The mind embraced Crete tenderly.
He loved her like a living thing, warm, with a mouth that shouted and eyes that cried, and she was not made of stones and earth and tree roots, but of thousands and thousands of grandfathers and mothers, who never die, but live and gather every Sunday in churches and occasionally go wild, unfurling a magnificent flag from the graves and taking to the mountains.

And on this flag, the immortal mothers, bent over for years, have embroidered with their raven-black and gray and snow-white hair the 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 diary; that's the true diary of every fighter! Freedom a n d death!"