Finding Paradise on Mykonos

 

Saturday–Jeff

“Your assignment, Jeff, should you choose to accept it, is to find paradise (small p) on Mykonos.”

A mission impossible?

Some might say that, but I’m used to challenges of that sort for they come at me each year at this time in the form of an email from the managing editor of Mykonos Confidential.  In it, I’m asked to contribute an essay to its eponymous glitz and glamour magazine –an icon of the high fashion lifestyle that rules Mykonos each summer.

This year’s topic was described to me as “inspired by the documentary ‘Super Paradise’ - you might have heard of it…we are looking for paradise stories on Mykonos!”

I’d not.

Still, in the three decades I’ve written for MC, they never changed a word of what I’d written, nor has its editorial content shied away from addressing controversial issues. 

I reward that journalistic honesty by writing what I think appropriate for that summer’s topic “without fear or favor” of those who might feel otherwise.

Below is my contribution to this summer’s Mykonos Confidential, and here’s a link to my essay that appears at its pages 44-45.

A Place for Friends

Paradise is a decidedly subjective term.

We can adorn our respective images of paradise with modifiers such as “super” or some yet undiscovered supercalifragilisticexpialidocious version, but the bottom line remains this: each of us possesses an intensely personal view of paradise.

For millennia, creators of art, music, poetry and prose have extolled its virtues while others have proffered demonic versions consistent with their views on paradise as lush with amorality.  That seems a topic worthy of serious attention for members of the Mykonos early morning kafenion crowd in their inevitably intractable musings on the state of their beloved island.

Among visitors to Mykonos, many likely envision paradise as involving turquoise waters lapping against golden beaches under azure skies––perhaps while in the embrace of a new-found lover.

Locals, too, undoubtedly subscribe in varying degrees to that paradisiacal vision of the sea that surrounds their island home.  But mostly it is to their families’ deep roots in a shared hardscrabble past, and unabashed pride in their island’s new-found affluence, that they point to when describing Mykonos as their paradise.

And proud they should be, for prosperity came to Mykonos in no small measure because Mykonian families saw beyond the petty temptations, foibles, and feuds that often come into play when natives, conditioned to accepting as gospel a fixed vision of their paradise, find themselves adrift among compelling alternative perceptions of what paradise might mean going forward.

In an effort to precisely pinpoint what keeps my 40-year love affair with Mykonos still going hot and heavy, I reviewed decades of articles I’d written for Mykonos Confidential.

My first essay described what I liked most about Mykonos.  That answer was easy: the people. Life then was more about hanging out with friends, be it for coffee in the morning, spearfishing and the beach in the afternoon, or joining in on any number of communal activities––all for the purpose of making me part of their lives and they part of mine. 

Back then I saw Mykonos as every bit the legendary draw for tourists from around the world that at its heart still remained a small, Greek island village.  A place where people raised their families and shared strong traditions—forever linked in geographic and spiritual kinship to the Delos of antiquity.

A few years later, for Mykonos Confidential’s Tenth Anniversary issue, I wrote:

“We have entered a different world.  We no longer exist as we once did.  We are separate and apart.  We are imagination and fantasy, dreams and aspirations, a place in the sun unlike any other, fulfilling the great expectations of our planet’s buyers and sellers.”

Despite all that change, Mykonos remains a place of joy where friends from around the world seeking paradise still gather to celebrate.  Old faces and new; Greeks, non-Greeks; gays, non-gays; locals, non-locals; rich, non-rich, all there in abundance listening to their eclectic music, grazing on modern cuisine, imbibing in whatever they desire, wearing as much or little as they wish, dancing, sunning, playing, perhaps even praying, but all smiling and doing whatever makes them happy. 

And as the years roll on, I watch old Mykonos tales of magical moments being remade by the young in their own words, and though time will fly by for them surely as quickly as it has for me, I can assure them that those memories of their time in paradise shall always remain the property of their makers—staying just as fresh for them as mine do for me.

