After the Mathematical Society award and the announcement of my participation along with other seven nominees in the International Mathematical Olympiad of the July of 1981, Kazantzis tried with lukewarm and fragmentary attempts, unsurprisingly given his was with menial tasks at his school, to prepare me somehow for that Olympiad. I did not expect fervour or even him to allocate a substantial amount time on this project, as he was constantly busy with his own activities: discovering and exposing mathematical irregularities and errors hither and thither, competing with and blasting colleagues of competing tutoring schools, as well as demeaning secondary school teachers and academics, preparing speeches and lectures on mathematical education practices in Greece, and so on. I naturally suspected that he probably did not have much belief in some outstanding abilities and talent in maths in me and, perhaps, the majority of young Greeks for that matter, to excel in a competition of that calibre.
One morning in late
June, a couple of weeks before the Olympiad was due to commence in Washington
DC, he invited me to his office in the tutoring centre he owned and managed on
Plutarch Street. The small space of the office was occupied by an imposing
mahogany desk with a shiny glass-top. A rarely used phone, a coffee cup and an
ashtray, some sheets of white paper and a Parker pen were the only objects on
it. He was capable of retaining everything of mathematical significance in his
beautiful mind, I thought. Despite the relative competence in maths acquired
mainly by diligence in my studies, the idea of solving and presenting solutions
of cumbersome maths problems outside the solitude of my own room and desk in the
presence of others made me nervous. After a brief pause to finish his coffee, on
a sheet of paper, he posed randomly to me one of the multitude of problems that
found space in his mind. He drew a straight line on the blank sheet of paper
and dotted with his pen several points on either side of that straight line,
with the same hand he held his cigarette: ‘We are given an arbitrary number of
points in space... Every straight line that joins two points passes through at
least a third point. Prove that the points are colinear.’
To questions without
a straightforward answers my mind blurs, my thinking is suffocated and I am overwhelmed
by a kind of anxiety before a potential mental block; on one hand, because of a
general lack of self-confidence (innate or nurtured, it doesn’t matter) that characterised
me, on the other hand, because of that inherent slow-wittedness of mine Father rarely
missed an opportunity to point out whilst comparing it with his own commendable
sharp and quick thinking. (Of the latter was partially aware, still found demeaning).
In those moments, I would not and could not devise promptly a valid solution,
let alone answer coherently a complex question, especially when seated next to
the wonderful mind of a teacher whose time, I knew, was priceless! I needed my
own time, without prescribed limits, for deep and tenacious thinking, in calm
isolation. I was capable of thinking in depth and length under certain
conditions in space (for instance, alone in my room surrounded by my books and
notebooks) and time, unlimited time over which I would expend every ounce of
intellect and torture the mind until I reached the desired solution. After a
few seconds of uncomfortable silence under the familiar from his lectures
piercing gaze, behind the smoke of the cigarette, some relief came. Thankfully,
Kazantzis due to his justifiably big mathematical ego enjoyed to answer himself
the complex questions he posed to others, and impress students and colleagues.
Perhaps, out of complacency or even narcissism and selfishness, but hardly
anyone could fault him for those traits recognizable in many a genius. He
described the proof of the theorem to me with a simple sketch on the same sheet
paper he drafted the question. And my training for the Olympiad by Kazantzis was
over. Someone walked into the office, they exchanged a couple of jokes and
derogatory comments about a third parties, and then he excused himself and took
his leave, after he lit another cigarette. There it began with a mathematical problem
of presumably Olympic standards, my training for that Olympiad and, in barely
half an hour, it was concluded.
I met with the other
seven awardees of last autumn’s national competition at the offices of the
Mathematical Society in Athens, on the eve of our departure for America. All of
us were male, excellent students at school, and had already secured our admission
in one of University’s top school of our choice, children of well-off petty
bourgeois families from parents who were either civil servants or small
businessmen. In short, that was a group of ambitious young people with
homogeneous interests and aims in life, and minor but distinct differences in personalities.
Hitherto, most of us had a genuine interest in maths and not just because of it
being a core subject, with the exception perhaps οf Elias, a rebellious character from Arta, and were taking the process and the
forthcoming international competition seriously, felt some pride for
representing our country, and would fight for distinctions. At least that is
what I surmised from discussions with two or three of others in the group. An
introductory lecture, hardly a morale boosting induction to the event, by a certain
Mr. Exarchakos, who lacked both the prestige and the teaching skills of
Kazantzis, seemed devoid of content and substance, to remember. We were expecting
some intensive and focused preparation in the few days leading to the event,
but alas, it did not materialize; it would have never meant to in a Greek
world. We were abandoned to our own devices.
