The Northwesterly Fury

Review by M. Ben-Yami Column from WORLD FISHING, June 2007

“…Yet this sea, this beautiful sea, is not to be trifled with. If It gets angry and suddenly and unexpectedly begins to foam, the waves whipped up by the tramountana rise up, break out into the open sea and crash furiously down onto the rocks, which wince and howl with pain, then ride over the jetties, the foot of the lighthouse and the surrounding roads and burst into the harbour, which mouth lies open to the full force of the tramountana. At times like this no vessel can escape its fury, no matter whether it is inside or outside the harbour. It is sheer hell, and yet incredibly majestic”.

Reading the English version of the novel by Andreas Keleshis of Cyprus “Maistrotramountana – A Kyrenia Sea Story” (Moufflon Publications Ltd. – www.moufflonpublications.com – 2007, 130 p.) brought me many years back to situations and heroes with whom I could identify. Andreas is my dear friend, but this is not why I’m dedicating this page to his “Maistrotramountana” (hyper-northwesterly), but because in my eyes this fisherman’s story belongs to the highest league of the world’s sea- and fish-lore.

Andreas is a son of a Greek fisherman, one of the Kyrenia fisherfolk of uncountable generations. When in 1974 this small seaport at Northern Cyprus was taken over by Turkish military, Andreas and his family moved south to the Greek sector of the island. But, the memory of Kyrenia of his youth has maintained a constant presence in his mind, which found its expression in his numerous oil paintings and, more recently, in his book.

I first met Andreas in the late 1950s, when he, still a very young man, arrived in Israel to train in fisheries technology and administration on behalf of the struggling for independence, at that time still future Cyprus’ government. He was chosen, not only owing to his being a carrier of ages-old fishing knowledge and traditions, but also because he was, at that time, on the wanted list of the British authorities. As it happened, Andreas became my trainee and, during that time, sort of adoptee in our family. Upon the independence of Cyprus, he was appointed to its Fisheries Department, received a formal skipper’s education and training in Hull, and since the late 1970s has served, on and off, as FAO’s Masterfisherman in Middle-East countries and in Nigeria.

Andreas is trough-and-through a man of the sea and only a man of the sea could write such powerful and gripping account of a struggle of a father and his teenage son to survive the fury of the Northwesterly storm driving their small boat towards a rocky shore. This semi-autobiographic drama is, in the words of Nadia Charalambidou who wrote the book’s Preface, about “the struggle with the waves and the masterful building up of agonizing suspense”.

“Soon there would be heavy squalls with thunder and lightning. I’d heard Kapetan Panayis talk about this kind of weather. He would utter the word with a sense of awe. It was vile, the dirtiest kind of weather that a sailor could experience: there was no worse kind of weather than a maistrotremountana!”.

“The water struck the “Argo” as it whirled round half-submerged in the water. It caught it on the bow, shaking it violently, and lifted it up, flooding it with foam. As the wave rolled away beneath it, half of the boat was left hanging in the air, and then it plunged down and crashed into the foam at the beginning of the next trough. With its bow now pointing north-west, though half-submerged, it was still floating properly, fortunately with its keel facing downwards…”.

But there’s much more than that. Keleshis tells also the story of the fishing community of Kyrenia and describes its life sometime in the 1950s. The reader is introduced to a lively mosaic of colourful characters of the Cypriot fisherfolk and mariners, old-salt “kapetans”, and harbour crowd, as seen through the eyes of a dock-wise and boats-wise teenager, who’s attentive to his elders and highly respects their wisdom and experience.

“…’Why don’t you make just one big catch in the morning? Once they’re caught, fish don’t get away’, I ventured to ask. ‘That’s enough from you… you should learn to listen without speaking,’  Charalambis cut me short with a fierce look’. ‘You should also learn to respect the sea. A fisherman never leaves his nets set for longer than he has to. If the evening catch is left in the water, by morning it will stink and it’ll be eaten by worms, which is a crying shame’…”.

Hear, hear, ye fishermen of the ghost nets age!

Keleshis brings back to life the community of his childhood, portraying a scene of sea and harbour reality in which every coastal and inshore fisherman can find bits and pieces of their own past and present. The harbour and its people are depicted as a typically Mediterranean male country, where women keep in the background and pay only short visits to the arena on which fishermen, boats, fish and waves interact. Their role was to prepare the food and the sweets for the kids, and to provide the security and pleasure of homecoming. This was mostly a kith and kin community, intermarrying and inter-related for hundreds of years.

There’s the wine shop with its customers, the joint effort to beach the boats upon the approaching storm, the nostalgic love of the tall-masted schooners of the past that formed Kyrenia’s merchant fleet exporting carob over the Mediterranean, and the unending attention to the vagaries of the weather. And there’s the ad-hoc and resourceful rescue party.

The last 8 pages of the book contain a short history of Kyrenia’s harbour, its boatyards, shipowners, skippers, and maritime traders in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Maistrotremountana is a book that fits the widest readership, including any wannabe sea fisherman, but these are the coastal fisherfolk who should enjoy it most. I did.