Sandy hands him the Avis map of the island. Minoan ruins are marked by a double axe, Greek ruins by a broken column. Jim looks for broken columns, understanding already that on this island Minoan ruins are first-class ruins, Greek ruins are second-class ruins. Find one away from towns, at the end of a secondary road, on the sea if possible. “Whoah.” Several fit all the criteria. His mood lifts a bit. He picks one at random. “Humphrey, drive us to the very end of the island.”

“Right ho. Gas is expensive here, remember.”

“Drive!”

“Right ho. Where are we headed?”

“Itanos.”

Sandy laughs. “World famous, eh Jim?”

“Exactly not. The Pyramids are world famous. Knossos is world famous. Red Square is world famous.”

“Point taken. Itanos it is. What’s there?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

So they drive east, along the northern coast of Crete.

It strikes them all at the same time that the land looks just like southern California—to the extent that they know what southern California looks like, that is. Like the middle section of Camp Pendleton. Rocky dry scrubland, rising out of a fine blue sea. Dry riverbeds. Bare bouldery hilltops. Some tall mountains inland. “The first wave of American settlers always called southern California Mediterranean, when they tried to tell the people back east what it was like,” Jim says slowly, staring out the window. “You can see why.”

It’s the same land, the same landscape; but look how the Greeks have used theirs.

Scrub hills.

Scattered villages. Concrete blocks, whitewashed. Flowers.

Untidy places, but not poor; Jim’s ap is smaller than any home here.

Olive groves cover the gentler hills.

Gnarled old trees, crooked arms, silver-green fingers.

The road is spotted with black oily circles: crushed olives.

Do you live here?

Blue-domed, whitewashed church, there on the hilltop. Inconvenient!

An orange grove.…

“This is how it looked,” Jim says quietly. And his friends listen to him, they stare out the windows.

They stop in at a village store and buy yogurt, feta cheese, bread, olives, oranges, a salami, retsina, and ouzo, from a very friendly woman who has not a single word of English. After Egypt’s ceaseless venality her friendliness pleases them no end.

Late in the day they drive down one last blacktop ribbon of road, which follows a dry streambed to the sea.

Scrub hills flank them on both sides.

Hills breaking off in the dark blue sea.

A beach, divided into two by a knoll sitting in a small bay.

The knoll is covered with ruins.

The landscape is empty, abandoned. Nothing but the ruins, the scrub.