Ancestry 21 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: A Distant Grandfather and the Village

Grandfather Yiannis retired shortly before a few months before I was born. As a child and, later, as a high school teenager, my encounters with grandfather were casual and our relationship, until the end, remained fragmented and weak. Only few words were exchanged between us whenever Mother and I descended to the village –exchanges minimalistic and inconsequential. The few typical greetings of "How is it going, L?" on grandfather’s part were answered by an expressionless monosyllabic: "OK..." or “Good.” This was due, on the one hand, to an immense and unbearable shyness -especially unbearable for the child in me. Unforseen then, this shyness would torment my soul and being throughout life, quite often raising insurmountable obstacles to expressing myself spontaneously and articulating thoughts and wishes, presenting myself socially. On the other hand, it was due to the teachery, the pedantic and paternalistic style of grandfather that created an emotional distance between him and the people around, typical of that between a teacher and his students; in short, a barrier of a psychospiritual nature. The relatively long physical distance of the village from our home in Thessaloniki that we had to negotiate with the scarce transport means of the time, a couple of hours by bus through the busy city centre and its rugged industrial western suburbs, did not help either. I do not remember grandfather visiting, let alone staying overnight at home, likely because he was feeling unwelcome by Father, while Father himself only grudgingly gave us lifts in his car. A few hours of travel and stay in the village were unworthy of him, his rest on Sunday afternoons hardly negotiable.

The figures of one hand suffice to recount the memories of walks in the company of grandfather Yiannis, when we might have held hands silently, as is the case with two timid guys separated by two generations. The handful of walks I remember took place in Sunday mornings along the old promenade, continued around the White Tower landmark and finished in the small central park with the birch trees stretching from the YMCA building towards the sea, with its rudimentary zoo of pheasants and a sad unkempt bear that could be smelt from afar. They ended in the afternoons, with a couple of spins on the wooden horse carousel for my entertainment, before our farewells and my safe delivery to Mother (the sacred duty of grandparents entrusted with the care of a child). Often, at around noon, I was offered some sort of snack, a ham & cheese toast and orangeade, whilst grandfather enjoyed a glass of ouzo with small plate of mezedes; in the café of Exarchakos, where an endless row of tables under the green awnings bisected the park from the YMCA building all the way to the Royal Theatre, separating two broad paved pathways that buzzed with Thessalonian families on the Sunday mornings and afternoons of Spring and Autumn, and cool Summer evenings. All those scattered fragments of memory from the distant childhood, faint and tangled impressions as they were, in a chronological disorder, were squeezed into the depths of the mind, even crushed into oblivion by the incessant passage of time, by other impressions of greater gravity and intensity and importance. Nostalgia, however, this grand Homeric word which is used to describe a unique passion in human existence, the distinct bittersweet feeling that tends to overwhelm us from time to time, more often -it is true- as we approach the end of the road, this nostalgia reappears as a kind of an unhealed wound in the soul, while the mind flutters from one distant memory to another, it becomes a tide of sadness difficult to overcome. Instead, it flares up undiminished, if not strengthened, with the years. The effect onto our souls is disproportionately intense relative to the magnitude of the causes: the fragments of memory, the trivial events of a distant past, the weight of time elapsed without us noticing.

I was too young a child then. I do not remember a single occasion where grandfather stopped by my childhood flat in the old Thessaloniki neighbourhood, despite his regular visits to the city centre. I attributed this to the notorious discretion and caution which characterised the Economou family and a usually unfounded dread of becoming a burden to others, while this mental burden-in-itself described earlier, was something inexplicable by the circumstances that could potentially raise it. Of course, he would have never come uninvited! And I do not remember his daughter inviting him. Father certainly never did. However, either invited or uninvited, either welcome or unwelcome, it was not hard for even a child to sense that grandfather did not show up to our doorstep primarily because of some kind of innate fear and timidity in the company of an imposing, unyielding and domineering Father. Over-and-above the said discretion, the well-established sensitivity of grandfather's race would be affected inordinately by inevitable micro-clashes, because of the rigid spirit and ideas, the incessant, impulsive, and categorical, almost aggressive points of view that separated Father from the rest of a party (any party); with arguments contradicting that of his interlocutor, and often himself—from one statement to another, even from one sentence to the next. In short, it was always difficult with Father in the presence of other people and, first and foremost, in the company of Mother’s family. The contradictions and arguments of Father, from politics to family matters, which his peers and friends often found intolerable and rejected in kind, to an elderly man like grandfather would have seemed avoidable and unnecessary. If those were eventually erupted, they would become unbearable and a call for taking flight. Father’s piercing loud voice, which could reach thunderous peaks in intensity, sometimes unpredictably, was a factor not to be ignored either.

