Surrender: Journey to the Greek Islands Journey to Love

By Diana Karezi

At forty years of age and after a divorce, Hope finds herself on an atmospheric Greek island away from the mainstream tourist trade, wanting to be alone and gain some self-respect and courage. She meets Jason who is some years younger than her but seems to have a maturity that is well past her own years.

With much trepidation on Hope’s part, they enter into an extremely sensual relationship, making Hope’s insecurities surface and fight with herself not to love this man.

On his part, Jason fights to persuade her that this is not just a summer fling for him.

The Moira, the three fates, seem to have more to say to Hope and Jason and bring on an incident that forces Hope to make unwanted decisions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984502483

Diana Karezi

Diana Karezi was born on the Greek island of Lemnos. These days she lives in Melbourne Australia. She is fluent in both Greek and the English languages and goes back and forth between Athens and Melbourne to try and understand her place in the world. She was a visual artist for many years till she turned to writing. She’s comfortable writing about characters who like her straddle the two or more cultures she belong to. She loves to travel and these travels have influenced her art and her writing. Her stories are often about socially mismatched lovers, lovers who overcome obstacles that life throws their way. Friends and lovers who are torn between the multi-cultures they belong to and life’s path to understand where they belong.

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Copyright © 2018 by Diana Karezi.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018910966

ISBN:           Hardcover             978-1-9845-0250-6

                     Softcover               978-1-9845-0249-0

                     eBook                    978-1-9845-0248-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/21/2018

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CONTENTS

Surrender Book 1 By Diana Karezi

Authors Notes:

Names And Their Meaning

Meanings Of Greek Words

Greetings;

Food Culture;

Sundry Words;

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Surrender

BOOK 1

By

Diana Karezi

AUTHORS NOTES:

The two books on Hope’s and Jason’s love story cross two cultures and span two countries and two continents. I’ve tried to give a background to the language and food and hope I have not caused any confusion.

All men between the age of 19 and 45 with Greek citizenship must serve mandatory military service for nine months

NAMES AND THEIR MEANING

MEANINGS OF GREEK WORDS

WORDS OF ENDEARMENT;

Note: I have given literal translations but most of these words can be used in sensual love as well as friendly love.

GREETINGS;

FOOD CULTURE;

SUNDRY WORDS;

Prologue

She had grown up an unwanted child. Abandoned by her mother at a young age and with an absent father, she had little understanding of what it meant to feel loved, nurtured and protected. Her stepmother resented her presence and subjected her to a weekly beating. She never understood the beatings and never spoken to anyone about them. Her childhood trauma resulted in her suppressing her emotions. How could she open herself up to giving and receiving love when she had been deprived so deeply of the emotion in her formative years?

At the tender age of eighteen she consented to marry a man who was ten plus years older than her, seeking the stability and security of marriage, a home and love. However, the marriage was consummated on a rocky foundation from the start. One needed to have some understanding of the concepts of stability, and a loving home life to be able to contribute these qualities to the relationship. Consequently, the cracks began to appear very early in her marriage. Her expectations of the physical side of her marriage had her questioning whether the sexual act itself should be more than quick penetration and sexual gratification for her husband only. In her marriage she never found the happy ever after that was touted in romance novels and movies. She had been a lonely child and now had become a lonely and damaged adult. Unhappiness and loneliness were her companions and somehow, she needed to find a way to mend the broken person she was.

A shining light in her darkness came in the form of a child. Her son. For the first time in her life she understood the meaning of giving unconditional love to this tiny human being she had created. But the overwhelming love she felt for her son, only highlighted the empty void that was her marriage. She was living a passionless existence in a marriage where her husband regarded her more as his possession, rather than an equal partner in their life together.

She eventually found the strength and determination to abandon her marriage. With her bag packed and what meagre belongings she had, she took her son and left the home that had never felt like home and the man who had been neither friend nor lover. She left with little money nor any formulated plan as to where she was going. Eventually she went to Greece, the land of her heritage. And eventually, she found herself on a Greek island, one that was unlike any other.

It was here she met a man who was much younger than herself in years as her husband was older, but this man was much older than both her and her husband in maturity and she was both physically and emotionally drawn to him. The thought of indulging in a summer affair, one that promised to awaken her sexually, tempted her to abandon all logic and taboos. In this man she found a kindred spirit. He too was damaged but somewhat less damaged emotionally, than herself.

She gave herself to him in body only and although her heart longed to give him more, she was unable to lower the protective shield she had meshed around her heart.

With the Greek sun beating down on their bodies, and the hot sand warm and comforting between their toes they spent endless days and sultry nights locked together in heated embraces, where passion was the quintessential essence of their lovemaking. It was easy to forget that the outside world existed. Of course, there were other people around them and so much of the island’s history and sites to explore and enjoy. But at this moment in her life, nothing else existed but this man.

