4 - A Brick in the Wall

Secondary education, the compulsory three years of the Greek Gymnasium, followed by another three of Lyceum, initially, after the tedium of primary school, opened before me an apparently new exciting paths I was looking forward to walk. It was a terra incognita keen to explore for new knowledge, hopefully useful and practical in life, even though aim was attainable through a maze of rigid and, in a way, soul-destroying preparations for the succession of unforgiving exams it involved. It was also a path along which individual characters and personalities would be shaped and matured, one that would open doors along the way for interactions with people, and, for some of my peers, would lead to the discovery of love. In one way or another, it could be said that it was the painful, but the necessary stage in life for growing into a man, a real and proper man.

Reality rarely lives up to the initial expectations. A man, after those six, long slowly dragging years of secondary education,  hardly reaches the point in maturity that he had imagined and, perhaps, had dreamed when this project, dictated from outside and above, began.  The path to adulthood, this physically and emotionally complex process of growing up and maturing, became scattered by the weeds of exams, milestones of either success or failure, and the mental burdens they brought along; in short, a marathon with many hurdles. Exam after exam, a sequence burdened, in my generation’s rather unfortunate case, by a conjuncture of incessant interventions in the education system by successive governments (promoted as necessary modernizing reforms). From this (and not just) point of view, we were unlucky having to sit and endure: exams for entrance to the Gymnasium, from the Gymnasium to the Lyceum, demanding nationwide for entry to university twice in the last two years; exams which over time, one after another, were abolished; exams, amongst others, in now obsolete subjects, such as Ancient Greek or certain chapters of Physics, devalued after a while as anachronisms and omitted from the core of the curriculum. The expectations to perform in those exams was of course high, extremely high, the pressure from the immediate family environment maybe indirect and latent, but real, noticeable and oppressive. Admittedly, I possessed the necessary above-average intelligence and other similar skills not just to succeed, but also to excel in those exams. It was not difficult. Due diligence, basic dedication and consistency, and holding one’s nerve during the exams sufficed.

Pressures from Mother, the primary school teacher, and Father, the once proud scientist, were strong and constant throughout. It was occasionally reinforced by a friendly, school and wider environment, nevertheless it became unbearable at times, especially when I was being introduced and shown around as the ‘pride’ of the family. In a way, I became a showcase for a proud family and its name, the always ‘positive’, intelligent eldest son with an aptitude for knowledge and understanding and few minor gifts, the main amongst them being diligence and tenacity. And I had to somehow handle and justify, in school and gatherings with family friends, those aggressively flattering designations and exposure. Failure at any step along the way would have certainly disappointed; it might have even caused embarrassment and grief, if not a backlash.

Yet on the very first step in this long process, in the twilight of childhood, in the entrance hall of adolescence, I stumbled. The idea of preparing for and taking, as a twelve-year-old child, some demanding exams, for admission to the so called ‘Experimental School of Thessaloniki’, a model school for selected few, conventionally gifted boys of the city, who would be taught by the elite of city's teachers, had its roots in those social micro-prejudices, possibly, propagated by our closest family friends of the time, the Akrivides’. They had strong links with this elite educational establishment of the city. I failed despite my gallant efforts to prepare, imprisoned for hours and days in a little room to study and deprive of our street games, when friends were enjoying their first weeks of summer holidays. Billy, Akrivides’ sone of  the same age, succeeded with ease and bravado. The disappointment at such a tender age was great, almost traumatic. Then I realized for the first time that wounds from such failures in life (exams, rejection in job applications, and so on) heal relatively quickly. Someone gets up, dusts off, forgets that singular pain and sorrow, and carries on. It was one of the fist important and useful life lessons of my youth, the failure in those inconsequential exams, which, at the end of the day, might have been worth it, as it was followed by small glories and the euphoria from a sequence of ‘successes’ in school and the exam arena. The prestige of the family had been more than restored in the following years.

