Karutious

Day fifty-two, Greece. On the beach at Fanari I meet Karutious. I am looking at the sea. He simply starts talking to me.

„I have multiple sclerosis,“ he says, and moves back and forth in front of me while he tells me things. Walking is not easy for him; his balance is gone. He shows me the scars. He has been operated on more than once.

He describes what he can no longer do with a cheerfulness that catches me off guard. He is president of an organisation for people with physical disabilities, the Somatio Amere Rodopis. A good deal of what he says gets lost between our languages. What comes across without any trouble is that he treats every day as though it were the last one on offer.

He comes to this beach daily to snorkel, and films the world under the surface with his phone.

„On land I'm clumsy. In the water I'm free as a bird,“ he says. On land his spine has work to do. Swimming, it weighs nothing.

A minute before he arrived, I had been staring out to sea in a heavy mood, going round and round my own small problems.

Then a complete stranger walks up and shows me what I have been carrying around without noticing that it works.