Diatribe

Tom is, perhaps, the closest equivalent to Noel Coward that a Greek-Australian could ever hope to be. Even his Greek, which is perfect, is inflected by Cowardian enunciation. His speech is playful and peppered with assonances, rhymes and glorious exaggerations. He is charismatic and professional, for he enjoys a high-powered career. He is stylish without being foppish, erudite without being overbearing, generous without being needy and immensely pious, possessing an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the history and practice of the Orthodox Church. One of my oldest and dearest friends, he is also, gay.

Tom rarely speaks of his sexuality because on the rare occasions that he has confided in me, he states that this aspect of his life is intensely private and he refuses to be defined as a human being by it. He lives with his mother, in a house festooned with icons and fragrant with incense. The shelves of his study groan under the weight of tomes concerning Church Canon Law, the lives of the Saints, studies in theology and a mouth-watering selection of antique, rare Bibles. He is seldom to be found without a komboschoini in his left hand, while his right hand is usually enclosed around a glass of finest scotch. If he could wear a smoking jacket while enjoying a dram, he would, but his mother is elderly and constantly cold. As a result, their home usually is maintained at the temperature of the sweltering Nitrian desert.

For Tom, the current Australian debate about expanding the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act is deeply distressing. This is because he feels that the debate has polarized the community into two distinct sections: pro-church (and hence NO voters) and anti-church (and hence YES voters, but also all gays). In his opinion, this polarisation is harmful when trying to understand the Greek community because it does not take account of the significant number of gay Greek-Australians who find comfort and solace within the Orthodox Church, and strongly identify with it.

In answer to the question: “how can you identify with an institution that does not accept who you are?” Tom is dismissive. In his view, he feels that the Church accepts him and everyone else for who they are, for all are made in the image of God. As he sees it, the Church encourages its members to divest themselves of those things that keep them tied to the world, in order to seek a higher, more substantive reality. In that process, the practice, though not the presence of his particular sexuality, is a hindrance. In keeping with his understanding of that teaching, he explains, therefore that he now lives a celibate lifestyle and believes that this is the only acceptable path for Orthodox “like him”. Unconsciously, as he speaks about this, he grimaces, and one can tell that he has only arrived at this position after years of pain, guilt and soul-searching. He has voted No in the current postal ballot because he believes that marriage is a religious institution, and that any form of union, whether heterosexual or otherwise, existing outside the Church, cannot be called marriage. His mother informs me in her village accent that Tom is now too old to get married and that anyway, he will never be married as he prefers men. Tom winces with embarrassment.

George, is exuberant, flamboyant and sporty to the point where his constant play-punches and faux-football marks scored off one’s back become slightly disconcerting in the way they intrude upon conversation. He lives with a partner who is non-Greek and has converted to the Orthodox Church. On the wall of their home, they have framed Cavafy’s poem “In Church”, with its majestic verses: “Whenever I go there, into a church of the Greeks….. my thoughts turn to the great glories of our race.” They attend Church every Sunday, armed with interlinear translations of the Matins and the Liturgy which they print from the Internet. They follow the service line by line and when they return home, they excitedly discuss passages or words in the text, that stimulated their interest. Frequently, they line up for communion. George relates that he has loved going to church ever since he was a small boy and that being immersed within the liturgy gives him an immense feeling of serenity and belonging. He recalls that the first time he ‘came out’ it was as a teenager to his former parish priest. The priest, shocked, turned his back on him, stating: “I have nothing more to say to you.” George is quite certain that his current priest knows that he and his partner and living together as partners, but he is never denied communion. “If they were to deny us communion, they would have to deny it to the entire congregation. After all, didn’t the Boss say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”

George’s partner exchanges recipes with his ‘pethera’ as he calls her, for tsoureki, fasting food during Lent and his Pascal lamb, basted with indescribable sauces is a vision of culinary Paradise. Both he and his partner have voted YES in the postal vote and would, if given the opportunity, marry. They provide me with books that argue that only certain types of sexual acts are prohibited by the Orthodox Church, and that these apply to everyone, whereas certain others can be enjoyed across the board. When I express my doubt at their interpretation of the Church’s position, as I understand it, they launch into a meticulous and lengthy deconstruction of the relevant verses, cross-referencing them to theological commentaries and expositions about grammar. They also point me in the direction of diverse websites such as “Orthodox and Gay,” whose content informs their convictions.

George and his partner do not feel rejected by the Church, nor do they feel it is opposed to them or their lifestyle. In their opinion, the correct interpretation that will reconcile the issue has not yet been revealed and they fervently hope and pray that it will soon, so they can marry, within the Church. After all they say, “Love, is love.” They point to the slow and careful way change is made in the Orthodox church as proof of reverence and correctness of doctrine. Above their dining table, they have gay Franciscan friar Robert Lentz's 1994 version of the icon of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, first displayed at Chicago's Gay Pride Parade, and who, they maintain, were an openly gay couple, during Byzantine times.

Maria and her partner, who is an Orthodox from the Balkans, live together and have a child. Maria’s partner freely admits that she has been estranged from the Church she was raised in and her family, ever since she came out to them twenty years ago. The revelation of her sexuality caused her to be completely cut off from her community and support network and she was also the victim of domestic abuse as a consequence. As a result, she harbours hostility both towards the Church and what she describes as “traditional communities.” However, when Maria told her that she wanted to baptize their child in the Orthodox church, she agreed, believing however, that such a thing was not possible and that they would be turned away.

Maria did not go to her local parish to baptize her child, for as she says, she wanted to avoid “scandal.” Instead, she found another parish. “When we arrived at our appointment,” she grins, “the father looked us up and down. His countenance was impassive. He opened up his book and said: “Right, make sure the godparent is Orthodox. What date suits?” I truly was astonished because I thought that he was going to send us packing.”

Maria and her partner frequently attend Church, primarily in order for their child to obtain communion. Maria will often line up to take communion herself. Her partner never does, for she is still angry but she concedes that though the odd glance is cast their way by elderly parishioners, they have never been treated with disrespect and those same parishioners will often hold their child and ruffle its hair. Both of them have voted YES in the postal vote and cannot understand, why in their view, the Church cannot accept them for who they are. Voicing their opinion in this regard to their parish priest one day, they were surprised to hear him respond: “But we do. You are here, aren’t you?”

Peter, in his early twenties, plausibly could be called a religious fanatic and a zealot. If he lived in Biblical times, then surely he would have been a Pharisee, for he takes great delight in keeping every single abstruse ritual or custom he has read or heard about, in relation to the Orthodox Church and criticizing others for not being so observant. Peter’s parents are irreligious and he came to Orthodoxy through the Internet. He has learned the Psalms of David by heart and quotes a Church Canon stating that all bishops should know the aforementioned Psalms by heart in order to impugn their piety and legitimacy. Peter is extremely conflicted by his sexuality, for he is attracted to people of the same gender and periodically engages in cross-dressing, but believes that this is wrong. He goes through periods of agonising repentance, punctuated by church observance, fasting and prayer, alternating with periods where he trawls the relevant nightspots in search of a partner. Consumed by guilt, for he believes that he is susceptible to possession by the demon of lust, after each bout of illicit, in his view, lovemaking, he confesses his transgressions via telephone to his spiritual father, who abides in a monastery in Greece. Peter confides that the spiritual father has given him dispensation to sleep with a woman, out of wedlock, in the hope that he will prefer the difference. He has voted NO in the postal vote and is a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage as he believes that this will compromise the doctrinal purity of the Orthodox Church. He is currently considering traveling to Mount Athos to become a monk, because the Greek community is too godless.

As the Orthodox Church, up until recently, has been inextricably interwoven within and has informed, the traditional understanding, articulation and practice of “Greek” culture and identity by Greek-Australians, it follows logically that the manner in which members of that broader community relate to their faith, its practice or culture, are, as the above examples suggest, complex and emotive, transcending considerations solely, of sexuality and gender. Conversely, the manner in which LGTBI members of our community negotiate their way within the structures and institutions of that community and respond to challenges outside it, also entail considerations that are not only informed by sexuality but also, by an agglomeration of the cultural and religious background in which they have been reared, or which they have chosen to espouse. The fact remains that a significant proportion of the LGTBI members of our community still have meaningful contact with the Orthodox Church, experiencing and relating to it in diverse ways. Any insightful analysis of the current marriage reform proposals, and their relation to the Orthodox Church and the broader Greek-Australian community, is incomplete, unless it provides a forum for their voices to be heard and considered.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 14 October 2017

When the dynamic Hellenic Women’s Cultural Association “Estia,” approached me with the suggestion that we collaborate in creating an exhibition of women’s traditional costumes and jewellery from Epirus, at the Victorian Parliament, I asked myself the question: What do a bunch of old clothes and old fashioned bling from an obscure region in the Balkans have anything to do with Victoria, Melbourne, and indeed the magnificent edifice that dominates Spring Street?

By way of addressing this is, I now poke you gently and with discretion, in the direction of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who, while her husband was out gallivanting with one-eyed monsters and particularly nubile demi-Gods, sat at her loom, weaving into it, imaginary scenes of her husband’s infidelities and misadventures.

Three thousand years later, and in roughly the same geographical position, the women of Epirus sat at their looms, waiting for their husbands, migrants to various parts of the world, to return home. Loss and longing formed the warp and the weft of their experience and they wove upon it, motifs that had barely changed over millennia. Those motifs can be discerned woven or embroidered upon the fabrics that will be displayed at the: “From Epirus to the Antipodes: Multicultural Foundations through Artefacts,” exhibition.

The loom was then one of the most central implements to the Greek woman’s daily reality, which is why, not a few Greek migrants to Melbourne, my own great-grandmother included, packed her loom, a most bulky item to transport and brought it Melbourne with her, on a great Odyssey-like sea voyage.

Our family no longer has its loom. It appears that in order to fit the stereotype, the loom was only relevant if it was used in a Penelope-like fashion, the man of the house being abroad, and the woman of the house waiting patiently for his return. Now, through Antipodean metastasis, the whole paradigm was inverted, or if one pardons the cliché, turned ‘down under’. It was the woman who had embarked upon the Odyssean voyage, the woman who was to tackle the monsters and the pleasures of that voyage and considering that there was no gender stereotype waiting for a return, or at least able to imagine the adventures of those migrant women, nothing could be, or was woven. The loom, in the new country, was made redundant. Ours was secreted in a basement, where, unused, it proceeded to rot away.

The fruit of the loom, which is what the “From Epirus to the Antipodes” primarily concerns itself with, is thus a powerful symbol of the backstory of multiculturalism. The patterns, the motifs, the very fabric, transplanted here, to these Antipodean climes, forms the framework through which a significant number of Melburnians have in the past and still do, view the world around them. The application of age old tropes, connotations and ancient meanings which have their origin at Penelope’s loom, to an interpretation of Melbourne society describes the process of Greek acculturation here in Australia. This is a significant and yet unstudied, aspect of the multicultural experience. Belabouredly pushing the paradigm further than any paradigm should plausibly go, it is these motifs, the memories of these fabrics that form a new warp and weft for a new psychological loom, one upon which the travails of everyday life here are interwoven.

Of course the provenance of these costumes and artefacts is traced to Epirus, north western Greece, the place of origin of my mother and before her, a particularly significant line of strong family matriarchs. Long before multiculturalism, globalization and immigration became buzzwords with which to tax the tabloids, Ioannina, the capital of Epirus was a trading and cultural entrepot whose reach was surprisingly long. Thus, one will see among the exhibits, a silver butterfly belt, made in Ioannina, exclusively for the Bosnian export market, an ornate costume, made in Ioannina but exported to and worn primarily in Cappadocia, central Turkey. One will also see a shepherdess’ costume that can be found all along the northern Greek transhumant pastoralist continuum to Thrace, Bulgaria and beyond, in only small variations: the Sarakatsan costme. The motifs on the aprons to that costume are fascinating in that they are, by sheer coincidence, strikingly reminiscent of Australian Aboriginal art.

Reflecting the diverse nature of the social fabric of Epirus, long before words like mosaic or melting pot became popular for a brief period here in the eighties and nineties, the jewellery display will feature almost identical wedding crowns for Christians and Muslims, distinguished only by extremely slight details such as the presence of a crescent moon and, amazingly, a votive reliquary with the undeniably Christian symbol of St George on the obverse, while on the reverse, paradoxically, or maybe not so, the Jewish star of David appears, attesting to the presence of the vitally important Jewish community in Ioannina. Long before our arrival to these shores then, Greek women understood not only diversity, but also synchretism and the enriching experience of culture-sharing. This exhibition will argue that they packed their looms for the journey here, with a pre-disposition for pluralism.

These days, social media facilitates us wearing our hearts on our sleeve, or on our Instagram, our pinterest and all the other forms available of which I am blissfully unaware owing to an innate inability not to understand what purports to be modern technology. At the time when the costumes that will be on display were worn, and many of them were still being worn in Epirus, at least on feast days, at the time of Greek mass-migration to Australia, what set one apart was their bling. That bling, was in less words than a tweet, the entire articulation of a personality, including one’s standing in one’s family and community. An entire exposition of class relations can therefore be extrapolated from the costumes that will on be display. From urban formal wear, with sumptuous silks and intricate brocades, styled in the latest Ottoman fashions in the capital, to rural formal wear, slightly heavier and rustic, but no less ornate, to urban street wear for the more active woman, and there were few that were not, to rural street wear, formidable, durable, uncompromising and ready for action, kind of like most of the Greek community actually, the exhibition aims to provide a snapshot of the cultural diversity existing in one of Greece’s smallest and poorest regions.The costume of Konitsa that will be displayed, worn by women who spoke Vlach, a Latin-based tongue, is a testament to that diversity.

Of course, not a few counterparts of the costumes that will be on display were brought to Australia and adapted to Australian conditions in the 60s and 70s. I have heard stories of fashionable young migrants applying scissors and shears to brocade and embroidery that will make the skin of even the most indifferent crawl. But then again, if it is deemed acceptable for Valentino’s 2016 collection, in which bodices that look almost identical to Attic singounia are featured, it should be ok for us. Sadly I did not have the heart to seek to display the mini-skirt made out of an ornate nineteenth century caftan, a particularly enterprising acquaintance of mine created in an act of unspeakable desecration, during the late sixties. Yet this act itself, is one of supreme acculturation.

In keeping with our narrative of globalization, a large portion of the silver-works made in Ioannina, traditionally the silver-smithing capital of Greece are now made in Taiwan. Nonetheless what will be displayed at the exhibition, are not the dinosaur bones of that tradition, nor its ossification, but again, the warp and the weft of an aesthetic tradition that thrives today, within Melbourne, as can be discerned by a cursory visit to some of the jewelry shops in Oakleigh. Many of the pieces on display lent their wearer immense dignity, and a distinctive gait, a method of deportment common among many of the older ladies among the first generation Greek migrants, no matter their stature, who tended to walk in a particularly erect, and proud manner. Their deportment, was conditioned by generations of wearing of items such as those on display. Caroline Crummer, the first Greek woman to arrive in Australia in 1835 from Ioannina, to whose memory the exhibition will be dedicated, wore such pieces, during the formative years of the creation of Australia.

To point to artefacts of whatever nature, and to expect that they symbolise or encapsulate the breadth of any human experience is a task fraught with danger. This exhibition merely hopes to draw attention to the complexities but also the commonalities of that experience, within the Victorian multicultural context.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

“From Epirus to the Antipodes: Multicultural Foundations through Artefacts,” will be launched at the Parliament of Victoria by Dean Kalimniou on Tuesday 6:30pm, 31 October 2017. The exhibition will run from 31 October 2017 to 2 November 2017”

First published in NKEE on 21 October 2017

What passes as a hunk in 1987 Athens, haunted by his family's expulsion from Constantinople during the 1955 pogroms, is organising an exhibition of the everyday life of the Greek community of Smyrna before 1922. He does so, during the Sismik crisis, when tensions are heightened between Greece and Turkey, and war is threatened. Byzantine in appearance, and dwelling in the past, his girlfriend, on the other hand, professional, unsentimental, calculating and completely indifferent to the fate of the Greeks of Asia Minor save as a topic of scientific study, she is a symbol of the "new Greece."

A chance encounter with a blood-stained wedding dress and a mysterious photograph in Izmir (for as his Turkish guide responds to him when he asks what remains of Old Smyrna: "Not much,") will set our hunk upon a train of enquiry that will see him: a) destroy his relationship with his girl and almost immediately forge another, after a chance encounter in an antique shop, b) uncover the inconvenient truths of a family that has up until now, preferred to have had these remain hidden. That inconvenient truth is one easy to foresee. The elusive Roza's secret is that she had fallen pregnant to a Turk, with tragic consequences.

The brilliance of the lavish film "Roza of Smyrna" is that even though the plot is basically comprised of bunch of cliché's strung together upon an extremely flimsy, implausible and yet predictable plot, both the scenario and characters are treated with so much affection that these implausibilities don't really matter to the viewer, neither will the film's many flaws, detract from what is a pleasurable viewing experience. From an artistic point of view however, this film, is a conglomerate of fascinating and inspired potentialities, whose flaws and possible lack of research, prevent from coalescing into the coherent and epic narrative it deserves to be.

A few basic incongruities are indicative of this regrettable lack of attention to detail and yet rather than infuriate, they entertain the viewer, which is why this film abounds in charm:

Firstly, and this is my favourite, all of the motor vehicles appearing in the film present themselves as being waxed to a brilliant shine, as if they had just been driven out of the car detailers, quite an interesting juxtaposition to dusty, perennially water-deprived 1987 Athens and for that matter, 1987 Izmir.

Secondly, if Ismail, the main protagonist's lover, spent the years between 1922 to 1987 desperately trying to find Roza, the mother of his child, and had no idea of her whereabouts, (even though he is an extremely powerful man and could have plausibly obtained professional assistance in order to track her down), how is it that he could send her letters, which she was able to receive and keep unopened?

