28 February 2009
Saturday

These are the final days before Katheri Deutera (Clean Monday) and the beginning of Lent, when Orthodox Christians experience the full richness of their faith and traditions. But for the coming weekend, at least, all the stops are pulled—eating, drinking, dancing, laughing, carousing. We look forward to taking part in this last hurrah before the time of fasting, contrition, and self-evaluation.

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Our seven-year-old daughter Evyenia has lost two teeth since arriving in Finikounda. No, she has not been kicked by a yaidouri (donkey) but instead, like her father who turns fifty in the next week, her body and soul are in a state of transition.

The first words from her mouth this morning: “I want to ask Keria Irini if I can throw my tooth on her roof.” Last week when she inquired of our friend Niko whether there was a tooth fairy in Greece, he recounted the local custom: the children throw their lost teeth on the household roof. Everyone expected a highly charged symbolic explanation for this act. “I have no idea why we do this,” he answered, much to our dismay.

“But what if the cats swallow my tooth?” Nia asked.

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Last night, in the early evening and before a brilliant sunset, Jonathan set off for a run with Manny. We ran on the old road toward Kamaria, stopping at the olive orchard that our American friends bought last year, climbing to the highest point with the broad view southwest toward the open ocean. We witnessed the purple sillouettes of Schiza and Sapientza, the setting sun, the twinkling bonfires of olive branch prunings along the hillsides toward Methoni.

Manny and Jonathan ran through the back streets of town and climbed the narrow village path to the old church, which features some of the most expressive sunsets anywhere. When we returned home Lucia met us at the door, dressed to run—now it was her turn.

Lucia and Jonathan ran in the opposite direction toward the village school. Earlier in the day, Ann took the children there while Jonathan worked. At the school they met several parents and a teacher. They were welcomed to return on Tuesday--schools in Greece are closed on Clean Monday, which is a national holiday—to discuss the prospect of enrolling Lucia and Evyenia for the morning session. Ann learned that many of the students there, the sons and daughters of Albanians, Bulgarians, and a smattering of western Europeans, cannot speak any Greek. So they will not be alone in their efforts to learn the language from square one.

Lucia, for her part, has taken genuine inititative in learning Greek, asking for names of foods and of things in nature and on the farmsteads, and is gradually cobbling together polite phrases. Inspired by her efforts, Manny and Evyenia are applying themselves toward a similar end. Evyenia has mastered the panoply of confections; Manny is now sufficiently skilled to hurl insults at the soccer referee on television.

Vaso, the daughter of the butcher Dimitri, has offered to take on Ann and the children in Greek language instruction.

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Jonathan phoned the U.S. Embassy in Athens yesterday morning and explained his predicament. He spoke with a woman who suggested that he pursue dual citizenship—a long-term goal postponed owing to the military requirement of all males citizens who are under the age of fifty. The U.S. government accepts dual citizenship for several dozen countries, with no negative consequence for one’s U.S. citizenship. There are a variety of benefits associated with European citizenship: an ability to work and travel freely; attend university; and reside in any EU nation without restriction. These benefits would extend to the children and to Ann.

But like everything else in Greece, the citizen process requires a small mountain of documentation: grandfather’s birth certificate, father’s birth certificate, grandparents’ and parents’ birth certificate, all of which establishes a “tree of lineage,” to use the consular official’s phrase.

The process will begin with a visit to the police station at Pylos, a medium-sized town located by the sea and about 20 kilometers distant. This is the place referred by Homer in the Iliad as “Nestor’s sandy Pylos.” The modern town is a warren of narrow streets and brightly tiled homes washed by a cobalt sea and the strengthening spring sun.

In Greece, the police station serves as aliens bureau of first resort, a place where foreigners begin the visa process. Jonathan was advised to say that he is of Greek descent and is in the process of “registering” his (now deceased) father as a citizen in order to obtain citizenship for himself—and, in the meantime, needs a three-month extension on his visa. He was told to expect the usual bureaucratic resistance but to remain steely in his determination. In the meantime, Jonathan has sent a desperate message to his loving sister in Viriginia…to please try her best to cobble together the missing documents and send them here forthwith.

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Dinner at Dimitri’s House

We decided to splurge last night and go out for pizza at a back-alley restaurant called La Foca, but before we could gather ourselves our friend Dimitri the butcher phoned to ask if we would like to come to his house to “drink some wine.” Dimitri had told us about his oikopetho (property), which includes, in addition to his hillside home, a grape vineyard, olive orchard, citrus grove, and large family garden. “But how will the five of us fit into the car,” Jonathan inquired. “There is plenty of room!” he replied with a suspicious laugh.

