Running with Pirates

When he was 18, Kári Gíslason decided to head off overseas from his home in Brisbane, in part to reconnect with his father in Iceland. His father had an affair with his mother when she was living in Iceland. Married with a family, his father wouldn’t or couldn’t acknowledge his relationship with Kári. Hoping that due to the passage of time his father might at last acknowledge him, Gíslason made the trip. The meeting didn’t go well. Shortly after, he met and joined forces with Paul, another lost boy, and together they decided to travel across Europe from the Scottish Highlands.

A few months later they land penniless, far from Paul’s hometown of Glasgow and even further from Gíslason’s, in Corfu. It’s the middle of summer and the Mediterranean and the whitewashed houses shimmer in the sunlight. Through the kindness of strangers, they are introduced to a taverna owner known as ‘the Pirate’, who takes them under his wing and calls them ‘my boys’.

The Pirate gets them jobs, gives them food and accommodation, draws them into his web and proposes that they sail with him to Brazil on some mysterious mission. As winter approaches, jobs dry up and the boys become more dependent on the Pirate. Gíslason becomes uneasy and determines that they must leave. He returns to Australia, begins a career and has a family, but his time with the Pirate weighs on him and in particular the debt he owes him. While contemplating his father’s rejection of him and his former dependence on the Pirate, Gíslason’s reflections turn to his own experience of fatherhood and to his relationship with his sons, creating a desire to share Corfu with them. This a joyous, tender reflection on the freedom of youth, on fatherhood, and the beauty of Corfu.