Bozika's Grapes

We barrel down the road, leaving Manos’ farm, hidden in Bozika’s mountains in the Peloponnese. The farm is a microcosm of Bozika, small and eclectic. Amid the olive trees we water and the tomatoes we coat with volcanic dust for pest control, there are remnants of an unknown past: a rusted blue truck, a metal shield and a sprawling wooden face.
I’m a waitress at Manos’ taverna. I get by with only the words yamas (cheers) and bira (beer). I speak with the locals through laughter. Old men with rutted laugh wrinkles and young men with dark, lucent eyes. Even though riots rage in Athens and no one here has a euro to spare, everyone is always laughing.
At night, I sit in the taverna with Maik, a regular, drinking ouzo and dark wine. We eat tzatziki, with lighter than air yogurt, hand grown cucumbers and garlic. And lahanika yemista, tomatoes stuffed with rice, fresh oregano and raisins. We eat everything with fresh feta and olive oil. Rich and salty, light and sweet. We sit in bright chairs under a fig tree decorated with fist-sized cloves of garlic and fairy lights. Staring out at the sea, at the Gulf of Corinth, Maik says the only two English words he knows: no worries.
No worries, I think, as Manos and I race from the farm. It’s almost dark. It gets a special dark here, as if the one hundred residents have made darkness their secret and stored it. A warm darkness hidden in their smiles and captured in their grapes.
We stop on the side of the dirt road and take handfuls of chalky grapes for the taverna. Manos “borrows” grapes from the large farms. He says, “the fruits are for the people.” He believes in the earth’s incapacity to be owned.
As we drive, darkness slowly swallows us, but Manos likes to drive without his lights. He likes the adventure.
“Are you scared?” He laughs.
I think of the Greeks and how they linger and laugh over food. I think of Maik and his no worries. I put my head out the window, into that warm darkness that smells of grapes.
“Go faster,” I say.