On his part, during his rare visits to Magnesia, he usually presented himself and confronted the Economou family through a standard catalogue of ironic and derogatory, supposedly "humorous", comments, a behaviour which, although seemingly was disguising good intentions -harmless atnd innocent to the close family members who knew him and usually ignored them with indifference or a feigned smile, the same behaviour in relatively unfamiliar or, even worse, sensitive circles of people gave sufficient ground for misunderstandings, and sometimes even fiery reactions and quarrels. Father projected himself, at least in the village of Magnesia, as an intellectual, a university graduate, a presumably cosmopolitan bourgeois, detached from his own family humble origins –as opposed to the bunch of inferior peasants around him. (Mother was often called a "little peasant" or mocked about her short height she “sadly” inherited from her father, amongst alternatively serious or ironic remarks. That I remember. The "serious" part of such characterizations weighed heavier to Mother’s psyche and pride. Although they were seemingly and initially expressed as constituents of some innocent teasing, they could potentially lead to unnecessary irritation and escalation. Deep down, though, he often meant his derogatory remarks; he might have even derived pleasure from the reactions they caused.)

I am sure those kinds of sarcasms of Father were not greatly appreciated by grandfather. He never followed up or responded to contentious conversations, especially about economic and political issues, but usually retired discreetly to his room, in his own space, in his sofa by the old radio. Nevertheless, secretly in his mind he must have had cultivated some respect, even perhaps admiration, for his educated, cultured, certainly assertive and courageous and son-in-law, characteristics not featured amongst all members, bar one, of the Economou family.

After my brother's birth, he used to call us on Sunday afternoons, sounding tipsy after several glasses of ouzo in the café on his way home for lunch. His tipsiness was evident even to an uninitiated child by his characteristic overture in the old-school teacher’s archaising form of Greek. Whenever it was me who picked up the phone he used to say: "Which estimable gentleman do I have the honour to speak to?" "I'm L, grandpa..." was my short answer. Then reverting to more colloquial Greek: "How are we doing, Ore L? How is it going? How things?" -"Well, I'm OK..." -"Where is your mother, Ore?" -"Here she is... Mom!" The conversations ended abruptly, rather awkwardly for me, the sober one.

Like Father, neither did I honour my grandparents sufficiently with frequent visits and my presence in their home as a child, even less so as a teenager. We usually visited on sunny Sunday mornings with Mother after catching a morning bus that waited for us behind the Bey Hamam. Less often we were accompanied by Father, the undisputed and proud driver of the first and second FIATs of the family. Along the main road of the village, I was always struck and at the same time slightly embarrassed by the strange, fixed -to our car and the passengers inside, gazes of the villagers -passers-by or sitting in the café or balconies of their houses. And they kept staring with prying eyes at us until we moved outside their field of vision. We were clearly the faces of strangers; they had to clarify in their minds or amongst themselves our descent, our identity, most importantly the household of the village we intended to visit. For Father, of course, those persistent and indiscrete gazes of the villagers of Magnesia following our trajectory, focusing into anything alien to faces and objects of their daily routine and intimacy, which I still perceive today when I drive through its streets, fed back his notions of "peasantry" and the cultural backwardness that this concept implies.

During those visits, the conversations we exchanged privately with grandfather were few and inconsequential to have left any significant imprint in memory. We are both naturally laconic, which of course goes hand in hand with the natural shyness and timidity and introspectiveness that characterizes some people. Grandfather’s speech was often categorical and imposing (due to the wealth of his vocabulary rather than the tone of his voice) and his arguments could hardly be objected to or even questioned by his close environment in the family and the village, at least by the women of his household: Mrs. Vasiliki, the aunts, Mother. Only aunt Aliki, whenever she ascended to the village from Athens, I did notice on occasions that she used to become a source and target of confrontation and criticism and found herself the midst of fierce domestic arguments (being also the cause of those), either over property matters or the thornier subject of the rehabilitation of the two still unmarried sisters. There were shouts and quarrels in the kitchen, and the otherwise exemplary environment in a house of peach and calm was perturbed. In those incidents, when Mr. Yiannis' vocal intensity slightly rose above average and his opinions and speech became more emphatic, hardly anyone was taking Aliki’s side of the argument. But I remember her standing imperiously, a lone figure in the centre of the kitchen condescending, expressing fearlessly scathing views with equivalent intensity, which a defensive grandfather tried to answer with the headmaster’s pomp from his seat at the head of the table, barely lifting his head from the plate of food in front of him. All the while Mrs. Vasiliki, always a bystander, a neutral or without opining, watched silently from the divan against the wall. The other sisters were moving restlessly in and out of the kitchen and, in conversations between them, at every opportunity, they whispered venomous remarks behind her back: aunt Aliki had already been blacklisted as the obstinate and wayward of the family, because more of her intransigent and occasionally offensive style, than the integrity of her character. She was Mr. Yiannis’ least favourite daughter, yet grandfather barely favoured and approved of any of the rest. Maybe, just Mother.

Ancestry 20 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Family Traits

Yiannis imposed on his family a peculiar culture from the elevated position of respect and prestige that the veteran teacher and headmaster commanded· mostly unintentionally, sometimes deliberately, however, not through intimidation or psychological compulsion. He rarely yelled to his wife and daughters, let alone quarrelled with them. This kind of latent nurturing, aided perhaps by some untraceable genetic heritage, instilled in the personality of the three daughters, who stayed with the family well into adulthood, certain common traits and a distinct temperament. In family gatherings, the following statements were often voiced: "This is how we, the Economou’s, are…” or “The Economou’s are not up to such things..." And nothing would be attempted to changing the underlying attitudes.

