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AUSTRALIAN APOKRIATIC APHORISMS

February 23, 2018, 5:48 pm
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When I was young, apokries didn’t exist in Essendon. Communal Greek celebrations back then consisted solely of the Greek National Day march to the Shrine of Remembrance, sundry dances and barbeques organised by various regional brotherhoods and the ubiquitous but now almost extinct, name-day barbeques.

I discovered apokries through my Greek school reader. An avid kite flyer, I was enthralled to learn that back in the homeland, there was a day called “Clean Monday,” when it was the custom for all young children to fly kites. The text was accompanied by respectable looking be-suited boys, all uniformly sporting the same low-fringe haircut, flying kites with their moustachioed fathers, on a rock which was identifiable as the Acropolis, as the ruins of the Parthenon loomed behind them. The text also explained that Clean Monday came immediately after the apokries, which was a time of festivity, the details of which remained unexplained. As a young boy whose sole dream was to behold the Parthenon in all of its Pentelic glory while wearing a suit, I thus longed to experience the apokries for myself, solely for its Parthenonic kite-flying conclusion.

 Around about the same time, I learned that the word apokries, meant “fasting from meat,” the word carnival having a similar meaning. In those days, no one I knew fasted, so this made no sense to me, until my friend’s grandmother, a lady who had been in Australia since the thirties, and whose diet consisted of lamb chops for breakfast, lunch and dinner, explained to me that in Greece, it was necessary to force everyone to fast from meat, because most people were poor and if they saw other people indulging in meat eating activities, they could become distressed and even violent. Apparently, there was a civil war fought just after the Germans left Greece, between meat eaters and those who had no meat. However, here in Australia, she explained, God had given us an abundance of meat and therefore, there was no longer any need to fast as we were now, all equal. According to her, τσικνοπέμπτη, the Thursday during apokries when it is customary to barbeque meat, was every day in Australia, kind of like Christmas in July. She also attempted to put paid to my Clean Monday proclivities by attempting to explain to me the meaning of the Australian expression: “Go fly a kite.” Consequently, she concluded, apokries, an event she described as being: “kind of like Moomba but without the birdman rally” were an irrelevant and superseded discourse for our Greek-Australian paradigm, unless one came from Patra, a place far from that of my own people, the Samians and the Epirots; the likelihood of my meeting such a person being as remote as experiencing the apokries in the flesh, in that fabled carnival city.

 Her prognostications notwithstanding and in complete contradistinction to the norms of cultural assimilation, which assume traditional customs erode over time, Greek Melbourne has, in the decades since, evolved into an Apokriatic town. Every year, in the weeks before Lent, a plethora of community organisations stage apokriatic events, each of them becoming more elaborate than that of the year previous. This current year, I have participated in four, the most brilliant being the Moorabbin carnival, in which the Manassis Dance Group, dressed in animal pelts, masked in ram skulls and girted by cattle bells, proceeded to shock, scare and titillate the pants of punters, enacting the apokriatic rituals of Northern Greece, to the tunes of gaidas and the samba.

 The annual Lonsdale Street Greek Festival, now a pre-Lenten fixture upon the community calendar, also purports to partake of the apokriatic spirit. During the two days of its duration, imported and domestic momogeroi perform Pontian carnevalic fertility rites, masked Genitsaroi from Naoussa jingle down the length of the street with their coin-sewn vests, accompanied by Manassis’ Icelandic heavy-metal nightmare beasts, while stylish stilt walkers loom benevolently over the awe-struck souvlaki-munching populace, tsiknopempti being a moveable weekend feast in our city. Considering that for much of the Festival’s history, its sole purpose was to celebrate Greek National Day and ourselves, the trend towards the carnivalesque is a palpable one.

 Even brotherhoods and community organisations with absolutely no apokriatic history are now “buying in” to the rediscovery of this tradition. Sometimes, however, it takes a few goes before one gets it right. Just a few years ago, I attended the first ever apokries dance of a regional club, in which fancy dress was compulsory. Sadly, the members of the club, most of whom had never celebrated apokries before, either in Greece or Australia, ignored that last injunction, which is why I found myself, clad in full authentic Bedouin garb, standing out among a long line of dinner suited and skirted members, waiting to pay at the door. As I waited, I could hear them whisper in full patois:

- Τι γυρεύ αυτός ιδώ;

- Δε ξέρου. Τι είνι; Κανένας αράψ πρέπ να᾽ναι.