A certain Mr. Mermigkis
was appointed as the sole senior cohort who would ‘lead’ -so to speak- our
mission. He was a taciturn, retired mathematician, of short stature, with a
relatively large pot-belly, and a balding forehead. What was left of his white
hair was combed behind the temples. In his light gray suit, he reminded me of a
pater-familia characters character of post war black & white Greek comedy
dramas. To call him ‘team coach’ would be far-fetched in our case, as his role
in our journey proved to be decorative and ceremonial. I quickly realized that
he undertook to accompany our team, not as much to coach us or at least to provide
moral and psychological support, but for the pleasure the experience a long (and
expensive) journey could offer to a retired civil servant, for sight-seeing trips
in the margins of the competition, and the shopping in Manhattan. Someone from
the Mathematical Society had to accompany us and that opportunity was afforded
to Mr. Mermigkis, more because of his seniority than suitability, and he must
have seized without a second thought that probably once-in-a lifetime
opportunity for many former high-school teachers it. From the beginning of that
mission to its very end, the conversations he exchanged with our team of
mathematical talents were minimal, none of them on mathematical matters: they
were more aimed at handling one or two bureaucratic issues along the way and
participating in committees. He remained in the background of our group,
unapproachable and unaffected by our concerns, always at some distance from us.
I believed he was a mediocre mathematician, apprehensive of incisive questions of
mathematical nature, which he could not understand, let alone help answering.
We flew to New York
from the old Athens airport, the Ellinikon, with one of the jewels of
Olympic Airways fleet: a Boeing-747. It would be a first-time travel experience
that left lingering traces and etched in memory. It began on sunny Saturday of July
the 11th, when, escorted by my Athenian aunt, I was dropped off with my large
suitcase through the choked by traffic at the chaotic entrance of the Ellinikon
airport. For the first time, I would fly from Athens to a truly international
airport, the New York JFK, the name and size of one of which, the New York JFK,
filled me with awe. Even the lesser Ellinikon Airport, with its relative
insignificance, exceeded its true magnitude in our young eyes. And for the
first time, we would fly with one of grand achievements of human technology of
the 20th century, on a multi-hour transatlantic voyage that would causes
both awe and fear in any inexperienced traveller.
But the actual
in-flight experiences, the drama of the flying monster’s take-off and landing,
the view of the clouds and the ocean from above, the sounds of its four huge engines,
were forgotten. I was left with the reassuring impression of a veteran captain
sleeping in the last row of seats on the plane with curtains drawn around him.
I assumed that he would be woken and take over flying the beast in the skies above
New York or in the case some emergency. Not even in the company of my peers,
who might have experienced similar sensations, do I recall feeling any extreme
fear during that first long-haul flight· a fear that seizes me almost
incessantly and inexplicably magnified with time and age and the number of
flights each time I fly nowadays. Along with scenarios of unlikely accidents
that can happen during a flight, the negligible chances of survival, the
desperate reactions of mind and soul a few minutes before an almost certain
death swirl regularly in mind. Perhaps, the excitement of the unknown, the
anticipation of the Olympiad itself, perhaps the expectations of decent
individual and team performances had preoccupied our minds for most of the
flight.
The recording of memories
from that trip essentially began in the hours of waiting outside the arrivals
of one of JFK terminals on that hot July afternoon, where we were waiting for
the coach that would take us from the airport to Rutgers University, in the
dormitories of which we would spend the night the first night. A few other
national teams were scattered nearby waiting for the same coach and we could
not help staring at their directions. Dizzy, spaced out and overstimulated after
a long trip, on arrival to the campus we wandered aimlessly on its grounds,
impressed by the plush cafeteria and sports halls, amidst vast expanses of
greenery, orderly interspersed by red-brick building, the smell of the grass, with
the endless flat spaces dotted by old trees, would have impressed any teenager descending
from a small, poor, mountainous country, and the concrete of its amorphous
cities. But the sea and maybe a bit of soul were missing from that place.
