It was not on the water’s edge, beside the shimmering sea, where most outdoor cafes on the Greek Islands were located, where tourists and islanders sat at small tables for hours, day and night, on rickety white wooden chairs sipping bitter black coffee, retsina, or small glasses of red wine, practicing the fine art of café-sitting-by-the-sea, Greek style.

But if you remember scenes from “Zorba the Greek,” if you have ever spent time on Hydra, Mykonos, or Corfu…it was something like that. Or like anything you had every imagined living in a small white village on a Greek island surrounded by the blue Mediterranean might be like.

No, the Old Men’s Cafe was set far back in the village of Lindos, on the island of Rhodes, some distance from the sea. You made your way back to it, climbing slightly through a medieval labyrinth of twisting narrow streets made of sea pebbles, sometimes in sun, sometimes in shade, past all the while buildings of the village, past the grocer, the baker, the taverna, the orthodox church, the children playing in the courtyards, the old women, dressed in black, sitting on the stoops of their houses, chattering like large crows.

The sea was far behind you know, the tiny acropolis of Rhodos high above, when suddenly the cobblestone pathway opened to a small dirt clearing of scattered houses and fields, where in the bright, lemon-white afternoon sun sat a small house with a terrace of three or four tables shaded by a grape arbor. The Old Men’s Café.

I would come here alone almost every afternoon, carrying a small spiral notebook, a dated copy of the International Herald Tribune, and a book or two --probably Lawrence Durrell’s REFLECTIONS ON A MARINE VENUS and Henry Miller’s COLLUSUS OF MARROUSI, two books, two writers, who lived in Greece and caught the truth of earth, air, fire and water, passionately in their own words.

There would always be one or two old men sitting at the tables, sipping coffee, smoking, starring into space. Waiting their final years out amidst the eternal life of purple grapes, red geraniums, and the sky-blue sea. Burly Mediterranean types with long, gray mustaches, sometimes bent over a game of backgammon in a silence, almost prayerful. Even the dice were hushed.

Mostly it was always quiet. Mostly it was serene. On windy days, you could almost hear the surrounding sea or picture it bearing you.

The owner, in white apron, would bring me a tiny cup of strong, sweet coffee…I would remove one perfectly oval Turkish cigarette, light it with a wooden match, inhale deeply, exhale everything that did not fit into the tranquility of the moment…take a sip of coffee…feel the fine grounds upon my lips and tongue…and when the sun erupted upon the white village walls in blinding light, when the subtlest shadows began to descend upon the roofs of the old, old houses teetering toward the sea, I would slowly open my notebook, and continue to record the writer’s dream. At home. In place.

This was many years ago. On an island very far away. But in times of tumult, wherever I was in the world, I would often return there, to the Old Men’s Café.

I still do.