My memories of Mykonos as paradise shall forever remain linked to my Mykonos friends. Friends who continue to draw my heart and soul back to our shared island home.  I’ve stood with them from midnight until two-thirty on an Easter morning crammed into the tiny second-floor space above the chapel of Agia Kiriake in Chora. I’ve danced at their weddings, rejoiced at their baptisms (at times, to both on the same day), and cried at the funerals of longtime friends. 

Though I was not born here and my roots are not Greek, I met my wife here, and Mykonos is the place I call home more than any other.  It is a place of wondrous contrasts and energy, a source of inspiration for my writing. But above all it is home to many of my most treasured friends.  Which is why Mykonos is, and shall forever remain, my paradise.

––Jeff

Jeff’s upcoming events

2025

All Live Events

 

September 3 – 7 | Bouchercon 2025 | New Orleans, LA
Friday, September 5, 4:00-4:45 p.m.
New Orleans Marriott—La Galeries 5-6
Panelist, “Tips and Tricks for Keeping a Series Fresh,” with Anne Cleeland, Marcy McCreary, Charles Todd, Tessa Wegert, and Moderator Deborah Dobbs

Saturday, September 6, 10:30-11:25 a.m.
New Orleans Marriott—La Galerie 3
Panelist, “No Passport Required: International Mysteries and Thrillers,” with Barbara Gayle Austin, Cara Black, Joseph Finder, J.L. Hancock, and Moderator Mark Ellis

 

Wednesday, September 17, 6:30 p.m.
Greek National Tourist Organization
Presentation of the literary work of Jeffrey Siger
Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum
Kallisperi 12, Acropolis

 

A Confidential Mykonos Question

Jeff—Saturday

Into its fourteenth year of publication, Mykonos Confidential is the often imitated, but never equaled, summertime bible of the passions, pastimes, and peccadillos of a place like no other. 

This year, as in the past, its publisher Petros Bourovilis, and Managing Editor Ira Sinigalia invited me to contribute an article to the issue. It’s always a great pleasure and honor to be part of MC, and so I of course accepted.

For those of you who’d appreciate the opportunity of perusing Mykonos’ premier summer time publication from cover to cover (stopping perhaps to pause and contemplate life at pages 90-91) and potentially gaining a sense of what summering on Mykonos means these days, here’s a link to Mykonos Confidential 2019.

But for those of you who simply want to read what I had to say—in an essay titled, “A Question For the Mykonians”—here's how it appears in the magazine, and beneath that (in sympathy for all our eyes), its text:

“What did you do in the war, daddy?” is the title line from a 1960s film packed with well-known actors.  The film is a comedy, and back in those days Mykonos had not yet attained anything near its current star status, yet I see a serious meaning in that line keenly on point for what the island now faces:

Those confronting today’s threats to their way of life will surely be judged by those left to live with the results of their ancestors’ decisions.

As our world currently shapes up, I’d say the ancestor adulation market is in for a precipitous decline worldwide.  But I’m not concerned about everywhere. I’m concerned about here, on this island I call home, at this moment in time.

And that is why I wrote THE MYKONOS MOB, the tenth mystery-thriller in my Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series.  Yes, it’s fiction, but it ranges across the island, touching upon matters not obvious to the casual visitor, but well known to Mykonians who’ve experienced the many changes to their island.  It is for them that I wrote this book.

I am not a preacher and do not write sermons.  Nor is it my place to suggest how others choose to live their lives.  Having spent thirty-five fun-filled years on Mykonos, I’d be the proverbial stone-thrower living in a glass house should I attempt any of that.  My role as a writer is simple: entertain my readers. Yes, I delve into the seamier aspects of life, but that’s what a mystery-thriller calls for.  Nor can I take responsibility for how much of what I write later ends up actually happening.  I chalk that up to a Cassandra-like curse. 