Main characteristic of this "Economou" temperament was the excessive sensitivity to external stimuli, such as words or actions from actors outside the family nucleus, which through a labyrinthine thought process and over-analysis, further compounded by adding unnecessary gravity to sayings and events, otherwise trivial and transient for the common sense, that is through an anti-dialectical isolation of words or actions detached from their context or ignoring any correlation with other events, often led to misinterpretations, misunderstandings, resentment, distress, sulking, bad-temperedness, anger. It led to a temporary insularity from the outside environment, disproportionate and asymmetrical reactions vis-à-vis their cause, often an acute feeling of embarrassment and shame and some psychological turbulence of the like.

The Economou family was collectively or individually obsessed by being under the scrutiny from the “eyes of the external world” and “the gaze of society”, by “what the world would say or how would judge us”, by how every action would be seen by the world, how each phrase said would be understood and interpreted. Such fears were often counter balanced by pretence and duplicity. This emotional hypersensitivity over an underlying deep-rooted sense of pessimism and negative predisposition to the denouement of complex life situations was self-fuelled by an innate family introversion and the code of conduct this adopted: whereby, one sister would talk with the other and analyse ad nauseum the one and same situation from every possible point of view, direct or oblique or inverted, through a perpetual cycle of in-house gossiping and, later in life, via endless phone calls and back and forth visits. Unsurprisingly, such much ado about nothing would prove ineffective and fruitless· considerably more than necessary amounts of cognitive power was wasted even in the rare cases when the analysis and discussions were aimed at something of substance. Thankfully, such mental tensions and exertions and the associated distress faded quickly without serious repercussions to the mental well-being and family tranquillity, before they emerge anew from another spark or under a different pretext.

Family introversion, on the other hand, an obscure yet powerful centre of gravity towards which the three sisters converged, might have been partly bred by Mr. Yiannis’ past or it might have subconsciously fostered by him, or it could merely be formed because of life itself in a small village community, culturally inferior to the city where I grew up. Or, perhaps, it was due to limited innate capabilities and the scanty intercourse with the outside world – via work, studies, politics, or raising children. The two of the sisters did not have any children. A logical result would be the inadequacy to face up and overcome the obstacles that life regularly erects in front of us, beyond the trivial everyday questions with obvious answers· the indecision in the face of existential dilemmas that seek choices, good or bad, and taking responsibility for the possible consequences. The horizons of their lives remained low for the best part of their youth, reduced into reliving the everydayness, the torturous repetition of its trivial and colourless components: household chores, shopping from the grocery across the street or the village markets, the coffee drinking and coffee reading sessions with the neighbours, the telephone calls to sisters and relatives away, and so on.

Why am I writing all this about grandfather’s family? With maturity and the reflections of my  consciousness, in the dialogues with it along the road to knowing-myself, I discovered that I inherited, partly due to the impressions imprinted in my conscience and left indelible traces on a malleable child soul, whilst growing up with Mother and her family, partly due to grandfather’s household modus operandi and the prevailing intra-family mentality, as expressed by Mother and to lesser extent by my grandfather and aunts, and, as always, partly due to an indeterminate genetic footprint: the much higher than average emotional sensitivity, the pessimism and negativity displayed ahead of life crises or after major decisions with uncertain or several possible outcomes, the meticulous planning always based on the worst possible scenario, the propensity to abdicate a heavy burden of responsibility in the face of misfortunes involving myself and others.

Such traits inevitably determined several of my personal choices along the way. Yet, despite the bonds that heredity binds us to our ancestors and the inherently reactionary attitude to life situations I inherited, during an apparently autonomous and "radical" development of my personality, which would eventually be detached from the family roots and traditions, I managed to at least expand my horizons, in as much as geography and time allowed. Being conscious of the reality I experience each time, and of the End that human fate inevitably has in store for us, I tried constantly to trouble the stagnant waters of everyday routine and free myself from the shackles of these traits I inherited and brough up with, no matter how difficult it had been. But admittedly it has been and still is a cumbersome burden.

Ancestry 19 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: A Discordant Speech

It would be the last notable episode in the life of Yiannis’ young family. Other than death or birth, that is. Since then, in the triviality of everydayness at home, of work at school, and the shrinking with age social circle of Mr. Yiannis, his intercourse with politics and public life was strictly regulated, despite the political turbulence and struggles outside those microenvironments. Mr. Yiannis retained a core of progressive beliefs -in the broadest of senses, in discourse almost exclusively with himself and within the family boundaries. These beliefs were surrounded by a veil of opacity: he did not want to divulge the more "militant" past of his, having learnt his lessons. In the school, where he was headmaster, he confined the education of pupils and management of junior teachers, his communication with guardians over the progress of the children and the operation of school, within boundaries delimited by government mandates and directives without the subtlest deviation and initiatives, coming across as incorruptible by revolutionary or potentially "subversive" dogmas. Yet, there were still a few fires raging in Greece's political landscape, despite the meticulous suppression of such dogmas on this side of the Iron Curtain.

