Ancestry 3 - From Melnik: The Family of Elias

Aunt Anna died in 2016. The exact date I do not remember, nor does it matter. It did not register in the mind when it was mentioned on Skype, amongst several conversations with Father about unconnected everyday matters and other rather trivial events, and I was not paying the due attention. Two generations of my family passed away and buried in the shadows of time from the days of the flight from Melnik, and Aunt Anna, the unmarried daughter of Elias, a first cousin of Father, was the last remnant of her generation from the branch of Elias in the grand family tree. Father was her closest relative and, by law, responsible for the procedural issues that needed to be sorted out after his cousin’s death. Anna had lived more years than most of us humans are entitled to, and her death, one might say, took none of the few involved by surprise. (I seem to be counting many deaths lately, of friends, relatives, and personalities whose lives were connected and, for short or long periods of time, concurrent with mine, partly, of course, due to the advanced age of mine, too. As the years go by and my turn gets closer, the more frequently and intensively death plays games with consciousness and thoughts and emotions, the closer He will be breathing to the necks of Father and Mother, that is, not far away from me.)

Aunt Anna was a rather forgotten existence living at the fringes of what had remained of that great family. The Immediate concerns following her death came temporarily to the fore and confronted what one would call the "close family circle", mainly Father, unexpectedly, whilst her carer and neighbors were counting the last days of her life. I mean posthumous concerns with regards to settling unfinished business, inheritance, etc., of anyone who leaves the worldly, so they are concluded in the best possible way and in the interest of the remaining relatives. Until her death aunt Anna featured in the margins of my own book of life and memory banks, a leaf of a distant, almost obscure branch of my family tree, which was not long ago before her death I had begun to explore. Naturally, her death affected me only imperceptibly, hardly at all, from either an emotional or material point of view. It did not bring any emotions of sorrow, as had been the case with my grandparents and uncle Marios. I would not be endowed with any inheritance.

That was not a matter of indifference or stone-heartedness on my part. After all, she was a member of the broader family, that much I could not ignore. On the contrary, I was moved by the way Father, as by default her closest relative, squeezed the last remnants of his strength and energy from the depleted reservoirs of old age, and settled the formalities of Anna’s death, and protected her meagre possessions, her tiny apartment and a few thousand euros, from some shady characters of her environment who coveted them. From a pragmatic point of view, she was a second-degree relative of mine, a first cousin of Father’s, and the surname we shared was the obvious thing that linked us: two consecutive lines in the white-pages, in addition to several obscure genes, a common DNA -as they say. But when a leaf turns yellow and falls under the generation tree, when a branch of that tree dies, as it happened with aunt Anne's family, we tend to look a little further down the tree: its trunk, its roots, its history.

And so it happened. As if her death were a milestone in my own life journey, made me pause and turn my head back: into the past, as deep in it as possible, as deep as the memories and testimonies of the still living allowed. I am fully aware that most of the road I have, myself, left behind. It is well-known and logical and commonplace: as the years go by, as the future ahead shrinks, as memory and recollections from the past outweigh ambitions and expectations and dreams for the future, the more the mind is inclined to stare back and delve into the realms of the past, sometimes gratefully, other times with regrets, poignancy or nostalgia, the more it strives to hold on to the accumulated past, retain it in the memory banks of his brain, tooth and nail, perhaps to nurture and keep it alive in his mind until the end. We observe this tendency in conversations with the elderly -and ourselves, as we grow older. Plans for a contracted future are limited to the food we will have for lunch or what the weather will be like, today or maybe tomorrow, what necessities we need to purchase, or whether will hear news from children and grandchildren soon, maybe a walk in the park or a brief and low-key holiday. Some say all this weighing and re-weighing of the past is a subconscious effort to relive parts of our past lives during the remainder of our days, as many times as possible, through memories and experiences, under the light of the knowledge we acquired.