Dimitri arrived in a relic of a Fiat 127, larger than an Austin Mini but smaller than a Ford Pinto. The five of us squeezed in. Jonathan shut the back door on his family, a process that reminded him of the last stage in the canning process for herring. Thankfully the journey lasted only a few minutes, climbing on the road toward the village of Lahanada.

Although it was difficult to see much of his farmsted in the darkness, the house was a lovely two-story, whitewashed structure with a large veranda with several archways that looked down on Finikounda harbor. His wife, Yiorgia, and his son Christo and daughter Vaso met us the entryway—with a hearty welcome that included kisses on both cheeks.

We retired into a large saloni (salon or living room), where a fireplace crackled and broadcast a warm, orange and yellow glow from the burning pieces of olive wood. Dimitri emerged with a galoni (eight-liter bottle) of the clearest, rose-colored wine, his own creation. “I only produce about 400 kilos of wine each year, but it is enough for our family.” In Greece, wine has been a mainstay for more than four thousand years. Traditionally, wine is a beverage that is consumed with meals—and the large table setting offered the promise of extensive hospitality. Reckless drinking and drunkeness is frowned upon in village society—at least this is not the object, although occasionally the obvious consequence. Rather, wine is consumed as part of the social fabric of daily life, and even young children are allowed a small glass of this Dionsyian elixir.

The conversation began with the poor state of the educational system in Greece, which is terribly broken, uniquely unfair, and often counterproductive. Dimitri and Yiorgia’s son Christo and daughter Vaso (both young teachers, a gymnastiko—gym teacher—and classroom teacher, respectively) took turns, speaking in both Greek and English, explaining just how bad the situation has become.

Christo: “In a single generation, Greece has gone from the healthiest nation in Europe to one with rampant obesity in children. We are now almost as bad as the Americans, who lead the world in obesity. Cholesterol has become a problem with children as young as ten. And, of course, smoking has reached epidemic proportions.” Christo told us that in the gymnasio (high school) and and lyceio (lyceum, the last two years of high school) the children receive just one hour per week of gymnastiko (gym class). “Everything is geared toward the final exams of lyceum, beginning in the first grade. Children begin to study multiple foreign languages at a very young age, and parents are nearly bankrupted by the need to send their children to frontistiria [after-school tutorials] in foreign language, mathematics, literature, etc. It costs nearly one thousand euros per month for parents to send a single child to frontistiria. Without such additional education, the child will score poorly on the final exams when they are seventeen. A child’s entire future hinges on one single exam—if you score poorly for whatever reason (say, if you are sick or there is a crisis in your family, or even if you didn’t sleep well the night before) you do not progress to university and the future of your life is determined. And even if you do score well, there are only a few positions in the various schools—law school, engineering school, and so on. Now I am applying for one of forty-eight positions, and there are 4,800 applicants, many of whom are older and more experienced than I am. It is basically unfair and tortuous. Both for the young people and for their parents, especially for poor, rural families.”

Vaso: “I speak five languages and have a college degree. I have studied in Kototini (her mother’s home in Thessaly, in far northern Greece) and in Spain. Still I can only find work teaching in the afternoons. So, like all other teachers in Greece, I work as a tutor after school at a frontistiria. Some of the very successful frontistiria, like those in Kalamata, charge the students (that is, their parents) seventy-five euros per hour. Who can afford this is rural Greece? But somehow the parents find a way—and sometimes, in the end, to no avail.”

Yiorgia, the mother, told us of her life in Komotini in northeastern Thessaly, a hinterland rarely visited by tourists. It is a rich agricultural area and, unlike the rest of Greece—which features a generally rocky and unfertile landscape—Thessaly is a broad, fertile, alluvial plain. It is famous for growing wheat and other cereal crops, and for some of the finest tobacco in all the Balkans. Thessaly remained part of the receeding Ottoman Empire until the time of Balkan Wars (1912–1913), when it became part of the young Greek state. Jonathan’s grandfather returned to Greece from Brooklyn, with a twin brother, to fight the Turks. His twin brother was decapitated by sword, fighting in battle beside him. It was a story that papou (grandfather) Aretakis never let his children and grandchildren forget.

