And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.
(Leviticus 13:45)
The ship approaches Spinalonga at a leisurely pace. The island looks like a yellow scar on the face of the tranquil Mediterranean azure. The sun is slowly reaching its zenith, and the heat weighs heavily on the passengers despite the marine breeze. More often than not, tour operators sell the excursion as a nice outing for the whole family. Yet, I see very few children on board, as if the idyllic pictures on the brochures couldn’t make up for the tragic atmosphere that surrounds the islet.
My journey starts where that of so many other people ended, as upon disembarking on the scanty quay, visitors are urged to start the tour by going to the cemetery – though very few conform. It is an interesting choice, to begin with the ochre graves instead of the restored village, as it sends a very clear message: Abandon all hope, you who enter here. Hell did have an outpost on earth, and it was located on a small island off the coast of Crete. Spinalonga, ‘the long thorn’, as the Italian name translates, was one of the last leper colonies in Europe.
But this island was not always an island. In 1526, Venetian settlers destroyed the portion of the small peninsula that linked it to its Cretan mainland in order to make it a bastion that would protect the entrance of the nearby port. It is said that Barbarossa, the legendary corsair, used to hide his fleet in coves a few miles away from here. The Venetian rule over Spinalonga, often disrupted by Arab raids, lasted until 1715 when the Ottoman Turks captured the island and colonised it. The Cretan revolt of 1878 failed to recapture the fortress, and the last Turks did not leave before 1903.
And they did not leave of their own accord. In 1898, Crete was declared an autonomous state, in a desperate attempt to detach it from the Ottoman Empire. Prince George of Greece and Denmark took office as the first High Commissioner of the young semi-independent country, and yet, the Turks would not withdraw from Spinalonga. The Cretan government then came up with a bizarre plan that would kill two birds with one stone: establishing a leper colony on the island would prevent the disease from spreading in Crete, and it would force the last Ottoman families to leave, lest they be willing to take their chances with leprosy.
From 1903 on, Cretan citizens diagnosed with leprosy would be taken to Spinalonga. It is easy for us to look back on history and see nothing but cruelty in the motivations that could prompt a government to send its most fragile citizens to a place where they would live in complete isolation from the rest of the world, but at the time, there simply was not a cure for leprosy. Those who suffered from it had nothing but death ahead, and they represented a danger to the rest of the population. The solution may look inhumane to us —and it certainly was — yet, it was the only sanitary measure available then.
Of course, no one knew much about leprosy. It was believed to be highly transmissible – which has since been disproved – and it came with a dangerous Christian aftertaste of uncleanliness, reclusion, and shame. The name itself comes from the Greek λεπίς (“flake”), and there have been accounts of the disease since Herodotus (i. 139) in 430 BC, most of which insisting on the practice of isolating those who suffered from leprosy.
The island was only accessible by boat then, just as it is nowadays, but the journey that the sufferers took must have been very different from mine, as it was made clear to each and every one of them that they only had a one-way ticket. Although their own tour did not start in the cemetery, arriving in Spinalonga through its main door must have been equally chilling. In fact, the prospect of entering the lepers’ village was so horrifying that the large entrance that leads to it was given the evocative name of Dante’s Gate.
And they had every reason to be frightened. Before arriving in Spinalonga, those who suffered from leprosy used to live in meskinias, or leper ghettos, outside big cities. It was not just a matter of social stigma then; it was a question of life or death. Forced to wear bells at all times to warn other people of their presence, they were outcasts who could only live a life of loneliness while waiting for the inexorable and painful end. So when they arrived on the islet, their fear of an even worse fate was only understandable.
Yet, Spinalonga’s patients received food and housing. The Ottoman houses were reallocated after the departure of their previous inhabitants. Clean water should have been available to all thanks to the ingenious Venetian cisterns, but up until the late 1920s, no effort was made to maintain them and more often than not, the water of the island was simply improper for human consumption.
Treatments were scarce and inefficient – when they were implemented at all. Spinalonga was not a leprosarium; it was a leper colony where sufferers were parked out of everyone else’s sight. And it did not get any better when Crete was unified with Greece in 1913, as lepers from the entire country would then be rounded up and sent on their last voyage to Spinalonga. At its peak, the population of the islet counted a little over 400 men, women and children.
