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| Around the corner--and down the mountain |
Καλο μήνα / Kalo Mena
Today is the first of June. The
traditional greeting—καλο
μηνα, kalo
mena—is heard throughout Greece. It means, more or less, “I wish you a good
month.” The Greek language is full of such pleasantries and phraseologies. In a few days Greece will celebrate Αγιο Πνευμα / Aghio Pneuma (the Holy Spirit), know in the West as Pentacost--fifty days since Easter.
When I drove to Kalamata on Tuesday, to visit my friends Akis and Niko, I asked several local people the question, “How long does it take to drive to Kalamata?” The best answer went like this: “If you’re Greek, about 45 minutes. If you’re anyone else, plan on an hour.”
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| Pylos, inner harbor |
Driving anywhere in Greece is a
horror show. For other activities, Greeks drag their proverbial feet. This
includes, especially, government officials, but also ordinary people: no one is
in a particular hurry. A planned meeting at 7 p.m. becomes 9 p.m., out of
principle. It is Greek time.
But not while driving. Everyone, men and women, are entrants in the national rally. The thought of following another vehicle—especially at a reasonable distance—is utterly anathema to Greek culture. You have an imperative to always pass the vehicle in front of you.
And so Greece, like the other Balkan states, has among the highest fatality rates among motorists in Europe. People pass lines of cars and trucks on two-lane roads with reckless abandon, with no particular regard for their own life or that of other motorists (or pedestrians, who enjoy no such thing as that quaint “right of way”).
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| Pylos dimarchos (town hall) |
It is hard not to get swept up in
the rally. I keep reminding myself to remain vigilant, defensive, and most of all--alive.
On my return from Kalamata,
nearly at dusk and on a damp, meandering road without guardrails—which is alarming enough—I was following a line of a half dozen cars just outside the seaside town of Petalidi, about halfway home. Suddenly, a shiny black Mercedes Kompressor 300
appeared in my rearview mirror, approaching at about 140 kilometers per hour.
(The speed limit, an irrelevant bit of signage in Greece, read 60 kph.) I
braced for a terrible impact. At the last moment, the driver swerved around me,
passed all six vehicles, on a blind corner, and nearly struck an oncoming panel
truck approaching in the opposite direction—forcing said truck into the ditch.
A kilometer down the road,
traffic was stopped for a cement mixer in the middle of the road. But the Mercedes
had also stopped on the roadside, so the passenger could step out and buy a
pack of cigarettes at a kiosk.
This offered me a singular opportunity
to use every Greek swear word at my disposal, plus that distinctively American
gesture, a sort of greeting, now a universalized expression of disdain. I stopped a few inches from
the driver’s door (so he couldn’t possibly open it), rolled down my window,
leaned on my horn to get the driver’s attention—some rich kid wearing fancy
sunglasses—and totally unloaded on him: hands, mouth, and every fulmination at
my disposal. I was waiting for him to get out of the car. He pretended I wasn’t
there. Just as well for him and for me.
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| Eat to run, run to eat |
As a rule, I am nonconfrontational.
I constantly remind myself that self-preservation is my primary task while driving in
Greece, not getting into fist-fights over some idiot’s reckless behavior. I
shut the window and carried on over the mountain back home.
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Gypsies, Greeks, and the Dao
Today I learned that Gypsies
(Roma), who can be Muslim, Christian, or non-denominational, have a patron
saint: St. George, a decidedly Orthodox Christian saint. This curious fact points
to a kind of syncretism in religion in the eastern Mediterranean that extends
back thousands of years. Muslims can venerate Christian saints (though the opposite
seems not to be the case). Shrines in the Middle East, built in antiquity to honor the
Egyptian goddess Isis, for example, became shrines to the Virgin Mary with the coming of
Christendom. But such shrines were also places of pilgrimage for Muslims,
during that faith’s early years. Something was lost the People of the Book, a commonality, maybe a mutual tolerance and respect.
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| Anemomilos beach--Finikounda |
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| Fini harbor |
I have also learned more about “Greek
Buddhism,” too, which dates back to time of Alexander the Great’s conquests in the East—as
far as Afghanistan and modern India. Greeks in Japan were said to have impacted
the formation of the Dao, in an even earlier type of religious syncretism,
wherein the teachings of Plato and the pre-Platonic philosophers greatly influenced
the formation of Buddhism's teachings. I find all of this to be so
fascinating and worthy of some additional personal research. In lieu of making
a living?