3 - Thoughts on the Social Backdrop

Performance in school and exams, as mandated by the system for progress to higher education stages and its climax, that is, entering the university and obtaining a degree, was the imperative of every petty middle-class family, faithful the established social dogma and traditions for their offspring: in the suspended anxiety for the preservation of social status, for stability, entrenchment and self-affirmation, and ideally ascendence to a higher income and wealth bracket, all those elements of class mentality I criticized and treated with contempt and sarcasm later in life, despite being an organic member of these classes. There were, of course, some infernal goals, less obvious than the ingenuous of graduating with a degree and whatever knowledge that certified, which laid bare the class cynicism in the whole project: it was a position in the state-bred and -fed apparatus and bureaucracy that would ensure forever, without worries what tomorrow would bring, until death, a relatively comfortable life away from the plebs of wages and toil, or ascendence to the proud bourgeois caste of doctors, lawyers, engineering contractors, etc., the bourgeoisie proper of the city. At the root of all this, of course, were the accumulation and preservation of private property and wealth, this materialistic vanity that man in capitalism measures and preserves as something sacred, which one daily looks after like as much as he does his eyes, as the saying goes, ignoring the fact, one day, all this will be pulverized and scattered in the chaos of the universe, along with the bodies of the men that produced it.

This system of raising children and bringing up adolescents into adulthood in Greece has become more elaborate over the years. During the post-dictatorship period and its generation (that is, my generation), a gradually counterproductive and parasitic development of the Greek economy was taking place, evident even to immature young eyes. It was directed, in some deterministic way, by globalization, international competition and global division of labour. Such changes of historical magnitude, which direct the future evolution of a nation’s economy, were normally hidden behind sporadic, apparently insignificant news nobody paid much attention to: such as the shutting down of a textile or electric machines factory or the ritual advertising of each government increased tourist arrivals and revenue. Dependent on the global economic centres in a obsequious manner in a clientelist framework, panting behind technological advances, despite the anaemic and usually ineffective reform policies attempted by governments from time to time. The contradictions of this unproductive model of growth would unfold spectacularly a few decades later in a historically large and unprecedented economic crisis.

Economic reality and systemic crises, now and then, demystify given preconceptions and beliefs about the socioeconomic structure of Greece, although they are quickly forgotten, until the next crisis occurs. As a rule, they fragment and impoverish layers of its middle class, and devalue the political system and state apparatus that was built on and recycled -to serve and in turn be supported by this class.  In the meantime, however, it forms the peculiar characteristics of those transitional, ‘floating’ small and medium-sized strata and defines the temperament, idiosyncrasy and peculiarities of Greek society: children of the middle classes have to be educated at all costs, hoard degrees and certificates; at worst, follow in the footsteps of their parents in the public sector or in their professions in small primarily retail businesses, at best, advance a bit further than the previous generation, but not diverging too much from the same, ‘well-trodden path’. In short, many personal ambitions were drained in the pursuit of a rather predetermined career, under the auspices, directly or indirectly, of the gigantic and ubiquitous state. The motto of civil servants (the elite amongst them prefer the euphemistic title of ‘public functionaries or official’), the multitude ‘freelancer professionals’ and to a certain extent the vanity of the Greek middle class, stems from latent social instincts of self-preservation and perpetuation. It could be summed up in the phrase a family friend, a grand local lawyer of the ‘shark’ species, had solemnly uttered in one of Mother's rare soirées: ‘Sans-culotte I may end up, but I will make sure my daughter gets her university degree!’ And she did. And she worked and succeeded as a solicitor in her father’s legal practice, along with her more capable brother, whose education cost less.