Thirdly, how is it that Roza, who has changed her name, can receive letters addressed to her old name, care of Athens Greece, with no suburb, or street name and number supplied. Is the inference that there existed at the time, dedicated Greek postal detectives who, nimbly and silently tracked down those to whom letters were improperly addressed? More importantly, what has happened to these selfless individuals?

Fourthly, while the film makers take great pains to explain to us the plausibility of Ismail signing his letters with the Greek initials Ι.Σ (which is silly because his name being Ismail Kulaksiz, his initials should be I.K), by having Roza launch into a lengthy and a rhythm disrupting explanation that many Turks used Greek letters because the Ottomans of the time used the unwieldy and difficult to use Arabic script, they present Ismail's first letter to Rosa as having been written in 1922. That letter, the text of which can clearly be seen, is written in the Modern Turkish alphabet, with Roman, not Arabic letters. And yet, the new alphabet was did not come into effect in Turkey until 1929, some seven years after Ismail's letter. Either Ismail was an early linguistic prophet, or some serious lacunae in the research have developed.

Fifthly, according to the film, in order to efface her sexual transgression, Roza is married off to a willing Greek, in exchange for a financial benefit. The wedding we are told, takes place after the Greek troops evacuated Smyrna. We know that this took place on 8 September 1922, that the Turkish army entered the city that evening, and that massacres began almost immediately. We also know that at this time, the Christian inhabitants of the city began to flee for their lives. Is the film maker's contention therefore plausible, that a wedding would have taken place during these circumstances, let along one where the guests are dressed in their finest clothes, completely disregarding the fact that marauding Turkish soldiers and irregulars are contemporaneously roaming the streets trying to kill them?

Sixthly, Ismail relates how he entered the church while the wedding was in progress and during the confusion, Roza's father was shot dead, neatly explaining how blood stained her wedding dress, one of the film's supposed key 'mysteries.' He states that he entered the church with the purpose of disrupting the wedding as he did not want to lose his love, or his child. However, after Roza's father is massacred, he is shown placing her on a horse, giving her a tiny knife the size of a letter opener and letting her go. Considering that at this time, massacres were raging all around Smyrna, how can Ismail's professed love of Roza be reconciled with his willingness to allow her to venture, unprotected, into the midst of a raging genocidal mob, knowing that her rape or death was almost a certainty? And what purpose does the penknife have, except as to act as a silly and irrelevant symbol of who knows what, when at the end of the film and her life, Roza throws it into the Bosphorus, a stretch of water that has absolutely no significance for her?

One aspect of the film I found enthralling was this: Roza's granddaughter, who I suspect is a parody of Audrey Tautou, is a struggling artist with no recognition of her talent. When it is revealed to her that the only reason why her art is being recognised, purchased and exhibited in Istanbul is because her patron is actually her grandfather, Ismail, who has arranged for this to be so out of his own pocket, she barely bats an eyelid. If this was an Anglo-Saxon film, this revelation would have caused her immense self doubt and to question her talent and artistic value. In this film, directed towards a Greek audience, none of that betrayal or loss of validation is explored, presumably, because nepotism is so entrenched within the modern Greek psyche, that the thought doesn't even occur to her, or rather to the film makers who lack the insight to explore this aspect of the scenario they have created. Roza herself, provides insight into entrenched nepotistic values. While she is fully cognisant of the hunk's designs on her grand-daughter, she treats him with exaggerated consideration, when she forms the opinion that he is behind her grand-daughter's turn in artistic fortunes. Thus, in the case of both Ismail, an abductor, murderer and person willing to allow the object of his love to venture into a massacre, and our hunk, money, and favours, can buy you love.

Just as intriguing is the film's attitude towards to Ömer, who our hunky protagonist meets in Izmir. In their lame and clumsy attempt to trace the conversion of a racist hunky Romaic intellectual consumed with hatred into a modern, humanistic hunky European intellectual, the film- makers have the said hunk treat his Turkish companion appallingly. Stereotypes abound: The Greek is impulsive, effusive and passionate. The Easterner is accepting, passive, stoic and kind. As the relationship thaws to the point where hunk is comfortable enough to reveal that he speaks Turkish, we are led to expect that this is a seminal moment in their relationship. Paradoxically, however, the effect of this revelation is completely rendered irrelevant by the pair continuing to converse in English. Furthermore, the portrayal of the reputedly more intimate friendship is puerile: At all stages hunk acts as a western colonialist, rather than a friend. Even as the relationship warms, instead of being treated as an equal, Ömer is portrayed by the film makers as an errand boy or a trusty sidekick. Tellingly, he is conspicuously absent from the exhibition at the end of the film, one which could not have been held without his intervention. His absence, renders hunks public recantation of hatred and espousal of inter-ethnic love, presciently hipsterish.

In like fashion, the denoument, where after needless prevarication, Roza scurries to Ismail's deathbed, witnesses him succumbing to a heart-attack, throws his knife into the sea and then dies on the pier is mystifying. Grandmother and granddaughter are close. By this stage, Roza is at least eighty years old. It stretches credulity to believe that Roza would have been allowed out at night in a strange country without supervision, let alone be permitted to perish romantically upon a pier, just so the flim-makers can reference the romance of Layla and Majnun. (Note to the film-makers: Majnun was killed by Layla's husband. There is little or nothing to parallel their story to this one, except for an inept attempt at a little orientalist exoticism. Still, ten marks for trying).

While the movie successfully builds up suspense and creates mystery around the circumstances of Roza's secrets, their revelation is emotionless and the retrospective scenes do not succeed in allowing us to feel her pain or sympathise to the extent that we should, partially because they are not plausible but mostly because they are told by others and we do not get to understand them through her eyes. As such, her character remains criminally underdeveloped. This is because the film-makers, in spending time cramming as many disparate and interesting elements into the early part of the movie in order to build suspense, have forgotten the most important rule of narrative: Show, don't tell. This is a pity because the character of Roza gives rise to immense opportunities to fully showcase the ambiguities of moving within and transcending ethnic and religious boundaries. Perhaps the film-makers could have taken a leaf out of Alexander Billinis' brilliant: Hidden Mosaics: An Aegean Tale, where similar secrets are treated in a historically plausible and nuanced fashion.

The above notwithstanding, the endearing Roza of Smyrna has the makings of a thoroughly evocative and enjoyable movie, one that invites thought and consideration, a feat in itself. Its cinematography, more a paean to a lost, confident PASOKian past that to Smyrna, is lyrical and elegant. It is worth a look, not just only, to trace what could have been, an epic masterpiece, had the film-makers the patience and the skills, to delve into what is, a fascinating amount of detail.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 28 October 2017

According to a learned friend, there are two potential types of Greek clients in the legal services industry. The first, are the auxiliary lawyers who feel they understand all aspects of their case and are doing you a favour by granting carriage of it to you. They have read widely, or spoken to many people who have endured like circumstances, or have graduated from the University of Bitter Experience aeons before you were even a hint of glee in your progenitor’s eye. For them you are merely an instrument, to be wielded and manipulated by their expert hands. They enter your office breezily, demanding they be told by you, what you intend to do, for them.
The second type characterizes those who are not possessed of such knowledge. Instead, they approach you somberly, look deeply in your eyes and begin to tell you, with exacting detail, the story of their lives. In doing so, they will brook no interruption, nor will the interposed injunction that lawyers bill in six minute intervals serve to stem their verbal flow. For once proffered, in their estimation, that life story creates an unbreakable bond between lawyer and client that forever cleaves them together in a pact of mutual understanding. For as one elderly client once told me when I dared to offer the opinion that the details of his unrequited lust for his neighbour were not necessary for me to sue his glazier for damages: “How can you understand my case, if you do not understand me?”
When the client the subject of this narration entered my office, I had no inkling of which of the two he would be. Tall, muscular, sporting a distinctive buzz-cut that would have been de rigueur in nineteen-eighties US college football fields and decoratively draping a turquoise knitted jumper about his neck, he slung himself into a chair with the considered but effortless poise of a ballerina. All I could surmise, both from his gait, and the manner in which the squint of his left eye seemed intimately connected to the gradient of his upper lip, was that he appeared to be a recent arrival from Greece.
Wasting no time upon introductions, he began to interrogate me confidently:
“Who owns the Internet?”
“What?” I asked.
“Who owns the Internet?” he repeated.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I responded, bewildered.
“Καλά, are you really a lawyer or what? It’s a simple question. Who owns the Internet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone owns the Internet,” I mused.
“Why not? Everything is owned by someone isn’t it? Someone has to own the Internet.”

Extending the tip of his right index finger, he lifted his dark, hairy hand to his lip. A hint of tongue made contact with the finger, providing it with a modicum of wetness. Raising the hand further, he then applied the finger to both his eyebrows, smoothing them lovingly. Those eyebrows were a masterpiece to behold. Thick and impenetrable, they were lovingly defined around their edges by someone who manifestly, was a master of the tweezer. As he lowered his hand, he winced in pain and it was then that I noticed the skin toned thermoskin carpal tunnel glove he was wearing.

“I’m not sure the Internet works that way,” I commented. “I think is a collection of hundreds of thousands of different computer networks that all link in to each other.”
“Yes,” he spat impatiently, “but who owns those links?”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Well the Internet is a net,” he sniffed contemptuously. “And a net is made up of various different filaments that link together. Each filament is separate but they all make up the net. Have you ever owned a net?”

“My grandfather did,” I reminisced. “In those days everyone fished with nets here. I remember him coming back from the bay and hanging the nets in the backyard to dry. Of course that’s all banned now and what within fishing quotas…”

“Never mind all that,” he interjected impatiently. “Point is, I’ve proved to you that you can own a net, so why can’t you own the Internet? Seriously, what kind of lawyer are you? Its right what they say about you ellinakia here and your level of education. Year 12 here is the equivalent of Grade 6 in Primary School in Greece. I haven’t been here for five minutes and I’m already running rings around you. I’m not sure if you’re the right man for the job.”

“And what is this job?” I asked.

“It’s a pity,” he continued unabated, picking his teeth with his right index finger, again wincing in pain. “You stand to make a hell of a lot of money.”

“I don’t think I’m following,” I responded.

“Have you seen the film, “The Matrix?”

“Yes, what of it?”
“Do you understand its deeper meaning?”
“What, the power of self-delusion and the dangers of uncontrolled technological development?”
“No,” he snorted, leaning back on his chair, with his legs outstretched to reveal an unnaturally engorged crotch region. I suspected sport socks, but held my peace. “The fact that the Matrix was a network controlled by machines.”
“So you think the Internet is controlled by machines?” By this stage, I had stopped making file notes.
“No, silly, but the Internet is obviously controlled and owned by someone.”
“So?”
“Well I want to engage you to find out who owns it.”
“Why?”
“I want to sue them. Believe me, I am going to bankrupt them, the amount of damages they owe me. You will take on the case no win, no fee of course but rest assured, you will make a pile of money. More than you can possibly imagine. And more than that, the publicity. You might want to consider hiring a bodyguard though,” he added as an afterthought. “The powers that be may try to kill you. But don’t worry, I know a place outside of Serres. They would never think to look for you there. We are going to bring down the Western world. Its going to be bigger than Wikitweets.”

“Wikileaks, you mean. And why do you want to sue the Internet?” I enquired.
“Well,” he raised his gloved hand. “They did this to me. I’m in agony every day.”
“Did what?” I asked.
“This, I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and RSI and arthritis in my arm and hand.”
“I’m not a personal injury lawyer,” I informed him, almost gleefully, grateful that I had, in my estimation, found a way to extricate myself from any further protracted intrusions by him into my workspace.
“No, you don’t need to be. There are higher principles at play here. Let me explain. I arrived here three years ago, knowing no one. My relatives were not interested in helping me. The bunch of goat-herders that make up your community were neither on my intellectual level not socially evolved enough to appreciate my company. Your women are all rude and ill bred. I found myself spending my spare time in my room on the computer and I discovered..,” here he lowered his voice conspiratorially, while simultaneously fluttering his unjustifiably long, for a man of his pronounced masculinity, eyelashes coquettishly, no mean feat. “Well, I discovered, τολμηρά sites.”
I knew what he meant, but I could not resist. “Τολμηρά as in risky? Your computer was infected with a virus?”
“Oh you Afstralakia,” he gasped in frustration. “No, τολμηρά means, well you know, racy, rude.”
“OK, so not so much risky as risqué?” I asked.
“Yes,” he ruffled his hair nervously. He must have been nervous, for this time he omitted to make the obligatory grimace of pain that concluded every lowering of his right hand.
“So you didn’t get a virus?” I asked again.
“No. Let’s just say that I got used to watching these sites. I couldn’t stop. I would spend hours and hours, night after night looking up these sites on the Internet,” he gestured plaintively, again without wincing.
“I’m sure that there are a number of organisations dealing with addiction that can help you,” I advised him softly. “I’m not sure how I can help.”
“But that is the thing,’ he raised his voice emphatically. “I did become addicted. And as a result, I’ve injured my hand. As I told you, carpal tunnel syndrome, RSI and arthritis. I can barely move my hand but my addiction compels me to do so. And for all of this the owner of the Internet is to blame. Τι τραβάω, τι τραβάω.”
“How?” I asked.
“Are you serious,” he spluttered incredulously. “Because he allows these dangerous sites to be placed on the Internet. Because there is no health warning when one logs onto the Internet. So I and everyone else like me gets onto the Internet blissfully unaware of all the health hazards. There is not even a disclaimer warning people to enter at their own risk. I’m telling you, there is a cause of action in this. Imagine how many other people are exactly in my situation.”
“You could run a class action,” I suggested.
“No,” he looked behind him suspiciously. “No. What are you an idiot? If you include others it will minimise the prize pool. Seriously, what a δικηγοράκος της δεκάρας you’ve turned out to be.”
“Anyway,” I said, standing up, hoping to end the interview, “I don’t think I can help you. Internet sexual injury compensation law is not my field of expertise.”
“No, I know that. I’ve already figured out you aren’t really very competent. I just need you to find out who the Internet is owned by and lodge the requisite papers to sue them. I’ll handle it from there. I’ve already got it thought out. We will ask for $500 million.”
“Why so much,” I asked.
“Punitive damages,” he responded with well thought out ease. “But as I said, don’t ask for money up front. You have to do it no win, no fee.”
“Sorry, I don’t think I can help you. For starters, I don’t believe the Internet has an owner, as I’ve told you and further, the whole thing seems far-fetched.
It was then that he reached out with his right hand and grabbed mine in a vice-like grip. As he proceeded to almost crush it, he expostulated through gritted teeth: “What the hell is wrong with you dense Afstralaki? Where do you get off throwing away the chance of a lifetime? Μαλάκας είσαι;”
In that split second, I had visions of pots calling kettles black and of Greek village donkeys calling roosters ῾κεφάλα.᾽ Managing to extricate my by now, porphyry coloured hand from his, I responded: “No, but I do subscribe to the philosophy of the stoics.”
“How do you mean?” he asked, as he adjusted himself.
“Ό,τι τραβάμε, δεν το μαρτυράμε,᾽ I murmured, as I gently showed him to the door, shutting with it, my once-in-a-lifetime chance of winning millions, forever.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday, 11 November 2017

Every Saturday, a lady that I know, bundles her child into her car and drives the one and half hours separating Ballarat from Melbourne in order that her child attend a quality Greek school, in this particular case, the city campus of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria’s Saturday school. Such commitment in these time-deprived days is rare however, even when the desire is there. For one thing, the institutions our community has created, largely reflect a demographic reality that no longer exists: that of Greek migrant communities living in close proximity to each other, in the Inner Suburbs.

Over the years, as the Greek community grew and became assimilated within broader Melbournian society, Greek-Australians began to move from the hitherto working class suburbs that still continue to define them and their identity, such as Brunswick, Richmond, Collingwood and Port Melbourne, to what were then, “new” suburbs, primarily in search of space and, most importantly, a garden. To a large extent, community institutions, in the form of churches, schools and regional social club followed them, which explains their proliferation in these areas.

Two generations later however, five important changes have taken place:

1. Greek cultural and social activity seems to have coalesced around certain Melbourne suburbs, at the expense of others;

2. Melbourne has expanded far beyond the traditional areas of Greek settlement and expansion;

3. The property boom has rendered hitherto affordable areas in which Greeks have lived, beyond the price range of younger Greek-Australians, resulting in them moving to outlying suburbs on the ‘fringes’ of Melbourne that have not had a Greek presence before and thus have no Greek churches, schools or clubs;

4. The “inner city” institutions of the Greeks of Melbourne have thus become remote, inaccessible and increasingly irrelevant to the Greeks of the outlying suburbs; and

5. As a result of geography, many younger Greeks of Melbourne who could benefit from such institutions are cut off from the organised Greek community, are unable to conveniently access Greek education or cultural and religious activities for their children and thus are displaying more rapid and higher percentages of cultural and linguistic assimilation.

As the vast majority of our community institutions are organised around the principle of a common regional Greek ancestry, addressing the complex demographic changes on Melbourne and their impact on culture and language is not only beyond their competence, but also beyond their scope and save for funding initiatives in the outlying areas through the rationalisation of unproductive assets, (something that would be highly unlikely, if the recent directive of a northern suburbs regional Greek club, that it not advertise its events to the rest of the Greek community because it only wants “its” people attending, is anything to go by), they sadly have nothing to contribute to this issue.

The Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria on the other hand, is one of the few Greek institutions that can and is taking steps to assess and address the challenges faced by the Greek community owing to shifting demographics. In some respects, this should come as no surprise. While Alphington Grammar School and other Greek schools have been operated by the GOCMV for a considerable period of time, over the last few years, a conscious effort has been made by the board to invest resources into Greek education, in new and unprecedented ways.

