My Greek Odyssey

The Simpleton: A Short Story

2009-11-01T08:12:21-05:00

He was born with what seemed a perpetual smile on his face. His mother, in the throes of a deep depression and premature labor pains brought on by the execution of her husband by the Germans, had cursed God. And God in his wisdom had given her a son who the midwife had immediately understood would be a simpleton, a child that would never be like other children. Some of the villagers whispered it was the sins of the parents being visited on their offspring or was it simply God's way of laying his hand on all those who the life of the infant would touch. Nothing happens without a reason. In her madness and despair she named him Gelasios. Already weakened by hunger and the loss of blood in childbirth, she died two days later. He was given into the hands of a childless widow who loved him and raised him as her own. She had a solitary goat and it was that goat that helped them survive the stone years during and after the Occupation of Greece. Gelasios was the object of many village jokes and in spite of his innocent cheerfulness and genuine attempts to play with the other children, he was never fully accepted. It was just too easy to take advantage of him, naive to a fault, generous without exception. The village schoolteacher tried without success to teach him but gave up after two days, banishing him from school forever. The other children envied him....

At the Movies

2009-10-06T22:37:42-04:00

A nostalgic view of village life from a bygone era. This 1958 production from Finos Films highlights the collision between modernity and tradition in a small Greek village. It is about about the hilarious conflict between the newly arrived village doctor played by Orestes Makris and a savvy midwife, Georgia Vassiliadou. With English sub-titles.

Walking Down the Road

2009-10-04T19:45:41-04:00

For hundreds of years Greek life has been centered around village (horio) culture. During the postwar era, a gradual migration from remote villages to a handful of cities, primarily Athens and Thessaloniki, took place. Even when Greeks moved to a large city like Athens they congregated in neighborhoods that took on almost a village like culture that emphasized sociability and the maintenance of village ties. Village life is often the subject of much nostalgia, especially for those that were raised there as children. To be sure, rural poverty, the lack of opportunities and the periodic upheavals brought by war and occupation, forced many villagers to leave, either migrating to Greek cities or emigrating to foreign lands to find work. Life in the horio or village was characterized to some extent by a lack of cooperation, superstition and competition between families. It was also marked by a sense of solidarity in the face of outside dangers and a common religious and cultural context. Attributes that are very much in evidence on a wider scale in Greece, even today. Most Greeks share a lifelong ambition to build a house in the village of their parents. Many put a great deal of time, effort and money in restoring their ancestral homes. Like migrating birds they return on holidays like Easter, Christmas, the village patron Saint's day, or for weddings, baptisms and funerals. The populations of villages that are normally inhabited by sparse numbers of elderly residents during most of the year, swell instantly...

Refreshing Turkish Memories

2009-09-25T23:39:10-04:00

The very foundation of a civilization which is the heritage of centuries, the property of all mankind, has been gravely attacked. The sacred things of our religion have been defiled, seventy of our churches and houses of worship destroyed and most of them set on fire. Our sacred objects of religion were desecrated, floundered and plundered. The graves of our dead, including those of the Patriarchs were broken open. Newly buried corpses were torn to pieces, the bones of the dead removed from their resting places, scattered around and set on fire. Our clergy men were everywhere persecuted. When found they were manhandled, threatened with killing, and one of them was actually put to death. The immunity of private dwellings was violated, virgins were ravished, and even the sick, old and children were maltreated. All of us, without any defence, spent moments of agony, and in vain sought and waited for protection from those responsible for order and tranquillity. From a letter to Adnan Menderes from Patriarch Athenagoras November 15, 1955 For the Greeks of Constantinople, September is a time of remembrance. It marks the sad anniversary of the 1955 pogrom, an event that my family and I lived through and which changed our lives forever. Things would never be the same. For the few remaining Greeks still living in Turkey, most of them elderly and those of us who now live elsewhere, this month, in particular is a portent of a future in which the more things change, the...