In conclusion, the absolute minimum degree of success of the offspring of a family of civil servants or city professionals would be measured by a degree or certificate, their number and prestige. The sought-after type of university subjects and the possibility of further postgraduate studies was usually based on an arteriosclerotic and, by and large, obsolete by contemporary standards and irrelevant assessment of the employment opportunities the Greek society could offer and which was generally belied by a rapidly evolving global reality. And the final restoration of the young graduate into the  ‘comfort zone’ of prescribed and entrenched professional spaces. In turn, the achievement attainment of intermediate or ultimate goals (the acquisition of that one or more and better degrees and diplomas), presupposes incremental successes and advancement in a closed education system of successive loops of ‘delivering the curriculum’ and examinations on this ‘teaching material’. The level of comprehension, resting often on learning mechanically and by heart and memorizing the study material, and the final success in the exams naturally depended on the zeal and intelligence of the student, but also on the support one would happen to receive, amounting to the supervision and where necessary the ‘push’ from the close family and, lest we forget, the private tutoring centers run side-by-side and ‘shadowing’ the public school system. The latter and its teachers were simply the long arm of a ministry in a bureaucratic educational organization, the intermediaries so to speak, who mechanically taught (‘delivered’, would be a more apt term) study material compiled by ‘expert’ civil servants in a cramped office of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Creativity, critical thinking, initiative, cultivation of skills and talents were attributes forgotten or neglected. One wonders: what creativity could one draw from repetitive orthodox religion studies or the grammar and syntax of a half-dead language? What history can be learnt from texts tailored to a narrow national and nationalistic narrative? The means provided for an aim or to an end in life, were grossly inadequate. And blessed were those who left school with their initiative and spirit not fully checked.

2 - Schooling for the Transitional Classes

Adolescence, for the main body of Greek youth, that is, the offsprings of educated to semi-literate members of the lower and middle urban strata, whose population was increasing rapidly after the war (and not much slower, since the transition to democracy and growing dependence of many a career on political clientelism and favouritism), revolved around the days spent in public secondary schools, appended, by daily attendance and throughout the calendar year, of that innovation of the Greek educational system: private tutoring schools on the main subjects. The effort of tutors, parents and pupils, of everybody barring the uninterested teachers of public schools, were focused on the imperative of success in the final year nationwide exams that would ensure admission, preferably to a university or, if that was not achieved, to some form of college education. At the end of this process a holy grail for many families would be reached: one or more university degree or certificates, which would, supposedly, open the doors into a future materialistic prosperity –an ambiguous state of well-being that for most was akin to a leisurely paced, low-stress, ideally government sponsored employment for life with a fixed income, for fewer with an applicable  family tradition, to more lucrative careers in law and medicine.

Although lacking structured class consciousness in the early years of adolescence, admittedly I also belonged to this mass of children, merely by virtue of the fact that I was born into that lower middle class, which is the backbone of Greek urban societies; from relatively educated parents, neither poor nor rich, parents who ardently and often desperately strived to maintain and strengthen their economic and social status in the city,  as well as, of course, that of their descendants; without, however, too many an aspiration outside the city and national borders, and the pre-eminently state-run economy that would safeguard a regular income, monotonically increasing with years of service, along with some ‘tranquillity, peace, and security’ ad vitam, paragons of middle-Greece (and, to be fair, not just Greece!)

Those low family horizons and mundane goals, as contemplated by Mother, Father and members of the extended family, were rather predetermined, as much as clear and distinct in their minds. Education and schooling, along with the succession of mandatory exams at different stages the arteriosclerotic and sterile educational system required, in which success meant more or less an end in itself, omitted or, at best, bypassed more important attributes: intellectual edification via creative and critical thinking, maximum possible utilization and optimization of one’s inclinations and talents -latent in every human from birth, the liberation and strengthening of one’s physical and mental powers, the cultivation of soul and mind to embrace the timeless virtues of human nature, such as love, sociability, companionship, sympathy and empathy, cooperation, logical thinking, provide insight into the world and nature around. The Greek school, even when viewed through the eyes of an immature person lacking life experience, even more so now from a temporal and geographical distance, did not offer much more than a quantity of knowledge, by and large of no practical use and detached from reality outside its high perimeter walls; a reality, however, which was in a fervent evolution, changing at an incessant pace and leaving an inert educational system lagging.