Yet she held back a part of herself. In those short few euphoric months they were together, he opened her up to the art of sensuality, and showed her what true passion was during lovemaking. Even deeper still he taught her about friendship and what it was to truly care for another human being, but most of all what real love was. And even though she knew in her heart that he did love her, she was too afraid to expose herself to the pain of abandonment. The end would come, she kept telling herself.

Chapter 1

She had fallen in love with the island in the same way people react when, driven by sensual desire, they experience what we call love at first sight. The love was passionate and all encompassing.

She loved everything about it: the people, the beaches, the landscape, its industry, and the amazing local cuisine. She found the mythology and its history intertwined. In fact, the two become entwined somewhere between legend and history; and truth and lies. In her mind it was this ambiguity that made the place so damn sexy! It was the mystery that allowed the imagination to conjure its own version of the truth that fascinated her.

It was not a tourist’s version of a Greek Island; it did not have white houses, or an overload of bars, clubs and foreign tourists. There was enough entertainment for everyone, however, during the long warm Greek Island summer nights. The local population was vibrant and local industry was not reliant purely on tourism, as they were in the white islands. It had the pristine beaches, of course, the must-have medieval fortress, a history with many buried archaeological sites and a mythology that makes one’s imagination soar. She found the excessive mythology from pre -history was what gave the island its darkness, a darkness she too carried within herself - a mystery that made this piece of land jutting out of the Aegean Sea somehow sensual to her.

Hope understood darkness much too well. The island’s and Hope’s darkness matched each other.

The houses in the villages were built of stone, carved from the rock in the landscape, blending with the surroundings and harking back to the day where not only did the people need protection from their enemies, but they were also isolated and had to rely on whatever the island had to offer.

There were jagged rock formations that had forced themselves out of the earth like a rampart collection of clustered razors. It was as if the underworld gods were attacking the heavenly gods and their weapons had become solidified into rock in that attack position for all eternity.

The Island was a large island compared to most Greek islands. It was in a strategic spot in the Aegean Sea, so that it could have army and air force bases. It had a long and troubled history of wars, in fact, and had played a major part in both world wars in the 20th century.

Along with the local population, there were the young men who were doing national service and both women and men beginning careers in the armed forces. The island also hosted the Department of Food Study from one of the Greek Universities, therefore there was a high proportion of youth not local to this place. In the summer, loved ones and friends of the men serving, plus tourists arrive in the main town, and the beaches are full of carefree frivolity. It’s an island that has appeal to all ages. Most of the time the serving young men were seen in civilian clothes and only when on duty were they in khakis.

Hope had left this island as a six-year-old child with her family, and as an adult, came to this island for the first time to find documentation about her birth. She was wanting to retrieve her Greek citizenship and to become part of the European Union family, since she had decided to leave Melbourne and live in Athens, whilst she also knew she would be allowed to keep her Australian citizenship.

It was October when she arrived so she was not swayed by the summer ambience. It was already cold. The streets were void of people, unlike in the summer, when everyone is out of their homes all over Greece. The holiday- makers who came in the summer had left, (a good percentage of them being Greek, with old family homes on the island). She had been born in the main town, the capital of the island. This used to be the most affluent part, with the architecture of old neoclassical homes built in the early part of the 20th century. Some of them were so big and beautiful and pointed to the time of Greek men travelling to other lands, and had brought their money back, also pointing to Greeks who had gone and settled in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where they had planted cotton and brought the wealth back to Greece. A lot of that wealth was indeed on this island.

The town also had other less impressive neighbourhoods, but still very visceral, with meandering cobble stone streets and less impressive homes, that had been built of the traditional grey stone, but for the sake of modernization some had unfortunately been rendered over the stone.

Hope explored the cobble stone streets in the main town and wondered who lived there. Had the families always been here? What work did they do? And how many of the men were seafaring, like her father and grandfather had been? There were main arterial roads cutting through the town, roads that connected the capital with the many villages on the island. These were also connected to the many archeological sites that are so important to modern day history and help in discovering where people came from originally and who they are now. It’s only by knowing the past, can the future be understood.

She hired a car to go and explore the other villages and their archaeological sites; sites that go back to pre-history and the road the Tuscan race took to get to the Italian Peninsular to create Tuscany, they came from Asia Minor to settle on Lemnos and eventually crossed to Tuscany. The Kabeira Mysteries rivaling those of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries were available to her, and close by, was the famous city of Hephaestus buried until recently. Now, of course, the theatre has been excavated and the dig in an ongoing process. The Archeology is endless on this Island; it spans five thousand years that have been verified and the myths go far into prehistory. Myth and legends abound, history becomes entangled on this island. It is said that fire was invented here.

The more Hope explored, the more she fell in love with the place.

