Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Say “Yee-roh”
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
The most important word to know in Greece is gyro, pronounced yee-roh. A gyro is quintessentially Greek. Like Homer, the Parthenon and Retsina. Like the Olympic Games, Aristotle or the Greek goddess of youth Hebe.
Moving along the old Venetian harbor in Heraklion, Crete, my feet are sobbing—tenderized from pounding marble museum floors, scaling archaeological ruins and crossing scorching sidewalks. The middle-aged legs attached to my hips are strangers, each headed to different destinations like two Mediterranean ships cruising uncharted waters. What I would not give for young legs again.
Heraklion is the big-city doormat to the island’s Minoan civilization—3500 years old. The Minoans built Europe’s first urban centers. Constructed without defensive walls, palatial cities like Knossos reached five stories high. Minoans relied on the sea and a strong navy for protection.
For those into the Minoan lifestyle—religious rituals, sports, public festivals, burial practices—the Heraklion Archaeological Museum has cultural riches spanning seven millennia. The frolicking Blue Dolphins fresco is my favorite. So playful, so youthful.
To convince my complaining feet to shut up, I stop at a hole-in-the-wall diner, a speck of a place with a barely noticeable storefront. Inside, behind the counter, the chef/owner is a man enlarged by his occupation. His stained, grimy apron is stretched to the breaking point. Like the eatery’s walls, his face has a sheen to it from decades of spattered cooking oil and sweat.
I read through the menu as if I am a Greek priest studying the Novum Testamentum Graece. As it happens, only the gyro is on offer. The other menu items are merely decorative, a consumer fraud case of bait-and-switch advertising waiting to happen.
The gyro is a roasted pork sandwich. Slabs of raw pork are stacked, cone-shaped, on a rotating vertical spit so that the drippings baste the lower layers of slow-cooking meat. The sizzling pork is thinly sliced into crispy shavings, then coaxed into a warm pita bread stuffed with tomatoes, onions, lettuce and French fries, then topped with a creamy tzatziki sauce.
After handing me my gyro, the cook mops his sweaty forehead with a worn, tattered dishrag. He uses the same rag to clean off the counter, dry the half-washed dishes and wipe the same bare hands that carved and assembled my gyro. I choke back the adult voice in my head prattling on about hygiene.
A nearby traffic roundabout hosts colorful tables and chairs for the hungry customers of several nameless eateries. A straightforward, practical public-private partnership.
On the roundabout, large trees and a fountain compete with a blur of circling cars, trucks and motor scooters trailing smelly blue smoke. Mothers push strollers or corral running infants. A scruffy dog provides janitorial services, systematically vacuuming the plaza of food scraps. Like children on their birthdays, others around me are unwrapping their gyros.
I place myself on a metal chair, open my gyro and take a first bite. Juices dribble down my forearms and splash onto my pants. I have the sensation of eating like a child.
In Greek mythology and in Greek life, the only palatable option is replacing Hebe with the true god of youth, Gyro.