The weak initial interest in subject lessons, therefore, was exhausted after a few first weeks at school; notes from the lectures covered a maximum of one or two pages of subject notebooks over the school year. From then on, attending classes became a routine undertaking. We only opened the piles of textbooks furnished gratis by the state at the beginning of the school year, for a quick, indifferent look, and that in anticipation of a written or oral examination. These were the tedious drags the most conscientious amongst us, nevertheless uncomplainingly, performed at the expense of personal freedom and happiness. Spirits were understandably lifted in the days before the holidays or those sunny days of school trips, when few hours and days of sought-after freedom from the shackles of schoolwork were granted.

1 - Thankless Times

Through the endeavours of maturity: for ordinary mortals to bring food to the table and roof over their heads, for many of them to raise children, for others to care about their old folk, for a few just to enjoy and please their partners and friends, the little time amongst the innumerable and forgotten days of a daily grind leave for inner reflection and a chat with ourselves,  to review actions and thoughts, it is in this little time the nostalgia of childhood is rekindled; with its innocence and naivety, its purity and sweetness, its vitality and carefreeness. At this time, we are often overwhelmed by the feeling of missing longed-for past situations: sunny afternoons playing on the dusty streets and sandlots of the old neighborhood, the hot summer holidays by the sea, times and places of joy and carefreeness, when each day we reached new horizons. But the more we long for and miss those, the more we feel the inadequacy to slow down the passing of time, the more they hopelessly fade in our minds until they have become forgotten change in a box. For many, however, nostalgia does not have the attain the same magnitude with the recollections from the years following those of childhood, those of adolescence. It may have to do with the thudding intensity and dull colour of the experiences associated with this age, and a chaotic perception of the world. Perhaps, it has to do with the fact that we come to a better understanding with ourselves via a bumpy and rough road towards the crystallization into whom we finally become.

The review of adolescence, that whirlwind in our inner world, the complex and awkward as much as transformative period for spirit and body, remains very personal and subjective, at least, for an introverted boy, soon to become an ambitious young man, but who was eventually shaped into an inward looking and withdrawn person. I felt adolescence was an almost exclusively esoteric experience, with few occasions and examples of outwardness and externalising thoughts and feelings along its course. It is clearly a period when one develops at a rapid pace, both physically and mentally, conquers higher levels of self-consciousness and begins to perceive through emotional regressions, sometimes severe, one’s becoming and being. As the time gap from adolescence widens, the deeper that period is pushed into the memory banks of the brain and, thereafter, rarely recalled: with its secrets, the feelings of repression, the disorders, and some unhealthy or unsavoury habits. Whenever those memories resurface (and that occurs every time I dig into the being-in-itself, the person I grew up into) that period is projected as disorderly sequence of abrupt hormonal and physiological changes, as an emotional turbulence without a defined cusp, with vague beginnings and undefined ends, not easily affording a rationalisation and correlation with the present. Although paramount in the process of integration as human beings, it rarely becomes a point of reference and barely recognized as one of the foundations on which our life rests. For me and possibly a few others like me, it was in life what the Middle Ages represented in the history of the human kind: a dark, but historically deterministic prelude to the Renaissance. The era when a major chunk of the character and personality is sculpted and painted.

There were the times when oppression by the family environment, as itself formed by preset structures and established dictates of the Greek society of its milieu (because oppression seemed and was intensely felt as such), the weariness of the school and the ordinariness and mediocrity of most of our teachers, the exclusion from wider circles of friends and schoolmates and the joys I saw they could offer, in short, the curtailing of individual freedom, created situations that at times became unbearable to the point of implosion. Compulsions found fertile soil inside the soul, often I found myself stripped out of creative imagination, and dried of creative thinking and feelings; frustrated by unfulfilled desires and the absence of outlets for joy and creation, where passions and repressed desires could be channelled or where some latent talent could be detected and flourish. The result was an ever-increasing inwardness and circular or dead-end thinking, further isolation from the external world of peers and adults, unwarranted hostility towards people around me; all in all, a vicious spiral starting from and ending into myself. There were moments when I felt that I could not claim even a tiny share of the external world around me, that I belonged to it only in nominal terms, an emotionally alienated oddity, a stranger amongst strangers. I had no mates but a family and a room, and a school to go and get educated. For the most part, life revolved around the latter.  