The death of aunt Anna was therefore expected and happened naturally. After 88 years of life, she had her fair share of life, as one may say rather inappropriately and with a dose of cynicism. Anyway, “let’s live to remember her” as we would like to wish after the death of someone in lieu of condolences. In the Ibrişimci family photograph taken around 1930, signed by a Jewish photographer, a certain E. Ahilla, Anna, a nearly three-year-old girl sitting at the feet of her dad great-uncle Elias, the latest offspring of a vibrant and thriving family from Melnik, looks with admirable seriousness at the lens – with the same big eyes that characterized the whole family from Father's side. Her hair was straight, short, well combed, dark, shiny from the brilliantine applied for the occasion, matching a dark dress and patent leather sandals. Her complexion was swarthy nearly of a chocolaty tone -perhaps from tanning under the summer sun, perhaps from the uneven lighting in the studio, or perhaps from not being enough photogenic. Little Anna's dark complexion were contrasted with her white socks, the light-gray suit of her father, and the white face of a male doll with a hat –a caricature of a dancer of the time, the kind of item photographers of the time gave to toddlers to keep them still and quiet. But Anna focused with discipline and seriousness on the lens, holding the drooping doll indifferently. She was to be the last of the family members in that 1930 photo to bid farewell to the worldly.

As a child, I met aunt Anna a couple of times that I can remember. The first, with a cousin who lived across the street from her apartment, was on a Sunday morning before, whilst we were both excited and could not wait to watch in a cinema called “DIMITRA”, next door to aunt Anna’s apartment block, the double and sometimes triple-film show –one of those that inevitably included an animated and or a Laurel and Hardy comedy short film, along with a Hollywood western or historical epic. Aunt Anna, I remember, offered us in her tiny kitchen, on a small table crammed next to the glazed kitchen door, a little breakfast comprising a cup of milk and biscuits to dunk in it. In truth, there had not been much give-and-take with Elias’ household, as the greater family grew and spread out in the suburbs, in tandem with the relentless construction and its merciless expansion, and the prolonged absences of Father and Mother in out-of-town employment assignments. Nor do I remember us talking, let alone what was said, when Father presented me, a shy and tacit teenager to Elias in his 28^th of October Street apartment where he was staying with his children in his late years, as a farewell visit shortly before his death, at his wish it must be said. At that time, I was one of the young and promising hopefuls to carry and honor the name of the Ibrişimci clan whose reins were held by Elias during the years of the uprooting and immigration.

English translation. Uncle Elias, as the eldest son, had emerged early on and, since the death of the patriarch great-grandfather Panayiotis de facto, as the central figure of the family. He was the rock in the chaotic days of the forced immigration from Melnik and the cohesive link of the family in the first difficult months, on their way to Sidirokastro and then Thessaloniki. He was the only one among the seven brothers who had proper education and managed to climb the social ladder, yet not reaching the maximum of his potential, given the aura of suspicion which envelopes refugees wherever they end up. He graduated from the Commercial School of Stefanos Noukas, of almost tertiary level education at the time, got a job in the processing and trade of tobacco, and became a manager in the business of an illiterate, but wealthy owner, who, clueless as he was, without Elias’ acumen would not have learned anything about commerce and his business would have collapsed. Elias held its reins almost on his own, turned it around and made it profitable, back then in the interwar years, when tobacco processing and trade in the area was a large and growing business.

Elias married Katina nee Tsoprou, "Tsoprouda" as grandfather Leonidas teasingly called her. She descended from the distinguished family of Konstantinos Tsopros of 19^th century Melnik and as an educated woman of a dynamic personality, suited the ambitious Elias. In the family photo, Katina, dignified, almost imperial, gazes away from the lens, with her right palm placed on her left in an almost reverential way, perhaps a reflection of the personality behind the pose. I found Katina's short biography, a typewritten page framed and hung for years on one of the walls of Anna's apartment, only remnant of Katina's existence in this world, in a plastic carrier bag with photograph albums that Father collected and brought home after her death. In the biography, in a purist and archaising from of modern Greek, it was written: "She was born in Melnik in 1895... With a scholarship from the Hellenic State, she attended the Gymnasium of Serres, from which she graduated with HONORS for her excellent performance in her studies, especially, in vocal music performance... Forthwith after graduation, she was appointed as a teacher at Melnik’s Girls' School until 1913, whence she resigned because she was married to Elias P. I., after whom she had seven (7) children, of which only two (2) survived. She passed away at the age of 78 in Thessaloniki."  Her life had a beginning, a middle and an end. She left her trace the world of her time. One could say, in retrospect, that almost everything in her life was somehow predetermined, and determined by the environment and zeitgeist. It happens with every life -more or less.

