'What's happened to Armàki?' There used to be a huge lone pine on the slope where Miha sets up his first summer sheepfold. It is all split and scorched.

'The Albanians burnt it,' he says.

We are driving along the top of the Grèklu ridge above Samarìna, Greece's highest village. A flock of sheep slides over the bare ground. The turf, unable to renew itself for want of rain, has begun to break up under daily nibbling and the scurrying of so many sharp feet. We park the pick-up on a knoll overlooking the upper edge of the forest. It looks like a Marlboro advert, its chunky profile silhouetted against the sky. I take the food. Miha brings his World War Two German rifle. It's an illegal weapon, but then most of what Miha does is at the limit of what is legal: a legacy of the old mountain traditions of brigandage and independence.

LRB 21 June 2001 | PDF Download