52 - The End of Boyhood

 We played our beloved game for as long as our legs held up, but with the years gone by the agility of youth was lost, the bones have become more fragile, the breaths shorter. The football matches we played became less frequent. Contrived and with rigid rules, they lost much of the spontaneity and passion of those boyhood days: the fuss about finding a decent ball and a pitch, the laughter, the arguments, the camaraderie, the celebrations and embraces after goals and wins, the collective disappointment after a defeat, all that special friendship amongst boys, which football and team sports glue together, entails.

The dusty streets and sandlots, the scratched knees and elbows covered with sweat, blood and soil, vanished under concrete structures and asphalted streets choked with cars. The rare games, in the margins of our spare time and the other priorities life dictates, such as family and work, were played in proper pitches, with goals and lines, even turfed surfaces, but they lacked in spirit. Our childhood dreams did not materialise. And whilst our ageing bodies were declining in a sport that demands strength and vigour and endurance, we adapted in passively enjoying the spectacle of what we used played in our boyhood, outsiders in the stands of an arena or a ground, in cafés or pubs with one or two or more beers, or spread out on a couch. With the same frequency and interest, it must be said, and similar breadth and depth of emotions, such as those that stirred us in our boys’ ball games.

A lot has been written about the psychology, the way of the communal thinking and behaving of football fans. The literature on the subject seems inexhaustible. Perhaps, being a fan does not just offer an illusion of active participation in a game from the stands or an armchair. The dedication and subsumption into the sport, sometimes to the point of brushing aside and even withdrawing from other social activities, with obsessive discussions about rules and techniques and statistics, ad nauseum analysis of tactics and strategy, before, during, and after a match, seems difficult to explain just by a temporary psychological connection, which is nevertheless emotionally intense and in an inexplicable disproportionality with an object that is merely an entertainment show. A club with its symbols and slogans, banners and songs, a team and its players on the field, are elevated to an über alles entity, a deity almost -to be worshiped. Nor is supporting a club offers oneself a tentative illusion of security via attachment to a collective linked by objectives and a purpose, however insignificant compared with far more important events taking place around us. Nor is it just a way out and an escape from the often-unbearable everydayness, as another manifestation of Marxist alienation from the process of capitalist production. Or, perhaps, it is a combination of the above with different weights for each individual fan.

Once Albert Camus, the philosopher who inspired me in my youth and whom I re-read forty years after the first acquaintance equipped with the maturity of years past, so much so that many of his thoughts and findings still lead me in what is left of life, was asked by a friend whether he preferred theatre or football. He replied: “Football, without hesitation!”. He dealt passionately with both, it seems. Several times I thought that this ‘without hesitation’ claim was in harmony with his philosophy of the Absurd. Both the footballer and the actor are ‘players’ of the Absurd in a desolate and transient world, without gods and eternity, fully conscious of the finitude of life. Both the footballer and the actor express during a match or a theatrical performance, a separation and a detachment, a ‘divorce’ of the man from his life, which are manifestations of the Absurd. For the ‘players’ and spectators of a drama that lasts a few minutes, these are the only moments of a unique experience with no counterpart in eternity, amongst a multitude of finite ones whose aggregate total constitutes life. After all, our life is the sum of our experiences and memories. The same philosopher wrote that belief in the Absurd should prioritize quantity over quality of these experiences, diversity over repetition and uniformity.

“What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject, are all that counts. I understand only in human terms”. Everything that a man can see, touch, hear, feel, spontaneously or, for that matter, because of ‘playing’ or ‘acting’, is the only thing one comprehends. In the case of Camus and not just, the sense of football for the common folk, either the experience of playing it or being absorbed by its spectacle as a fan, is more intense and, perhaps, his perception and understanding better, than that of a theatrical play. In the spirit of Camus, I realized that I loved and still love football merely for the range and diversity of emotions it excites, for their transience and reappearance in different shades and hues in each game, for the integral of infinitesimal impressions it has imprinted onto the soul and mind. We live for such little things and joys, one could say. Why not sense and embrace them as much as we can and as long as we exist?