Mykonos has undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis during my time on the island, and change on a cosmic level for those who remember its pre-Jackie Kennedy Onassis visit years. Going back further, it’s hard for those not touched by the island’s World War II-induced days of starvation and depression to imagine Mykonos as impoverished as it once was.

And that’s what makes its current celebrity and off-the-charts good fortune an understandable joy for all who love the island and its people.

And in that lay the conundrum. 

How much of a good thing is too much? How much candy can you eat before getting ill? How much heavenly sunshine can you enjoy before it kills you?  You get the idea.

It seems impossible that in little more than a single generation the island achieved worldwide renown as a 24/7 summer-playground for international celebrities, the super-rich, and holidaymakers from around the globe wishing to be in on the glitz of it all, transforming long-impoverished Mykonians into among the wealthiest per capita people in Greece.

But, like everything, it came at a price.

Much of the island’s traditional agrarian and seafaring ways were sacrificed to cater to the holidaymakers.  Its dozens of breathtaking beaches now boast world-class clubs and restaurants, many designed to keep sun worshipers and partiers onsite and consuming from morning until well beyond the witching hour.

Locals who’d run traditional businesses out of buildings in town that had been in their families for generations realized they’d make far more by turning their shops into bars, or renting their spaces to national and international fashion brands. Outside of town, farmers found themselves making more from the sale of a parcel of land than they could ever hope to make in a lifetime farming that same soil.

Off-islanders, drawn to Mykonos by its seeming immunity to the rest of Greece’s dire financial circumstances, have invested heavily in catering to the whims, wants, and fantasies of holiday-makers willing to pay whatever it takes to be part of the island’s anything goes tourist season experience.

Let’s face it folks, the world realizes Mykonos is a tourist goldmine.

I won’t bother to quote statistics, prices, or champagne sales records, but they continue to greatly inspire the island’s investors, and keeping one’s investors inspired is a very good thing.  After all, they’re who’ve kept the sun brightly shining on Mykonos while so much of the rest of Greece has struggled against the darkness. 

I bet you think the next sentence is going to begin with something like, “On the other hand…”

Wrong. I’m not a naysayer, and though a true downturn in the tourist industry is always a risk, I see a different one confronting Mykonos’ future.

To wit:  How far away from their island’s cultural and societal roots are Mykonians willing to stray to accommodate their island’s new reality?  It is a question for each Mykonian to honestly answer and act upon to the full extent of his or her own beliefs.

That’s not my passing the buck on offering an answer to the Ultimate Question; it’s stating a respectful reality. I am not properly qualified to offer an opinion on how today’s Mykonians should shape their island’s future.

After all, it is their descendants who shall judge them on how they chose to act—or not.

—Jeff

The Bitter and the Sweet

Jeff—Saturday

First the Bitter.

All of Greece is in mourning, and I’m purposely not posting photographs of the source of its grief.  The world’s seen enough of those scenes by now. 

The fires this week that claimed so many lives weigh heavy on the nation’s mind. So, too, do the responses of its government officials to criticism of both their preparedness and reaction to a far from unexpected phenomenon—wildfires happen across Greece every summer. It is a developing story, with finger pointing well underway. Indeed, the head of the junior coalition party sharing power in the current government (he serves as Defense Minister), in an interview with the BBC, blamed the victims for building their homes illegally. Here’s a link to that much talked about interview.

As would be expected, much speculation is being bandied about in search of an explanation for how this tragedy came to pass.  Some theories are rational, some clearly not. For a good primer on where things stand at the moment, I suggest reading an article in Wednesday’s New York Times, by Jason Horowitz, titled, “In the Aftermath of Greek Fires, Suspicion Combines with Grief and Recrimination.” 

Barbara and I add our prayers to those of the many from around the world sharing in Greece’s mourning. 

Now for the Sweet.

Not actually sweet, more like bitter-sweet.  It’s an article I wrote for the just published thirteenth-year anniversary issue of Mykonos Confidential, the sleek, annual summer magazine celebrating all things Mykonos that’s come to be known as the “Bible of Mykonos.”

