Greece’s new socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, had felt compelled to deny that he was actually thinking of selling any islands. I’d arrived in Athens just a few days earlier, exactly one week before the next planned riot, and a few days after German politicians suggested that the Greek government, to pay off its debts, should sell its islands and perhaps throw some ancient ruins into the bargain. “They say this is the holiest place on earth,” I said. But I was pretty sure that if I told the monk what they were, he’d throw me out. But to see just how peculiar it was, you had to come to this monastery. No response was as peculiar as the Greeks’, however: anyone who had spent even a few days talking to people in charge of the place could see that. All these different societies were touched by the same event, but each responded to it in its own peculiar way. The Germans wanted to be even more German the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania.
Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.” What they wanted to do with money in the dark varied. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 20 has just now created a new opportunity for travel: financial-disaster tourism. I wore white running shoes, light khakis, a mauve Brooks Brothers shirt, and carried a plastic laundry bag that said eagles palace hotel in giant letters on the side. He wore an impossibly long and wild black beard, long black robes, a monk’s cap, and prayer beads. Then he looked me up and down more closely. “Just follow the monks after they rise,” he said. There were 37 different chapels inside the monastery’s walls finding the service is going to be like finding Waldo, I thought. The next event, it will emerge, will almost always be a church service. One of the monks then said the next event would be the church service: Vespers. The monastery was not merely efficient but free. I sensed something missing, and then realized: no one had asked for a credit card. He guided me along with seven Greek pilgrims to an ancient dormitory, beautifully restored, where two more solicitous monks offered ouzo, pastries, and keys to cells. It was late afternoon, and the monks were either praying or napping, but one remained on duty at the guard booth, to greet visitors.
The spit of land poking into the Aegean Sea felt like the end of the earth, and just as silent. After an hour on a plane, two in a taxi, three on a decrepit ferry, and then four more on buses driven madly along the tops of sheer cliffs by Greeks on cell phones, I rolled up to the front door of the vast and remote monastery.
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