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Written on the back of this work is: “Some years ago I was tracing ageing storytellers in the Aegean islands. I came across this 90-year-old woman in Karpathos, one of the remotest and most pristine places in the country. She welcomed me into her modest abode with immense generosity and trust. Among her few belongings, there was this bird; a toy that someone had left there. It stuck out, as it was perhaps the only thing that didn’t have some very specific use, so I asked her. Her eyes lit with joy. She asked me to follow her outside, to show me all the things her bird could do in plain daylight. And there she stood, on the little terrace overlooking the vast sea, playing with her bird as innocent and blissful as a small child.” — Nikos Economopoulos