Once upon a time, in the village of Petalidi, there lived a man named Thanasis. Around 1930, this man decided, together with his brother, to open the village’s very first mini market. Of course, a mini market in the 1930s would have looked nothing like the ones we know today in 2025. After all how many mini markets nowadays have their own pier leading straight into the sea? At this little store, the villagers could find everything from dried figs and raisins to screws for technical repairs. Almost every day, fishing boats would gather at the end of the pier, waiting for the wagon to arrive and unload crates of figs and raisins. Even today, the wooden doors opposite the old pier stand as silent witnesses to the wagon’s daily route. That pier was built four generations ago, and the man who built it just so happens to be my great-grandfather. According to family stories, he was captured during World War II and was never seen again. And that’s when I find myself wondering: what is the true value of those stones from that long-forgotten pier? This question leads me to a thought: People disappear, but stones even worn down by time carry the power to bring back the traces and stories of those who came before us. If those stones also happen to hold archaeological significance, perhaps they deserve even greater admiration and care from us. Even so, it’s always our choice which things we decide to seal into memory and which we choose to forget.

Gabriella Margeli