On Sunday morning we
set off for the Georgetown University campus in Washington DC, where the XXII
International Mathematical Olympiad was to take place. In the coach the Greek
team spread itself, rather unsurprisingly, in the back seats of the old
Greyhound coach. I sat on a back row seat at the bottom corner of the coach next
to the window, with my eyes open and fully alert curious to see the new world,
that mystical world of America, which I only knew from TV and films. Most of us
were shrunk on to ourselves behind foreign delegations speaking different
tongues, apprehensive by the unknown ahead and the weight of the occasion. The
warm sunshine of the long July sunset was bathing my face and the oppressive
sultriness of the late afternoon surrounded me where I sat. In an ingenuous
move, I tried to open the window next to me by pushing its glass forcefully
outwards, when it was actually stuck and firmly secured in its frame. One edge of
window came off the frame that held it tightly closed. The thought that the
whole window glass could come off and detach from the coach as it was speeding
down the highway caused panic, and I started sweating profusely -a cold sweat
this time, in quantities larger than my body would normally secrete in the heat
of a summer afternoon. I tried to hold it together from the metal strip of its frame,
between my sweaty index finger and thumb, alternating the right and left hands.
Neither, my compatriot in the next seat, Elias, the always smiling joker from
Arta, nor anyone from our group in the back seats, witnessed my drama to share the
suffering and, perhaps, show some support with the effort of preventing the
window from falling off; they enjoyed the ride with comments and jokes, which I
pretended to hear and understood and to which I was responding with a bitter
smile of discomfort no one was paying heed to. I kept looking at the window and
out of it at the road in an effort to assess the risk of that being completely
detached and fallen off the coach onto the tarmac. This possibility would certainly
cause some reaction by the driver, likely unpleasant, some commotion amongst the
international delegations the coach was carrying, and a huge embarrassment to
me. The journey seemed endless. In fact, it lasted between four and five hours!
I had desperately underestimated distances in America; the map distorted
reality of space and distance for an inexperienced traveller. Eventually to my
great relief, we arrived. My hands, arms and face were sweaty, my fingers dead-numb,
from the superhuman effort to prevent a half-open window from falling off. The
magnitude of the relief was comparable to those mornings in my primary school
class, when acute abdominal pains forced me to overcome every barrier my shyness raised, ask
permission from the teacher in the middle of his teaching and, and run home to
find relief in grandma’s toilet, often soiling my underpants along the way. In
that case, despite the suffering, I could not summon the courage to speak to
the driver.
On the outskirts of
the campus, the driver tried to tackle a steep incline of the uphill lane to
the entrance of the residence halls where we were going to stay, and drive his full
of students and luggage old coach and park it in front of the entrance of the
residence halls. Fully confident of his skills, he attempted it inexplicably in
a reverse gear. Two-three and four attempts ended up with the engine stalling
halfway uphill. That caused mirth amongst the student passengers and a few derogatory
comments about the driver’s competence· the Greek rehashed the stereotypes
about the naivety, if not stupidity, of the average American. After the few failed
attempts to reach the top of the lane in reverse, he let us alight at its
bottom, and had climb the steep ascent with our suitcases. At least it started to
cool down. The curtain of the drama of a hectic and intense first day had
fallen.
I had to share a room in one of the dormitories for the three nights of our stay before
the two-day competition, with Sarantos, the honorary team captain, in view of
the fact that he won the first national prize. Those prizes awarded annually by
the Mathematical Society after a rudimentary couple of hours written test with problems
of difficulty above the typical school-exam, were the only measure of one’s
ability in Mathematics. Sarantos was a pleasant and amiable character from
Athens who was respected and well-liked by everyone in our group. He was a
quiet, focused child, unpretentiously modest about his achievement, with a high
sense of responsibility and a distinct, but carefully concealed zeal. I learned
that later in life, he distinguished himself in his studies and scientific
career, as anyone who had met him would have expected. He had a slender body, a
long bony face, a small and rather unsmiling mouth, under two thoughtful and
always somewhere concentrated eyes and thick eyebrows, far apart from each other.
This feature, it was said, was indicative of high intelligence, something with
possibly a scientific basis, as it implies a wide forehead and hence a large
frontal lobe, whose function is to reason and process and solve problems of
logic. Sarantos was the only one of the eight in our group with whom I
maintained some contact a year after the Olympiad. He visited me once in
Thessaloniki, before each took his own path and disappeared into the depths of memory,
along with the events of our week together in America.