Once, I read a hand-written transcript of one of his speeches during a school celebration of anniversary of the "Struggle for Independence" of 1821, duty bound to deliver as a headmaster on such occasions. It included some political content, rather unconventionally for the given level of politicization of the audience he was addressing, although superficial and non-controversial from a political activist’s point of view. As far as I knew him, he would not have given credence in most of the content of such speeches in a previous life. Then again, he must have deemed necessary to introduce some stereotypical phrases eulogizing the ruling ideology of the era, especially when celebrating national anniversaries. It was all presented in front of priests, the local authorities, army officers, and other prominent members of the local community. A few standard phrases always gratifying to such ears had to be delivered, in the interests of the emerging nationalism and the political establishment of post-war Greece.  English translation. 

“The Greeks of '21 commenced the national struggle for independence on strong foundations... They were descendants of the ancient Greeks and conscious of their democratic rights of freedom and independence. The heroes of '21 are also heirs of the Orthodox Christian faith. The national struggle was inspired by Christianity for love among people, for justice among people, for equality... The Cyprus issue remains unresolved... Let us hope that the new political democratic leadership of Greece, the one that emerged from the elections of the 16^th of February, under the inspired guidance of the veteran political leader Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, and the support of the free and democratic peoples of the world, will find a solution to the Cyprus issue that would be based on self-determination and democratic principles. And now, friends, as I do not want to become tiresome, I would like to invite you to cheer for the Nation, for the 25^th of March, and our new constitutional King of the Greeks, Constantine: Long live the nation!! Long live the 25^th of March 25!! Long live our King!!”English translation. 

His ideological-and political metamorphosis, from the initial stage of him embracing leftist dogmas at the end of the German Occupation and the beginning of the Civil War to the adoption of sterile nationalistic stereotypes and a whole-hearted acceptance of the political status quo, was concluded upon retirement. His political digressions had reached a blind alley, and a historical cycle, after the post-war normalization and the establishment of a Western-style bourgeois democracy, had closed. His alignment with the dominant nationalistic dogma consolidated in post-war Greece, now tied for good to the chariot of America and the Western hegemony, an alignment even symbolic, even for the eyes of the simple world the people of the working-class districts of western Thessaloniki who did not dig much into politics and ideology, was completed.

What I read one afternoon in the faded folder with a collection of several naïve pedantic speeches did not correspond to the image I had formed of my grandfather, from the accounts of his daughters and the legends surrounding his family history and name. The young teacher-intellectual, the bearer of progressive, almost revolutionary ideas and opinions, through to the end of the war, might have been disguising a compliant individual in his core of existence. He was the son of a priest after all, and certain things may leave indelible imprints on one’s personality. Or, perhaps, I was carried away by my own beliefs (and corresponding prejudices, of course!) of that time and molded that image of grandfather into my own ideological patterns. After all, in the individual’s mind, such views either constantly change in form and essence in a dialectic relationship with the environment, or, in the absence of substance, they make up a colorful patchwork, often a patchwork of vivid contrasts, that coexist side by side or in succession of each other, chosen and expressed by the individual in accordance with the external circumstances.

Ancestry 18 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Young Mother

Mother was born from a different egg than her twin sister. More sociable and capable, more driven and willing to take risks outside the suffocating village environment than Litsa, although maybe not as fearless and adventurous as Aliki. Unlike Litsa, she faced up to the obstacles that life threw at her way, at work and family, always a good measure of one’s determination and will.

She was admitted amongst the top candidates in the Pedagogical Academy of Thessaloniki in 1956. However, with anti-communism still at its peak, enrollment in the Academy required a "Certificate of Healthy Social Convictions", identical to the one grandfather struggled to obtain to be reappointed as a public-school teacher after his exile. One morning, Mother in a flowery summer dress and her cat-eye glasses, Mr. Yiannis, impeccably dressed in a buttoned-up shirt and a grey suit, arrived at the Security & Police Headquarters where his and his family data were registered and kept and where he had to report in person regularly upon his return from exile. In a thick file folder in the basement archives, details of any suspect pro-communist or, generally, “anti-social” activities of the past were filed. Mr. Yiannis was well known amongst several senior officers in that department. He had been a regular visitor in the past and, not far from those headquarters, within the department's jurisdiction, he had been interrogated and eventually incarcerated in a basement cell, before his banishment to the isle of Lemnos. And his file in the security archives had barely gathered any dust. As it happened, between grandfather and the department’s commanding officer, a vehement anti-communist and nationalist zealot, there had been no love lost, due to some open accounts from their past; not an open personal vendetta, but some day, a few stray words against the security officer one his ilk or a transgression must have stuck in the officer’s memory. Not to mention that he had that great sense of a solemn duty to maintain “order and security”, characterizing many policemen, as that duty was perceived and ordered by his superiors and authorities, with an own touch of interpretation of such orders.