I left boyhood behind me, along with that unique friendship with Kostakis, after our street games were curtailed and our paths diverged since joining different secondary schools. It ended on a Sunday afternoon at the stands of the Harilaou stadium where we watched together our beloved team playing against Olympiakos, the football giants of the capital. It was an afternoon where I nearly choked, when balls of the Styrofoam pad I was sitting on and chewing in tension were nearly stuck in my throat, after the deep breath I took before cheering an Aris’ goal. It was the last day I met with Kostakis, my closest boyhood friend, to share our enjoyment of a football related activity. It could be also said that day marked the end of boyhood itself. The game in Greece was entering a long period of decline, the quality of the show was getting poorer, the crowds in football grounds were dwindling, the hooliganism from a core of fanatics were pervading the game. For several years that followed it was reduced to only a few rare escapes from the shackles of parental controls and the imperative of getting an education, and those mainly in front of the TV or watching basketball, still considered more civilised, in the city’s enclosed arena.

In the meantime, we had to endure adolescence in our own individual ways: that age of more dreams and ambitions yonder, as much as worries and unbearable frustrations. Other types of passion were coming to the fore, as we were growing into men.

51e - Football! (All Around)

 I had regained some of my lost freedom, under the blue skies and the abundant sunlight of the Greek afternoons, to roam the boys’ world, my world, to play football with Kostakis and friends, and when football was impeded by the external factors, other more mundane games. The older we grew the wider the neighbourhood and city had opened their arms wide to. Freedom is a concept impossible to define and even to describe it, that is, to put it unambiguously and unequivocally in words, but the feelings from its conquest are more clear, unique and irrefutable. You seek freedom and when you get some of it you feel it to the extent it was conquered it and in proportion to the effort you made to earn it. From the nearby sandlot, where we became persona non grata from the despised Theologian, we took to the streets with a ball under our arms to more exotic and distant corners of the city: to the large open space on Constantinople Street, on which decades later the council built a school, but in our time usually occupied by children, even youth amateur league teams; to the seafront parks, but where the fear of been chased away threat by groundsmen and even the occasional miserable pensioner, who enjoyed his peace on a bench by the grass; even in PAOK's training  ground in Ano Toumpa, for which we had to cross streams and what was left of the grandma’s shanty town, for a few minutes of football on a pitch of professional standards, regular goalposts and (yes!) grass. Alas, the unprecedented joy lasted only a few minutes, before the groundsman noticed us and chased us out with swearing and shouting that surpassed those of Theologian, as if we were committing sacrilege in a holy place.

We played football wherever there were space and time: in the streets, the parks, the sandlots and construction sites of the city, in the schoolyard despite explicit prohibitions and potential confiscation of anything that resembled a ball, during school trips, where football matches between classes were meticulously planned by self-appointed leaders. Football anywhere, anytime and by any means available: with plastic, leather, tiny rubber balls hidden in our pockets for the school breaks, usually unnoticeable by the keen eyes of Ms. Vanda and Mr. Eugenides and the supervising teachers, who roamed the schoolyard carrying a wooden stick. Even plastic milk bottles after everything else had been confiscated, especially from Ms. Vanda, a spinster who like the Theologian hated children, as much as, one could imagine, football. All these games that lasted from the few minutes of the break between classes, until several hours after school into the dusk and until darkness made the ball invisible, left indelible impressions: for the joy, the carefreeness, the anger and pain -physical and emotional, the antagonism, the bullying. Perhaps our souls are partially formed by the energy born out of invisible forces that develop through friendships, by the integration into a team and a group, any group, by the individual contribution to the ephemeral purpose of winning a game, the camaraderie that is born out of team games, one playing for all, and all for one. Impressions of all kinds: the disappointment from a wretched defeat; the ecstasy from scoring a goal that led to victory; the thrill from pride by the praises I received from our school star-player, Papaeconomou, the greatest football talent in primary school, for my performance in a couple of makeshift games; the humiliation I felt from the school bully and self-appointed captain of the class-team, Deliyiannis, who always had the first and last say in the line-ups, and his scolding to me and vice-captain Goutas (who had selected me despite Deliyiannis’ objections) when I scored an own goal in New Helvetia park (‘Goutas, I told you not to have him in our team!’ he exclaimed followed by swearing); the excitement when I wore a shirt with the number 7 grandma had sewn on its back, in an ‘official’ match with the class in one of our final school trip.

