It was a long and extraordinary summer that began with an extraordinary trip. At the Athens airport a fellow with a small sign was waiting for us and, poker-faced, he led us to a huge, rusty truck. A short drive along the broiling-hot roads on the outskirts of Athens brought us to our destination: a small car-rental agency whose modest fleet was sheltered in the shade of an olive grove. It was the kind of place a tourist would never get to on his own. The amiable woman in whose home we were supposed to live had made this match between us and the silent fellow, who deposited car keys in our hands without us signing even a single form. He gestured toward a small, dusty white Renault, took the envelope stuffed with cash and mustered his best English to say, "See you again at the end of summer."

From there we drove to Lavrio, a small port city, from whose wharf boats depart for all the islands that are not included on the route of the large ferries from Pireus. We drove in the Renault laden with suitcases into the belly of the ferry, went up on deck and in the evening, after we had assuaged our hunger with sticky baked goods from the ferry's cafeteria and had tired of gazing at the quiet waters of the Aegean Sea, and after all the passengers had disembarked at all the islands en route and had left us almost by ourselves, we heard the announcement over the loudspeaker: Kea. And indeed before us spread the landscapes of the island where, during the coming weeks, we came to know every path, along brown and arid ridges that from time to time send long arms out into the sea - arms that imprison tiny bays in a wealth of shapes. From our place on the deck it was not possible to discern even a hint of human civilization. Our new home looked like a pretty dull place.

In the Cyclades, the archipelago of which Kea is a part, there are a number of fashionable islands that are usually inundated with tourists, like Santorini and Mykonos. It turned out, however, that our island is a creature of a different sort. As of 2002, tourists hardly went there (on the island there was one hotel, and even it was abandoned) and there weren't too many locals either (about 500, to be precise). If you wanted to get away from it all, this was the place to go.