Mr. Yiannis did not want to enter or come too close to the offices of the Security Department: that would have revived the nightmares of a relatively recent past. He decided to wait outside, at a kiosk across the street, with his hands in his gray trouser pocket pretending to read that morning’s newspaper headlines. Mother, a seventeen- year-old trembling leaf, in a colorful and youthful, yet solemn dress, she entered the office that issues the specific certificate, with the application in her hands, signed-off and registered in a different office in the same building. She stood in front of the desk of the duty officer and timidly said:

"My name is Economou Theodora of Ioannis... I would like to apply for the Certificate of Healthy... for my enrollment in the Academy where I was admitted... Please, sir."

"For which Academy?", the frowning officer asked her abruptly, without lifting his eyes from the registered application that was handed to him for his perusal.

"Pedagogical Academy at the Archaeological Museum Street... I was the first to be admitted."

“I am not interested if you’re admitted first or last…”

After pulling out a thicker than average battered and greasy binder folder from a filing cabinet behind his desk, he leafed through it and momentarily huffed. A sardonic and crooked smile was quickly extinguished by an exhalation of smugness through the nose, and he exclaimed:

"Aha! You are Economou’s daughter, young lady! Don't you tell me, your dad sent you upstairs?"

"Yes, sir... He's waiting for me outside."

"Doesn't your dad have the courage to come upstairs and confront us himself?"English translation. 

He looked at Mother, who was standing at solemn attention in front of his desk, a beautiful, petite young girl with golden blond hair in two braids thrown on her back, the retro glasses in a black acetate frame, with one of her palms hiding the other on the summer dress. He raised his cold-eyes dispassionately upwards. With pursed lips, his mouth protruding forward under pressure from the lower jaw, signifying both disapproval and rigor, he crouched again his head on the piece of paper in front of him. Then, he returned Mother’s application in the open binder, took off his glasses, folded them and put them aside on his desk, as if to say "our interview is concluded," and in a calm and confident manner he said:English translation. 

"I will issue no certificate for you, young lady. I saw myself how well Greek children progressed and prospered under your dad’s tutelage… now he wants you to take on the same role!"

Mother walked away dejected and disconsolate, with the tail between her legs, whispering, or rather half-crying: "ΟΚ... Goodbye...", weak, crashed under a superior force. She met grandfather who waited patiently outside. In her face he could read the rejection of her application for this sine qua non for her admission in the Academy certificate. They took the bus back home gloomy and silent, but in grandad’s mind the only available course of action had already been formed.  A few weeks later, following a private phone call, Petros Garoufalias, the politician from Arta, grandfather’s hometown, would have to come again to the aid (or, rather, rescue) of his compatriot and intervene decisively, as he did when expediting the issue of Yiannis’ own certificate for his reappointment as a teacher. And Mother would have finally overcome the hurdle that the perverse behavior of the security officer raised, and enrolled in the Pedagogical Academy.

That was how many similar bureaucratic affairs were settled in post-war Greece, and, in a barely undiminishing rate, even today: an indication, they say, of Greece's poor political governance and low cultural development, through or, perhaps, despite its turbulent modern history. In the case of grandfather and his family, such means were employed to overcome unjust, arbitrarily erected obstacles rather than request unreasonable favors from a political system chronically plagued by corruption and cronyism. Following the ethical path of an uncompromising honesty many of the obstacles and barriers that a monstrous state mechanism erects, mainly to reassert its authority or, at least, justify its existence, would have proved insurmountable; not surpassing them timely would have drastically changed the course of my family’s history. In short, such "means to an end" were merely exercised to counterbalance gross injustices. In that respect, one cannot ignore the contribution of good fortune and the circumstances: in our case, the presence of some powerful political figure in the accessible social circle of grandfather and the power this figure could wield. 

Ancestry 17 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Head of the Family

Grandfather was the undisputed head of his family in a patriarchal community. A traditional paternalism reigned at home, austere and incontestable, as one would have expected from a family with no male members other than grandfather and the disabled Giorgos who passed away at a young age. The condescending style of the old-time teacher, the pedantry, the sophistry and the sarcasms, the rigid opinions rarely inviting counter-arguments, the instructions and orders, the monologues with creatively composed phrases from of a rich vocabulary, were delivered with pomp to the four women of the house at the dinner table and, occasionally, to neighbors, shopkeepers and tradesmen. This eloquence created an aura of superiority and authority and erected unassailable walls around him against any attempts at arguing. Yet, it was the form and style of his presentations rather than the content, which, in the culturally backward environment of the village, often left his audience dumbfounded and in awe.

