Salt. I lived for two years on an island called Alonissos, in the Northern Sporades. Eleven years before I went to live there it had been struck by an earthquake. The father of the local doctor lived in a house in the old village in the centre of the island. He rushed to fill a bucket with water, and then made marks on the sides of the bucket as the water moved inside it to demonstrate the force of the earth movement. The reason I mention Alonissos is that it is named for its openness to the salt water.