The fruits of this endeavour include but are not limited to addressing the needs of newly arrived migrants and advanced native speakers who do not benefit from the constant downgrading of the standard of Modern Greek usually taught in Melbourne, through the institution of Advanced Greek campuses, the introduction of classes in Classical Greek, so that the unbroken heritage of the Greek language since times ancient can be comprehended as a whole, pioneering creative drama programs, pioneering Greek school holiday programs and, underlining how seriously the modern GOCMV takes education, the appointment of a full time education officer, in the person of Mr Manos Tzimpragos.

That the modern GOCMV means business can be evidenced by the fact that it is committed to the scientific study of the Greek community and its attitudes to Greek –language education. Despite our century old sojourn in this country, academic studies have inexplicably not been conducted, not only to determine our needs in this regard, but also to evaluate the current systems via which Greek language education is purveyed and taught. The modern GOCMV is now redressing this, via its partnership with the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University, in offering a PhD thesis investigating parental attitudes to language learning in the Greek community of Melbourne. Such an endeavour, which also seeks recommendations for improvement of the current educational regime, is unprecedented in the annals of our collective history.

Given that despite out much vaunted numbers in Melbourne, only a third of school-age children of Greek ancestry in Victoria are studying the Greek language in day school or through after-hours providers, it is vital that outreach is made to targeted areas of Melbourne in which there is need for Greek educational institutions.

It is from this perspective that the recent announcement that the modern GOCMV is to open three new after hours Greek school campuses in the areas of South Morang, Point Cook and Narre Warren should be comprehended. These campuses were strategically chosen based on careful analysis of the latest census data and all three are areas in which the population of Greek-Australians, especially those with young families, is steadily growing, in full knowledge that location and convenience is by far the main reason why contemporary parents choose a particular Greek school campus, if any.

Choosing to locate the new after hours campuses in the above mentioned areas is a savvy move. Firstly, the campuses presciently anticipate future demand as these and surrounding suburbs continue to expand. Secondly, by reason of sheer presence and convenience alone, these campuses will capture a proportion of disengaged students and their families and re-induct them within the broader framework of the organized Greek community They comprise in effect, a focal point around which a local Greek community can emerge and coalesce, in connection with those already existing and this is why the modern GOCMV has pledged to allocate its most capable teachers to these areas, which makes sense, considering that these are the areas that have the most need.

Strategic planning is something that traditionally, our community has been decidedly lacking in. A good deal of heart, faith and hard work has always accompanied all of our endeavours but generally not, planning for the future. The GOCMV could, as others have, allow Greek language student numbers in Victoria to continue their declining trend, dolorously lamenting the loss of what once was. Instead, the modern GOCMV is bravely, methodically, responsibly and fervently committing itself to pro-actively reversing the current attrition.

The GOCMV’s new campuses on the fringes of Melbourne are therefore not just about expansion. They represent a turn-around in the way our community as a whole conducts itself and thinks about its future that is of considerable historical importance. The challenges facing Greek language learning in an increasingly monocultural and monolinguistic society, in which zeitgeist and attrition serve to disintegrate past communal affiliations, are legion. What we can take heart in, however, is that finally, someone, is willing to address these in a reasoned, calculated and committed manner. For this, the modern GOCMV deserves our full support and admiration.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday, 18 November 2017

In my idle moments, I often muse that the latter day history of our community can be likened to the plight of Sisyphus. For his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness, Sisyphus was compelled by the Olympian gods to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back to hit him, repeating this action for eternity. We too, engage in Sisyphian pursuits. From: raising money to buy the club building, raising money to pay off the club building, raising money to maintain the club building, raising money to find a use for the club building, raising money to stop the club building from being sold, to raising money to create a Modern Greek program in university, to raising money to maintain a Modern Greek program in university, to raising money to stop Modern Greek from being abolished from university, it appears that we are constantly, to paraphrase the colloquial Australian take on Sisyphus, pushing excrement uphill.
That is why I find the front cover of Christos Fifis’ recently launched book “Greek-Australian Offerings,” so intriguing. Designed by Phrixos Ioannidis, it depicts a little silhouette of a man, standing atop a mountain peak, holding his boulder in a masterful way. Significantly, the boulder is behind him, signifying that Sisyphus is not about to commence his futile task. Instead, he has finally completed it. As he stands triumphantly upon the peak, holding the boulder that inclines towards him, threatening to commence another descent and take him with it, Sisyphus, for the first time ever, is able to view the horizon, beyond his bondage. This should be a liberating and inspiring moment. Instead, Sisyphus’ view is hemmed in by more mountains, enclosing a void. One can almost feel the boulder begin to roll as he hyperventilates in exasperation. Phrixos entitled his picture: “The vision of Sisyphus” and it is, I suggest, no coincidence that Christos Fifis has chosen it for his front cover. There is a powerful pictorial parable encoded here, one that is key to unlocking Christos Fifis’ psychological attitude towards the Greek community, one he has researched, as lecturer and academic and loved, as an activist, at an inordinately deep level. He who has ears, let him hear, as the Chief Parabolist once said.
Christos Fifis translates the title to his book, rendered in Greek «Ελληνοαυστραλιανές Αναφορές», as “Greek-Australian Themes.” From the outset, what becomes apparent is that while in the Greek, the two ethnonyms can be merged to form a hybrid but harmonious new compound word, this is not possible in English. Instead the two ethnonyms, even though they attempt to express a compound reality, are separated by a hyphen and remain apart, suggesting the writer’s conviction that while such a semantic merger is linguistically possible in Greek, it is linguistically impossible in the Anglosphere, unless the term Graecaustralian is used, one that achieves compound hybridity, but significantly, only through the mediation of another western language, Latin, and has not, nor will it probably ever be used. The inadvertent realisation by Christos Fifis that the Greek term «Ελληνοαυστραλιανός» is untranslatable in English is of profound importance to his book but more pertinently to the community (which is also a mistranslation of the term that we use to describe ourselves, «παροικία» which literally means a settlement on the fringes, with all that this entails for our place within the multicultural paradigm) purporting to call itself both «Ελληνοαυστραλιανή» and Greek-Australian. This ontopathology is subtly played out in Christos Fifis’ interviews and musings that comprise the contents of his book.
I respect the author’s use of the word “Themes” to translate the Greek «αναφορές.» However, I prefer a more literal translation, one that, I feel, goes to the heart of Christos Fifis’ purpose. "Anaphora" literally signifies a "carrying back" or a "carrying up", and so, can denote an "offering" In the sacrificial language of the Greek version of the Old Testament, the term προσφέρειν is used to denote the offeror bringing the victim to the altar, and ἀναφέρειν is used to describe the priest's offering up the selected portion upon the altar. This is exactly the practice that Christos Fifis is engaging in, through the writing of “Greek-Australian Offerings”; offering up, by means of interviews, articles and poems, a unique view of a century of Greek-Australian cultural and literary achievement.
Christos Fifis’ perspective is a unique one. In a community suffering from historical amnesia and generally unable to forge a collective identity based on a coherent narrative comprised of the sum of our lived experiences, we largely do not seek to possess any knowledge of what transpired beyond our parents’ generation, nor do we find this relevant to our own experience. A key exemplar of this is the fact that we tend to term those migrants arriving here in the fifties and sixties as the first generation, ignoring the half-century of experiences, struggles, achievements and ideological and social activism of the pre-war Greek migrants. Consequently, instead of being able, after an entire century of settlement in this country, to draw upon an unbroken lineage of experience and attitude so as to formulate a truly Australian version of the Greek identity, our sense of identity remains fractured and ersatz, psychologically dependent upon an increasingly remote and indifferent Greek metropolis, and increasingly defined by Australian government policy and social expectation, of course, without the involvement of the original owners of this country. Having no knowledge of what has gone before, we, like our ancestor Sisyphus, the archetype of the modern Greek-Australian, are doomed to push our communal rock uphill, if not until eternity, then certainly, until we become dust, as prefigured by Fifis’ inclusion in the book, of Aristeidis Paradissis’ last ever poem, about death, written on his death-bed in hospital, upon a serviette.
Through his offerings, Christos Fifis seeks to arrest this phenomenon. It is important for him that we understand the perspectives of early Greek social and political activists as Alekos Doukas, or the poetry of Kostas Malaxos, who arriving in Australia prior to the First World War, published his first book of poetry in English, in Athens in 1957. While the poetry of Nikos Ninolakis, Dimitris Tsaloumas and Aristeidis Paradissis has been widely studied and critiqued at length in both English and Greek and the book would have benefited from an analysis of other largely forgotten but nonetheless powerful writers with much to say about the construction of a hybrid Greek-Australian identity, such as the great Yiannis Lillis, Christos Fifis’ sensitive treatment of these historic personages, through the interviews he conducted with them over the years, lends their insights on identity and acculturation, an inordinate immediacy to the reader, offering them up as building blocks, through which one can construct a coherent narrative, with a sense of historic continuity, that will ensure our relevance to the future. In this vital process, Christos Fifis becomes our chief ideologue.
“Greek-Australian Offerings,” is the third deeply inspiring volume of a trilogy of historically significant musings about identity and historical continuity in Australia. In his first, “Where is the place for a village?” his poems pose profound ontological questions: “Australia of impatient departures and pleasant arrivals. Fifty years later, who are the dinky di Australians, and who are the migrants? Who are the New Australians? And what are the Aborigines who didn’t count, back then?” In his second tome, “From Our Antipodes” Fifis makes a broad and sophisticated attempt to place the Greek community squarely within the broader Australian social context. In this, the final volume, he takes up all the strands of enquiry considered throughout the trilogy and weaves them together. This, the sum of our experiences is who we are. Our identity is us, in relation to the place we live, in accordance with the memories of those who have carved a place for us, in this place. Our challenge for the future, is, in absorbing this hive memory, to avoid triumphalism and understand that identity is an ever-shifting, ever-morphing paradigm that constantly requires refinement, re-assessment and re-negotiation. Perhaps it is futile to expect to escape the fate of Sisyphus after all.
DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday. 25 November 2017

FRIEZE: THE GOCMV MARBLES
The Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria building is now almost complete. It bears a depiction of Myron’s iconic discobolus, whose pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus, but which, notwithstanding, as the great Kenneth Clark once opined: “has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy… a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible, and he has given it the completeness of a cameo.” The moment thus captured in the statue, slapped upon the face of our community edifice is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance – lofty ideals for an organization that is the mouthpiece of us all. We marvel, Clarkian style, not only at its beauty, but at the fact it was able to be erected at all.

Now a replica of the Parthenon Frieze begins to festoon the building like a bridal crown. When all portions of the frieze are installed, the effect will be truly striking. Admittedly, the choice of frieze subject matter originally evoked feelings of unease in me. Is a 2,500 year old frieze from one of the most famous buildings of the world, really the best form of decoration for a 21^st century Greek-Australian façade? Would it not have been more suitable for a frieze to be commissioned, that while stylistically evoking the aesthetics of the Parthenon, actually provides a narrative centered around our own foundation myths, settlement in and acculturation to Australian society? What does the act of adorning our flagship building with what could be considered to be the most recognized cliché of ancient Greek art suggest about our identity, our ability to develop and interpret our culture here in the Antipodes and our negotiation of the Greek-Australian cultural cringe?

Not much actually, for the replication of the Parthenon Frieze, which is broadly held to be the defining monument of the High Classical style of Attic sculpture, and all that it represents, constitutes both a powerful manifesto and a symbol which enshrines a communal ideology of Greek-Australia, in a manner that is plain to see but which lends itself, as is the case with the original, to a multitude of competing and fascinating interpretations.

Thus, the first published attempt at interpreting the original belongs to Cyriaco of Ancona in the fifteenth century, who referred to it as depicting the “victories of Athens in the time of Pericles”. In our case, the viewer can thus draw their own conclusions as to which victories are being referred to and the identity of Pericles. Cyriaco’s view has been largely superseded, with most scholars now arguing that the frieze depicts one of the most important communal ceremonies of ancient Athens, that of the Greater Panathenaic procession from the Leokoreion by the Dipylon gate, to the Acropolis. During the Great Panathenaia, a special robe, the peplos, was made by the women of Athens for the statue of Athena, which was carried to the Parthenon as part of the procession. There was also a large sacrifice made to Athena, the hekatombe, literally meaning a sacrifice of a hundred oxen, and the meat from the sacrificed animals was used in an enormous banquet on the final night of the festival, the pannychis, or all-nighter. Considering that the replica frieze looks down upon the street upon which the most important Greek-Australian festival is enacted, one which causes the entire community to come together, to the sounds of much sizzling and the smells of a multitude of burnt offerings, perhaps the simile is an extraordinarily apt one.

Nonetheless, the contention that the original frieze depicts the festival for Athena is fraught with problems. Later sources indicate that a number of classes of individuals who performed a role in the procession are not present in the frieze, including: the hoplites, the allies in the Delian league, the skiaphoroi or umbrella bearers, the female hydraiphoroi (only male hydrai bearers are portrayed) thetes, slaves, metics, and the Panathenaic ship. If this is so, we would also have a problem with the replica, given the participation of the ancient themed Melbourne Hoplitikon and considering the vagaries of Melbourne weather, any number of umbrella wearers and women holding water bottles who also make themselves manifest in significant numbers in our own festival. Instead, scholars argue that the frieze is not a generic image of the religious festival, since no other temple sculpture depicts a contemporary event involving mortals.

Thus, John Boardman has suggested instead, that the cavalry in the frieze portray the heroisation of the Marathonomachoi, the hoplites who fell at Marathon in 490 BC, and therefore these riders were the Athenians who took part in the last pre-war Greater Panathenaia. Our frieze in turn, could diversely portray the heroisation of all those that devoted a significant portion of their life to fighting for multi-culturalism and the integration of the Greek community as a respected institution in Victorian society, or the heroisation of a number of Greek soccer players who took part in the last pre-A League finals, which destroyed ethnic soccer forever. On the other hand, several scholars have noted the Parthenon frieze’s similarity in style to the Apadana sculpture in the royal palace of Persepolis, which depicts a number of subject peoples processing to pay homage to the Persian king. The choice of style, it is argued, sends a powerful ideological message of democratic Athens counter posing itself to oriental tyranny. If we were to adopt this view, we could parallel democratic Athens with our own robust democratic culture within the GOCMV as well as its long historical tradition of being at the forefront of our community in campaigning for social justice.

Similarly, J.J. Politt contends that the original frieze embodies a Periclean manifesto, one which promotes the cultural institutions of contests/games, (as evidence by the apobatai), sacrifices, and military training as well as a number of other democratic virtues. This would position the frieze as a site of ideological tension between the elite and the demos. As a corollary, our own replica would therefore constitute a potent symbol of the importance of communal institutions and activities, discipline, volunteerism, inclusiveness and anti-elitism, all important elements of the modern GOCMV.

The latest theory, that of Joan Breton Connelly in her book “The Parthenon Enigma”, identifies the original frieze as the story of the donning of sacrificial garb by the daughter of King Erechtheus in preparation for the sacrifice of her life, one that is demanded in order to save the city from Eumolpos and the Eleusinians. Thus, the deities turn their backs to prevent pollution from the sight of her death. How that can be interpreted with the modern Antipodean context remains to be seen. A veiled reference at the sacrifices made by some at a time when the community was in peril? A cautionary tale about the virtues of proper governance? It is this multiplicity of meanings, connotations and symbols that renders the Parthenon frieze, by far the most suitable form of decoration, for the GOCMV building.

Most importantly, by choosing to adorn its edifice with the Parthenon frieze, a highly valued artwork that a) has been adopted as form an ideal basis for western art and b) has been not only appropriated stylistically by the west but also physically, given that it currently resides in the British Museum, the GOCMV is artfully making some clever points. Firstly and most significantly, that just like the easily identifiable and relatable original frieze itself, the GOCMV forms an integral part of both the Greek and Australian communities and acts as a bridge and conduit between both and secondly, its mere presence upon the building acts as an assertion of ownership and a mute protest against colonialism and a moral injustice visited upon the original. At the unveiling of the frieze, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Opposition Leader Matthew Guy both made impassioned please for the return of the Marbles that this frieze replicates.

The replica frieze is thus not derivative or cliché. It is only beautiful but also, a thoroughly thoughtful sculptural summation of the values, aspirations, historical themes and fault-lines, running through what is a venerable and nuanced community, poised on the verge of making important inroads within the context of broader multi-cultural Victoria. It acts as a clarion call for all of us, to espouse and realise those lofty ideals that have ensured our survival thus far, far into the future.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 2 December 2017

From an aesthetic point of view, our religious architecture in this country is unprecedentedly novel. Save for the situations where former Australian churches built by other denominations have been adapted to Orthodox use, a proper appropriation of pre-existing structures that fit in with the local landscape, which already have a history and facilitate the formation of a truly Australian Orthodoxy, the church buildings constructed by Greeks in Melbourne, generally tend to look nothing like the traditional form of church existing in Greece, at least, from the outside. Most significantly, their exteriors are extraordinarily diverse, reflecting various layers of Greek settlement and acculturation in Melbourne.

Thus, in a cursory drive around the suburbs of Melbourne, we are treated to a vast range of church buildings, some of which take surprising forms: resembling aeroplane hangars, sheds, multi-purpose gymnasia and, in one bizarre instance, a Buddhist pagoda. All forms of construction materials have been used in their erection, from the mission brown bricks of the seventies, to prefabricated concrete slabs and beyond. It could be argued that the strange character of these buildings reflect the circumstances in which they were constructed: hastily erected by a community still finding its feet in Australia and far from affluent, in desperate need of places to worship, with more thought given to function, than form. Furthermore, it has been argued, the architectural and construction skills necessary to build the traditional form of Greek church, which invariably is crowned a dome, have not been present in Australia, until recently, which is why the splendid Dormition of the Theotokos church in Altona looks Armenian or Georgian, with its strikingly Caucasian pointed roof.