Vasiliki was fated to live on the margins and under the shadow Yiannis cast on his family. Her social life was rather non-existent and she spent most of her time within the confines of the small village, barring the rare recreational visit to Thessaloniki with her daughters. She got on stoically with everyday life, dragging her lame leg, in defiance of a debilitating arthritis getting worse with age, and a high blood pressure somehow under control with drugs. As the years were passing by Vassiliki’s wanders were mostly bounded by the house walls and the bahçe fence, with increasingly rare trips to the grocery store across the street or to the church on Easter or to attend a wedding or a funeral. Most of her diminishing with age energy was spent in cooking and cleaning, her only social interactions being through the bahçe fence, in the Turkish language with the Prousan neighbors (amongst the non-Greek speaking victims of the populations exchanges of the past, because of their Christian beliefs) or in plain Greek with passersby, members of the Dardonis’ clan and the other large families who lived further down the side lane. Grandmother Vasiliki loved me tenderly, as her first grandchild, and she manifested this love with cheese pies, sugar pies, pasties and patties, and other specialties from the rich culinary heritage of Istanbul she eagerly prepared when we visited. To her implicit appeals for appreciation of her cooking, I always responded in the affirmative, although without the formal "thanks" but a nod of the head and a smile, and the customary kiss when we said our goodbyes. She was pleased, even grateful, for seeing me enjoying the food she prepared especially for me to honor my visits, and addressed me kind-heartedly with spontaneous Turkish exclamations: "Ah, paşam!", "Ah, yavrum!" and, later as a teenager, "Ah, babacim!" It goes without saying that Mr. Yiannis, the intellectual, was not particularly pleased with Vassiliki expressing herself or conversing in the Turkish dialect he considered barbaric.English translation. 

The paterfamilias strongly urged his daughters to study. At all costs, often with arm-twisting and yelling. Aliki was left untouched by all this. She had been the house rebel and a free spirit, and was armed with a personality more dynamic than her father’s, and, for some unknown reason, she decided on her own volition to become nurse. After school she left the village for Athens, where she found her bearings, qualified as nurse, and built a life free from the overbearing paternal influence and the shackles of the small village community. Litsa, on the other hand, seemed less enthusiastic and rather disinclined to pursue any studies beyond the mandatory high school education; her comfort-zone was delimited by the narrow surroundings of the house and the yard and bahçe at the back, where she was happy to keep herself busy with housework chores and nurturing and patronizing her younger sister Domna. She spent her plentiful spare time in gossiping with visitors and neighbours in coffee soirees, which were culminated in Litsa’s “coffee reading” to the participants, a pastime in which she developed a remarkable skill, as I can attest from personal experience. After several failed attempts at the exams, at the exasperation of grandfather, she was eventually admitted to the Law School. After graduation, she practiced as a small-time solicitor, in a disinterested manner and charging tiny fees or no fees at all (barely amounting to a regular income), primarily having to deal with the ominous state bureaucracy on behalf of illiterate and ignorant clients, that is, to act on errands requiring nothing more than basic reading and writing skills.

Domna, the youngest and prettiest of the four daughters, having, however, been nurtured into a feeble, hypersensitive and highly-strung personality, after similar struggles with her father’s intransigence and obsession for education, eventually graduated with a dubious degree in Business from a public college. She complemented this degree with some inconsequential qualifications in French and typing, but she remained unemployed for the rest of her life without having ever displayed any detectable effort or initiative to work -somehow, somewhere. Possibly, she was not attracted by any type of employment or, merely, because daily work seemed to her like a tall mountain that she felt too scared or too lazy or both to climb. Like her elder sister, she found solace in household chores and endless everyday gossiping.English translation. 

Ancestry 16 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Political Compliance

 The political activity of the few petty-bourgeois intellectuals of semi-rural areas, like grandfather, during the German Occupation and the Civil War years, had begun to fade in the memories of fellow countrymen and colleagues. For the sake of his family and his own life, under the weight of the political developments in post-civil war Greece and the world, as projected through state propaganda filters and as perceived by citizens with a relatively narrow point of view, grandfather would gradually water down his radical leftist views. Some, however, still lurked in his conscience when, after the defeat of fascism, the USSR emerged, for many of his generation, as a beacon of an "actually existing socialism" and a global superpower. He retained some broad socialist convictions and values, despite the personal and family ordeals, the exile and the quarrels with the other side of the fence, despite the heavy shadows cast over lives by the ubiquitous National Security, despite an alien to his political past and forcibly obtruded ruling ideology. However, Mr. Yiannis, for the public eyes at least, would sail to moderate ideological and political shores.

In truth, a similar change in the perceptions of politics and political bias affected most local participants in the post-war dramas. The pillories, the People's Courts, the arrests and executions, were events unfathomable to their children and grandchildren, although they had a marked effect well into the maturity years of grandfather and many others around him. English translation. Magnesia and the surrounding villages made a predictable conservative turn, its people unconscious of the growing conservatism in their political minds and oblivious of what this might entail in post-war Greece. Things were going relatively well, so to speak. Everything seemed to fall in place, barring, as always, the occasional isolated tragedies of human existence in its microcosms. These tragedies, however, were "dictated by fate" or by an invisible hand of God, as the common folk often believed. Why should they try to change, adhere to progressive forces, transformative of the socioeconomic system, and take a leap off the mainstream into an uncertain future? Why should let anything disturb their "peace, order, and security"?