English translation. Elias’ political conservatism was radically opposed to the views and political leanings of the other members of the family, at least the politicized ones. "He’s right-wing" was one of the phrases that the Father used regularly and emphatically, almost derogatively, in characterizing politically his uncle’s rigid political stance, when he himself for most of his life was a conscientious voter of the Left. Elias’ beliefs had their deep roots in history and his Melnikian heritage. On one hand, there was the instinctive conservatism and a reflexive, natural suspicion of the new in a society, by default deeply conservative, almost backward, however pushed from many quarters of society towards progress and development, that is the typical bourgeois anti-liberalism. On the other hand, and above all, it was founded and consolidated within the anti-Venizelist faction, in so far as Venizelos represented the progressive and extrovert part of the Greek political and national scene after the Balkan wars. Venizelos, one of the protagonists in the post-war negotiations and signatories of the Treaty of Bucharest, was stigmatized in Elias' mind, with some, one might say, anti-dialectical reasoning, as the chief responsible for handing over Melnik to Bulgaria, an arch-antagonist and enemy state of Greece when dividing the spoils of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, which led to the tragic end of the affluent community he had grown into, the uprooting of his family of which he was the de facto head. In a few words, Venizelos betrayed the dreams and ideals of himself and hundreds of his fellow compatriots, turned their lives upside down and brought about uncertainty and misery. Perhaps, his ascend to the managerial positions of a medium-sized enterprise in interwar Greece, that is, at the doorstep of the Thessaloniki’s upper middle-class, as the city was emerging from the set-backs of successive wars, despite the relatively small fortune he eventually managed to accumulate, contributed to the crystallization of his political ideas or, if not ideas, an unshakable political persuasion. He represented the extreme right in the political spectrum of the broader family, which although had no working-class traditions ingrained, it nevertheless found itself positioned closer to the considerable and militant working-class of the city. Elias followed his conservatism with extreme consistency and zeal until the end of his life. An avid reader of the conservative newspaper Βραδυνή, intertwined in life with the conservative politician Stefanos Stephanopoulos and other political actors of the same ilk, he detached himself from the rest of the family and built a very own autonomous circle in life. Any testimonies about paternalistic interventions or intra-family political conflicts and quarrels did not reach my ears. He must have respected the opposite political views and will of the others.

Katina and Elias raised Dimitris, the serene and composed teenager in that same family photo who stood smiling behind his mum and dad. He was their beloved ‘Takis’ who studied and became a lawyer, promising to climb one step higher than his father in the social ladder. I discovered his name, after an internet search, in a picture of a hand-written page with the “List of lawyers crossed off from the Register of the Bar Associations in year 1943”.  The word "deceased" was scribbled next to his name. His was amongst twenty-two other names: Yomtov Yakoel, Camhi Elias, Cohen Abraham, Cohen Alfredo, Cohen Elias, Cohen Lazarus, Cohen Simandov, Kisspi Isosif, Levis Abraham, Masarano Albert, Moses Saul, Nahmia Samuel, Ovadia Elijah, Revah Joseph, Shiaki Albert, Shiaki Isaac and Faratzi Menahem; the names of Jewish lawyers, threads in the fabric of the pre-war society of Thessaloniki, who were expelled from the bar on February 27, 1943, just two weeks after the arrival in the city of the Hauptsturmführer of the SS and Eichmen's henchmen Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner, along with 100 men following an order from the Military Administration of Thessaloniki. And then, they were uprooted from the city. What preceded and followed in the tragic lives of the Jews, not just the lawyers amongst them, is well known and documented. History rarely dwells on the fate of ordinary mortals, who think, act, work, struggle, and fight in the background of the great historical events, while without these actors, constituents of what we call social classes and human mass, there is no historical movement. The early death of Takis is still recalled by Father· an eight-year-old child then, he remembers hearing of his death at the threshold of his Toumba's poor dwelling, and crying at the news.

Elias' and Katina’s two other children, Lakis and Anna, did not distinguish themselves in life as much as their parents or even their prematurely deceased brother. In the 1930 photo, Lakis' eyes did not have the spark and glow of those of his brother. However, his smile betrayed an inexhaustible childlike vivacity, sometimes associated with an innate intelligence. There are always exceptions to any rule or stereotype. The early death of Takis in 1943 and then of Katina in 1978, the steely and impassionate personality of Elias, brought the two siblings closer, but at the same time lowered their horizons. Perhaps, the individual personality and intelligence played its part, in addition to the conservative dogmatism and authoritarianism of Elias, which could have suppressed many of their ambitions, guided them to well-trodden paths of post-war Greece. Lakis became a civil servant, Anna took over the housewife duties from Katina, whilst attending Sunday schools, and assisting the local priest in her parish. Both lived under the same roof with their father, until the end of a life in January 1983 which spanned ninety-four years. Despite his weak heart and several heart attacks, the bourgeois tenant of Mackenzie King's “first apartment building with elevator”, during his late years bedridden in the lesser apartment of October 28^th Street, maintained until his very last day his clarity of mind, along with his stern political conservatism. Such was the testimony of Father, who had great respect and esteem for his uncle, and revered him even more than his own father.