In anticipation of
the grand brain test of Olympic scale, we remained relatively calm. At least we
managed to conceal our nerves and anxiety. The expectations amongst ourselves,
from Mr. Mermigkis, as it was evident from his countenance, his general
presence and the few words he uttered, as well as from some mildly interested
parties back home, were low. We are called upon to compete with superpowers in
Mathematics, such as the USSR, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, almost all
countries of the Eastern bloc, and of course the USA, the then West Germany,
France and Britain amongst the wealthy western powers offering far superior education
to young generations. The various nationalities, their appearance, contact and
manners, their culture and, above all, their uncanny intellectual skills that they
were hiding behind an air of superiority, result of a thorough selection process
and systematic training, piqued our interest. I was especially intrigued by the
Soviets, partially because of the political and ideological sympathies, which,
rooted in broader family convictions, began fermenting in my mind during my last
school years, as well as the still universally admirable distinctions of people
of the socialist block in arenas, of intellect and sports, that were feeding
back to the ideologies of the Left in Greece of my youth.
In a common hall in
the afternoons before the competition, the organizers erected several blackboards,
so that contestants from the different competing countries could exchange
ideas, pose, discuss and solve mathematical problems. Youngsters from the USA
and USSR teams, in front of one of those boards, with the boldness and swagger
and that confidence of their educational along with their underlying social and
economic systems, which transformed their countries to universally recognized superpowers,
as well as irrefutable talents, exchanged mathematical riddles and problems and,
with the mastery and fluidity of mathematical geniuses, presented solutions and
let the other party scrutinize them. Others competed in the speed of solving
Rubrik’s cube. If the troublesome cube lasted more than a minute or two to
solve, the face of the contestant grimaced from disappointment with self. At
some point in the eve of the competition, the most willing of our delegation
decided to test our mathematical abilities in that friendly forum. We found
ourselves amongst some of the members of the Soviet team in front of one of the
boards in the hall. We struck up a conversation with a stocky and athletic Russian
young man with light hair, green, playful eyes, and a broad face with slightly
protruding cheekbones, the features we usually attribute to the Slavic race.
His English was poor, and after each phrase he managed to string together he
turned to his comrades next to him, saying something in Russian, often with an
ironic smile. The others did not talk much, they said nothing in English, but rather
listened to him attentively and deferentially. I surmised he would be the captain
or leader of the Soviet team, or merely one whose English was better than the rest.
I dared to pose to him the one and only small mathematical problem of Olympic level
difficulty (and if that!) I remembered from my short session with Kazantzis,
who presented and solved for me in his office a few days before our departure,
as a feeble attempt in training me for the Olympiad. After glancing
meaningfully at his comrades and then at me, with that ironic and almost
contemptuous smile, he solved the problem I dared to pose to them in a flash,
as if it were a child’s play. Then in turn, he posed to our team a problem from
his own menu of mathematical puzzles. We had hard time to make sense of the
problem per se, partly because of his broken English, nevertheless we could not
solve it, with Sarantos and Stefanos and myself trying courageously, whilst Elias
was uninvolved staring nonchalantly at the board from a distance with a crooked
smile; as if he was having fun with our travails and mocking the mental torture
we were unnecessarily subjecting ourselves to.
We were heading to
the opening day of the condition dejected. The mathematical exchanges with the
Soviets brought to the fore an ignorance, a lame preparation or rather a complete
lack of it and, for some, a sense of intellectual inferiority. Personal
complexes and social mentalities are moulded through such episodes at best
temporarily, but definitely the morale, at least amongst those of us who were
treating competition solemnly and responsibly, reached a new low. We left the
hall disappointed, but after having a more realistic perception of our
capabilities and status children of Greece in the mathematical galaxy. The
thought of a genetically inherited ethnic weakness crossed my mind; surely, what
was instilled in our consciences at home by the media, teachers and politicians
about being a chosen intelligent race, which, despite adverse historical
conditions, distinguished itself on an international stage thanks to an innate
spiritual brilliance handed down through the generations from our “brilliant ancient
ancestors”, all of those were myths -national myths, and it would not take long
before many young Greeks realize it. But steering away from such disparaging and
deprecating aphorisms, the certainly disappointing show in front of the Soviet team
was most likely due to the lack of training and preparation, not to mention
shortcoming and flaws of our educational system. I could not enter the minds,
thoughts and psychological state of others in the group -at least of those who
bothered, but I left for the room discouraged, with hopes of any success
fainted.
