The mind embraced Crete tenderly.

He loved it like a living thing, warm, with a mouth that shouted, and eyes that cried, and it wasn't made of stones and dirt and tree roots, but of thousands and thousands of grandfathers and mothers, who never die, but live and gather every Sunday in the churches and get wild every now and then, unfurling a majestic flag from the graves and taking to the mountains.

And on this flag, the immortal mothers, with their crow-black and gray and snow-white hair, have embroidered their three immortal words: Freedom or Death.

For a moment, his lips, his eyebrows, his eyes played, he looked around at his comrades, down at Turkey, up at the uninhabited sky... "Freedom or Death!" he murmured, shaking his head fiercely. "Freedom or Death, you poor Cretans! Freedom and Death! That's what I must write in my notebook; that's the true notebook of every fighter! Freedom a n d Death!"