* Author : Eleanna Castroianni * Narrator : Alethea Kontis * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Fireside Content warnings for war, imprisonment, and torture Rated PG-13 An Incomplete Account of the Case of the Bird-Talker of Yaros by Eleanna Castroianni     PANAYOTIS M., interviewed by Eleni Haji, November 1975 When I first saw her, she was covered in wings. Sea birds flocked to her as if she was honey and they were the bees. Watching from the men’s prison, we could always tell which was her cell window by the cluster of flapping, squawking gulls. The guards were furious. They would thrash around to drive the birds away or even keep her locked in isolation in windowless rooms. But I know she still spoke to them, all of them. A chirrup here, a cry there. You can’t stop them. Birds carry words, my father used to say. Their wings are speech. “Packages and other mail from relatives are not accepted, given that the inmates are not in need of additional food items or other material.” — Pavlos Totomis, Minister of Public Order, May 9th, 1967 CHRYSSOULA K., diary excerpt April 21st, 1972 Three months in prison; five years of the Colonels’ regime. April 21st is my birthday, you know. Five years ago, on my birthday, we became this unfree country. My father disappeared immediately. Mother was smarter. She knew our family was too political, too vocal, and that she had to look after us. They came one day at the school where she worked and took her. She was tortured for a week in Perissos, yet never revealed our whereabouts. I wasn’t smart like her or like my siblings. I itched to join the anti-Junta action. I was caught along with other students after a failed bombing attempt. We had targeted the foreign cars, the French Embassy. To make them do something. To force them to act and stop looking the other way like nothing’s happening to us. And here I am: earned myself three months and counting in Yaros, the Death Island, on a steady diet of humiliation and deprivation. The food, I can handle. The beatings too. But not the letters. They’re taking our letters. No prison ever was so cruel. “Greece and France have different approaches to Democracy. This, however, is completely irrelevant, because every state is free to govern in different ways. The French government has adopted the principle of not interfering with other countries’ internal affairs.” — French State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, during a visit to Greece, January 27th, 1972 PANAYOTIS M., interviewed by Sotirios Iakovidis, 1986 The island was a place forgotten by the gods: time had stopped, life had stopped. A place where everything was grey and dry. The little we saw of it, you could say it was like every other island, really — rocky, low vegetation, blazing sun. And a smell of death everywhere. It was small — just big enough for a red-bricked prison and little else. Can you imagine a tiny island that has a giant prison on it and nothing else but rocks? It’s like a prison within a prison. The Junta never wanted the outside world to know what they were doing. Many knew, of course. All the world’s elite, the governments, the oligarchs. All these had excellent relations with the Junta — business deals and so forth.