Little by little, the natural boyish enthusiasm and longing for playing the game with friends became a passion for the sport itself. With the end of primary school, the painful onset of adolescence, the neighbourhood friends and schoolmates were dispersed to secondary schools in different parts of the city. Football on Sunday afternoons and holidays in the open spaces that the few remaining sandlots around the city, died down as those were disappearing under the relentless construction of blocks of apartments or parking lots. The sweat on our faces by the heat of the sun, the panting from playing ball, the shouts, the arguments and the fights, the celebrations and contentment or disappointment for nothing, all those memories, precious nevertheless, were pushed further into the depths of memory. Some fleeting, naïve dreams of playing for Aris Salonika, as did Papaeconomou, in the Harilaou stadium, which in the meantime had been turfed, in front of thousands of cheering fans, were quashed at the onset of adolescence and the imperative of education.

Kostakis and I changed from mildly talented ballers into devout fans. Before the game week had even started, we would have rushed to the bet-shops of Koudas, a former PAOK captain, or anyone who served as a ticket agent in the city, or the box office of the stadium, to buy tickets for a derby before they were sold out. And early on Sunday mornings we would walk down Constantinople Street to the Harilaou district to the east outskirts of the city, hours before kick-off to wait for groundsman Solon to opened the gates, to rush in and reserve a good seat amongst the crowds of Aris’ faithful: to Gate 1, home of the ‘Holy Company’ of fans, later to Gate 3, behind the goals with the hot-blooded ‘Ultras’. In less important games, we summoned the courage to jump over the railings that enclosed the premiums stands, to Gate 4, under the concrete roof canopy, where tickets were more expensive, but the views better. The Aris’ crowd, and we were merely two of a multitude its miniscule integral molecules, each equipped with the freedom anonymity and the strength a solid uniform mass of people, a mob others might say, possesses and without qualms, demonstrated our support with gestures, shouts and insults, and other vulgar expressions of emotion: our joy and enthusiasm in victories, our disappointment and bitterness in defeats, our rage after any perceived sense of injustice against the team. Today we would barely imagine ourselves and recognize our manners and behaviour at the stands of the Harilaou stadium then.

51d - Football! (Playing Truant to Play Football)

It was one Wednesday afternoon when some schoolmates invited Kostakis and myself for a match on a fenced sandlot of substantial area, free of cars, on Kallidopoulou Street, not far from home. The place was ideal for a proper game of football, however, there was a major hindrance: later in the afternoon, both Kostakis and I, had a scheduled after-school English tutoring class. The temptation to participate in such a match with bigger boys and ‘star players’ of our school, including its top talent, a boy named Papaeconomou, was great -irresistible. I spontaneously decided to skip my English class, although my friend Kostakis resisted the temptation. So that I can satisfy my urge and evading recriminations and the chastising that would be in store if my parents found out, we agreed, after the scheduled end of the English class, we would meet with Kostakis outside the tutoring school to walk home together, as we always did, like nothing happened. No harm would have been done to anyone concerned. What a gap in the learning process missing a two-hour lesson of a foreign language would have left?

I enjoyed my football to the maximum possible that afternoon and utterly satisfied with my performance in the match, but taken away by its flow and the excitement it offered I neglected to check the passage of time. It was dark when the last kick of the game was played and we could barely see the ball, but neither fatigue, nor the dust, nor falling over and scratching elbows and knees would have deterred us from carrying on; only darkness or some higher power. The tutoring school had been closed for some time, before I eventually made my way home: tired, flushed, sweaty, covered in dust. At the intersection of Deligiorgi Street with our alley, a few restless shadows were waiting for me under the dim street lights that illuminated Tsapatsaraina’s corner. Standing there with grandma, Father and Mother, was also Kostakis, standing meekly by his mother, Foula, and his grandmother, Mrs. Marika. My truancy, my choice of football instead of two hours of a boring English lesson, was exposed by Kostakis, inadvertently or not nobody could tell. I was overwhelmed by fatigue to worry about the scolding and yelling of Father and the whatever punishment that would likely ensue, or feel any guilt for the money Father paid for my English lessons and in that instance was wasted.

