Anna arrived in London disappointed. The bottle of Greek spirit she had brought as thanks for letting her stay, admittedly in a terrible, far out part of the city, had rolled. She had placed it on the side in the bathroom at Heathrow airport and slowly, as she washed her hands, the bottle of mastiha rolled its way to the floor.
I really didn’t mind at all. I didn’t mind at all because at the time I wanted, desperately, for Anna to enjoy staying with me in London. I didn’t mind at all because I had not yet tried mastiha. Had I tried mastiha before, I may have minded.
Mastiha, a liquor made with the resin of the mastic trees that grow on the island of Chios, is delicious. Unbelievably delicious. It’s earthy but so sweet, like a sugar-coated oak leaf. It feels like it comes from nature while still being sparky enough that you think it must be bad for you. Each time Anna would come to London, I’d get her to bring another bottle. Each time I would drink it very quickly then begin, again, to ask when she was next coming to London.
The liquor started to fleck our conversations. A news story would appear on my WhatsApp about wildfires in Chios with a reminder from Anna that this was where the mastic trees grew. ‘Could it hurt production?’ I would think, lying in my south London room, dreaming of Greek girls and the booze they brought me.
It’s been about three years since then and this summer I took my turn to visit Anna in Athens. After years of closeness and distance, we’ve come to a place of such comfortable friendship she doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve spent the last month coming and going from her west Athens apartment, a trip elsewhere in between. A support and kindness, with no expectations, an earthiness with a sweetness.
The night I arrived she drove me to a restaurant where we drank wine and cut up local cheeses, kittens barely old enough to venture from their mother hopping around us. As the bill came and Anna, and her sister, and I argued over who would pay, a waiter brought over three shot glasses filled with viscous clear liquid. “You know what this is?” Anna said.