Semper Fi, Nick

2009-09-11T19:17:03-04:00

It was a beautiful day. The kind that makes you happy to be alive. I got up early that Saturday morning, awakened by the birds chirping outside my bedroom window. My wife was still asleep as I crawled quietly out of bed on my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. That done, I got dressed and walked out to the mailbox to collect the mail. It was wrapped up in a copy of the Hellenic Voice newspaper. I walked back to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, grabbed the paper and went out to the porch to sit on a rocking chair. As I opened the paper my eyes fell on the front page photo of a young Marine. I didn't know this young man however I had seen that familiar youthful countenance and the steely determined look before. It reminded me of the faces of hundreds of Marines I had known in the course of my twenty two year career in the Corps. Cpl. Nick Xiarhos, U.S. Marine Corps, had been killed in action in Afghanistan. As a father, I thought about the inconsolable grief of his parents. I thought about my own sons and about the sons we have lost and the sons we will lose. I remembered also the palpable gut-wrenching fear one feels in combat and the struggle to overcome that fear. To do your duty and above all not let down those by your side. I wondered about...

Say My Name by Dean Kalimniou

2009-09-07T11:30:09-04:00

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names,” Chinese Proverb. Modern Greeks don’t generally hold Northern Epirotes in high esteem. They tend to equate them to Albanians, a people generally considered as culturally inferior in the common consciousness. This particular trait of self-loathing is nothing new by the way. When the Asia Minor refugees arrived in Greece, expecting to find a safe haven from persecution and intolerance, they too were segregated, isolated, and made subjects of derision. The irony is greater however, in the case of the Northern Epirotes, because their ancestor’s endeavours and bequests are responsible for the construction of most of the landmarks of Athens and the foundation of some of its most enduring educational and financial institutions. Having endured some of the harshest forms persecution for approximately seventy years, which they did stoically, their eyes forever fixed upon Greece as a symbol of hope, Northern Epirotes generally find that apathy at best is their compatriots’ response to their plight. Sometimes, that apathy inexplicably turns into hostility, as is the sorry case among some insular Epirot groups here in Melbourne, unaffiliated to the Panepriotic Federation of Australia, and as was recently attested to in a bizarre incident in Canberra where a representative of a Sydney Epirot group purported to tear up Australian Hellenic Council submissions to Parliament on the subject of human rights for Northern Epirotes, claiming that “there is no issue,” and implying that he had been asked by ‘higher Hellenic powers,” to...

The Enemy Within: An Interview with Elder Dionysios

2009-09-06T13:20:57-04:00

Source: What is Enlightenment Magazine Photo by Douglas Demetrios LyttleWIE: What is the ego? ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: When Satan, who was the first and highest angel, looked away from God and turned his attention to himself, there we had the first seed of ego. He took his spiritual eyes from the view of the Holy Trinity, the view of the Lord, and he looked at himself and started to think about himself. And he said, "I want to put my throne in the highest place, and to be like Him." That moment started the history, the reality and the existence of ego—which is not in fact a reality, but the refusal of reality. Ego is the flower that comes out from the death of love. When we kill love, the result is the ego. WIE: What is the character of the ego? How does it manifest within a human being? AD: When we don't trust. Ego is born when we don't trust others. When we're afraid of others, when we need guns against others, then we need to have an ego because we are in the wrong way of life. We think only of ourselves, and we see only our ego. But when we see each other, when we trust each other, there is no need for ego, no reason for ego, no possibility for ego. WIE: So in the way you're speaking about it then, ego is the insistence on our separation, our independence? AD: Yes, on our solitude. Our...

Turkish Friendship

2009-08-23T13:02:49-04:00

I am always surprised that MGO is visited and read by a significant number of Turkish readers who either live in Turkey or elsewhere. At times, they outnumber my readers who live in Greece. Occasionally, they leave comments and although they are uniformly polite and most embrace some sort of Greek-Turkish friendship, they often espouse views that I think are indicative of the deep divide between Greeks and Turks. Almost two years ago I wrote a post which still seems to engender the periodic comment. Hande recently made the following comment which is typical of the feedback I receive: "History, history, history...Keeps repeating all the time. I dont really understand what is the importance to keep bring up this subject and be stuck on the past? And pointing in one way or another who did what, who is guilty? Where is this going to lead anyway?........Turks don't hate Greeks! Like Greeks have been thinking all these years about Turks. But ironically its actually more the Greeks who still hate the Turks because of history/politics. Greece and Cyprus don't even come close to seeking a peace with Turkey because they are not willing to let go of the past and to get rid of this hate. As long as the hate and the hostility remain inside it will be impossible to find the peace and the future can't get better. It's really, really sad why it just can't be like in the old times, when we lived side by side as...