Lakis with the early but small pension of the former tax collector, married a widow from the town of Sindos in the outskirts of Thessaloniki, left the family apartment in search of a last sparkle in love and maybe solace, before a rather premature death despite his not much advanced middle-age. Anna ended-up a spinster, rather predictably. Perhaps from personal disappointments in her life, perhaps from vanity and setting high standards to possible suitors due to an arrogance and complacency bred by her beauty as a young woman, or perhaps as a conscious choice to turn mind and body away from love and lust, dictated by her strict adherence to her religious dogma; that is, the fear of God and the hell that awaits sinners in after-life. Who knows? She was undoubtfully beautiful as a young girl and woman. In the plastic carrier bag Father brought home after her death, there was a photo-album and in it, amongst the photos of countless excursions to various parts of Greece with groups, mostly with friends from Sunday Schools and her parish, I found the portrait of a young man in the uniform of a merchant marine officer, and a love note written on the back: "To beloved Annoula to remember me with love". That seemed the only circumstantial evidence of an apparently short and frivolous love affair in Anna’s existence.

In short, the life of aunt Anna could be described as measured and sedate, if not outright dull, without distinctions, devoid of any drama and emotional peaks and troughs, deep sorrows, and exaltations. She eventually found certainty and solace in the church. Her life could by no means be described as full and colorful, even by her close friends, relatives, and neighbors. On the contrary, colorless, lukewarm, monastic, would be more apt adjectives. Like walking on an open plain without trees, under gloomy gray skies. That life of hers must have passed quickly, albeit without much stress, without worries about work or raising children, without the inevitable quarrels of a married couple or the frictions of a love relations: there had been no man in her life and, thus, no object to fight with. With the small joys of carefree group excursions to the country, to the mountains and the coast, to monasteries and the holy destinations Greece can offer, her daily occupation with the affairs of her parish and attending to the church, her devotion and saintly work was awarded with a certificate of praise, framed, and hung on a living-room wall next to her mother’s biography as a highlight of her uneventful life.  English translation. 

With the world of the Greek Orthodox Church I had no open accounts, apart from the mandatory, nearly coercive attendance of liturgies and services. Only prejudices have I formed, which daily life in Greece retrospectively justifies. Yet, I presume, apart from those unbearably lengthy liturgies and services, like weddings and funerals, outdated and kitsch church festivals with the main purpose of fundraising from church flock donations, and the like, the life of a religious person can follow other paths, more secular, cosmopolitan, colorful, even spiritual. But how should I know? In aunt Anna's case, a noose was tightening around her in tandem with the growing mental helplessness and senility and the deterioration of her eyesight until virtual blindness. There remained two or three shadowy characters from her parish, another devout Christian named Karapetsa, a certain Petros, apparently the chief candlelighter in her church, along with a few Albanian and Georgian paid carers who looked after her in the blindness and senility of her late years. It was rumored that some of these parishioners, purportedly genuine caring friends, preyed like crows on her micro-deposits and little apartment, until they were scattered by the intervention of Father, the closest remaining relative for all intents and purposes, including inheritance matters. Those characters were unseen in the funeral and memorial service of Anna, therefore, all previous talk of heartfelt friendships and compassion for the helpless woman rendered itself meaningless.

Eventually, as it is with most mortals, aunt Anna’s memory faded away, "defeated by time." The sun set, and her grey, unillustrious life was consigned to oblivion. The family branch of patriarch Elias, in the absence of any descendants fell from the tree of generations and was scattered by the winds of time. The plastic carrier bag with the photo album, the framed portrait of her brother's Takis, the sign with his name outside his law office, Katina's CV, the death certificate of Elias, a certificate from her church praising her philanthropic activities, those and only those, are buried amongst other odds and ends in a corner of a family basement storage room, until the future clears them.