steep hillside, their deep wooden tans covered by tastefully billowing linens. They seemed to spend their days living in the anticipation of civilised evening drinks, followed by a meal of greens and grilled white fish. Was any European generation as fortunate as the one born after the last war? Health, heartiness, holiday homes… linen. I expect that by the time I am their age these Soixante-huitards will be looked back on with more envy than pity.
Holding out for a hero
In the evenings we went to restaurants, ate tiny shrimps that were cooked inside their shells and smoked thin cigarettes that reminded me of pencil lead. We drank wine by the carafe and argued about how to end the war in Gaza. (We were unable to resolve the conflict.) I tried to recall the Herodotus I read at the beach but nobody wanted to hear about King Darius’s war on Scythia in the sixth century BCE. Everyone in the group was a journalist of some kind, which means everything that was said during our dinners will probably end up in print one day. I was the only man among four dynamic women, which led one of my friends to say: “It’s just like Sex and the City except you’re here, Will.” I decided not to point out that there is no episode of SATC in which a bloke with a stick unsuccessfully attempts to defend Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte from the savage attention of a goat.
[See also: How Labour learned to love the flag]
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