The Cretan Runner

2009-08-13T21:18:25-04:00

George Psychoundakis died on the 29 January, 2006, at Canea. He was best known for his extraordinary account of clandestine life in the Resistance after the German occupation of his island in 1941; the book was translated into English by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, and enjoyed success in Britain as The Cretan Runner. His obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 18 February 2006: "George Psychoundakis was born on November 3 1920 at the village of Asi Gonia, perched high in a mountain pass in central Crete. "Asi" means "unconquerable" in Arabic, and was bestowed by one of a long list of invaders that left their mark on his island. He was the eldest of four children, born to a family whose only possessions were a single-room house with a earthen floor, a few sheep and goats. Education at the village school was basic; but unlike most of his fellows George learnt to write as well as read, and gleaned what learning he could from books lent by the schoolteacher and the village priest. When the German invasion of Crete began, he was 21, a light , wiry, elfin figure who could move among the mountains with speed and agility. While the Germans imposed their rule with the utmost brutality, Psychoundakis was among the many who guided straggling Allied soldiers over the mountains to the south coast, from where they could be evacuated. As the Resistance grew more organised, Psychoundakis became a runner, carrying messages, wireless sets, batteries and weapons...

The March to the Front by Odysseas Elytis

2009-08-02T20:38:31-04:00

The Axion Esti (Worthy Be) published in 1959, after a long silence, is one of Nobel Laureate Odysseas Elytis greatest works. It was set to music by Mikis Theodorakis in 1964 and became so popular that every Greek can sing some of its words. You can listen and download some of the music from the panel in the right margin. I'll post at least two or three more excerpts in the coming weeks. Download 2-03 Η Πορεία Προς Το Μέτωπο 1 Translated by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris from the Collected Poems of Odysseas Elytis, revised and expanded edition At dawn on St John's Day, the day after Epiphany, we received the order to move up to the places where there were no weekdays or Sundays. We had to take over the lines, held until then by the men from Arta, which extended from Heimarra to Tepeleni, because they had been fighting without a break right from the start and only half of them were left and they couldn't bear any more. We had already spent twelves days in the villages behind the lines. And as ours ears again became accustomed to the sweet rustlings of the earth, and timidly we gave ear to the barking of the dogs, or to the sound of distant church bells, it was then we had to return to the only din we knew: slow and heavy from the cannons, dry and quick from the machineguns. Night after night, we marched without stopping, one...

The Nobility of Failure

2009-07-31T23:59:26-04:00

Growing up in Greek America, all the Greek grown-ups in my life, struggling immigrants like my parents, seemed to my childish eyes, like part of one big extended family. No wonder I bestowed the honorary appellation of "Thio" or "Thia" (Uncle and Aunt) on all of them whether or not they happened to share any familial connection to me. They seemed so much like my own parents, in countless ways, that there was no denying some sort of mystical, unbreakable linkage existed between us. After all they reveled in doing things that appeared so strange to normal people. Normal people didn't stare at the sediment in an empty demitasse cup of Turkish coffee trying to divine the future. They didn't carry lighted candles home from the midnight Resurrection service to burn the sign of the Cross above the doorway of their front door. You never heard our American neighbors singing nostalgic off key songs about faraway little villages with unpaved streets and barefoot children. Normal people didn't do that sort of thing, only Greek immigrants like my parents and their gaggle of like-minded countrymen, far from home. Families, when they weren't going to school or work or church, were going to each other's homes where the women competed to see who could cook more food and the men competed to see who could tell the tallest stories. These gatherings were vociferous to say the least, punctuated by the incessant chatter of men, women and children. The aromas and the sounds...