Ordinary people of the lower strata, especially in the countryside, became by and large politically inert or depoliticized, and, of course, political inertia and depoliticization are both inanimate souls of conservatism contrary to political activism. In years of adversity, they would rather safeguard their daily jobs, most of them in fields and shops or the factories that were springing up in the vicinity, a privileged minority in government positions, all furnishing small but regular incomes. In any case, most of the countryside folk did not possess a concrete ideological basis, some not even the intellect let alone a sophistication, to analyze, beyond the superficial and frivolous debates in cafés, complex economic processes and a political reality that stretched far beyond the boundaries of their villages and even their country. In elections, they sided with one of the legalized, mainstream parties, either like football fans supporting a club, without a well-founded rationale and driven primarily by instinct and emotion, or for the simple reason that their father supported the said political party, or because they were too credulous in believing the enticing, yet often implausible, pre-election pledges of politicians, or by reciprocating with their vote a favor by a politician, which was done or promised to be done. An ideological and political reconciliation took place through everyday life, family life, the trivial traditional social interactions, weddings, christenings, funerals festivals, as well through their daily toil in workplaces. Either way, in grandfather’s village in the outskirts of the big city, sizeable class divergence and a consequential struggle from excessive inequality did not occur; nor an unbridled greed against the welfare of the local community by individuals was evident. Mr. Yiannis realized that he was devoid of power and will to contribute in transforming Greek society or shaping the local mentality or altering historical prejudices as he might have wanted or, without expressing an ideological or political party affinity, might have envisioned in his youth. But he was frequently critical of both the established social norms and the locals’ indifference or reactionary conservatism. Greek civil society, the village and schools where he worked, the educational system in which he joined as a docile functionary, the State above all, were all well-formed and established forces not to be reckoned with: forces exerted by the centers of political power and the ruling class; more so given its under-developed economy and strong dependence on economic poles outside Greece for its modernization and growth.  English translation. 

Thus, Grandfather and his village community became conformists. His attention turned to his family and work at school, until his retirement shortly after I was born. From the years of his professional rehabilitation, as teacher and headmaster at the school of Ampelokipi and, finally, shortly before retirement, as an inspector in schools in central Macedonia, a thick dossier survived with a collection of school works from the top pupils of the classes he taught (in geography, in arithmetic, in essay writing) and the several speeches he delivered on historical anniversaries and in school assemblies with "parents and guardians", providing further evidence of his conformism at work and in politics. He had succumbed and his alignment (forced or volitional) with the established national ideology and narrative, without the slightest of deviations from government mandates, tied always to the historically distorted nationalistic and anti-communist chariots, became complete. The petty-revolutionary, the quiet proponent of the Greek Liberation Front, the progressive left-wing "enlightener" of the village during the first months after liberation had put on a conservative façade, at least when under the public eye, and fully complied with the establishment directives. For some time, in the post-war years, he might have voted for the “Unified Democratic Left” party, and other center-left legitimized groups. In domestic discussions, he might have praised (always with due care) left-wing politicians of his time. He used to buy inconspicuously the only legal left-wing newspaper from kiosks in the busy Thessaloniki city center, cautiously wrapped by mainstream conservative papers, like "Macedonia", under his arm. In the privacy of his room, seeking pluralistic worlds news briefings from alternative channels, he secretively tuned his age-old radio by the couch into Slavic-language radio stations, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, whose news and announcements, strangely enough, he generally understood. Such trivial digressions, like keeping an open mind to non-mainstream information had no significant resonance, but they were constituents of a rather closed-in-itself whole, hermetically sealed from the world outside.English translation. 

With the priests and the church kept no open accounts beyond the absolute minimum necessary his role as school headmaster required. (He had to shepherd the pupils of his school class to the mandatory Sunday mass and make some dry and routine remarks to pupils, parents and local dignitaries on religious holidays.) Vasiliki, perhaps because of the multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism of the city she was born in and brought up, was neither a devout religious woman, nor did she regularly attend to the local church, nor did she hang icons of the Jesus Christ or Virgin Mary at noticeable places in the house. At least at home, Mr. Yiannis harbored an aversion, occasionally expressed as contempt towards everything related to the Greek Orthodox church doctrines and its ministers. In that respect, he remained faithful to the ideas of his youth, that is, to atheistic or agnostic notions.  His covert anti-church sentiments certainly influenced Vasiliki and their daughters, and, further down the generation ladder, myself and Brother –in as much as fragmentary opinions picked up early childhood can affect one’s beliefs. In public, in religious holidays, liturgies that his school was decreed by the Ministry to attend, christenings and weddings, whenever he was not assigned to deliver the customary meaningless speech, he presented himself discreetly in the background, keeping a good distance from priests and deacons, however, wary not to give rise to any malevolent whispers. A few might have still remembered his pro-communist past associated that in Cold War Greece has been associated with atheism. At his work, he transformed himself into the archetype of a teacher whom the state, which, though initially reluctant, had entrusted him to indoctrinate children within a framework of firmly established national and religious dogmas.