Despite the harsh conditions, or perhaps because of them, the people of Spinalonga made the decision that they would rebuild a society of their own on their island. Their demands for proper sanitary facilities and medical treatment were never met by the Greek government, but their pleas were heard by private foundations and charities. Soon, the Spinalonguites recreated a copy of life as it was anywhere else, and built a school, a bakery, and a coffee house.
At about the same time, the government finally decreed that an allocation would be paid to every leper living on the island. The very proximity of Spinalonga to the coast made it possible for fresh meat, fruit and vegetables to be delivered daily, and soon trade was established with the villagers of the bay, who took full advantage of their situation of monopoly and often made the islanders pay fortunes for their goods. The law of supply and demand, as they say.
Of course, people fell in love, because people are people, whatever their circumstances. Weddings were celebrated in the small church. Love is inevitably intertwined with loss, perhaps here more than anywhere else, because it can only spring from the disease, and only pain can spring from it. Some children – healthy children, as leprosy does not spread through pregnancy – were born from those unions; no one knows how many exactly. Some of the children were sent to orphanages or to stay with relatives on the continent to make sure that they would not contract the disease. The others stayed here.
I keep imagining those families of fate. The sick children whose parents had stayed on the mainland, maybe taken in by parents afflicted by leprosy whose own child had to be sent away for his or her own good; strangers finding comfort in patched-up familial nuclei. The illness, so alienating that it strips humanity to the bare bones of loneliness, and yet, people seeking for a connection. The smokescreen of a civilised life, only there is no wizard behind the curtain this time, and all that’s left is a form of despair that goes well beyond isolation and fear.
The grey stone houses still stand tall, though the roofs are long gone. A peek through the louvres reveals the troubling banality of everyday life. Here, a broken chair, there, what is left of a kitchen stove. Above the cobblestone street, a new frame made of wood holds a few timid grapevines. The recent varnish and the bright green leaves offer a strange contrast against the decaying architecture as if they meant to say, ‘Life goes on.’ Only it does not on Spinalonga.
No cure was available. The sensory loss that came with the affliction meant that a small cut would go unnoticed until infected. Simple everyday life activities such as cutting tomatoes or taking a walk on one of the island’s paths were dangerous, as any lesion could and would kill you. That, or your body would absorb its own cartilage, resulting in deformed and shortened fingers and toes, as if your system was trying to devour itself. And then there would be the weakness, the loss of eyesight, the agony, and finally, death. A grave in the south corner of the islet was all you could look forward to.
It is quiet – almost silent – except for the voice of a guide in the distance. Even the chirping of the cicadas has subsided over the Venetian fortifications. The white and blue flag hangs from its mast like a sad fruit. Time itself has paused. It does not smell like anywhere else in Greece on the island. Lavender and rosemary do not seem to grow among these rocks, nor floats the aroma of garlic frying in hot olive oil that you would detect in any other village. No one lives here.
With the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928, and its subsequent use in the treatment of bacterial infections such as staphylococci and streptococci, the idea that antibiotics could potentially cure leprosy started to gain popularity among the scientific community. French chemist Ernest Fourneau and British pharmacologist Gladwin Buttle investigated the properties of Diaminodiphenyl sulfone (also known as ‘Dapsone’), and as soon as 1937, a clinical trial concluded that it was efficient to suppress Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria responsible for leprosy, though it was very slow in doing so.
Finally, a 1946 study by American researchers Guy Henry Faget and Paul Erickson demonstrated that streptomycin, which had been used to fight Mycobacterium tuberculosis could also cure its cousin, leprosy.
The cure reached Spinalonga in 1948. From then on, the number of patients on the island fell at a constant rate, until 1957, when the last 20 inhabitants were relocated to the leprosy yard of Agia Varvara, an Athenian hospital. In the long process of leaving the islet, many Spinalonguites were filled with the hope of going back to their lives as they had left it, now that they were no longer a threat to their fellow citizens.
How not to picture those silhouettes standing on the two-boat pier, holding small suitcases (what would you take with you from Spinalonga after all?) and scanning the sea for the ship that would take them to the mainland, then home? One would be a teacher, or a cook, or a shepherd again. There would be hugs, songs, and dolmades, served on the old oak table by the pomegranate tree. Leaving the island and going back to the world surely felt like being born anew in a universe full of possibilities.