The Greek Madness

2009-07-18T10:58:23-04:00

By Katherine Kizilos "Many orderly and predictable events take place in Greece. The new underground rail system in Athens, for example, is handsome, well-designed and a model of efficiency. All around the country, bread rises and is baked in thousands of reliable bakeries. Well-dressed children go to school and do their homework and play soccer in the park when siesta time is over. Church bells ring on name days and everybody visits their parents at Easter. In many ways, Greece is still a traditional society, which means a Greek is more likely to follow custom and convention than an Australian - because here it is easier for a person to cut loose and declare themselves free of all ties than it is in Greece. For all that, the Greek reputation for madness is not unfounded. Public drunkenness is rare, but it is not unusual for people to yell at each other in the street (and then, perhaps, to embrace), to push in, to smoke too much, to become argumentative, or to buy you, a perfect stranger, a meal for no reason except that they like the look of you and why should you be sitting there all alone on such a beautiful evening? If the ability to strike up a spontaneous friendship is a sign of madness, then the Greeks are barking. Greeks can also be exasperating, particularly in banks and government offices. As a rule (with honourable exceptions) the melancholy facts of bureaucracy and paperwork do not bring out...

Another Year, Another Greek Festival

2009-07-16T22:56:26-04:00

Every July our small parish along the Maine coast holds its annual Greek Heritage Festival. Events of this type are standard fare throughout Greek America, serving a dual role. On the one hand, helping to fund in part, the pressing financial requirements of sustaining a viable church community and on the other, showcasing its religious and cultural roots. This year, like years past, I have had a ringside seat watching the substantial efforts of the members of this small but dynamic community of two hundred or so families. Our church community, named after its patron Saint, St. Demetrios, is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary. It was first founded in 1909 by the first Greek immigrant settlers to what was then a thriving industrial center in a mostly rural state of fisherman, farmers and lumberjacks. The changes since then have been deep seated and widespread yet the area retains its small town roots and traditional character in many respects. Like an island of calm in a tumultuous sea, our community has weathered the history of the twentieth century and the tectonic changes of the twenty first. Anyone who has ever been involved in the effort that goes into one of these festivals knows full well the incredible amount of planning, organization and downright hard back-breaking work that is required to achieve even a modicum of success. The women of our community start baking months before it takes place and they produce tray upon tray of all manner of delicious Greek pastries....

Independence Day - God Bless the USA

2009-07-04T12:41:05-04:00

Years of Stone

2009-06-30T17:42:27-04:00

Voice: Stelios Kazantzidis Lyrics: Stamati Spanoudakis Clarinet: Vasilis Saleas Translation: Stavros Σκληροί καιρόι μες την φωτιά εφτά καημοί πληγές εφτά Και γω κρατώ κλαδί ελιάς και συ να κλαίς σαν με κοιτάς Ελλάδα στους ώμους την γή κουβαλάς εσύ που χάραξες τους δρόμους την φωνή σου να βρείς ζητάς Σαν μια γιορτή απ ' τα παλιά χρυσή εποχή θα ρθείς ξανά Ελλάδα στους ώμους την γή κουβαλάς εσύ που χάραξες τους δρόμους την φωνή σου να βρείς ζητάς * * * Hard times in the inferno seven yearnings, seven wounds I hold an olive branch and you cry watching me Greece carried the world on her shoulders opening up new ways Now she seeks to find her voice As a celebration of the past a golden age will come again Greece carried the world on her shoulders opening up new ways Now she seeks to find her voice Years of Stone. Hard times. As I see and read about what is going around me these days I cannot help but regard the era we live in as barren and devoid of hope for the future. My fellow bloggers at LandOfMiracles and Hellenic Antidote chronicle the steady stream of bad news from the Hellenic world. While I bear silent witness to what seems to me to be the unremitting decline of my own country. To be sure our generation has not been the first nor will it be the last to experience hard times. Our ancestors were tested in the crucible...