Ancestry 15 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Rehabilitation

He made the correct decision; he did the right thing. He returned home, where his wife and children were fervently waiting. His in-laws, Kotis and Dominique, had passed away within a few days between each other shortly after his banishment, and, God only knows, how Vasiliki coped alone with the three underaged girls and sustained themselves with the meagre savings Yiannis left behind, and the produce of their garden. But after that enlightened decision, the lives of all concerned would gradually change for the better and, ultimately, be restored to a normality akin to that of the pre-war years.

Less than a year after his return, in 1950, their last child, Dominique, known to everybody as Domna, was born. The elder of her sisters, Aliki, had left for Athens not long after Domna’s birth to study and become a nurse and only occasionally visited her home village ever since. The long distance from the family home, then half-a-day’s coach journey, and her rather despotic nature somehow checked the growth of closeness and a sense of familiarity. In phone conversations and during her visits, I used to call her ‘Aunt’ Aliki and listen quietly to the pedantic lectures she was giving to family assemblies in a strict tone of voice. On the other hand, Domna & Litsa, feeble characters as they were, were simply called by their nicknames, as we do with close friends. The rather atypical in old Greece names of Yiannis’ and Vasiliki’s four daughters, Aliki, Stella, Dominique, even that of Mother Theodora, after generations of families naming their children after a grandparent, as it was and still is a common practice in Greece, suggests a long ago forgotten and time-worn connection with the Frankish and Catholic element of the population of Constantinople of old, a faded trace from the depths of the history of Byzantium and its glorious capital.

The path to the daily round, the way back to the teacher's career and what we call everyday life, the desirable state of equilibrium, peace and security, which was abruptly disrupted by the political forces that emerged and prevailed after the conclusion of the Civil War, in that gloomy night of Yiannis’ arrest and, afterwards, during the months of incarceration and exile, forces acting fiercely and paying no heed to the impact on human lives (the discontinuities major historical events cause to human life can be profound), that path Mr. Yiannis and his family strived to walk again on his return was not paved with rose petals. As a humble aspiration as the reappointment to his teacher’s position in a public school might have been, it required, first and foremost, the notorious "Certificate of Healthy Social Convictions". Schools are workshops where young souls are engineered, consciences shaped and formed, young human beings “prepared for life ahead” –as they say. The political class, having asserted itself on the ruins of post-war Greece, sought to establish a new order, aiming primarily at serving the interests of the national ruling class, its wealth largely unscathed by the war (as it is often the case with the richest strata of society in periods of disasters and depression), and, of course, its foreign sponsors. Therefore, it contrived that these young souls are educated with respect to a set of preconceived notions and standards, selectively drawn from a biased, distorted view of history, adapted to the country’s new position in the new world order. The demands exerted on the educational system were aiming, amongst others, at the formation of a concrete national consciousness, unsmeared by communist or radical ideas, whilst maintaining the illusion of a “special people,” direct descendants of a glorious past.

The issue of a such ‘to whom it may concern’ certificate (essentially “certifying” one’s alignment with the dominant ideology) had first to be authoritatively approved by the higher echelons of State Security after an exhaustive search of someone’s past, then checked, stamped and counter-signed by several layers of the state hierarchy, which comprise the notoriously cumbersome Greek bureaucracy, and, finally, sent back to the point where the applicant formally requested it, typically the local police station, for a countersignature, before it was handed to the successful applicant. It was the sine qua non for public sector employment, amongst several other declarations and certificates that government agencies regularly demand as necessary supporting documentation to proceed with any kind of application, sometimes at periodic intervals, often from other government agencies, but with the applicant as the hapless intermediary; in an endless exchange of papers and stamps, seals and signatures, too many stamps and signatures from too many bureaucrats. All this by and large pointless individual effort was often a necessary condition for getting on with life for many modern Greeks between their birth and death. But, Mr. Yiannis, a citizen also of this "Kafkaesque" state, was further burdened by a dubious past, which forced him to oscillate between nonchalant public servants, seemingly with no end in sight, thus exacerbating an already difficult family and financial situation.

In the months that followed his exile, with the cogs of bureaucracy spinning at a familiar desperately slow pace, Mr. Yiannis, the ex-headmaster, still without a job and a regular income, was forced to sell pomegranates from his trees in the public markets of the western outskirts of Thessaloniki. Eventually, the desirable certificate with a ministerial seal of approval was dispatched, thanks mainly to a decisive intervention by a certain Petros Garoufalias, MP and minister of the "centrist" governments of that time; a peer, a fellow countryman and former classmate of Mr. Yiannis’ father from Arta. He was reinstated and reappointed as teacher, and resumed his teaching at the Bosphorus school in the working-class district of Ampelokipi, in the industrial west of Thessaloniki. His place in the local community, the respect by the people of his village and by the pupils of his school and their parents, a respect he valued highly throughout his life, was regained effortlessly. In the field of fundamental everyday human interactions and the essential in education parent-student-teacher relationship, there was no room for bias and prejudices. No further political obstacles were erected by the State Security in his career, no grievances from members of public were raised. His prestige in the local and teacher’s communities and his privileges as a teacher and headmaster were fully restored to the pre-war levels.