This is a potent argument, but one which ultimately is refuted by the beautiful, traditional, domed Orthodox churches constructed by communities much smaller, or more recent in arrival than our own, such as the Serbian and Russian communities, along with the FYROMian community, though it should be pointed out that their church, though not its architecture, is schismatic. Of course, it is trite to mention that there are a number of Ottoman style mosques dotting the suburbs which also sport grand domes.

There is something more intrinsic at play, in the manner in which Greek churches on Melbourne have departed so markedly from the traditional “norm,” than mere lack of money, or lack of skill. Saint Nektarios in Fawkner, for example, which was built decades ago, is possessed of a grand dome, spanning almost the entire breadth of the building. It is not an example of “traditional” Greek church architecture and not does it need to be. Compared with other churches in Melbourne, Saint Nektarios in Fawkner is architecturally significant because it is an Australian reinterpretation and adaptation of the Great Church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople, and its façade, reflects both the building materials and designs available to the community at the time, as well as the aesthetic of the community at large, which is why its strange round windows, trapezoidal porches and rendered exterior fit in well with what was, at the time the church was constructed, an up and coming, newly developed suburb. Someone has considered all of: the Orthodox tradition, the Australian urban landscape and the nature of the Greek community of the area very carefully, and has successfully married all these elements into an Orthodox church that belongs to and encapsulates its environment and its aspirations, in an unprecedented way.

A few kilometres away, the Coburg church, also has a rendered exterior and a dome. Unlike the dome of Saint Nektarios however, the concrete dome of the Presentation of our Lord, is clumsy, and ill fitting. One also does not know how to interpret the two looming bell-towers at the front of the church, rounded by bizarre hollow arches. Here we venture into the world of the surreal. On a clear day, this church, which resembles the Coptic churches of the Nitrian desert, in the early morning with no one around, the dome and the arches look like a city scape from a De Chirico painting. Is this a reflection of the parishioners own sense of quandary in interpreting the world around them? If so, this endearing church is a potent focal point of an unravelling cosmos.

If surreal is what one is after, one can go no further than the brilliantly breathtaking Saint Athanasius church in Springvale, which combines the Saint Sophia-style aspirations of Saint Nektarios, with the De Chirico qualities of The Presentation of our Lord. A small red dome, that looks like the top of a flying saucer, sits jauntily atop a roller coaster of arches and half arches of a complexity rivalled only by the architectural imaginings of a Dr Seuss book. One is in constant anticipation of a Lorax springing out from behind one of the columns and if the Grinch was ever to steal Christmas, surely it would be from here, that he would make his attempt. The overall effect upon the viewer is one of awe, derived from an appreciation of the church building’s immensity, complexity, but most importantly, overall harmony.

Saint John’s church in Carlton, also sports a dome. It is squat, comfortable, and unlike the Coburg dome, un-selfconscious. The highly adorned exterior brickwork recalls but does not copy the decorative stonework of the late Roman and early Byzantine eras, while the metalwork in vibrant blues, yellows, red and grays reminds one of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The disconcerting blue trapezoidal porch and eaves are a novel interpretation of the traditional barrel vault. This hybrid masterpiece has something of the Gothic about its aesthetics. Instead of feeling enveloped by the heavens, one feels a vertical connection of ascent to them, granting a completely different ecclesiastical experience. This marriage of received and inherited architectural emotions and aesthetics renders Saint John’s a truly significant edifice.

Saint Andrew’s in Sunshine, is a remarkable building, in that it reminds one immediately of a Roman basilica, the first type of Christian church, crossed with a martyr’s shrine of the type one generally sees in the Holy Land. Constructed of the light brown brick common to the homes of the surrounding area, it has a great gate for entry to its side, just like the basilicas of Constantine, and is a prodigious reinterpretation of the fundamentals of church architecture.

With regards to their ability to interpret and adapt received religious architectural tradition, all of the abovementioned churches have their precedent in the first Greek Orthodox Church ever to be built in our city, the Annunciation. This church, constructed by Longstaff in 1901 to a design by noted contemporary architects Inskip and Butler, plays on motifs drawn from French and German medieval sources in order to situate the church within the context of turn of the century Melburnian urban architecture, without rendering its form unintelligible to parishioners, used to the architectural traditions of their homeland.

It is this unique ability to enshrine the essence of Orthodoxy from the outset while also appealing to its parishioners’ desire to acculturate within the context of broader Australian society that has perhaps rendered the Annunciation church the most beloved and revered in Melbourne. Its interior, prior to its partial destruction by fire last year, was endearing though unastonishing, permeated as it was by the dark, close aesthetic of the neo-Baroque, so common to Greek churches of the nineteenth century. Its successful restoration will, no doubt, recall that style, for it forms an intrinsic part of the history of the formation of our own Greek-Australian design, with the restoration forming yet another layer in the edifice’s composite history. The manner in which the Greek community engaged in radical innovation of church architecture from its very genesis, in the Annunciation, has thus had profound influence in the interpretation and ideology of style, right up until the present day.

One could say that a vernacular form of architecture specific to Australia has been articulated and if the work of architects like Angelo Candelapas who is currently completing an extraordinary ninety-nine domed mosque in Punchbowl, Sydney, and who has designed All Saints Greek Orthodox Grammar primary school, is anything to go by, that tendency will most likely continue into the future.

Given the above, it is regrettable that a proper cultural and comparative study of the churches of the Greeks in Melbourne, one that examines the innovations and ideologies of adaptation, their cumulative effect upon the development of church architecture in Australia, how they respond to and interepret the Orthodox tradition and most importantly, what they say about the Greek of Melbourne themselves, has not been undertaken. Considering however, that church architecture is one of the few cultural elements in which the Greek community has displayed pronounced innovative tendencies, for the large part, divorced from the tastes and trends of the mother country, their evolution is well worth studying. Such a study, perhaps undertaken concurrently with the restoration of the Annunciation Church, will surely lead to an increased appreciation of the art behind some of our most utilised, but least aesthetically appreciated, community edifices.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 2 December 2017

A while ago, when speculation was rife about Greece’s imminent ejection from the Eurozone, I suggested to a friend that in the aftermath, we should create our own zone, one in which we are the ones who make and break the rules and within which we are completely comfortable in being ourselves. I dubbed this prospective new zone, the Euzone, a zone of Epicurean peripatetic goodness, albeit regulated by Stoic ataraxia.

“We already have that,” my friend shrugged. “It’s called Oakleigh.”
In Greek of course, the term euzone signifies he who is well girt, kind of like Australia, vis a vis the Indian Ocean. Though the term conjures up in the Modern Greek consciousness, connotations of impossibly short-skirted males, possessed of inordinately gloomy countenances, resolutely goose-stepping around self-conscious pigeons and voyeuristic tourists, it is in fact, of antique provenance, being first attested in Homer’s Iliad and used thereafter for centuries, to describe a type of light infantry of unidentified equipment, probably used as a generic term to denote light infantry.

The word Euzone is, for the Modern Greek, synonymous with bravery. From the light skirmishers, mountain and border guards of King Otto’s time, the euzones participated in all of the wars that precipitated Greece’s expansion to its present borders and beyond. Operating independently on the vanguard or the flanks of the army during the Balkan Wars, they distinguished themselves for their fighting spirit suffering high casualties, especially among officers. An euzone battalion landed in Smyrna in 1919 and the euzones, fought valiantly in the mountains of Epirus against the invading Italians, pushing the fascist army out of Greece and liberating Northern Epirus in the process.

Adding to the lustre of the already resplendent reputation of the Euzones for heroism, is the romantic sacrifice of one of its youngest but most significant members, Konstantinos Koukidis. As the invading Nazi Army entered Athens, the Germans ascended to the Acropolis and ordered the euzone Koukidis who was guarding the flag post, to haul down the Greek flag and replace it with the swastika. The euzone hauled down the Greek flag, but refused to hand it over to the Nazis. Instead, he wrapped himself in it and fell off the Acropolis to his death. Or so it would seem, for recent research suggests that no person of that name ever existed, attesting to the enduring power of his myth.

Sadly, the noble image of the selfless eugenic euzone has been slightly sullied by the creation of the Collaborationist Security Battalions during the Nazi occupation. Sundry traitorous scum, not fit even to contemplate spelling, let alone to wear the hallowed foustanella, donned a version of the uniform and unleashed a murderous reign of terror upon their own people, in order to please the Germans. As a result, after the war, the euzones ceased to be a fighting force, and instead, were formed into a prestigious and elite, Palace and then, Presidential guard.
Interestingly, though the modern euzone uniform that is so iconic and gives rise to so many stereotypes of modern Greece is modelled on the clothes worn by the fighters of the Greek Revolution, perhaps implying that in that troubled part of the world, liberty is not a constant and must always be defended, the uniform of the first euzones, in 1933 was in the unpopular Bavarian style of blue trousers, tailcoats and shako. As light infantry, the Euzones were distinguished only by green braid and plume and it was only in 1837, that a prototype of the skirt that has become synonymous with Greek masculinity, was introduced. In homage to that ideal of manliness, which I can never hope to emulate, when I wear my own foustanella, at the annual Independence Day march, around the house, or at various parties, I do so demurely, below the knee.
Euzone skirts have been seen down-under of late. Notably, their visit to Sydney this year sparked howls of protest in Melbourne, as breathless fans, predominantly but not limited to the female of the species panted their indignation at our robust metropolis of Hellenism being left out of their itinerary. The allure of the eutrophic euzone is strong indeed, and this despite a veteran Melbournian foustanella wearer pointing out to his wife and I, as we eulogized about the symmetry of their bearing, proclaiming that euzones are an euphonic euphemism for eudaemonism, that: “real euzones are not six foot tall, but are grisly argumentative mountain shepherds. These guys are too clean cut.”

Consequently, the news that the Victorian State Government is co-sponsoring a visit of a smattering of eugenic euzones next year, coinciding with our community’s Greek Independence Day celebrations, to the tune of $30,000, has been met largely by our eurytopic community with euphoria. Yet the announcement in itself has also raised eyebrows among some skirt disparagers: Other than their eupeptic, sugary physical form, what possible reason could our euxenitic government have for expending such a significant sum for the transportation of skirt-clad euzones to our shores, especially when various organisations of our diverse community, especially in the welfare sector, could well make use of financial assistance of such magnitude, not to mention the stunted arts sphere?

Given our enthusiastic acclamation of our government sponsoring the visit of another State’s Presidential Guard to our city, are the fellow citizens of our eusocial abode justified in expecting similar subsidies for imminent visits of Her Majesty’s Buckingham Palace Guards, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the Turkish Janissary Guard and of course the Holy Father in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard? Will this also extend to fully funded virtual online visits by muscly Black Ops personnel of Call of Duty fame?

Furthermore, considering that as a community we have, over the past few decades, overseen the evolution of our Greek Independence Day March, from the formulaic, regimented, militaristic, Red Square May Day Parade in miniature, into a celebration of ourselves and our presence in Australia, with children dressed in a motley mix of traditional and modern garb parading haphazardly but always enthusiastically before their whooping, fist-pumping parents and giving scant regard to the largely ignored dignitaries golf-clapping politely on the side-lines, what do the euzones, who have played no part in our own festivities, to do with us? Is there no shortage of native born six foot Greek-Australians with great legs who can don the foustanella without us having recourse to the euzones, in the manner in which they have always done in Australia since the Second World War?

According to this point of view, the imminent visit of the euzones and our rapture at the reception of this news, seems to exemplify our cultural cringe and inability to articulate or stand by our own culture, without constant need of reaffirmation from a place of origin whose mores and culture is increasingly becoming different to that of our homes, or recourse to stereotypes created by the dominant culture in order to dictate to us how we should present ourselves to them. As a result, it could be argued that in such cases we consequently fall victim to the populist pamperings of those who purport to preside over our polis, knowing that they need only to pander upon our insecurities of identity, in order to have us eating out of the palms of their hands.
The presence of euzones out of the Eurozone is not necessary to our identity, nor does it add anything to the culture we have created and/or developed in the Antipodes, more often than not through attrition, trial and error. Nonetheless, the euzones are most welcome. We want to welcome members of an elite group that, throughout the vicissitudes of fate befalling Greece over the past two centuries, has largely remained, that rare thing: a constant, steadfast and relatively unsullied symbol of heroism and selflessness. This is a heroism that Australian soldiers in Greece during World War II experienced first- hand and it is with the euzones that an enduring Greek-Australian bond was forged.

In these times of crisis, which have forced Greeks not only in Greece but throughout the world to re-appraise their identity, the presence of the euzones on our shores serves not only to focus on our linear kinship but also to re-articulate and give greater emphasis to those elements of our identity and the myths that uphold it that could serve the basis for moving forward. Further, considering that a significant number of Greek migrants in Melbourne have served in the euzones or have family that has done so, our ties to the euzones are more than just symbolic. We have physically partaken in their legend and are entitled to do so again.
Next March then, seek me at the Shrine, resplendent in my flowing pleats, chasing, what else, a bit of ineffable and sublime, euzonic skirt.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 9 December 2017

My father strode up and down the trench I had just dug, hands in pockets, with the inquisitorial stride of a zealous building inspector, squinting all the while.

“It’s not square,” he commented grimly. He then turned his head sideways and frowned as he resumed his stride.

“It’s not level,” he observed.

As I pondered whether it was worthwhile for me to inform him that as my world view was generally skewed, it followed axiomatically that what I perceived as straight, everyone else saw as off kilter and vice versa, my progenitor pronounced final judgment with an air of resignation, as he rolled up his sleeves and assumed custody of my shovel: “Ατζαμής είσαι βρε.”

Save for the above incident, I have only been called an “ατζαμή” twice in my life. The most recent was over a decade ago when I attempted to assist a newly married friend who wanted to re-construct what he perceived to be a Helladic lifestyle, in wintry Melbourne. According to him, being Greek consisted of using expletives before prepositions in every second sentence and cooking gyros in his backyard on every available weekend. It was in the design and installation of an inordinately intricate contraption for the even roasting of a holocaust of meat, the complexity of which would confound even the designer of the Antikythera mechanism, that I was called upon to act as accomplice. Having miraculously, through copious amounts of prayer and misadventure to rotate, we ululated like ecstatic Trojan women as we impaled pieces of carcass upon the spit, only to have our revels interrupted abruptly by my friend’s incensed father: “Βρε ατζαμήδες, τι βλακείες κάνετε;” Apparently, in the obscure part of Greece whence he had come, it was common knowledge that one’s spit must turn clockwise for best results. He also directed some words of particularly derisive force towards my belief that gyros would taste better, medium rare. Sadly, our friendship did not survive this endo-familial rejection of my friend’s Hellenic credentials and his ensuing food poisoning at my hands.

The first time I was called an “ατζαμή” was when at the age of seventeen I was introduced to a wall-eyed gum chewing girl at a Greek dance, whose sole vocabulary seemed to consist of the words: “I’m bored,” punctuated by a “so” interposed between the first and second words on occasion for emphasis. As she appeared to be rejoicing in her boredom and resplendent within it, I felt it would be a crime to disengage her from it by means of a conversation employing the rest of the words in the English language she was not privy to, and thus left her to rejoin my companions. As I walked away from her, I noticed a ruddy faced man, the girl’s father, shake his head with incredulity and exclaim: “Καλά, δεν ξέρει ούτε να μιλάει”; “Συγγνώμη,” I heard a distant uncle apologise. “Δεν ήξερα ότι ήταν τόσο ατζαμής.”

Generally though, in my household, the word ατζαμής was applied to the description of incompetent tradesmen, which accounts for my firm belief that the etymology of the term was derived from the negative prefix α- and the word for glass, for only an ατζαμή would be so incompetent as to construct windows, without the glass attached. As it turns out, however, the term has deeper and more historical roots.

The word is Arabic and in its original sense, it signifies a non-Arab, or on who does not speak the Arabic language. Literally it has the meaning of "one who is illiterate in language", "silent", or "mute.” In this sense, it is the semantic counterpart to the Greek “barbarian,” though the root of the word ajami is said to have originally signified the act of “dotting,” that is, adding the dots that distinguish between various Arabic letters in a text, for the benefit of non-native speakers who would not otherwise be able to distinguish similar letters from the context. While in English, the act of dotting one’s i’s and crossing one’s t’s is laudable, it Arabic, it is a sign of the foreigner and the inept. The ancient Greeks on the other hand were decidedly uninterested in the describing the process of teaching barbarians to read and focused on the uncouth sounds emanating from their uncultured larynxes when coining the onomatopoeic term that denoted them as existing outside of the fold.

While both the terms ajami and barbarian stem from two respective people’s expansion from their original homeland and their coming in contact with hitherto unknown peoples, within the word ajami, a more sinister history is encoded. In Persia especially, Arab conquerors tried to impose Arabic as the primary language of its subject peoples, with the particularly harsh governor al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ordering the official language of the conquered lands to be replaced with Arabic, sometimes by force, which including cutting out the tongues of Persian speakers, giving rise to the connotation of "mute" for the term. I assume that it is in this sense, deriding my inability to “chat up” my bored beauty, that my uncle referred to me as an ajami, so many years ago. After all, the Arabic verb ʿajama originally meant "to mumble, and speak indistinctly", which is the opposite of what I did that fateful night, for as my uncle informed me, my ineloquence cost me my chance at true happiness, since the girl in question went on to marry someone who is filthy rich and enjoys a fabled lifestyle. My several attempts to explain to him the flaws of his paradigm, mainly that the acquisition of such an oneiric fate was contingent not upon me marrying the girl but rather her husband, something that is rather impossible in these pre-plebiscite, pre-legislation times, have all been met with the inarticulate grunt of the classical ajami.