The disillusionment came soon enough.
When the Spinalonguites returned to their former homes, they realised that nothing had changed. They still were shunned, and they could be refused access to their village upon simple opposition from the mayor or the schoolteachers. In order to be able to go home, a subject needed to have a private bathroom with separate access, which in the 1950s Crete was pure fiction. The list of the jobs they were allowed to apply to was extremely short, and more often than not, no one would hire them anyway.
Left with no other option, many Spinalonguites decided to go or were sent to the contagious diseases ward of Agia Varvara Hospital. There, the conditions were even worse than on the islet, but the Spinalonga spirit lived on and soon, they decided to build their own village within the walls of the lepers’ station. With whatever little money they had, they erected elementary housing and organised their lives just like they had in Spinalonga. The board never managed to convince them to follow the strict hospital rules. Against the harshness of being isolated again, their weapon was once more to build a civilisation of their own.
‘At least, in Spinalonga, no one died alone,’ lamented Epaminondas Remoundakis, many years later, in Agia Varvara. He had contracted leprosy at the age of 12 and had spent 20 years on the island. ‘Perhaps we had managed to create the ideal, humane society, after all.’ It was him who, in 1956, had been the spokesperson for the inhabitants of the islet. When asked by the authorities what the Spinalonguites wanted, his answer had been ‘For everyone, the living and the dead, to leave this island.’
Legend has it that the last inhabitant left Spinalonga in 1962, five years after the leprosery closed. He was a priest, and he had stayed behind to honour the dead. According to the Greek Orthodox tradition, the Trisagion (a chanted service) has to be performed at the cemetery on the ninth and fortieth day after someone had passed away, then on the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth months, and annually for the next four years. And if true, then it is fitting that the final song sung in Spinalonga ends where so many others did.
Though the religious rites were observed for a time, they were soon done away with. The rise of mass tourism transformed the landscape of Greece, and Spinalonga was no exception. From the Parthenon to Knossos, herds of flip-flops toting tourists stormed fortresses and millennial theatres in a way Barbarossa could only have dreamed of, with the benediction of the Greek government who could not let such a lucrative opportunity slip away. Ethnologist Maurice Born witnessed visitors standing in the upturned communal grave and monkeying around with bones at the end of the 1970s. So much, so good for Spinalonga’s eternal rest.
In 2013, fifty-six years after the last patient left, Iera Mitropolis Petras kai Chersonisso and Topiki Enoria tis Plakas, two religious organisations, finally managed to have the ossuary rebuilt. A small commemorative plaque gives a terse account of the martyrdom of the lepers of Spinalonga, like a discreet monument to all the things that cannot be expressed.
At the end of the main street, some houses have been painted with bright colours. Inside, a permanent exhibition traces the history of the island, from the first invasions to our day. Four examples of Ottoman, Venetian and Orthodox tombstones stand in a corner. Broad informative panels show photographs of those who lived here in the 1940s. In display cases, syringes and morphine vials are artfully arranged like cheap souvenirs in a gift shop.
The peeling plaster that covers the inner part of Dante’s Gate reveals writings in Arabic, Italian, and Demotic Greek. The entire history of Spinalonga is summed up there in five or six words, from the Venetian rule to the Cretan revolt and the contemporary Greek state, passing by the terrifying tales of Ottoman pirates and indifferent settlers. The Gate itself, with its sturdy walls, acts as a reminder not only of the abysmal fear and pain that took place here but also of the resolve and dignity of the Spinalonguites.
The tour ends here, on a small promontory near the derelict Venetian turret. I have walked the paths of Spinalonga starting with the cemetery and ending at the gate. For too many years, the people who suffered from leprosy used to take that long walk clockwise — I have done the contrary. It is a curious thing to do; like reading the epilogue of a novel before the first chapter. But there is no suspense at the end of this book. There never was.
The warm sun of the afternoon has started its descent as the last ship leaves the island. No one is standing on the quay, and no one will until tomorrow morning when the next groups of tourists come to take in whatever theatricalised version of history they’ll want to hear. In the meantime, the island is at peace, and its ghosts are left alone.
