Cappadoccia (Kapadokya), a beautiful mysterious place.
In the 4th century AD it was the center of major developments in Christian theology and philosophy.
The tradition of the Christian Orthodox religion remains strong even today in the rough and mysterious landscape.
A lot of men are abandoning the life we know to become monks leaving in the caves carved inside the rocks centuries ago.
This is the story of one of them.
His name is Kostas T. He grew up in a city in the North of Greece.
As a Lyceum student he distinguished himself in carving names and hearts in trees, and there are a lot of them in the countryside around the city.
After serving in the Greek Army he started working as a model.
His success brought him a lot of female admirers.
As it usually happens, none of them captured Kostas’ heart.
The lucky ones got to experience his extra-ordinary love making for one night, or two.
No one seemed to be able to tame the young stud, until he met Iphigenie M, a beautiful heiress of a ship owning family of the island of Andros.
Happiness was knocking on their door.
But life was hard on Kostas.
Quite accidentally, Iphigenie met Sophie M, an Australian girl who was working in Greece as a waitress after having divorced her Greek husband.
They became fiends and she was introduced to Kostas.
After a few days, a Ménage à trois (a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as “household of three”) was formed, the two women and Kostas becoming entangled in a world of passion.
Days and months passed by.
One morning, Kostas woke up in a state of deep anxiety.
He went to his two lovers and declared that this cannot continue any more.
He was hoping to convince Iphigenie to dump Sophie and then marry her.
Alas! Iphigenie was caught in the nets of Sophie!
Sophie got so upset with Kostas wanting to break up the trio, that she started eating hamburgers one after the other, and then to burn the calories she was washing cars. The photo above is proof of her condition.
After doing this for fun she opened a car laundry serving the best hamburgers in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Iphigenie tasted the hamburgers and decided she was going to stay with Sophie.
A hamburger changed Kostas’ life!
Kostas became a wreck and started having visions of meeting Death.
Suicide was imminent.
And then things took a totally unexpected turn.
Kostas was spending a lot of time with his parents trying to clear his mind.
One evening, after dinner, he found a book in his father’s library, opened it and started reading it.
It was a book by Saint Basil on the Human condition.
Saint Basil writes,
“Examine what sort of being you are. Know your own nature, that your body is mortal but your soul is immortal, and that our life is twofold in kind. One kind is proper to the flesh, quickly passing by, while the other is akin to the soul, not admitting of circumscription. Therefore be attentive to yourself, neither remaining in mortal things as if they were eternal, nor despising eternal things as if they were passing. Look down on the flesh, for it is passing away; take care of the soul, for it is something immortal…
For when the body enjoys well-being and becomes heavy through much fleshiness, the mind is necessarily inactive and slack in its proper activity; but when the soul is in good condition and through care of its own goods is raised up toward its proper greatness, following this the state of the body withers.”
Kostas was struck by thunder.
He kissed his parents good bye and started the long journey to Cappadoccia.
His life was never going to be the same.
Once he arrived there, he enlisted in the Christian Orthodox legion of monks and started praying.
He never lifted his eyes above to see the sky.
He never breathed freely the fresh air.
His eyes were almost shut, open only enough for him to read and cry.
One day he lifted his face and looked up.
What he saw in front of him was like a vision.
A beautiful woman on a bicycle.
The woman on the bicycle was a psychoanalyst, who was visiting Cappadoccia for a few days.
She needed this break.
Her job was full of the joys and sorrows of the human affairs, and she needed to get away from all that.
Her name was Elektra, and was French from the region of Alsace. She lived and worked in the city of Colmar.
The woman noticed him. and responded enthusiastically.
to be continued….