In time, all non-Arabs in the Caliphate were referred to as ajamin, including Greeks, although the term is still primarily associated with Persia. As the subject peoples of the Caliphate gradually were converted to Islam, not only did they display an ignorance of the Arabic language, they also knew next to nothing about the Islamic religion and were clumsy, shoddy and incorrect in their observances of its rituals. It was in this sense, that of the rookie, the inexperienced, or the inept that the term entered the Turkish language and from there entered, not only our own, but Bulgarian and Serbian as well.

Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, “aljamiado” came to denote the rendering of the languages of the Spanish peninsula in Arabic script while similarly, the Ajami script, is the use of Arabic to write the West African languages of Hausa and Fulani.

It is high time, we ατζαμήδες , no longer able to be distinguished solely by the barbarity of our tongues, adopted our own Ajamic script in order to record our own ineptitudes for posterity. I can think of not a few Greek politicians who do history a disservice by not embracing their identity in this fashion, especially when the logic of their argument is often as inverted and convoluted as the Ajami script appears to the uninitiated.

Two Christmases ago, rushing to perform some last-minute errands in the metropolis, I happened to park my car in a rather negligent manner. Returning to my mode of conveyance some time later, I found a note tucked behind my windscreen wiper. Unfolding it carefully, I read: “To the noob who doesn’t know how to park. Learn to park or next time I’ll smash your [insert something to do with copulation here] windscreen.” A noob in the vulgar parlance of course, is an ajami and I was delighted that finally my status would be confirmed by a defenestration that would render me literally without a τζάμι. In one single revolutionary act of destruction, west and east would linguistically meet.

Regrettably, it was not to be. Ever since, in pursuit of my goal, I have parked in the metropolis in ever increasingly flagrant and exaggerated manners. I have amassed a multitude of fines and yet, my defenestrator has saw fit to leave my windscreen intact. Time and time again, I breathe a sigh of disappoint as I try to extricate my side mirrors from the clutches of the parking meter and drive away, suitably listening to something oriental, something in the maqam, or musical mode Ajam, meaning "the Persian mode", corresponding to the major scale in European music, as I run red lights and weave my way out of the path, of oncoming traffic.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 9 December 2017

It began when an outraged friend called me. “Have you seen the thing that purports to be a Christmas tree that the municipality has erected in Ioannina?” she spluttered. “It’s a cubist nightmare.”
As a matter of fact, I had seen pictures of it just minutes before and was enthralled. Comprised of sundry steel bars juxtaposed against each other so as to imply the branches of a Christmas tree, it was more of a constructivist’s erotic dream, eerily reminiscent of the sweeping curves caused by the geometric shapes, in its evocation of Vladimir Tatlin’s design for the Petrograd Monument to the Third International. Sadly, Tatlin’s Monument was never built and soon after, the Bolshevik aesthetic turned from the avant garde to the socialist realism of Stalinist neoclassicism. Inversely, in Ioannina, an Ottoman town, boasting Byzantine buildings, neoclassism was now being rejected in favour of soviet constructivism. I found this process breathtaking, and said so.

“You know it serves them right,” my friend’s diatribe continued, unabated. “These Greeks of Greece have lost all of their traditions. The Christmas tree itself is a western import that fits ill with the Greek psyche. No wonder that they take absurd artistic liberties with its form. They should display a boat, not a tree, at Christmas.”

If there is one part of the motherland where a Christmas tree is more fitting that a boat, then surely that is mountainous northern Greece. If the Epirots were to feature a Christmas boat, then surely it would have to be one of those low-riding canoe-cum longships, depicted by orientalist artist Louis Dupré that were once used to convey the infamous and prone to reclining Ali Pasha through, not Lake Pamvotis, as most inhabitants of Ioannina believe, but rather, Lake Lapsista, which no longer exists, as it has been drained. The Ioannitans generally deny that Lake Lapsista ever existed, which is cited by my friend as evidence of the historical and cultural dementia of the modern Greek. The Ioannitans, like all other Greeks, also seem to believe that the Greeks of down-under celebrate Christmas by the beach, a source of ever-lasting wonder to them.

Dementia or no, the village Epirots still retain tree-themed Christmas customs, generally involving parading through the streets bearing lit tree branches which crackle and sizzle, scaring the kallikantzaroi and the municipal fire brigade. In Ioannina, the populace would carry bay leaves to throw into the fireplaces of those to whom they sought (literally) to convey Christmas greetings.

Having learned about this charming custom after spending my first Christmas in Greece, the Greek equivalent to bringing one’s own supply of beer to an Australian Christmas party, I resolved to transport it to Australia. None of us had fireplaces, it was the height of summer and when, adapting to local conditions, I threw a heap of bay leaves on my great-uncles’ barbeque while he was cooking chops, I earned a prodigious clout on the head, for though he was from Samos, a place where Christmas customs are not unknown, he had long forgotten them and concentrated instead on his superpower, which was, the ability to sense when a relative was coming to drop in unannounced at Christmas half an hour earlier, and to manage to have the barbeque lit and the chops cooking five minutes prior to their arrival.

“But that is the point,” my friend argued when treated to my reminisces. “We make conscious efforts to retain our customs in this country. The dehellenised Graeculoi of Greece do not.”

When my father was a boy, growing up in Melbourne in the fifties, Christmas comprised of my grandfather taking him via the tram to the Sidney Meyer Music Bowl, to listen to the Carols by Candelight. Going to church was inconvenient owing to a paucity of public transport and so did not feature in the migrant celebrations at all, which consisted, primarily, of a barbeque. My grandmother, an epicurean who held strong convictions about denying oneself none of the pleasures of life, would make kourabiedes throughout the year. By the time I arrived on the scene, these progressively became so dry that eating more than one seriously placed one in peril of having all of their bodily fluids sucked out of them, just the thing for a hot Australian summer Christmas.

It was my mother, and my uncle, later arrivals who, upon marrying into the family and having respectively spent their first Christmases with the (to their horror) no-frills Kalimnioi, set about re-hellenising Christmas. My uncle constructed a wood oven in his backyard. All of a sudden, the traditional Samian Christmas fare of stuffed lamb shoulder made its presence upon our table. My mother introduced the family to melomakarona, (and Christmas fried rice) and my cousins and I introduced the compulsory singing of the generic Greek Christmas carols we learned at Greek school. As this custom proved to be quite lucrative, my uncle decided to put our show on the road. For a few years, we would spend Christmas Eve in the back of his van, driving around town, being trundled out at Samian households in order to perform the generic carols, (my grandmother tried to teach us some native Samian carols, involving Saint Basil being barred from entering a village because he couldn’t give the countersign, but for some reason the other Samians kept interjecting with their own lyrics) thus raising much needed capital in order to pay off the Samian Brotherhood’s clubhouse, which was sold recently. After a while, my cousins and I realised that our material was stale and at a general meeting, resolved to disband before we lost our coveted artistic integrity. I don’t think my uncle has ever forgiven us.

Nonetheless, my childhood Greek-Australian Christmas Day mainly consisted of: Opening presents under the Christmas tree, taking the obligatory calls from Greece, going to relatives’ houses to eat barbequed meat and then, while the adults went torpid in the aftermath of their feeding frenzy, and playing cricket in the backyard.

“Yet we still maintain the richness of our traditional heritage,” my friend insisted.

Somewhere along the line, we began to attend church on Christmas Day, and were seen as dangerous innovators. Moreover, we began to fast in the lead-up to the feast and also attended the epic traditional Greek Carol extravaganza staged annually by the Archdiocese. From somewhere, I procured a model ship, festooned it with small lights and this, juxtaposed against the Christmas tree, is the mother-ship that brings the Kalimnioi out of the Christmas season and ushers in the New Year. I decorated it with the flag of the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus, a short-lived state that never had a navy, at least, not until I came along.

With the corporeal manifestation of my own progeny, I began to learn the specific carols particular to my places of origin, intoning these sonorously a month prior to Christmas so that said progeny could learn them by osmosis. I objected strenuously to the practice of eating turkey, championing instead, the ritual consumption of parts of the pig and cast out from my place of abode those well-meaning Greek-Australians who sought to defile my Hellenic Christmas by pestilentially proffering a panettone. By way of atonement, I sought out and learned to make the traditional Χριστόψωμο, which, viewed from a variety perspectives, is a more eastern version of the panettone, which is why I abjure the use of raisins. There is a profusion of reindeer, elves and Santas in our home this time of year. I allow them, as the Soviets allowed Christmas trees, by way of magnanimous compromise, until such time as Communism arrives, and the State, (or in my case non-Greek Christmas customs) withers away.

At my daughter’s Greek school Christmas party recently, the children sang the «Σπάργανα,» traditional carols of Epirus. One of the mothers, recently arrived from Greece asked me what these were. I explained that traditionally, the women of the village would get together, heat a hot flat stone on the fire and make pancakes on it while singing the carol, employing the pancakes as a symbol of Jesus’ swaddling clothes.

“See what I mean?” my friend exclaimed, when I related this to her. “She is an ‘off the boater’ and like most modern Greeks, she knows nothing about our traditions.” All I could see, on the other hand, was a person desperately missing Greece, facing the prospect of spending Christmas in a strange place, away from friends and family, trying valiantly to cling on to vestiges of lore that have suddenly become relevant in a way never before expected, and seeking information about them from someone who has never experienced them and only read about them in books. I, on the other hand don’t miss Greece. Instead, I fear missing the intrusion of any other tradition that would render my Christmas, any less Greek.

I emerged the other day from the garage bearing a geometrical, spiral type contraption made out of garden wire, invoking, as I have been told later, Tatlin’s design for a Soviet suppository.
“What is that?” my wife asked, incredulously.
“This? It’s a traditional Ioannina Christmas tree,” I replied.
“Are you sure?”
“Well it is now. Where shall I put it?”
“Next to the model dug-out canoe,” she suggested.
“You think?”

My wife, absorbed in her internet search for Russian Christmas bread designs that could render our projected Χριστόψωμο more aesthetically pleasing, did not reply.
«Σπάργανα,» I broke the silence.
“What?”
«Σπάργανα. Let’s make σπάργανα this year. It will be good.”
My wife looked up from her screen thoughtfully. “Well there is a hot plate on the barbie….”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 23 December 2017

Even before I reach Odisho’s front door, my ears are assailed by the sound of Giorgos Dalaras’ voice emanating from beyond threshold: «Μες το μαχαλά, πέφτει κουμπουριά…» Then, the sound of shuffling and a heavy voice struggles to be heard over the music: «Εντάξει, περίμενε ρε φίλε, σού ανοίγω τώρα,» aspirating the s.

As the door opens, Odisho’s broad white grin is blinding. He bears in his hand a bottle of ouzo. «Χρόνια πολλά βρε φίλε! Έλα να πιεις ούζο.» Being led down the hallway and into the dining room, I note the conspicuously mounted Greek souvenir plates, the statues of the Greek gods on the buffet and a bouzouki hanging nonchalantly next to an unremarkable print of a non-descript blue and white church on some non-descript Greek island, all of which populates many a Greek home in Melbourne and which should not cause the eyebrow to be raised here, save that Odisho is manifestly not Greek, but Assyrian.

Every year, close to Christmas, Odisho and his nostalgic Assyrian friends, who lived in Greece in the late seventies and early eighties, prior to their emigration to Australia, get together to have a pre-Christmas dinner. The sole purpose of that dinner is to reminisce about a Greece that is inextricably linked to their lost youth. They mouth Greek phrases and speak to each other in nineteen eighties Greek, all the while drinking ouzo and playing the music that was popular in Greece during the time of their sojourn there, in order to evoke that era. My sporadic presence at these Poseidonian rituals, in some bizarre way, legitimizes them, for as a speaker of broken Assyrian, and as a Greek-Australian who did not experience Greece in the period in which my convivial diners were there present, I lend the solemn proceedings, a modicum of ersatz authenticity.

Tonight is different from other nights, however, because as Yiannis Parios’ «Να μ’ αγαπάς τώρα,» is allowed to play out its final grace notes, Odisho finally reveals to us how he got to Greece in the first place, in time to celebrate his first Christmas there:

“It was 1976. I wanted to leave Iraq to go to Greece, and I was a student. I went to the passport office and in those days, the forms were so complicated, that there were professional scribes with typewriters set up outside the office to assist people with their applications. I approached one and he asked me:
“What do you do?”
“I’m a student,” I responded.
“That’s not good. They will never let you out if you are a student,” he shook his head knowledgeably. “Do you do anything else? What else can I write?”
“I don’t know, you are the professional. You write whatever you think is necessary,” I replied, in turn.

He wrote something on the form and told me to take it in to the passport office, where I would be interviewed. For some time I waited in the office, until an army colonel marched up to me briskly.
“Follow me, young man,” he ordered.
I stood to attention and saluted him, as was the custom and gave him my papers. He pored over them diligently, his brow growing increasingly furrowed as he scanned down the page. Suddenly, he stopped.
“What is this? You are unemployed?” he asked.
“No, sir, I am a student,” I responded, still standing to attention.
“A student, do you say? Then why have you written that you are unemployed?”
“I…..”
“Go and tell the idiot who helped you fill out this form to change this to ‘worker’ and come back here at once,” he barked.

I did as I was told and returned a half an hour later, submitting the amended documents to the colonel.

“Ah, see that’s better,” the colonel beamed. “Now when you go abroad, the foreigners will have respect for you and for Iraq. Who would respect a country full of the unemployed? Bon Voyage.”

As it turns out, I did not make it to Greece at that time. In those days, visas were issued on the day of travel by the Greek embassy and a series of mishaps intervened that resulted in me missing my flight. At the commencement of the Iran-Iraq War, travel restrictions were instituted and I could not get out. As things worsened in the country, I left Iraq illegally through Turkey and stayed in Istanbul. From there I tried on seven separate occasions to cross into Greece over the Thracian border, but each time, we would be caught either by Greek or Turkish border guards. However, you will find my last attempt interesting.

It was Christmas Eve. We three, [he points to another two of our fellow diners] had just crossed the border just after midnight and as the people smugglers had taught us, we were inflating a rubber dinghy which we were going to us to cross a river. We managed to get all of our party across safely when the guards found us. They took us to an outpost. On the way, they questioned us about our nationality and our religious affiliations. I pulled out my cross and showed it to them. “Jesus, Christmas,” I told him.

Taking me aside, one the guards whispered: “Look, I recognize you. You’ve tried to come this way before. I’m sorry but I have to take you to my commanding officer. Just be wary of one thing. If he asks you where you came from, do NOT, under any circumstances say Istanbul. You say Κωνσταντινούπολη. Can you say it? Say it with me slowly. Make sure you don’t forget. It’s important.”

When we arrived at the outpost, there was no one on duty. Instead, we could hear the radio blaring and a lot of voices singing. The guards were having a Christmas party and were blind drunk. We were taken before the commanding officer, a squat, bald man with a thin moustache. Teary eyed, cheeks flushed crimson with alcohol, he shouted:

“What animals are these?”
He staggered off his chair, and poked his swollen face into mine. Reeling even closer towards me, he coughed:
“Where did you come from?”
“I…iii”
“Λέγε. Where did you come from?”
“Ist….”

I had a mental blank. I could not remember how to pronounce the word the guard had told me and was terrified we would be beaten and sent back.

“Tell me now you animal,” the commanding officer screamed.
“ K,,, Kostadinopoli,” I stammered, finally.

“Of course you did palikari,” he crowed triumphantly. “You came from our city but those filthy Turks have taken it from us. But the time will come when the city will be ours and the Turks will be sent back to the Red Apple Tree….” He walked away, only to turn back and command indifferently: “Let them go. It’s Christmas. Χρόνια πολλά. Ο Θεός μαζίσας.” That was the first time in my life that I could celebrate Christmas openly. I was alone, but ecstatic.

I celebrated six wonderful Christmases in Aegaleo, and was the last of my friends to leave Greece. When I arrived at Melbourne Airport, just before Christmas, they all came to greet me, all of these guys sitting around the table here today. But what type of welcome do you think I received? As soon as I walked through the doors, they started yelling at me: “What are you doing? Are you crazy? Go back! Greece is far better.” And it is true. There is no place like Greece. The years we spent there are golden.”

We listen to some of Mitropanos’ early songs and they ask me whether I am familiar with the type of music a certain group of Greek musicians used to play at the Retreat Hotel. I gasp. “You mean Apodimi Compania? How do you know them?” Odisho and his band of Greek nostalgics then reflect upon how important the rebetiko outfit “Apodimi Compania” was in making them feel at home and adjust to their new life in Melbourne. Week after week, they would visit the Retreat Hotel, listen to Apodimi play and contextualise their own experience of double ξενιτιά. I extract an early Apodimi Compania CD from my car and begin to play it. I am unsurprised to note that they know all the words by heart. For this is Apodimi's greatest achievement: to manage to touch the hearts of all who heard them, regardless of ethnicity and to help them find, in their interpretation of rebetika, a common human denominator.

As his friends attempt to execute a rather wobbly zeimbekiko to the strains of a karsilama, I help Odisho to wash the dishes. One slips out of his hands and smashes on the tiles below. Immediately, the dancers whoop: «Σπάσ’τα! Σπάσ’τα!» One of the revelers, looking distracted for a moment as if he had lost his car keys, tentatively offered: «Γούρι;» When I nodded, he beamed at the affirmation.

It was only when Thanos Petrelis’ «Θυμίζεις κάτι από Ελλάδα,» made itself manifest upon Odisho’s playlist that I determined it was an opportune time to leave. I farewelled the party in Assyrian, and they responded to me in Greek. «Αχ βρε φίλε,» Odisho sighed. «Η Ελλάδα είναι μόνο μία. Καλά Χριστόυγεννα. Και του χρόνου στην Ελλάδα» And we both turned away, so that his tears could not be seen.
DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 23 December 2017

Greek New Year’s lore roughly accords with Anglo-Saxon traditions about the changing of the wind: If, upon the stroke of midnight in the New Year, one is miffed, quizzical, or downright perturbed, cosmic forces will mysteriously ensure that such moods will remain immutable for the duration of our planet’s revolution around the celestial orb.