A Cretan Village in the Peloponnese
My forefathers from the island of
Crete suffered more (and longer) under Turkish Ottoman rule than almost
anywhere in the Mediterranean world. In fact, my Cretan grandparents, who
were born in the early 1890s, were born as subjects of the Ottoman Sultan—although,
most importantly, they were never subjugated. Cretans are famous for never submitting--to the Venetians, the Turks, the Germans during World War II. The rallying cry is "Freedom or Death"--also the name of a great book by the early twentieth-century novelist/philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis.
We are a knife-bearing people, stupidly and recklessly lacking in fear, and prone to throwing outselves at the "enemy," even without cause or triffle. (My father, a Marine Corps colonel,
who fought gallantly in the South Pacific during World War II, carried on this
tradition with his five brothers—all combat Marines. For this and the earlier history, we have a broad legacy of PTSD.) For 300 years Cretans
bore the horrors of Turkish occupation: enslaved, murdered, raped, children
kidnapped, and generally forced into a host of unspeakable indignities.
In the 19th century, the Cretan
uprisings against the Turkish overlords occurred about every ten years. There
was massive brutality from both sides—both Cretan and Turkish villages
experienced constant raids, being burned to the ground, and an extreme variety
of bloodletting occurred that boggles one’s tender imagination. The final revolution
that expelled the Turks, once and for all, occurred in 1897. My grandfather, Andoni, left the island for the America a decade later.
My great-grandfather (my father bore
his name, in patriarchal fashion--and his is my middle name) was a capetanios of some note in the mountains
of western Crete, as I’ve learned. Captain Yioryo led a band of mercenaries,
who swept down from the mountains on horseback to steal sheep (often from fellow Cretans) and to fight
the Ottoman pashas, whose red fezes made them distinctive targets.
The Cretans were brutes. The Ottomans
were brutes. They spent 300 years killing each other, burning each other’s
villages, and reigning terror on civilian populations.
Occasionally, Cretans fled in mass
by the boatload. And so it is that the little mountain village in which I pen
this post, Lahanada, is nearly entirely Cretan by heritage, formed by refugees
who fled their homeland by boat and landed here in the 1840s. Later these
Cretans spread their wings to adjoining villages, including Finikounda, down on
the ocean.
The names are quintessentially
Cretan, with their -akis endings: Petroulakis, Rombakis, Korokakis, Moudakis, Yannoukakis…and
more recently Aretakis (that’s us).
So in a curious way, I fit right
in here. When I introduce myself, there is a wink and nod indicating that I
somehow belong.
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The Sahara sands
The weather was unsettled during the
month of May. All of Greece, but especially those areas facing North Africa, Crete
and the southern Peloponnese in particular, sometimes endure sand storms (in
Arabic, the simoom or simoon; better known to the West as the scirroco)
carried across the Mediterranean from the Sahara Desert—usually in the early
spring and the late summer/early fall.
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| Our mountain village |
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| The endless olive grove |
But the “dusting” continues even now,
though with less intensity. A red-pink dust of pulverized sand occasionally covers
the car in the morning and needs to be washed off the veranda.
But now summer approaches and
with it that distinctively bluebird sky and gradually rising temperatures.
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The road to Pylos
Yesterday morning I drove to
Pylos, the largest town within reach, to do some banking in advance of a meeting
with our accountant. Although we pay no taxes, as homeowners we are obliged to
submit an annual “tax declaration”—even though we declare nothing. It is a 100
euro hoop that the authorities make us jump through, a small price to pay to
live in paradise.
The road from Methoni to Pylos is said to have been Greece’s first asphalt road—and perhaps the only stretch of road in Greece (with the exception of the new national highway) that is actually straight for more than a kilometer.
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| One of many shrines--to the fall motorist |
It was built by the French
military after the successful campaign against the Egyptian-Ottoman Turks in
1832. The Ottoman fleet was devastated in Pylos’ Navarino Bay, a savage bombardment
by a combined naval force of French, Russian, and English, that sent the entire
Ottoman fleet to the seafloor. It is a much celebrated event in local history
and the singular event that freed mainland Greece after nearly 400 years of brutal
occupation by their Muslim overlords.