She thought of herself as an urban creature. She could never live in the provinces, no matter how beautiful the surroundings were. It was a love affair that could never be consummated. She could love while she was there but had to leave the unrequited love behind her. She would be thinking about what was left behind of that love, thinking about what she could not have, and what she was not allowed to have, but what she wished she could have had.

In that cold October month, Hope found herself walking aimlessly through the main town, drinking in the mystery of the island, making love to it with her eyes and her feet, as she covered just about every cobble stone in the town. But most of all with her heart, she likened the feeling as somewhat orgasmic! She could not explain why she found this place so erotic. After some time, she stopped searching for an answer and just went along for the ride. It was enough for her to just want and not have. After all, it was what her life had been like up until now. Life had never allowed her to receive a true love.

Chance would have it, that during one of those extended walks when it felt like she was going to explode from a love of the island she could not understand, Moira showed her a For Rent sign on the sea front residential area. As Hope often did things simply from passion and not reason, she made inquiries and found that the building consisted of two apartments, and the top one was for rent. Hope did not hesitate.

She rented the flat on a yearly basis, even though she knew she had to live in Athens and she could barely afford to keep two homes, but she felt she could paint with passion in this place blessed by the gods, she was hoping that this island with its tempestuous gods would heal her soul.

She had no idea how often she would be on the island, or for how long at any given time. She created two homes - one on the island, her imaginary happiness and one in Athens her current not so happy reality, two of her favourite places in the world, and yet the sensible Hope knew she would return to Melbourne at some stage, where life was comfortable, sensible and easy.

But if truth be known, Hope had never liked easy. She had never had easy, and so she had no concept of how it would be.

She signed the contract. She went back to Athens and gathered what she needed to furnish the spacious, one bedroom flat. It looked out to the sea where the water was deep, created by earthquakes that had moved the seashore and had become a playground for dolphins. The beach was in front of the small flat and was ideal for the beautiful mammals.

A narrow asphalt road separated the sea from the homes on the sea front. The road had no cars, except for the local residents and others with special permits. She found out in all the subsequent summers she spent on the island that no one swam there, because it became too deep, too quickly and was very unlike Greek beaches in general. But the view was spectacular, and in the distance, one could see the Holy mountain of Athos, where in the summer, the golden and orange sun would set behind it. And in the winter, the sun would dip into the blue and purple horizon of the sea and the sky beside the mountain.

Hope had left the island when she was a child; she only had memories of the immediate home she had grown up in, during those initial stages of her life. It had been a time in her life in which she had remembered every detail, as if it had happened yesterday.

She remembered the sea of red poppies from a bus window. Later in life, when she had been painting, she would create a whole body of work around those poppies in a childlike technique imitating her childhood, as they were carved into her brain cells. It was as if someone had taken a carving knife and dug the pictures in a vision that she was sure to take to her grave.

The last of the family left the island, went to Athens and then to Australia, and even though she had been a small child, she remembered almost everything that was important. At the age of three her mother had handed her over to her father and she went to live with her paternal grandmother, and Hope would see her father whenever he was in from a voyage. It would become a pattern of her life, up until she was a young adult.

Between aunties, her grandmother and her two stepmothers, changing countries, changing homes and many schools, not to mention cultures and languages, she had experienced many challenges

Hope had learned very early in life to adapt, and not to get too attached, because she had worked out that nothing was forever. No one had been there when she needed them most. She learned to be emotionally self-sufficient. She created the skills to protect herself from abandonment. And she did it well.

Hope had fallen hopelessly in love with Greece in a very unrealistic, and somewhat passionate way. It was almost erotic, but she felt that this love had not been reciprocated. Yet, she also understood that love (or more correctly, Eros), had no security. Nor did it ever offer her stability!

She had learned to cope with instability very early in life. After all, one can’t help one’s love interests. It does not matter how sensible or right something is, one can just love. Eros is the only condition in which it is sufficient to give, without thinking that you must get back in return. Love is love, no matter how it comes, in whatever shape or size or age. And this island was old and yet young, and mysterious to love and lust after.

Hope had married young, without love, as she had not understood that love was a prerequisite to a marriage. She had believed in her youthful naivety, that this was going to give her the family she had always craved for.

But to have stability in any relationship one must have an understanding from both partners involved that marriage is a partnership, a concept she had had no role model for. The man she had married was still growing up, even though he was substantially older than she had been, and it was doubtful if he would ever mature. After all, he was already in his thirties, when she had only been eighteen. Hope had unrealistic, high expectations from her marriage; a fairytale live happily ever after story was what she was after at that time but had no idea how that could even be achieved. She had no emotional and intellectual tools to accomplish this, nor did she understand how to manipulate life to her advantage.

When she had come to live in Athens, she carried around with her the fallacy that the city was going to change her life, that it would bring her the happiness she had always craved for, that she would at last belong in the total way one belongs to a culture but she was wrong she had been gone to long, she had not grown up in Greece and she was not