In the late summer, after the August gales bluster back to Africa from whence they came, and the few foreign tourists have deserted the windy island vowing never to return, the days are still so hot that Auntie Katerina's donkey Charlotte is hidden in the dusty shade of the stables at our family house. Greek summer shade is a cool, almost liquid oasis echoing the cicada's scream from the blinding shine outside. The chickens peck the dust around Charlotte's hooves as if she were a wheelbarrow. She stands there stolidly - no designs or aspirations, no desire for attention.
Nor does a change of scenery enliven the beast. No matter how much candid advice you give a donkey when you tie it up in the middle of a field, within a few minutes it will have totally immobilised itself, mixing its legs up in its tether or wrapping itself around the only tree in sight, without a thought to walk in the opposite direction to unravel its simple self. But it isn't their complacency which impresses me - it is their silence in the face of immobility. There is no struggle when faced with an almond tree as a knotty dancing partner, nor do they ee-aw once they have lassoed their own four legs rodeo-style and fallen on their sides in the dust.