It is for this reason, then, that I smiled, when Greek friends manifested themselves upon my doorstep, bearing, instead of the requisite vasilopita, a boxed Panettone, this particular version being, the Motta Colomba. Interestingly, this avatar is actually the cake served at Easter, that coming in the shape of a dove, symbolises a time of peace and reflection. When my friends invited me to insert my own coin within the confection, because, as they informed me, this vasilopita comes without one, I continued to smile, taking the time, in peace and reflection, to visualize their offering being ritually impaled upon a toasting fork and immolated within the fires of Vesuvius by enraged New Year’s kallikantzaroi, of the Orthodox persuasion, of course.

Similarly, I allowed my lips to express joy, goodwill and mirth when an acquaintance also apparated at our place of abode some time later, bearing what he maintained to be a vasilopita. It was in fact, a plaited tsoureki, manifestly frozen at Easter time, its decay suspended in time and space and now thawed out and proffered wholeheartedly. It was the words: Χρόνια Πολλά 2018, inscribed in texta on the outside of a clear plastic bread bag, along with the hole at its rear, where a coin had been manually inserted, that provided the logical basis behind my deduction. As things transpired, the said tsoureki-cum-vasilopita was of historical importance, since the inserted coin turned out to be a two-cent piece, withdrawn from circulation in 1992. Furthermore, I relish the idea of a versatile Greek comestible making itself available to a multiplicity uses, as being the Greek-Australian equivalent of bringing out hot cross buns just after Christmas. Apparently, many Greek-Australian bakers feel the same way, for their vasilopites also look, taste and feel suspiciously like tsourekia as well.

For this New Year, I chose to attempt a recreation of my late grandmother’s vasilopita, which was hard, dry and bread-like, and topped with walnuts whose shells were charred, for my grandmother was a purist and would not cover them with foil. In pursuit of this lofty goal, I attended my local Greek deli just before Christmas, in order to obtain the requisite ingredients early and give myself enough time to experiment. As I waited at the cash register, I was treated to this following conversation between the proprietor and what appeared to be a second-generation Greek-Australian:

“Ela re, how are you going palikari?”
“Gamiseta re. How about you? Busy?”
“Tis trelis mate. Gamiseta.”
“You taking time off?”
-“No way mate. Closing the shop only on the main days. Too busy. Gamiseta. What are you doing for New Year’s?”
“Going to my pethera's re.. Gamiseta.”
“Gamiseta re.”
“How's the missus?”
“Giving me strain re, gamiseta. Wants to go to Queensland.”
“What is it with missuses always wanting to go on holidays to Queensland re? Gamiseta.”
“Gamiseta, alright.”
Turning to me, the smiling proprietor enquired:
“Esy megale?”
“No I can’t,” I responded.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“ I can’t do what you are encouraging me to do.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“I’m fasting,” I informed him.”
Whereupon both my interlocutors chimed in unison: “Gamiseta!”

Apparently, the more you conflate the two Greek words into one, and the more you repeat them, the more Greek you are. My antiphon to the ritual chant appeared to grant immense cheer to the proprietor, for he would not let me leave without obtaining custody of one of his vasilopites, one of the tsoureki-looking types, gratis.

“Ellada," the proprietor exclaimed, spreading his arms expansively as I walked away. "Only we Greeks understand the vasilopita. The rest of the world? Varvaroi vre paidi mou, gamiseta.”
I attempted to explain to him that both eastern and western New Year’s celebrations derive from the ancient Greek Kronia, the festival of Cronus, the god of Time, which involved selecting a "king" by lot, and then, the Roman Saturnalia. I added for good measure that the traditions surrounding vasilopita are very similar to western European celebrations of the Twelfth Night and Epiphany, the king cake of France and Louisiana and the tortell of Catalonia.

“Yes, the proprietor responded, "but there is one thing we have that they don’t.”
“What?” I asked.

“They aren’t Ellines, re,” he crowed triumphantly. 'Even Agio Vasili was Greek."

I returned two days after Christmas, surmising from my experimental concoctions that my grandmother’s vasilopita recipe contained other secret ingredients I had not accounted for.

"How are you re? How can I help?" the proprietor asked, expending the last of his leftover Christmas cheer upon my insufficiency.
"Do you have mastiha?” I asked.
"Yeah re. Katse....Here it is re."
“Is that the Greek one or the Lebanese one?”
“ It’s the Greek one re, what do you take me for?”
Suddenly, he looked up at me, frowning. "Re, are you doing baking?"he enquired tentatively.
“Yeah, vasilopita.”
The proprietor shook his head in disbelief: "Seriously, re?"
"Yeah, why?"
Looking defensive, he hastened to confide. "Nah relax re. It’s all good. No judgment. Your secret is safe with me, re. Καλή χρονιά."

With the advent of the New Year, just before the vasilopita is served, it would be ideal to retrieve, from the depths of the cupboard, my invention, the Greek Australian board game for the holidays: ΠΑΡΕΞΗΓΗΣΗ. The object is to visit as many squares on the board as possible, which represent relatives' houses. If you wipe your hands on the tablecloth instead of using a napkin, go back three spaces. If you forget to gossip about your third cousin, go back two spaces. If someone makes a snide remark about your distant uncle’s Filipino girlfriend’s culinary prowess and you don’t join in, advance three spaces. If you fail to show appreciation for your newlywed investment banker brother-in-law’s new barbecue, go back one space. The object of the game is to get to the finish with the largest amount of relatives not speaking to you.
Extra points are awarded for:
1. Guessing around the New Year’s Day table, which of your relatives have deemed your Christmas presents unsuitable and have already surmised whence they were purchased and obtained a refund.
2. Guessing around the New Year’s Day table, which of your relatives know that you have deemed their Christmas presents unsuitable and have already surmised whence they were purchased and obtained a refund.
3. Guessing which new age relative will make the most outlandish New Year’s Resolution, including world peace, sustainable and ethically made yoga pants, the cooking of gluten-free lakhanodolmades and commencement of a communication embargo with their mother.
4. Guessing around the New Year’s Day table, which relatives will not be speaking to you by the end of the cutting and distribution of the vasilopita.
5. Referring to the cutting of the vasilopita as κοπή της βασιλόπιτας, and not κόψιμο της βασιλόπιτας, which is what happens when your vasilopita gives you the runs.

In keeping with the spirit of most Greek organisations, there is a rule book, but no one is expected to follow it. Sadly, since its invention, I have found no one within my social circle who wishes to play.

When my vasilopita emerged from the oven, it looked and smelled like a History Channel graphic re-enactment gone horribly wrong. Malodorous and hard baked on the top, it lacked structure and was soft in the middle, much like myself, really. The consensus being that it was not fit for human consumption, adhering to the strictures of hallowed custom required us to pull out the previously gifted tsoureki-vasilopita, upon which I chipped my tooth, thereupon discovering the ingenious insertion of the two-cent piece.

“Γούρι, γούρι,” one relative joyfully exclaimed.
“Don’t swear!” another advised, as I uttered nefarious idiomatic curses, clutching my mouth in agony. “If you swear today, you will be swearing all year.”
“That’s what happens when you play the fool and try to do a woman’s job,” a middle aged invitee observed darkly.
“What did you say?” I looked up, my eyebrows contorting like a Russian gymnast on steroids, in fury.
“Τίποτα, τίποτα,” heretreatedthreepaces. “Τίποτα, καλήκαρδιά, καλήχρονιά. Και του χρόνου.”
“So you want him to chip his tooth again next year, do you?” an enraged aunt demanded.
“Όχι, όχι παρεξήγηση,῾he retreated a further two paces.

I sat back, mesmerised as I watched them play ΠΑΡΕΞΗΓΗΣΗ unwittingly, in a manner that exhausts superlatives, crumbs of tsourekovasilopita streaming from their mouths as they engaged in heated invective, my cheek muscles jerking my lips into a chasmic smile.
“That’s better, my overprotective aunt beamed, hurling a stream of pejoratives over the table. “Smile. Now you will be smiling all year round. Και του χρόνου.”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Tuesday 2 January 2018

“The ancient Greeks,” my blonde and blue eyed Greek teacher from Thessaly, informed us in Year Nine, “were all blonde and blue eyed, like the Germans. The reason why most Greeks are not, is because they have been forced to mix with barbarous races like the Turks and the Slavs.”

“But aren’t there large numbers of blonde, blue-eyed people among the Slavs?” I had asked.

“Where do you think they got that from?” my teacher replied, without batting an eyelid.

The ancient Greeks on the other hand, rarely portrayed themselves with the tawny locks of Brad Pitt. From the time of the Minoans, to the Mycenaean period and beyond, Greeks have generally rendered their own images in paintings, in swarthy tones, with some famous painters, such as Exekias, portraying Brad Pitt’s alter ego, Achilles in the act of slaying the Amazon Queen Penthesilea (and apparently falling in love with her corpse) in ebony hues, though this was a convention of Attic back figure pottery painting.

Nonetheless, the concept of the blonde has always been present in hallowed Greek antiquity. The ancestor of both the Ionian and Achaean nations was said to be Xouthos, whose name is considered a variant of Xanthos, meaning blonde, though according to Liddell and Scott, as a colour, xouthos describes a tone as "between xanthos and pyrros" (i.e. between yellow and red), which means "tawny", or "dusky". This can suggest that his name can refer to either to his skin, his complexion, his hair - or all three characteristics.

No less a personage than the hyper-rational Aristotle extolled the virtues of blondeness, with reference to the animal kingdom: “Those with tawny coloured hair are brave; witness the lions. [But those with] reddish [hair] are of bad character; witness the foxes."The equation of blondeness with goodness or bravery is an enduring one. The many Greeks who believe in the prophecy of Agathengelos are still awaiting salvation at the hands of the “blonde race.”

When it comes to Homer, Gods and heroes are generally, but not consistently portrayed as golden and blonde-like. Thus, while Poseidon was described as having a blue-black beard and Zeus blue-black eyebrows, (with Homer attention to detail is everything), Aphrodite is described as golden haired (χρυσή), Menelaos, the king of the Spartans is, together with some other Achaean leaders, portrayed as blondies, as are Peleus, Achilles, Agamede and Rhadamanthys, while the blonde Odysseus is at some stage, transformed by Athena so that his beard becomes blue-black.

In the Hymn to Demeter, the goddess (or her hair) is twice described as “ξανθή”. Leto in the Hymn to Apollo is described as χρυσοπλόκαμη, or “golden-locked,” while Apollo himself and Hera are also occasionally described as blondes in the ancient texts.

According to D Pontikos, perhaps only 2% of Greek statuary provides evidence for blondness among the Greeks. Taking the genetic identity of Greeks to be fairly consistent over time, Pontikos argues that while there was a minority recessive trait for blondness present among the Greeks, the usage of terms such as ξανθήor χρυσή are more likely to have represented a darker pigmentation that is suggested by the modern term blonde. Nonetheless, it can be taken as accepted that for the ancient Greeks, as well as for a large proportion of modern Greeks believing in the goldenness of the Greeks, being blonde is being special, though in the moderns’ case, it is probably their imbibing of the orientalist, western propagated myth of the debased swarthy Middle Eastern Greek, fallen genetically far below their flaxen-haired ancestors (while the suitably fair-haired westerners are manifestly genetically worthier heirs to their civilization), that has led to the mass revival of platinum blondes via means chemical in the Republic of Greece.

Given the above, it is unsurprising that sundry diasporan Greeks are up in arms, at the news that Netflix and the BBC are attempting to tackle the Iliad by means of a series entitled: “Troy: Fall of a City.” The reason for their outrage is the use of black actors in this attempt for a remake of a remake of a film based on the Homeric epic, including David Gyasi as Achilles and Hakeem Kae Kazim, as Zeus. For them, this is an insult and a criminal misinterpretation of what they deem to be “their culture,” for it implies that the ancient Greeks were black, this apparently being offensive to those aggrieved. One of the aggrieved even went so far as to assure me that “the Greeks were and always will be part of the Caucasian race.” The Caucasian race of course, is a biological taxon, which, depending on which classification is used, has usually included some or all of the ancient and modern populations of Europe, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.

The presence of black actors in Greek-themed epic films based on mythology is thus considered by the aggrieved as a historical distortion, even though we are dealing with fantasy. The ensuing hysteria is related to the fact that while the rest of the world watches for the sake of entertainment and not information, we Greeks expect to derive from such offerings, a statement about who we are, one that must conform to the manner in which we have been told, since the Enlightenment, who we and our ancestors must be. When what we see upon the screen does not conform to the stereotype of the glorious, sagacious, blonde and beautiful Greek to whose civilisation one must pay the requisite homage, we tend to become a little distressed at the real blondes calling us out for our lack of blondeness.

Interestingly enough, the manner in which Greek-themed myth Hollywood fantasies have of late, increasingly assumed the form of Viking sagas, with the Olympians assuming the form of the denizens of Asgard and all Greek warriors looking disconcertingly like Thor, seems to cause our righteously angered historians no distress at all, possibly because their Nordic appearance makes them qualify as Aryans, underlying a stereotype of genetic superiority of which we are the chief exemplars, and which, as the present controversy proves, harbours inordinately repellent racist undertones.

We should have no problem with the use of actors of any or all backgrounds in remakes or “interpretations” of this ilk. The brilliant manner in which actors "of colour" have portrayed characters in the Shakespearean dramas on film, most recently Sophie Okonedo as Margaret of Anjou, is a case in point. For in Shakespeare, and the same applies in Homer, it is not the appearance of the actor that is the primary consideration but rather the work’s words and what the actor does to vivify them, that is paramount. Having any actor, of whatever sex or background immerse themselves in Homer and entice us, by the skill of their art, into his world, is the ultimate compliment that could be paid to our tribe, much greater than any that could be paid by obtaining players who assuage our deep-seated phyletic insecurities and mask our western-imposed self-loathing.

What we should mercilessly object to however, where these exist, are inane film scripts, replete with wooden, poorly delivered dialogue, implausible and ridiculous panderings to modern mores, blatantly bad acting, and gross disrespect towards our chief Bard.

As for our incensed compatriots, instead of lamenting how the West does not portray our classics faithfully, (and it is true that they do not), let us consider that it is he who articulates the work, that determines the discourse. In this case, elements of an ancient Greek epic are being adapted for entry into an English-speaking globalised culture. It follows logically that any such interpretation will have as its primary reference point, the contemporary culture of its viewers juxtaposed against but ultimately reconciled with views of the ancient world that were crystallised in the West at the time of the Enlightenment.

We on the other hand, the Aryan, Caucasian, pure-blooded descendants of Homer have never produced a film via which to assert a uniquely Hellenic perspective of Homer. The fact that we have not done so is paradoxical for Homer was revered and formed the core of Greek education from times ancient right up until the fall of Constantinople. Somewhere along the line, we have lost and no longer know how to articulate what Homer means to us, without having someone else articulate it for us. Instead, like Cavafy’s Poseidonians, we focus inanely on homage rituals, or the lack thereof, no longer understanding or being able to express their significance, or parroting the orientalist ideologies of the imperialists. And this, vis a vis the Bard who was arguably, the greatest of his craft, is criminal indeed.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 13 January 2018

When I was young, I had a friend with no name. At his birth, he was supposed to be named Pantelis, after his paternal grandmother. However, prior to his terrestrial corporeal manifestation, two other first cousins had been born and given the same name and for this reason, his mother, without the consent or knowledge of his father, named him Aristogeiton, for the purposes of the birth certificate, this name being that of her great-uncle, who reputedly died in the Sudan. My friend’s incensed father and his relatives refused to acknowledge the existence and validity of the name, insisting upon calling him Pantelis. His maternal relatives addressed him as Aristogeiton and it soon came to pass that his father’s relatives turned on the father, considering him soft, a traitor to the family and stopped speaking to him, though they still referred to his son as Pantelis.

As a result of this dispute, Aristogeiton/Pantelis was not baptized as an infant. His father being of the opinion that it was at the baptism that one’s true name was conferred, he continuously delayed that event until such time as the intrafamilial naming dispute could be resolved. When Aristogeiton/Pantelis was in year nine, his father, an enterprising businessman, went bankrupt (this was the early nineties) and as a result, his mother took over the family finances and all decision making. She promptly had her son baptized as Aristogeiton, compelling her reluctant husband to attend the ceremony and it was with this name that my friend was known, until he entered university, whereupon, he changed his name to Trevor, by deed poll.

Though his paternal relatives still call him Pantelis, on the rare occasions that they have contact with him, about a decade ago, Trevor experienced a profound spiritual and personal crisis, at which time, he converted to Buddhism. Now he is known as Dorje, which means “something indestructible that can cut through anything,” in Tibetan and is constantly in a state of admirable placidity, convinced as he is, that there is no self and thus, identity is irrelevant.

Aristogeiton/Pantelis/Trevor/Dorje provided his friends with hours of activity, as we all scrambled to find suitable names for him. My cruel sobriquet for him was “Macedonia,” as his circumstances were eerily reminiscent of the broader Balkan naming dispute that saw all of us whipped to the most aerated froth of nationalistic frenzy in those early, heady days of its post-Cold War resurgence. Interestingly enough, we never sought to ask our friend which name he preferred for himself. This is because we were too busy debating with each other the proprieties and social consequences of assuming either of his names, in his absence.