On the way to the
room, I stopped by in what looked like one of the dormitory students’ lounges:
a room with a billiard, a ping-pong table and a vending machine with range of soft
drinks. I bought, what else, a can of Coca-Cola, the only recognizable soft
drink amongst root beers and other American soda brands that had not yet reached
our Greek shores. A young black guy, possibly a university student or employee,
was playing the pool on his own. I opened the Coca-Cola can and paused by the entrance
to observe his game. After he played last ball, he erected his hinged body, and
drew his spread legs together with abrupt movements, which betrayed annoyance
from my presence in the room, slowly brought the cue by his foot before turning
to me and said harshly with a hint of irony: “What are you staring at? Haven’t
you seen a black guy before?” I was taken aback. It was the sort of question I knew
whether I had to or how to answer. It would not have been asked nor it would be
answerable in my previous life. I certainly did not have the sharpness and readiness
to respond, let alone in a language that I was still not fluent in. I felt
embarrassed, somehow offended by blunt question and his abruptness and apparently
unwarranted uncouthness and upset countenance. There was clearly a racial
divide and I was standing at the opposite side of his. I felt my face flushing
red. And I did what I usually do in situations of embarrassment and feeling
insulted: a side-to-side nod of the head, which I knew in the Anglo-Saxon world
signified denial and disapproval, and I left without uttering a word. The soul
weighed even heavier and after the disappointing eve of the competition a
restless night was lying ahead.
Back in the room
with Sarantos I struggled to fall asleep, when a clear mind was desperately needed
for the cognitive effort of such magnitude ahead. Was it the Coca-Cola whose
stimulating effects I had underestimated? Was it the jet-lag that disturbed my
body-clock and I failed thus far to realise? Was it worries and anxiety, in
view of a competition for which the omens were unfavourable? For a few hours I
tried to suppress those thoughts and worries and get a decent asleep. In vain.
Sarantos at the opposite end of the room was enjoying a sound sleep. In truth,
he snatched under my nose the most privileged bed, at the back of the room
under the window, whilst mine was by the door and at moments noisy corridor. I could
hear every subtle noise echoing through from the residence hall rooms beyond. I
kept listening powerlessly and with envy to Sarantos’ calm breathing. It was
that of an unflappable man who was enjoying a good night’s sleep and pleasant
dreams, in peace with himself, relaxed about the great day tomorrow. This exacerbated
my restlessness which was transforming into some kind of mental anguish and despair,
protracting my insomnia into the early morning hours. It was still early
evening at home, I thought. An over-stimulated brain started visualising images
of sexual nature, but from personal experience on the matter, a masturbation would
bring exactly the opposite result from the desired one, that is, it would enhance
anxiety and prolong the wakefulness. I resisted it as an elixir of relaxation.
With what exhausted mind would I compete the next morning? Who would recognize
extenuating circumstances in an all likelihood impending failure – in absolute
and relative terms? Two-three-four o’clock in the morning and I was still
awake, with the mind recycling myriads of thoughts, with no beginning and end.
Finally, unexpectedly, in the midst of this jumble of thoughts, sleep came and
took me, for merely two hours before an alarm clock sounded, just when the
light of dawn had already begun to shine behind the curtain of the window under
which Sarantos was sleeping.
I woke up tired and heavy,
almost defeated before the competition even began. The insipid juice and watery
coffee of the cafeteria barely pulled me out of my stupor. The lack of clarity of
a blurry mind was evident. I was led robotically, stressful, and with my nerves
tense to one of the eight rooms, to Room No 2 (as I was the second in the rank
of the Greek team) and to the individual desks typical of American schools, as I
saw them in films. A small Greek flag was positioned at its corner, but such
symbols neither inspire nor lift me psychologically towards a successful performance.
And what can a rush adrenaline achieve on its own?
As broadly expected,
the first day of the ordeal ended in a resounding failure –personal and collective.
I knew it, we knew it. We found ourselves in the foyer bewildered by the
difficulty of the problems, worn out and mentally drained, with the slim hopes
the Greek team might have had until that morning brutally dashed. Numb,
exhausted, with few words, my only secret wish was for this futile campaign to
conclude swiftly and as psychologically painlessly as possible. The night of
the first day of the Olympics was forgotten. A few spurious and aimless
discussions amongst members of the group did not help to change the prevailing
heavy mood, nor did they manage to rationally analyse the predicament in which more
or less each one of us found himself. It was now becoming obvious from the flow
of events hitherto, our presence as representatives of Greece in an
international competition, which would at least weigh on our mathematical
education compared to other countries, was unlikely to improve significantly.