The theme for this year’s issue, as envisioned by its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, was “My Summer of Love,” and so that’s what I wrote about.  Whether or not my tale is what Petros expected I cannot say, but I can assure you it’s all true, and reveals how I came to write my first mystery novel on Mykonos.

PS. In the interest of full disclosure, I also was asked to participate in the fashion shoot section of the magazine (for comic relief, no doubt) and most of the photos in this post are taken from that totally fun experience, as captured by photographer Thanasis Krikis, and styled by Stefanos Zaousis . Thank you, one and all.   Here’s the article:   

  

“My Summer of Love” is a tricky subject. It can mean decidedly different things to different people. Perhaps that’s why Mykonos Confidential chose it as the topic for the likes of me to write about?  After all, as varied and complicated as love relationships can be, so too, are our respective relationships with the island of the winds.

My Summer of Love experience occurred unexpectedly on a stifling August afternoon in 2005, during my third decade of summers on the island.  I’d not yet given up my New York City law practice, but had returned to Mykonos committed to writing a book about this place I call home.  I had no desire to write a guidebook, or wax on about summer tavernas and island romances.  I planned to write a serious novel, one that told the truth as I saw it about the island’s people, politics, culture, and beauty, but in a way that held my readers’ interest as we explored life together on the island. 

A murder mystery-thriller format seemed the natural way to go, but my plans encountered an unanticipated setback when my closest friend on the island deeply opposed my idea.

We’d been friends since my first day on Mykonos.  I happened to pass by his jewelry shop on my way into town from my hotel, and though I forget how he’d lured me inside, the next thing I knew I was (unsuccessfully) dodging drinks, pastries, and candies.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d stumbled upon the most loved man on Mykonos.  A consummate gentleman and fervent booster of the island, he had an extraordinary circle of local, national and international friends, all of whom made a point of regularly stopping by to say hello to him.

Over the years we developed a deep friendship, sharing our birthday parties (he was seven days younger than I), watching out for each other’s children (I escorted his older son to his first days at Syracuse University), and attending together many a Mykonian panegyri, concert, baptism, wedding, and funeral. Without my realizing it, he’d subtly turned me into a Mykonian—or at least as close to that elevated status as a non-Greek American could hope to achieve.

Me, Tassos, Renate and Thomas McKnight

That’s why, when he expressed his heartfelt concern that placing a murder mystery on Mykonos might harm the island, I put my project on hold. Disappointed as I was, I did not want to write anything that might harm his business, or reflect badly on him in the eyes of Mykonians because of our friendship.

Then came August.

I’d stopped by his shop one evening around eleven, and he asked if I’d like to join him for dinner. He said he was “about to close,” but I’d been down that road many times before.  I knew that as long as a single potential customer lurked nearby, he’d remain open. True to form, we finally made it to the restaurant around one.

He had a lot of things on his mind, and I did a lot of listening.  Then out of the blue he said he’d decided I should write the Mykonos book I wanted to write.  I never asked him what had changed his mind.

We finished dinner, I walked him back to his home, and said goodnight. 

Around daybreak the next morning I received a call that my friend had suffered a massive stroke, and was at the medical clinic waiting to be airlifted to Athens.  I made it to the clinic as he was being wheeled to the ambulance for transport to the airport.

That was the last time I saw my friend alive. He died on August 3^rd, with family and friends at his bedside.

I know what you’re thinking. How could this horrific tragedy possibly serve as any sane person’s Summer of Love?

It’s complicated, but real.

His body arrived back on Mykonos by ferry to the old port. Tradition had family and friends meeting the casket there to accompany his remains to church for the funeral service. Fittingly, the procession passed by his shop on its way to Agia Kyriake.