The country we refer to as FYROM is also awaiting its official baptism. Since the re-genesis of the naming dispute almost three decades ago, however, the vast majority of countries around the world, officially, and unofficially, refer to it as ‘Macedonia’. They do so, not because they are laboring under a misapprehension about the ethnic identity of Alexander the Great, or because they are ignorant of the fact that Slavic peoples first migrated to the southern Balkans in the seventh century AD. Neither are they particularly interested in the manner in which Bulgarian nationalists first coined the phrase “Macedonian for the Macedonians” as the first step in a strategy to grant Macedonia autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, as an ancillary step towards the region’s annexation by Bulgaria. Furthermore, they seem strangely unperturbed when informed that the very fact that a country is calling itself by the name of an ancient kingdom it has no links with, constitutes evidence that that country has territorial designs on its neighbour. To put it simply, the world doesn’t care about history or our pride in it. In a post-modern zeitgeist where no words have no objective meaning and identities are fluid, the vast majority of the world addresses FYROM by the name it wishes to call itself, and looks dourly upon our righteous indignation, as being bad for business. In the meantime, two generations of children have been born in independent FYROM, espousing a state-driven “Macedonian” identity.

Whether or not the Greek government agrees to end the naming dispute by recognising FYROM by a compound name that includes the word “Macedonia,” it is likely that the rest of the world will, in normal, as opposed to official usage, continue to refer to the country and its people as “Macedonia,” and “Macedonians,” because brevity is always adopted in language use and the ethnonym is already familiar. Here the case of South Sudan, which, being recently separated from Sudan, has its people always being referred to as the South Sudanese, with no possibility of confusion with the Sudanese of the north, is the exception that proves the rule, because it is a new country, whose ethnic appellation had not, at the time of coinage, entered world consciousness to the extent that the term “Macedonian” has.

Though much of the rage directed by Greek people at the thought of compromise is, as was the case of my friend Aristogeiton/Pantelis/Trevor/Dorje’s relatives, a reaction at “losing” against what they consider to be a “lesser” foe, the toleration of an ahistorical name-grab by the community of nations and their indifference and insensitivity to history is manifestly unfair. Such indifference, as entrenched by the 2011 International Court of Justice ruling preventing Greece from using its veto to prevent FYROM’s entry into NATO, compromises the Greek people’s faith in the international institutions that are supposed to bring about just outcomes.

The above notwithstanding, much as in the case of the hapless Dorje, the “freezing” of the status quo for three decades, rather than assisting in achieving compromise or the successful prosecution of an outcome favourable to Greece, has merely served to entrench in the popular consciousness, an association of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with “Macedonia,” much in the same way as the illegally created republic of Northern Cyprus by Turkey, while not officially, is tacitly recognized by most major world powers, for the purposes of all substantive relations outside the United Nations arena. Keeping an issue “on ice” in the pious hope that somewhere within the future, a panacea for all ills can be found, a la Walt Disney, merely serves to harden the resolve of all sides and trap them into positions where compromise is almost impossible. In this case, the effluxion of time, has, as in the case of the Cyprus issue, not been favourable to the Greek cause.

The Greek people have invested a good deal of time and emotion into the “Macedonian issue” at the expense of other, possibly more vital humanitarian issues such as the plight of the Greek minority in Albania, the continuing occupation of Cyprus, or indeed the social and humanitarian crisis within poverty stricken Greece itself. They more they invest, the less the powers that be seem willing to listen. The issue is now at the stage where the FYROMian foreign minister, is parroting and parodying Greek arguments, stating that the term Macedonia is a geographical one and thus does not belong exclusively to any nation, all along knowing that the world has accepted it, via attrition, as an ethnonym for his people. The fact that machinations to resolve a decades-long naming dispute have intensified at a time when Greece is politically and economically at its weakest point since the restoration of democracy, should not be ignored. If it is time for the Greek people to accept that they cannot win every battle, and cut their losses in this matter, this should be done by their elected representatives graciously, honestly, strategically and with full disclosure to the Greek people as to why such a compromise is necessary, or beneficial. If it is to be done, it must be done in a manner that avoids nationalistic hyperbole but highlights the iniquity of a global political system that has not evolved since the time of the imperial colonialist powers. If the last Greek referendum, whose result was overturned by Greek government at the bequest of foreign interests is anything to go by, the Greek people deserve at least, that much dignity.

Aristogeiton/Pantelis/Trevor/Dorje is fond of quoting this line of Lord Melchett’s from Blackkadder: “As private parts to the gods are we, they play with us for their sport,” and he does so with an air of resignation that only the ill-used can affect. It is time to get their hands out of our pockets, if not for good, then at least, just this once.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 20 January 2018

The 19th of May is a public holiday in Turkey, for it is Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day. This day, made a public holiday by Kemal Atatürk himself and dedicated to the youth, commemorates his landing in Samsounta on 19 May 1919, which in official Turkish historiography, marks the commencement of what is referred to as the Turkish War of Independence.

Greeks also commemorate the 19th of May, for an entirely different reason. The day of the landing of Atatürk in Samsounta, there to rebel against the Ottoman government and establish nationalist Turkey, has been appointed as the day in which to commemorate the genocide of the Greek peoples of Pontus. The date is of course symbolic. The genocide of the Pontic Greeks had commenced years before by the Ottomans and though it would continue under the Kemalists, at whose hands the final extirpation of the Pontic Greeks from their homelands took place, the genocide itself did not commence on that particular day. Thus, when Turks celebrate youth, their national regeneration and vanquishing of the Greek Army, which they see as an invading force, Greeks simultaneously remember a protracted mass slaughter of innocent people, solely because of their religion and ethnic affiliation. One date, can, therefore, have diverse meanings and connotations for those observing its commemoration.

January the 26th, Australia Day, is also another holiday in which there are encoded a multiplicity of meanings. Originally chosen to mark the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, and the raising of the British flag at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, it commemorates the proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia. It is also one of the oldest public celebrations of white Australia, with records of celebrations on 26 January dating back to 1808, and with the first official celebration of the formation of New South Wales being held on that date in 1818.

In recent years, Australia Day focuses on celebrating the diverse society and landscape of the nation, with official community awards and citizenship ceremonies welcoming new members of the Australian community taking place on the day. The annual Lamb Day commercials, which portray all peoples converging upon an Australian beach in order to enjoy a lamb barbeque, commencing with Australian aborigines passively accepting the arrival of others upon their shores. The tacit message is that notwithstanding history, this country is home to all who reside in it, more things unite us than divide us (a trivial appreciation of lamb, for instance,) and thus, it is important for us to get along in an easy going, hospitable way, which is touted as being truly “Australian.”

Such an inclusive approach, celebrating multiculturalism and social cohesion, is a far cry from the 1837 celebration, which, whites born in Australia, sought to appropriate solely for themselves. In this, they had a sympathetic ear in the Sydney Herald: “parties who associated themselves under the title of "United Australians" have been censured for adopting a principle of exclusiveness. It is not fair so to censure them. If they invited emigrants to join them they would give offence to another class of persons – while if they invited all they would be subject to the presence of persons with whom they might not wish to associate. That was a good reason.” These days, the 26th of January is seen as an ideal day to celebrate unity within the part-mosaic, part-melting pot, that comprises the modern Australian community. In this way, it elides cleverly over the fact that the original significance of the date means nothing to the vast majority of non-Anglo-Saxon migrants to this country and their descendants, the Greeks among them being more likely to venerate the day Gough Whitlam won the 1972 election than any obscure landing of the British at Port Jackson. Whether we arrived in 1788, or in 1988, all of us have the opportunity to eat lamb.

The elision is logical and innocuous, save that it serves to obfuscate the significance of the 26 January 1788 landings. As a consequence of those landings, the original inhabitants of Australia were, over a long period of time, dispossessed of their lands, subjected to various bouts of physical and cultural persecution, culminating in the genocide of the Tasmanian aborigines, deprived of the right to govern themselves, deprived of their children in many instances, subjected to social discrimination and marginalization and until 1967, treated legally, as flora and fauna of Australia rather than as human beings. Viewed from this perspective, to celebrate Australia Day on 26 January could therefore be argued to tacitly recognize and legitimise the violent seizure of Australia from the aborigines by the British, to accept an Anglo-Saxon construction of history and the ruling class’ aboragation of the right to determine who and in which circumstance such people will arrive and reside here, without reference to the rightful owners of the land. Here in Australia, descendants of victims and the Pontian genocide are uniquely placed to appreciate the hurt that insensitivity to the psychological and social effects of catastrophes of this nature, can cause.

The intensifying campaign to re-locate Australia Day to another date in protest at the ordeal of the original owners of this land, is, not a new one. As far back as 1888, the centenary of British colonisation, Aboriginal leaders boycotted Australia Day celebrations. Petitions to the Australian and British governments in the early 1930s, for the recognition of Aboriginal civil rights were ignored or dismissed, As a result, on Australia Day 1938, a day of Mourning was proclaimed, via a protest march in Sydney. At the same time, because local aborigines refused to participate in an official re-enactment of the arrival of the First Fleet, the NSW government removed a group of Aboriginal men from a reserve brought them to Sydney. The men were kept overnight in the stables at the police barracks in Redfern and on Australia Day, were taken to a beach at Farm Cove, where they were told to run up the beach, to convey the impression that they were fleeing in fear from the British. Since that terrible day, which can be likened to Turkish celebrations of the past where the bones of slaughtered Greeks were paraded around certain areas, Aboriginals have continuously opposed 26 January as an appropriate day to celebrate Australia Day, just as Pontians are incensed at insensitivity of Turkey’s celebration of a date that was the catalyst for the completion of the genocide of their people.

The debate over the relevance on 26 January is thus symptomatic of a community that while on the one hand admits, via legislation, the wrongs done to Aboriginal people, socially, struggles to come to terms with those and enshrine them in their proper place within the national discourse. Thus, while the meanings and connotations of a particular holiday should, if they are to remain relevant, evolve over time and in the case of Australia Day have admirably evolved to embrace almost all of its inhabitants, such evolution comes at the expense of reckoning the harrowing effect of Anglo-Saxon rule upon aboriginal communities.

In the light of that experience, whether or not 26 January is deemed to still be an appropriate date in which to celebrate Australia, is ultimately an issue that must be resolved through community debate. Regardless, proper consideration of the negative experience of Aboriginal communities post 1788, must be awarded pride of place in any celebration of Australia and the Greek community, comprised of people whose ancestors have also undergone racial and religious persecution are perfectly positioned to play a leading role in facilitating such a discourse. Once Australia Day is able to encompass and pay homage to the sum total of our collective experiences, both good and bad, we will have something truly worth celebrating.
DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday, 27 January 2018

An event of historic importance took place, within the annals of our community some weeks ago; the publication of John Vithoulkas' fictional story: "Hellenism 2221, Tales from the Antipodes. 'The Centre'" in Neos Kosmos. As far as can be discerned, this is the first time that the future of our community, as an organised entity, (as opposed to that of Greece) has been imagined and expressed through the prism of science fiction, a genre that is not generally employed in order to articulate matters pertaining neither to Hellenism, nor the diasporan community.

This would appear strange: since the future is inscrutable, a resort to science fiction or fantasy to construct plausible versions of it, would seem to be a natural impulse for sundry writers. In the common conception of the panhellenion however, a high and noble destiny that has already been mapped out for it awaits, one of reclamation of the glories of the ancient past or, of a failure to do so, and consequently, up until now, we have been incapable of envisaging any other alternate of divergent path.

Ostensibly, Vithoulkas' conception of the Greek community's future in 2221 is, (rather than a bleak dystopian de-hellenised wasteland where the few remaining male descendants of the current members of the community worship a god called Hellas in South Melbourne, cause domestic strife by insisting upon giving their first-born males the name of Ashleigh, or Xander because they were the names of their fathers, and naming one's offspring after their male progenitor is the last remaining 'Greek' custom, and the community, such that it is, is split between two rival groups, the Billists and the Papastergists, both paying homage to conflicting interpretations of the ideology of a legendary but by now historically obscure former Greek community leader who a century ago, achieved something herculean, except that no one can now remember what that was, since the archives have been lost), inordinately technologically advanced, breathtakingly organised and incredibly benign.

A transport jet lands at the "Hellenic Centre" positioned at the 'Lonsdale Russell Hub.' By means technological and inordinately invasive, chiton-wearing 23rd century interested parties are treated to a continuous narrative of the twentieth century migrant experience, including the founding myth of ancestral migration, the fragmentation of the primordial community into a post-modern panspermia of regional organisations complete with a glimpse of their interminable dinner dances and its re-unification as a co-ordinated body. All the while, the visitors are immersed in slogans and buzzwords that assist to adhere the narrative to their consciousness: "transition""educate and enlighten,""forever true,""enrich,""smiling,""grows" and "shines."

We can assume that the narrative of our antipodean history is neither lengthy or particularly interesting, which is why Vithoulkas relates that the rest of the visit to the "Centre" is devoted to an astounding sensory exploration of aspects of the history and customs of the Greek motherland, rather than those of its Melburnian imitation, including the tantalising opportunity to converse with such historical figures as Dionysios Solomos, Nikos Xylouris and Panagiotis Tountas.

Part Westworld, part class-room, this virtual reality Hellenic theme-park has only come into existence via bequests by what appear to be long defunct Greek clubs, to an undefined, nebulous "Hellenic Foundation," whose unrevealed guiding principals apparently have the power to set homework.

The genius of Vithoulkas' futuristic vision lies in how he masterfully cloaks his future dystopia in the type of self-delusionary, self-indulgent language and imagery that so characterises contemporary mores. For, beyond the sensory delights of an ersatz actuality, Vithoulkas' future Greek community is a veritable dystopia. We neither know, or in fact is it considered important that we know, what constitutes the blindingly brilliant, all pervasive "Hellenic Foundation," how it is governed, who it represents, or indeed, why it is the sole arbiter of Hellenism in Melbourne. We do not know what language is spoken by it. Instead, what is important is that we submit to its education, that we "thank them," and that our "love for Hellenism [at least the version of it propagated and sanctified by it] grows."

Just as monolithic is the narrative foisted upon the youth, clad uniformly in retrograde but ideologically acceptable gear. The myth of arrival, settlement, decline and then salvation through the miraculous intercession of the "Hellenic Foundation," from which all good Hellenic things derive, appears to be not so much history, than gospel. At no stage, are we told, that the Greek-Australians of the future will be able to have the means to assess their past, personal, ethnic and national, for themselves. Nowhere, it appears, is there room for dissent, discussion, critical re-appraisal and a multiplicity of narratives. Instead, according to Vithoulkas, our critical faculties will be massaged and numbed by "real life" forays into the distant past, with the interpretation, re-construction and presentation of that past being managed by the ubiquitous Hellenic Foundation. Thus, the boy who was set as homework, the weighty task of discovering Odysseus' Cave of the Nymphs, is not given the opportunity to assess whether the Homeric hero was a literary character or indeed, had a corporeal existence. Neither does it matter. What is important is that he accepts reality as imposed upon him by the Foundation, for this forms an integral part of his "enhancement lessons."

Perhaps the most dystopian aspect of Vithoulkas' 23rd century Greek community in Melbourne is that in fact, it possibly no longer exists. There do not appear to be any "Greeks" living in the area and they have to be flown in from somewhere else. Even if it does exist in some other discernible geographic area, it has no vitality. The whole premise of Vithoulkas' insightful analysis is of a society so fixated upon the past, its re-creation (which is why the future reconstruction of community lectures and dinner dances as envisaged by the author, and to which dance groups could be added, is a masterstroke) and re-enactment, that outside of its role as custodian of a time-capsule of history and an Ark of culture, or high-priest of a cult of ancestor-worship, it has developed no identifiable culture or identity of its own. Instead, this is a community in crisis, where nothing of the hallowed past appears to have evolved organically through the centuries to meld with the local environment and as a result it exists as a entity completely separate and foreign to the understanding of the rootless community that is supposed to be its heir, requiring the intervention of others in order for the past to be "re-discovered" and in the process rendering it and the community, susceptible of gross manipulation.

If ever there was a cautionary tale about ancestor worship and the consequences of crystallising the past rather than employing its constituent parts to interpret and vivify, rather than rarefy the present, then this is it. Significantly, Vithoulkas embeds within the text, with a virtual Cavafy shedding virtual tears "as he considered what he had passed." For this, if we do not heed the gentle author, is our future: That of Cavafy's ritualistic Poseidonians, stuck within an Orwellian time-loop in the Ministry of Greek Love, with a little bit of the Matrix thrown in for good measure.

Vithoulkas ends his vision of a future Hellenism that shines brightly, flourishes, and enlightens by stating, ominously, that it sows, leaving it to us to imagine what will be reaped. What he has sown in terms of Greek-Australian literature is a remarkable way of gazing into the time vortex itself, unphased and, if we are not careful, re-Hellenised. May his successors and imitators be legion.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 3 February 2018

“Cruel are the times when we are traitors, and do not know ourselves.” Macduff, in the Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

Apparently, Professor Anastasios Tamis is a traitor. If you believe social media, he is also scum and a few other choice expletives also apply to him. The reason for this invective is that he caused to be published on behalf of the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies (AIMS), a carefully nuanced position on the naming dispute. That position, to paraphrase, opposed the inclusion of the word Macedonia in any name for FYROM, but went on to state that if the word was to be used, it should be clear that it is used in geographical, not ethnological terms, and should be preceded by an untranslatable Slavic prefix, so no confusion with ancient Macedonia could ensue.

The fact that from the eighties, Professor Tamis, through AIMS, has been at the forefront of Australian research with regard to the history of Macedonia, has organized international conference pertaining to aspects of that history and was at the forefront of articulating a cogent Greek-Australian position on the naming dispute in the nineties is irrelevant to those possessed of few spelling skills but vast stores of righteous anger. Because Professor Tamis does not write in slogans, because he does not think in aphorisms of the Orwellian: “Four legs good, two legs bad” nature, because a lifetime of research into the issue grant him a unique understanding not only of the history but also the constantly changing international and domestic political context in which the naming dispute has evolved, because he does not jump up and down to wave a Greek flag, thereby to “prove” his patriotism, he is branded a traitor by contemptible keyboard warriors, the vast majority of whom have not even bothered to read, let along consider and understand his position.