Greece had been occupied by—to
quote my grandfather, whose twin brother was decapitated before his eyes in the
Battle of Ioannina in 1912—for far too long by “the evil and viscous Turks.”
I traveled in Turkey in 1982,
during a period of martial law. I found ordinary Turks to be neither “evil” nor
“viscious” but very much like Greeks: generous, hospitable, and generally kind.
But I was raised with a far different narrative as a child, being told stories that
caused a steady stream of nightmares.
But back to the road to Pylos: it
is terrifying, in a word. It is not much improved, and certainly not widened,
since the 1830s. There are no guard rails, and in spots the road falls off by
five feet or more. Built in the time of horse and buggy, it is nearly impossible
to pass an oncoming car or truck without having mirrors within centimeters. But
everyone does. When on occasion two busses meet, both slam on the brakes, then
inch past each other, the drivers sometimes stopping to greet one another, ask
about their mothers, talk about football rivalries.
And yet, folks insist on passing
one another, in order that they might arrive in Pylos (or Methoni) one minute
earlier that the car they passed. On this stretch, one can encounter cars,
trucks, buses, RVs, cement mixers, goats, and old ladies in black carrying
baskets of cut greenery.
It brings out the best (or worst)
of this nation’s rally mentality.
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A tempest blows in from the South
Yesterday a stiff wind and
pounding surf cleared the beach of people, with the full fury of the Mediterranean
blowing in from the South.
I think of the refugees plying
this precarious passage, setting off from the shores of Libya or Asia Minor,
their rubber rafts or leaky fishing boat drifting aimlessly toward the
Mediterranean shores of Europe—Spain, Italy, and Greece. So many perish—men,
women, and children—in their efforts to escape poverty, hunger, and civil war. Much
of the exodus is a result of climate change. The Sahel is no longer livable,
pastoralists have lost their means of survival, and escape from such
unfathomable despair is the only option.
I recall, too, the privileges
that those of us in the West enjoy—and take for granted. Food to eat, reasonably
stable governments, education, healthcare. Vacations to Greece. Many of us are
oblivious to our good fortune, instead we rail against the Other.
A strange question
“Do you have guns in America.” The
farmer neighbor asked the question.
“Well, yeah, Yioryio, everyone
has guns in America. Practically every man, woman, and child.”
In Greece, gun ownership is a
privilege that is gained by way of an immense bureaucracy. Usually, hunting
rifles (shotguns), never handguns. Certainly not automatic weapons.
And, curiously, Greece has the
lowest rate of gun violence in Europe. Imagine that?
The prospective gun owner is thoroughly
reviewed. They are forced to take a psychological evaluation. And, more often
than not, the guns are stored at shooting clubs—with gun locks and in a locked
gun case, that is, double-locked.
“Can you bring me a handgun that
uses revma [power/electricity]?”
I wasn’t sure what he was referencing
at first, but soon realized he wanted a stun gun.
“You know, Yianni, like the police
use. You don’t kill someone with it, but you ‘make them understand’.”
“Yioryo, that’s impossible. Only
the police have these guns. And even if I could get you one, how would I bring
it?”
“Put in your luggage. Bury it beneath
your underwear.” It seemed simple enough to my friend.
“Are you crazy, Yioryo? Every bag
gets x-rayed. I’ll go to prison for life!”
“Oh, I see. Then can’t you just
put it down your pants? They’ll never find it.”
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The Other
“So why don’t like you like L.,”
I asked my English friends, long-time residents here. “He’s done excellent work
for me, and he is a master stone mason. Even if he needs occasional prodding to
finish a job.”
“Because he’s Albanian—we don’t
trust him. And we don’t like the company he keeps.”
I think to myself: Replace “Albanian”
with “Mexican” or “Arab” and I’m right back home in America, where the scourge
of racism rears its ugly head like never before.
Taught by my parents to treat all
people with respect, to never pre-judge anyone, especially on the basis of
their ethnicity, race, economic status—I found myself searching for some retort.
I was speechless.
My own family, Greek immigrants
in the late 19th century, escaping persecution and poverty, endured their own
share of racism. One branch of our family in America’s South were targeted by the
Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s—along with Italians, Irish, Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Native
Americans, Chinese. The list goes on. That is, the very people who built our
nation: the railroads, the mines, the shops on Main Street.
Racism and “othering” bothers me so
intensely. It sits like an undigested fava bean in my gut.
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| House with a view |
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