I’m not Greek Orthodox, so I did not think it appropriate to participate as a pallbearer.  I walked close behind the casket, trailed by a crowd of hundreds. As the line of mourners approached Kyriake, Mykonians pushed me forward toward the casket, politely telling me to participate as one of the pallbearers. When I said, “I’m not Orthodox,” one of the pallbearers insisted I take over his position, saying, “You’re his friend, that’s all that matters.”

We carried his casket into the church, and I never felt closer to the people of Mykonos than I did at that moment.  My feelings only grew stronger once we left the church, and wound our way through the town’s narrow streets toward the cemetery.  Locals I barely knew kept stopping me to share hugs and tears over the genuine sadness we all felt at the loss of such an extraordinary soul.

During that brief bit of a summer afternoon, I was immersed in a communal outpouring of pure love, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before—or after.

Amen.

There is a remarkable postscript to this story, one I credit to the spirit of my dearly departed friend.  During his funeral, as I stood at the foot of his casket struggling to maintain my composure, I stared up at the church’s dome. Spread out before me in what I can only characterize as a vision, I saw the perfect story line for tying together all the many ideas for my book.  It was as if my friend were saying, ‘Okay, Jeffrey here it is, now write it.” 

I think it’s fair to say that my debut novel, Murder in Mykonos, is a product of “My Summer of Love.” Even today, it stands as a tribute to the memory of my friend, Tassos Stamoulis, proprietor extraordinaire of the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry shop. God rest your kind, sweet soul, my friend. 

You remain deeply missed by all lovers of Mykonos. Perhaps now more than ever.

—Jeff

I've Launched a New Career

Jeff—Saturday

I’ve always thought of “launch” as such an imprecise term. After all, leaving the pad doesn’t mean you’ll make it into orbit.  That’s particularly likely to prove problematic with the career I’m talking about.

Or rather not talking about, for on top of everything else, the event that has me writing this post is confidential, more precisely Mykonos Confidential.

Into its thirteenth year of publication, Mykonos Confidential is the often imitated, but never equaled, summertime bible of the passions, pastimes, and peccadillos of a place like no other. 

This year, as in the past, its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, invited me to contribute an article to the issue. It’s always a great pleasure and honor to be part of MC, and so I of course accepted.

But this year Petros didn’t stop there. And here comes the confidential part. DRUM ROLL, PLEASE. He asked me to participate in what has become a core part of the magazine…its fashion shoot on island locations.  Yes, you read that correctly. I was asked to model for a magazine, and not MAD.

Whatever possessed him, I do not know, but I shall await the results (and editorializing) to see how it all comes out—and how much of my “work” makes it into print.  Though I cannot share any of the shots, or give away the theme, I do have a few photos of my colleagues at work. 

We shot for three days on beaches in Mykonos and its environs, and had a blast. The people were great, the laughs many, and my role as the senior model (by multiples over the ages of the professional Russian, Swedish, and Italian-Brazilian models) did not dampen my fun in the least. I guess that comes from being used to younger souls offering me their seats on the NYC subway.

And I learned so much from them too. For example, how many of you know what’s a “Boomerang shot?” Okay, let’s amend that to how many of you over thirty.

Well, enough of the chit-chat. Here’s some photos of my last three days away from the keyboard.  I can’t wait to see the finished product. Nor though, can I wait to get back into writing Kaldis #10.  But I’m returning with a new vigor toward that project, and a bandbox of grand new ideas for Kaldis and crew from this experience.

Plus, another bucket list accomplishment marked off the list.  I’m a fashion model! Of sorts.

All I can say is, thank you, Petros, Stefanos, Thanasis, Marios, Iris, Angeliki, Eva, Maya, Daria, Lucas, Michele, Dana, Ari, and Panos for great fun and introducing me to your world.

Can’t wait to see my tear sheets.

—Jeff

"Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?"

Jeff—Saturday

This week marks the twelfth year of publication of Mykonos Confidential, an annual summer magazine celebrating all things Mykonos.  All the glitz, all the hype, all the shopping, sipping, supping, seducing, and sunning for which the island is renown, wrapped up in one sleek, four-hundred page “Bible of Mykonos.”