Today, Komotini and another large nearby city, Xanthi, is 60 to 70 percent Turkish. Both Christo and Vaso studied there, near their mother’s family. “My father was once a rich man, with over 120 stremata [a large holding in Greece; one strema equals about 0.25 acres] but now he receives only a fraction of what he once earned for the wheat that he grows. Agriculture in Greece has suffered terribly in recent years. And our Turkish neighbors, with whom we have always gotten along, are being transformed in outlook because of the efforts by the new [non-secular] Turkish government. Women are now almost always veiled; girls are married at fifteen; men are prohibited from entering the homes of Turkish families with daughters, a mistake that I made with Dimitri many years ago. The houses are intentionally windowless, so that women cannot look out and outsiders cannot look in. There are only a few windows facing the inside courtyards. There are Turkish cafes and Greek cafes, and now there is less mixing of these two peoples than ever before.”

Vaso adds: “The Turks are treated very well by the Greek government; the same cannot be said of the few Greeks who remain in Turkey.” After the First World War, there was a forced exchange of populations—Greeks who had lived for several millennia in Asia Minor were forcibly “repatriated” to Greece in 1921–1923; many fewer Turks were repratriated to Turkey, hence the large Turkish population in Thessaly. “Many of the Turks there, even after many hundreds of years, do not speak Greek. But the Greek government provides a quota system for Turkish students who wish to attend Greek university. In the final exams, you can score between 10 and 20. A score of 17 or 18 or higher almost guarantees entry to university. But if you are Turkish and score 12, you can be admitted into medical school. It is unfair.”

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The Dinner Table and Conversation

We moved to the kitchen and squeezed around the kitchen table. The foods included roasted rooster (“these are our birds,” Dimitri prouded added), bifteki (seasoned hamburger), pieces of homemade feta cheese, macaroni, rice pilaf, and some curious items. For one, there was a bowl of boiled volvos, the onion-like bulbs of a purple wildflower, pickled in warm vinegar and olive oil. Evyenia tried one—she winced and swallowed and said “einai poli nostimo” (“it is very delicious”). Only a child’s father or mother can tell a white lie.

The eating and drinking began at 8 o’clock and continued until just after midnight. At around 10 p.m. were joined by Dimitri’s friend Alexis, a civil enginner from Methoni, and his son Panayioti. They arrived carrying two large boxes of sweets from the local zaharoplasteia, which we started eating just before midnight. After this we were served kiwi fruit (which is grown in northern Greece), pickled lemon peel, and pickled parsimmon.

Dimitri and his friend Alexis began talking about history. Everyone in this area is an armchair historian, and the breadth of their knowledge is remarkable—from Homer to World War II, the conversation ebbed and flowed, sometimes heated with disagreement but always friendly and respectful. The period of Venetian control is discussed as if it occurred yesterday; as are the horrors of the Turkish period. Both men described the fall of Methoni. The Turks built a pyramid of thousands of decapitated heads, three stories high, and then set it afire. This history has been recounted in the journals of several Western travelers who were fortunate enough to escape this fate.

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Dimitri promised Jonathan that we could all travel together to nearby (60 km distant) ancient Messene, a tremendous and well-preserved city-state that was finally abandoned after 600 years in the face of the Germanic invasions of the fourth century ce. It was buried by the flooding river silt and forgotten to history, and has only been recently rediscovered by an eminent Greek archaeologist, about whom Dimitri spoke favorably. “The site has no money and only a small museum, but there are more treasures there than anywhere else in Greece. The stadium even has the original seating numbers, very clearly inscribed. And there is a wealth of perfectly preserved marble statuary—so much more than the museum can accommodate.”

Dimitri, on Jonathan’s urging, also suggested a trip to Messenia’s Mount Ithone, to tour the sanctuary of Zeus.

Vaso appeared from the second floor just after midnight, dressed in her finest “Friday night on the town” clothes. She and her brother Christo were setting off to meet friends at 2 a.m. in Pylos. Christo said: “It is crazy here Greece. We usually do not go out for dinner until midnight; and then we meet our friends at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning for drinks and sweets. It is usually 5 or 6 o’clock when we return home. This is why a siesta in the afternoon is so helpful.”

Dimitri brought us back to Finikounda at 1 a.m, fully satiated and quite tired.

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Jonathan visited Niko the poet for coffee at mesimeri (midday) while Ann and the children played on the town beach. Niko read his latest work, a free-verse creation on the subject off horses. The two collaborated on an English translation over several cups of espresso.

Later in the afternoon Jonathan met up with the family on the beach, and then the five of us found an open taverna, where we shared a large plate of freshly caught kalimari (deep-fried squid), fried potatoes, shredded cabbage salad, fresh bread, and tzatziki (yogurt, garlic, olive oil, and cucumber). Yumm! We played guitar on the beach and flew our kite, while the girls ran through the surf—to the utter amazement of the locals, who are still bundled in their winter coats.

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