Mr. Mermigkis when simply asked how we did, he was answered with few sluggish,
and withdrew into his indifferent himself. The role of the coach clearly would
not have suited him. I was longing for an afternoon recovery nap, which I
managed to steal after lunch in the cafeteria full, by and large, from cheerful
contestants. Sleep that night came early and was somewhat liberating and
refreshing. On the second day of the competition, we performed slightly better,
although again at a much lower levels than our initial expectations.
The final individual
and team scores reflected in a crystal manner the general failure of our Olympic
mission, so to speak. Ranked twenty-third among twenty-seven participation teams,
a place in the world of mathematics from whatever point of view one would have looked
at and analysed it was disappointing and disheartening, no matter what the
expectations were even from the most pessimistic involved. No individual
awards, no praise, no commendations. A few, and I counted myself amongst them,
were concerned about the reactions back in Greece of the even fewer who knew
and maybe cared about our struggles in America: Kazantzis, the parents, a
handful of Mathematical Society officials, who were involved in organizing, took
such competitions seriously and invested personal time for a successful
representation.
After the
announcement of the results and a closing ceremony in a grand ballroom, for the
awards of metals and distinctions, which dampened our spirits even further, and
before leaving for our homeland, we would return to New York for one last
night. A last-day photo of the eight contestants in IMO T-shirts in front of
the historic Healy Hall of the University which hosted the Olympiad portrayed
eight grim, weary young men, who underwent trials and tribulations and fought an
uphill battle against the odds, which, despite hopes and illusions of very few
amongst us, the chances of success were slim.
In our last day in
New York, somehow relieved from the heavy weight of the competition, we were
offered carefree cultural visits to some of the city’s attractions: the
Metropolitan Museum, where I had the opportunity to see and be impressed by
Rodin’s ‘Thinker’, the majestic UN building, the straight avenues of Manhattan
that disappeared into the horizon with huge skyscrapers on either side. And of
course, for shopping in the Manhattan boulevards, where the $500 in tourist currency
I had exchanged before our departure, was spent in the purchase of a single
item: an electronic chessboard. Contempt for ‘pointless shopping’, ‘spending
money on useless items for the sake of it’, such as gifts and souvenir
purchases from tourist destinations has always been a family maxim, which I also
maintained to this day. For some it implies stinginess.
Upon returning to
Greece, the team disbanded and everyone went their own way. Before we shook
hands, we all agreed that with some preparation we would fare better and have
something to talk about. If anything, we all thought, our dismal experience of
those Olympics would help future national representations in the event. Using
the Balkan Olympiads, a less ominous and more friendly event that commenced
three years later, as a spring board at arm’s length, it would certainly help bridge
the gap at least with our Balkan neighbours and would be a first yardstick of
improvement. There were nuggets of consolation in those thoughts. There was no
reason for utter disdain and misery, nor for feelings of shame from our failure
and our dejection and disappointment ahead of our first year in university and
adult life would very soon evaporate.
Stefanos, the ‘third’
in our team, who however fared relatively better than the other members of the
group, sent a letter to ‘Euclid’, the periodical of the Mathematical Society.
It was annexed to a superficial review of the Greek representation to the
Olympiad by Mr. Exarchakos for the sake of accountability, which included a
criticism of himself and the Society. Stefanos took the initiative to express
and insider’s view of the failure and he lashed out with choleric comments on
all and sundry. Of course, it was the incomplete or non-existent preparation partially
to blame, Stefanos claimed, but many of the members of the group, he went on,
were possessed by feelings of inferiority which were intensified by the
interactions with other national teams, assembled via a thorough selection and better
trained and prepared and coached. He ended up with the sad realization that
many of us did not deserve to represent our nation in maths, that we did not
have the brain and abilities to be there. He might have been right in many
ways. I discovered Stefanos’ letter buried in the digital archives of the
Mathematical Society twenty-eight years later, and, God knows why, I read every
single line of it. Perhaps, because it concerned an episode, a singular moment
of existence, over and above average everyday life in the years passed, and stimulated,
despite all the resounding failure, a minute but distinctly noticeable
influence towards advancement in life; perhaps, because it reflected a tiny piece
of history of my being in the world, a pebble in the construction of who I am
today.