These keyboard myrmidons are mostly absent from the life of the organized Greek community. One does not generally see them joining the diminishing ranks of those who annually protest the continuing Turkish occupation of Cyprus. They are nowhere to be seen during fundraisers for aged-care or cultural events. Instead, they lead a parallel existence of their own, more Greek than any other possible Greeks, emerging from the meandric fringes of their reality, comprised of putrescent facebook pages existing only to pander to the most repellent forms of racial intolerance and rabid jingoism, to hurl invectives and impugn the loyalty of those who they do not know, or comprehend. When their paroxysm of patriotism is over, having successfully maligned, defamed and in some cases, threatened their quarry with physical harm, they retreat again to the outmost regions of cyberspace, virtually patted on the back by their hyper-patriot peers, for “outing” another subversive element, during their own two minute hate.

If one is to believe the members of our community who howled in derision when respected academic Dr Christos Fifis rose to address those present at the recent meeting at the Pan-Macedonian Association, he too is a traitor. Further, as one incensed patriot told me, wiping flecks of foam from his mouth as he did so, most academics hate Greece and are traitors, so this should be unsurprising. Dr Christos Fifis, a well respected academic who has devoted his life to teaching the Greek language, literature and history to younger members of the community and has spent countless hours trawling through Greek community archives in order to articulate a particularly Greek-Australian perspective towards our communal history, is a traitor because in his opinion closer ties between Greece and FYROM would benefit both countries and considering that the last letter in the word FYROM stands for Macedonia, stubbornly resisting a compromise solution should be viewed from the perspective that since the nineties, via tactical error, Greece has permitted FYROM to use a name that includes the contentions term. Dr Fifis was not permitted to expound his position. The howls and cat-calls from a crowd that heard one sentence, determined that it was nothing like the slogans it has taught itself to digest and regurgitate, became so intense, that Dr Fifis was compelled to bow before the might of the ochlocracy and exit the room, leaving his opinion only semi-articulated.

Semi-articulation of opinion is no loss to an ochlos that is not interested in listening to any viewpoint that does not reinforce its own narrow prejudices. After over one hundred years in this country, we are still unable to relate to each other as humans, let alone kin. At the first given opportunity, a difference, not even of opinion, but of nuance, can cause friendships to rupture, and basic human respect to evaporate. When one ventures, or is seen to venture to make an utterance that does not accord with the Party line, then, in our community, sadly, this gives us the right to treat our interlocutors with complete contempt, absolving us of any obligation to have regard to their dignity. Once one splutters but a syllable in the wrong direction, their previous service to the community notwithstanding, this apparently allows us to denigrate them in the worst possible terms and cast them out of the fold. We may all love Greece, but it appears that we are experiencing an inordinate difficulty in loving Greeks.

The fact that our community has not evolved sufficiently to allow debate and criticism places all of us in peril. For it is in the clash of ideas and beliefs upon the anvil of human interaction, that plans are formed, defined and a sense of unity and commonality of purpose emerges that binds our community together. Parroting slogans in order to establish patriotic credentials is not tantamount to love of people or country. It is through doubt, questioning, analysis, criticism and planning that the best ways forward emerge. This however, requires humility, mutual respect and love and foremost, a mutual acceptance of the fact that all of us generally have the best of intentions when it comes to our community and our place of origin, that there are, painful as it may appear to some, no traitors, only people with differing viewpoints. Sometimes, those viewpoints may be challenging to our sensibilities, but we would do well to consider them, especially when they emanate from personages who know much more about the issue at hand, than we do. We need to learn how to listen. We need to learn to respect and give due consideration to those who have devoted their lives to our community. We need to understand that governance by slogan and invective stifles progress and creativity.

There is a much with regard to the Macedonian name dispute that our community, fixated solely upon appearing patriotic, is leaving unsaid and is not discussing or preparing for. What plan of action exists vis a vis Australian government policy, should the Greek government capitulate/compromise? So far, we have asked the Australian government

(successfully) to adopt whatever stance Greece does on the naming dispute. If Greece capitulates, will we, as a community follow? Will we differentiate ourselves from Greece? If so, in what way? Has a draft policy been drafted? Have preparatory consultations been made in the appropriate areas? If the Australian government decides to respect Greece’s position and not follow the recommendations of the Greek-Australian community, how will we deal with this? Given that in the past, during particularly sensitive times, acts of vandalism and violence were targeted against both the Greek-Australian and Skopjan-Australian communities, what steps is our community taking to minimise such occurrences? What consultations, if any, are envisaged with that community, or counselling provided given that many Greek-Australians have intermarried with Skopjan-Australians and times like these cause strain upon family relationships? What public relations plan exists to counter the likely negative criticism from the usual intolerant sections of the mainstream media, when as a united community, we pursue our protest against the Greek government’s possible compromise on the naming dispute with vigour on 4 March? What plan of action exists once the 4 March protest is concluded?

None of these pertinent questions have been discussed, let alone raised for consideration, within a community for whom planning is often an alien concept and that appears not able to see beyond the staging of a rally as an end and the rooting out of imaginary traitors from its dysfunctional midst. Crowing patriotism is easy and absolves us of the responsibility of actually undertaking the constant hard work that is necessary to achieve a desirable outcome on both the domestic and international level. And when our lack of planning, consensus and foresight will cause us stumble, we can always, as we invariably do, blame the traitors in our midst.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE online on 5 February 2018

“If you chance to be pinch'd with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing.”William Shakespeare, Coriolanus.

Of all the Greek gods, my undoubted favourite would have to be Momus, the spirit of unfair criticism and irony. The son of Night (Nyx) via an immaculate conception, according to Hesiod, and twin of the misery goddess Oizys, his name is derived from the greek word μομφή, meaning 'blame', 'reproach', or 'disgrace.' Momus’ caustic wit proved to be too much for the Olympians. They decided to expel him from their company and Greeks have lacked irony ever since. Since the devil finds work for idle hands, according to the seventh century BC epic Cypria, Momus applied himself to fomenting the Trojan War in order to reduce the human population.

A deity that has nothing good to say about anyone is one that should be feared. According to Aesop, while giving the breathtakingly beautiful Aphrodite a visual appraisal, Momus noted that he could not find anything about her to fault except that her sandals squeaked. In Lucian’s “The Gods in Council”, Momus takes a leading role in a discussion on how to purge Olympus of foreign gods and barbarian demi-gods who are lowering its heavenly tone, thus providing a perfect role model for Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton.

As a result of his outspokenness, from a mean, curmudgeonly figure, Momus gradually became a symbol of social criticism. During the Renaissance, Erasmus presented Momus as a champion of earnest criticism of power and authority, admitting that the god was “not quite as popular as others, because few people freely admit criticism, yet I dare say of the whole crowd of gods celebrated by the poets, none was more useful.” In Giordano Bruno's philosophical treatise The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Momus plays an integral part in a series of dialogues conducted by the Olympian deities, as Jupiter seeks to purge the universe of evil.

In England, a renewed interest in the classics saw Momus in Thomas Carew’s masque Coelum Britannicum of 1634, which was acted before King Charles I and his court. There, Momus and Mercury draw up a plan to reform the ‘Star Chamber’ of Heaven. The famous saying: “Tis better to laugh than to cry,” is attributed to Momus in John Dryden’s satire on sports, “Secular Masque.” Two centuries on, it was to influence Henry David Thoreau as he was preparing to write his seminal work ‘Walden.’

Over the passage of time, in popular culture, Momus became softened into a figure of light-hearted and sentimental comedy. Momus slowly took the place of the Fool on the French playing-card pack. The mummers, who are still to be found in England, France and Germany, so-called after the ancient Greek momos, a word derived from the god Momus, meaning mask, assumed the guise of masked or black-faced men, who between Christmas and Epiphany, enact, a set number of humorous or satirical plays, usually where two actors engage in a combat, and the loser is revived by a doctor-type character. Often, these mummers are associated with sword dances.

Meanwhile, at the eastern end of the Black Sea, far from the world of masques, literary criticism and mummers, the Pontian Greeks also developed a Momaic custom surprisingly akin to that of the western mummers; the Momogeroi. Like the mummers, the momogeroi emerge between Christmas and Epiphany. Like their western counterparts, they are generally masked, wearing animal costumes, or as elderly soldiers bearing weapons. Momus-like, they are tasked with spreading humour and sarcasm, enacting a set play whose origins appear to lie in a fertility ritual that marks the passage of the seasons. The set play revolves around the story of Kiti Goja, (a corruption of the Turkish for old codger), an elderly gentleman, possibly a personification of the god Momus himself, who assists an “Arab,” (in black-face) to claim his beloved as his bride, only to attempt to substitute himself as the bridegroom. The actors cover themselves in garlands of dried fruit, symbolizing the bounty of creation and of course, poke fun at old man Kiti Gotsa, the interloper who seeks to fertilise, when his realm is properly that of decay. The themes of life, fertility, decay and death, are all encompassed in the ritual, which views the cyclical nature of life as the sick joke of the gods, a gesture that the old god Momus, would undoubtedly approve of.

The rituals of the momogeroi have not taken place in their land of origin, Pontus, since the Pontian Genocide. In Thrylorion, the village founded for Pontian refugees by the great Ballarat hero, George Divine Treloar, the ritual, transposed to the Greek mainland, began to die out in the fifties. However, it has of late, enjoyed a revival in the Pontian-settled villages of Northern Greece, to the extent where in 2016, a successful application was made to register the Momogeroi ritual with UNESCO as a part of the world’s cultural heritage.

The old god Momus would find irony in the fact that in a far off continent which we call the Antipodes, but should actually be called Antioecia, because according to second century geographer Crates of Mallus, that is the proper name for the land mass presumed to exist in Australia’s position, while the Antipodes instead, denote South America, Pontian Greeks continue to enact his ritual, with the vibrant youth of the Central Pontian Association: Pontiaki Estia devotedly indulging in much mummery as they celebrate and vivify a heritage that was almost entirely lost, owing to human intolerance and humanity. Only Momus would appreciate the irony of the fact that despite their best efforts, the perpetrators of genocide not only did not succeed in effacing the descendants of Momus from the face of the earth but merely, served to egg them on to further mummery.

At this year’s Lonsdale Street Greek Festival, Momus will make his presence known through the participation of Momogeroi from Kozani, Greece. These easternmost mummers, who are being brought to the festival at the expense and instigation of Pontiaki Estia and its sponsors, will indulge in momentous mummery, momogery and more besides as they munificently attempt to spread mirth and merriment among sundry Melburnians. Performing on stage, mingling with an unsuspecting crowd, they will invite us to seek enlightenment in futility, and in the tragic ironies, the bile and sarcasm of the human condition. Sir Francis Bacon knew this well when he observed: “Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.” Let us therefore set forth to receive Momus and his devotees on Lonsdale Street, this Festival, with irreverence but plenty of awe, in the spirit of the great Anna Akhamtova:

“From childhood I have been afraid /of mummers. It always seemed / an extra shadow / without face or name / had slipped among them...”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 10 February 2018

According to the tribes of North Auckland and the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, a mythological figure named Kupe sailed to New Zealand from Hawaiki, after murdering his cousin Hoturapa during a fishing expedition, and making off with his wife, Kuramarotini, fleeing with her in a great canoe, Matawhourua. During their epic sea journeys, they overcame numerous monsters and sea demons, including the great octopus named as Te Wheke-a-Muturangi. Arriving in New Zealand, Kupe returned home, recounted his adventures to his tribesmen and induced them to follow in his footsteps, in order to settle New Zealand.

The Pontic Greeks also preserve the outline of a founding myth that broadly involves a great sea journey. Jason of Iolcus in Thessaly, after some familial strife, commissions the building of a great boat, the Argo and along with a number of famous heroes of the day, set off on a quest to find the Golden Fleece. Along the way, like Kupe, Jason was compelled to confront various monstrosities, such as the smelly women of Lemnos, the six armed Gegeneis, whose name in Greek is now used to describe someone who is “native,” the Harpies, the Symplegades and even, possibly the first robot in mythological history, the bronzed Cretan Talos. Unlike Kupe, whose wife was indirect cause of his journey, Jason meets his wife Medea, at his destination, Colchis, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Having defeated the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece and the Colchian king, Jason, like Kupe, leaves the newly discovered land and returns home, there to cheat on Medea and have her in turn exact revenge by killing his children and escaping home on a chariot, drawn by dragons, neatly closing a circle of motif. The Greeks, having learned of the new lands to the east through saga and song, slowly began to found colonies in the Black Sea region, which is why Pontic Greeks consider the trailblazing Argonauts to be their ancestors.

Both Pontians and Maoris, cultural entities that have a proud warrior tradition, are widely considered, to use the Argonautic term, to be γηγενείς, or natives to the regions where they historically resided. Yet their foundation myths suggest that purporting to claim “earth-born” status is elusive: our ancestors invariably, have always come from somewhere else and though we may pride ourselves by our connection with a particular location, we are in fact, as our own myths tell us, a conglomerate of the sum total of our collective experiences.

It is for this reason that the melding together of two distinct cultural traditions that have hitherto never been in contact, differ from each other greatly and yet share surprising points of commonality makes sense and is in fact, a masterstroke, in a country the vast majority of whose inhabitants derive their ancestry from somewhere else. Using the Lonsdale Street Greek Festival as a melting pot is even more apt because this is a Festival that is staged every year with the sole purpose of celebrating diversity, exemplifying how, when one appreciates and is able to look past the colours, smells and movements and reduces them to their original elements, we are all united by our surprisingly similar (and gloriously mundane) humanity.

Local Pontian dance Group “Akrites tou Pontou” is perhaps best placed to view Pontian culture in this light, because its very name Akrites, means those who occupy the uttermost edge, the margins. Local Maori group “Te Whare Tutaua O Te Ara Hononga Ki Wikitoria” on the other hand, translates as “The Maori House of Weaponry and joining pathway of Victoria.” Custodians of a proud warrior culture, it is their capacity to form “joining pathways” with Pontians who are able to view their culture from fresh and ever changing perspectives that permitted us to view something extremely special and of inordinate historical importance during this year’s Lonsdale Street Greek Festival: the forging of these two diverse groups on the stage, through dance, song, music and shared stories, into something entirely novel, harmonious and gracefully coherent.

In sharing the stage and their lyrical and dance lineage, two heretofore completely isolated traditions, united in their cohabitation in our city, were able to provide an awe-struck audience with a multiplicity of narratives that though complex, exuded simplicity: the journey of the migrant, the imperative to stand up for one’s culture and protect it, the dignity of those who have suffered unspeakable loss and tragedy but abide regardless and the nobility that comes with welcoming all who would partake of a very human ritual of brotherhood. In order to collaborate with the Akrites of Pontus, their Maori counterparts insisted upon inviting them to a traditional tribal ceremony of welcome, inducting them into their hearths and hearts, not as Pontic Greeks but, as family. On stage, our cultural hearth, they welcomed the entire Greek community into their hearts, and we reciprocated with gusto, proving that filoxenia and filotimo are concepts common to all peoples.

It is not the first time that the “Akrites of Pontus” have reached out to extrapolate and transform the basis behind their unique tradition of folklore. Past performances at the Lonsdale Street Greek Festival include collaborations with Australian Aboriginal groups and closer to the cultural home, Georgian choirs, a particularly fitting choice, since Georgia is the modern descendant of the ancient state of Colchis. Yet their perspective, offers something new to a Greek community that here in Melbourne has largely been so overwhelmed by the corpus of the Greek historical and folkloric legacy to be able to interpret it and place it into the context of our antipodean existence.

Up until now, we have employed ourselves mainly with rediscovering our traditions, which are so multifaceted and venerable that it is easy to become lost in such a weighty task, and attempting to reproduce them as authentically as possible. Consequently, we run the risk of ossifying or seeking to cryogenically freeze what we understand to be our ‘culture’ for the sake of avoiding contamination, a symptom of a deeper-felt identity crisis and cultural cringe. Nonetheless, by only re-enacting a rediscovered litany of unadulterated rituals that have their origins in rural Greece and have little to say by way of context to our urban existence in our multicultural metropolis, we run the risk of, like Poseidonians, retarding the evolution of our own distinct cultural tradition as Greeks in Melbourne and like them, through slavish repetition, driving that tradition to the point of irrelevance and extinction.

It is in the interpretation of culture, its extrapolation to inform and enhance our everyday lives that the strength of our community lays and this is where the Akrites of Pontus are forging a new and exciting path for us to follow. Recording and maintaining knowledge of our past is vital, as it informs the foundation of our existence in this country. Yet unless we are able to also make use of that vast corpus of ancestral lore in order to contextualize our presence in a country that differs greatly from that of our ancestors, we will never be able to form strong cultural roots in Melbourne. Instead we will remain dependent for cultural sustenance upon an increasingly remote and alien Greece, a country with diverging and distinct cultural dietary requirements of its own, neglecting the creative forces of our own unique and precious, version of Hellenism.

If Greek civilization has been able to survive and inspire throughout the millennia it is due to its singular capacity for openness, its almost post-modern multiplicity of perspectives and versions and its ability to embrace and assimilate the cultures of its neighbours. Rather than obsessing over the correct way to wear a zoumbouni, the Akrites of Pontus have understood that, as its director, Peter Stefanides observes: “living culture evolves. Art is freedom of expression and culture is the result of that development….our culture is not a a Mona Lisa that must be replicated.”

Had Socrates been present at their remarkable performance, he surely would have remarked: «Οὐκ Ἀθηναῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην, ἀλλὰ Μελβουρνιώτης», the first small, but unimaginably significant step, in the coming of age of our own Greek-Melbournian culture.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 17 February 2018

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