nihat akkaraca - english

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

By The Courtesy of Symi Visitor

Manolis and the Sentimental Dolphin

With his gristling moustache, his rolling sailor’s gait and his ever-present cigarette, Manolis Tambacakis is one of Symi’s more colorfull figures...... and for four summers he had one of the Island’s least enviable jobs-manning the chain barrier by the Yıalos Bus Stop everyday to make sure that only authorised vehicles entered the harbour are between 1100 and 1500 and 2100.


Creatan-born, but christened on Symi, Manolis like many of his countrymen, has spent his life at sea. First as a sponge fisherman for twenty years in the water around Crete, Africa and the Greek Islands, then for eighteen years as a senior officer in the merchant navy.
Like all sailors, he has some good stories to tell, but one of the most incredible- but absolutely true- is how he saved the life of a dolphin, and in turn had his own life saved by the same creature.

Manolis relates: ‘İn 1953 the Symi Sponge boats didn’t go out, because the banks had refused them loans, so like many other Islanders I went to find work on Kalymnos and set sail as a diver with the ‘ Kalymian’ for Alexandria.

‘it was on August 15- the day of the Virgin Mary- when I went ashore with my of my friends to collect cockles. About one hundred metres away we saw something black moving on the beach. When we got close we saw that it was a small dolphin, about one and a half meters long, trashing about on the sand with a wound on its tail. I immediately asked my friend to return in the boat to the caique and to bring me a piece of sheet, some turbentine and some tabacco.

‘ He rowed as fast as he could and brought me what I asked for, so I carefully cleaned the wound (Which had presumably been caused byn the propeller of a caique) with turbentine; then I covered it with tabacco and finally dressed it with the sheet. Then we gently picked the creature up and put it back into the sea to give it its freedom.

‘from the moment on the dolphine never left the side of the caique. İt followed us everywhere we went and we fed it fish and watched it as it played its endless games besides us as we dived.

‘ A month passed and I was collecting sponges at a depth of fifteen fathoms as the day come to end and the sun had set. I couldn’t see very well, and it was time for me to give the signal for going up when a dark bulky shape came towards me and tried to hit me with its tail. I tried to move out of the way but thr huge fish kept coming back trying to knock me over.

Trapped
‘in my efforts to ascape my air tube got tangled, limiting my movements, so I thought that I would lighten my weight and free myself more easilu by untying the net of sponges. The net was threaded onto a rope which passed over your shoulder, around the nape of your neck. One end of the rope ties the net, the other is tied to the belt and holds the diving jacket in place so that it doesn’t float upwards. But it also the rope that goes up to the caique.

‘İn my confusion, I untied the wrong end of the rope with the result that the jacket floated upwards and covered my head, cutting off my contact with the caique. I had no vision and couldn’t do anything; then my air got cut off because the connecting key to the tube broke.

‘ I was left in a void. I was with God. I lost consciousness, and the rest of the story was told to me by my companians on the caique. ‘they stayed searching for me in the dark, knowing that I had no air and that my contact with the caique was lost. But they found nothing, and with heavy h hearts they left to meet up with the large container boat, leaving a bouy to mark the spot where they had lost me so that they could resume the search at first light.

‘ the weather was and the sea was calm so at two O’clock in the moırning everyone was asleep on the deck. Suddenly, one of my shipmates felt splashes of water and heard a noise outside the boat. Bending to look over the side he saw something unbelieveable.

‘ the dolphin was holding me, afloat, against the side of the caique so that the tide wouldn’t carry me away anmd was splashing water onto the deck trying to attract someone’s attention.

‘The crewmen dived inbto the sea to get me, believing that I was dead. But when they lifted me aboard they were amazed to find that I showed signs of life. So after some recussitation, I came around.

‘I owe my life to that creature, who it seemed, had wanted to repay me for the help that I had given it when it was hurt. It stayed with us until October 15, when our season ended, and followed us as far as Crete. There I lost Sight of it and couldn’t keep myself from shedding a tear for my savior.... The reason why I am still alive.’ We are grateful to be able to produce this story which first appeared in the annual Greek-Language magazine ‘Aigli’ produced..

By Symi writer Sarantis kritikos.

1 Comments:

At Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 10:36:00 AM PST, Blogger ilknur said...

Sevgili Nihat Bey,
Can Baba'nın şiirine yazmış olduğunuz yorumdan buldum sizi. Demek siz O'nun hemşehrisiniz...Ne şans!Geçen gün Can Baba'nın Datça evinin resimlerini içeren bir slayt gösterisi geldi ve içim gitti. En kısa zamanda oralara gelmek umudunu taşıyorum. Her zaman beklerim, üstelik koca jipleriyle gelip oraları istila eden büyük şehirlilerden ben de hiç hoşlanmıyorum. Saygılar,ikonundunyasi'ndan iko

 

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