Yes, it’s a cheerleading magazine for modern day Mykonos, but its publisher, Petros Bourovilis, has a long history of telling it like it is in his editorials, and encouraging his contributors to do the same.  This summer’s theme for the magazine is the island’s “Bohemian Past,” which necessarily involves reminiscences of a lifestyle far different from today.  How one evaluates the changes depends on your perspective.

I was asked for my thoughts on the subject, and so I gave them. 

In the interest of full transparency, I should mention that against a half-century of “old Mykonos hands” the magazine has kindly included me as one of “fifty-six people who symbolize the Mykonos Free Spirit.”

In keeping with that label, which I proudly wear, here is the article I wrote for this summer’s Mykonos Confidential issue, titled “Is Mercury or Mykonos in Retrograde?”

That title should give all you astronomers, astrologers, and music fans something to ponder. 

In astronomy retrograde means “a body in motion in a direction contrary to that of the general motion of similar bodies,” in astrology believers say you’d best “ready yourself for frustrating times,” and in music (at least for me) it conjures up visions of Queen’s incomparable Freddie Mercury shaking up the rock world with the eclectic punch of his 1975 classic song, Bohemian Rhapsody. All three offer unique insights into the state of our island.

Over the decades of this writer’s life, a once obscure and impoverished Mykonos transformed itself from wartime years of starvation and bitter struggle, into a modern international symbol of tourist hedonism and 24/7 glitz—barely pausing long enough to digest its good fortune and appreciate its natural gifts.  Yet, as quantum levels different as modern day Mykonos is from what it once was, first time visitors to the island, whether arriving by sea or air, still are awe-struck at their first glimpse of this dazzling white beauty set off against a stark desert mountain landscape.

Astronomically speaking, Mykonos adopted a trajectory retrograde to the orbits of its neighboring Aegean islands, fueled by an unwavering commitment to the benefits of unfettered development and entrepreneurial freedom.  Today, the results of the unquestioned economic success of Mykonos’s retrograde model has driven other islands to alter course, some to follow Mykonos’s lead, others to maintain a tighter fix on their cherished old ways.  As to which course is wiser, that depends on the goal, and what one is willing to endure to attain it.

A retrograde astronomical path

In terms of astrology, even non-believers have likely heard, “Mercury is in retrograde” tossed out as an explanation for why things are going very wrong, be it a business deal, politics, romance, or a broken lawnmower.  For sure, Mykonos has had its share of those moments (with the possible exception of the lawnmower), but just like Mercury, it manages to hang in there until things turn around—with one significant difference: Mercury always returns to the same orbit, Mykonos does not.  Where that might take our island, only time will tell. 

Astrologically speaking...

Now, on to the music.  Bohemian Rhapsody is regarded as one of the greatest rock songs ever, much the same as the rock known as Mykonos is considered in the tourist world. Many have analyzed the meaning of Freddie Mercury’s lyrics, but I tend to go with the description he offered as its composer: It is simply the story of a young man who accidentally kills someone and, like Faust, sells his soul to the devil, but on the eve of his execution calls out, “Bismillah” (“in the name of God” in Arabic) and with the help of angels regains his soul from Shaitan (“the devil” in Arabic).

I can only guess at the plethora of parallels observers of all things Mykonos will find in comparing that “simple” explanation of the meaning of a song with the state of their island.

Just to fuel the buzz, permit me to quote the opening and closing lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. [For those interested in the entire experience, here’s a link to Queen’s official video performance.] 

I think most would agree that the first two lines capture the essence of modern day Mykonos:  

“Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?”

As for its final two lines, they’ll undoubtedly elicit more serious discussion over the state of our Island of the Winds:

“Nothing really matters to me.

Any way the wind blows.”

Thank you, Queen, for giving us all a lot to think about.

—Jeff