Upstairs in our apartment, I endured the angry outburst and thundery shouts of Father, in the scale of intensity (and Father always had, even in old age, a thunderous and piercing voice that could shudder people nearby and could be heard throughout our building and beyond). That reaction was expected and did not affect me as much as previous times: ‘You fool! Imposter! Liar! Ungrateful donkey! I pay for you to learn a language and instead you are turning into a vagrant... I will cease your English tutoring from as early as tomorrow...’ and so on. The Mother listened from next door with what, one could say, was a furtive satisfaction and condescension. I stood silent in the middle of the entrance hall with my head hung down in shame, staring at the floor. In the bathroom, where grandma, the most sympathetic of all, took me by hand to have me washed, as she was preparing a bath, Father slapped me for the first (and, it should be noted, the last) time in my life. This shook me and made me cry. Grandma, on my side even in mischief, my only compassionate ally that night, reprimanded him for that slap, in her smooth Asia Minor way: ‘P, my son, he is just a child...’ She wiped my tears away, washed my face and body and comforted me with the towel. Even today, the sympathy and comfort that my grandma showed that evening, her affection and understanding of a child’s way of thinking no one else was capable to show, touches me inside. Mother, with her silence, maintained a muted demeanor and seemingly neutral attitude, but I believe she shared Father's anger without expressing it and consented with the scolding and, perhaps, even the slap. Unruly children in the schools she taught were still at the receiving end of corporal punishment. The model of a diligent and studious child of a fastidious teacher had been shattered that evening at least; I had become one with the neighborhood and school ‘whitebait’, lacking drive, ambitions and serious goals in life.

As the evening progressed the situation deescalated and things gradually calmed down and returned to normal. Second thoughts and some kind of guilt for the violent outburst probably seized Father. Before my bedtime, in a low tone of voice, he asked grandma how I was. Despite the shouting and pretentious threats about my schooling, despite the dominance his manipulative personality exercised over his family environment, physical violence had never been an attribute of his generally unpredictably tempestuous behaviour. The episode of my truancy was forgotten the very next day. None of Father’s threats about having me expelled from the English school or having me locked up in the house in the afternoons or banning me from joining Kostakis downstairs strictly materialised.

I never played the truant again; neither from tutoring nor, of course, from school, until perhaps once or twice in the last years of high school. However, our explorations of places where we could play football undistracted continued with the same zeal and gained new dimensions. After work and food, Father would take the usual refuge in the bedroom for the established and non-negotiable afternoon nap, the titirla as he humorously called it in a good mood, but for a short period after my truancy, I was quarantined in the afternoon his bedroom, having me lying next to him in the double bed. He was fixated by the idea that Kostakis and friends would get together downstairs for play, and I would be tempted to follow their lead to the detriment of schoolwork. Yet, I found impossible to evade that temptation. My resolve was too feeble to resist the call for a kickabout. Playing with friends on the streets is the opium of childhood. I counted to a hundred, sometimes even to two hundred, or until I heard Father's snoring, and I slipped quietly out of my bed-prison. With admirable technique and causing minimal noise I opened the lock of the front door of the apartment, which was frighteningly close to the bedroom, and I slipped out into the hallway and the staircase to freedom. Shutting without keys the slightly creaking front-door (Father for the benefit of an undisturbed siesta oiled the door hinges frequently), the noise from the latch bolt when it was shut, was an agonizing and time-consuming process. Yet again, I was thinking, even if Father woke up from his slumber, which often lasted hours, there would no way he would have the reserves and drive to bring me back shouting. At worst, he would call my name in vain in the empty apartment, turn on the other side, and complete his siesta.