- Κι τι γυρέυ ένας κωλοαράψ ιδουνά;

- Μήπους χάθκι;

- Για δεν τουν αρουτάς;

- Σώπα μη μας βάλ κι καμιά βόμπα αβδά κι μας ανατινάξ ολνούς…

- Μήπους ήρθι άπ᾽τν Αραπιά να αγουράσ᾽ του κτήριου;

Screwing up her courage, an old lady turned to me and asked:

“You spik Grik?”

- Καμιά φουρά, I responded, in her dialect.

Shocked, she replied: “You very good spik Grik. Where you learn et?”

- Απ´τουν μπαμπά᾽μ, I answered.

Frowing, she persisted: “And where you baba learn et thi Grik?”

- Απ᾽τουν παππού᾽μ, I informed her.

Puzzled, she shuffled away.

For the rest of the night, I had to endure dark and concerned looks by disturbed revellers. On the flip side, as rumours sped up and down the hall that I was an Arab sheikh looking to purchase the club building for a ridiculously overpriced sum, causing heated debates among the more socially active members as to how the profits would be expended, or rather, by whom they would be pocketed, the committee members acting as waiters, were extraordinarily solicitous. In breach of club protocol, our table was served even before that of the president, and the treasurer himself appeared in person to enquire as to whether the food served to me was halal.

- Μόνο η μπύρα είναι, Iresponded, αλλά χαλάλι σου.

 As drinks flowed, and mirth increasingly abounded, I was accosted by a particularly corpulent lady who, though she insisted that she was not wearing fancy dress, was eerily dressed like Carmen Miranda. “Get onto the dance floor and show us how to do a proper tsifteteli,” she whooped, her arms heaving.

I tried to explain to her that in my culture, only dedicated belly dancers were permitted to sway to the syncopated beats of the tsifteteli while drinking coffee under indigo tents in certain parts of the Nefud desert, but she was having none of it. Pulling me by the keffiyeh, she propelled me into the middle of the dance floor and proceeded to shake, rattle and roll, in front, behind and around my personage as I affected a look which I hoped conveyed lofty, rolling-in-money, sheikhic disdain.

Unsurprisingly, I did not win the “best dancer” prize but to my utter indignation, I did not win the “best costume” prize either, even though I was the only one in costume, simply, because the committee believed that the garb in question, was my everyday dress. When it was announced that no prize would be given owing to lack of participation, I abruptly rose and strode across the hall to the exit, two concerned committee members running behind me to ascertain what was wrong and to save a possibly endangered property deal. Curtly, I informed them that my helicopter was waiting. It was at that point, that they finally got it.

While we possibly not socially evolved enough to re-enact the traditional Phallus parades of Tyrnavos, in which giant, gaudily painted effigies of phalluses are paraded around town, (although several of my female friends argue convincingly that most committee meetings of Greek-Australian clubs serve exactly the same purpose), we have, as a community, managed to revive and in some cases, create new and exciting apokriatic traditions of our own. As a result, our communal life has become invariably the richer for it.

Cavafy, in his seminal poem: The Poseidonians, may have mused that: “The only thing surviving from [our] ancestors was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites… and so their festival always had a melancholy ending/ because they remembered that they too were Greeks… and how low they’d fallen now… living and speaking like barbarians, cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.” Our pre-Lenten apokriatic festivals in contrast, are vibrant, complex, and ultimately triumphantly exuberant interpretations of a unique Greek-Australian way of life. Καλή Σαρακοστή.

 DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

 First published in NKEE on Saturday 24 February 2018
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KOURABIEDES AND IDENTITY THEFT

March 2, 2018, 10:31 pm
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The whole affair took place while I was having a coffee with a friend at one of the cafés on Toorak Road, near my office. My friend a particularly patriotic gentleman when it comes to matters Hellenic was holding forth upon the necessity for us to regain our erstwhile greatness, by casting aside the foreign imposed title of Greek and replacing it with that of Hellene. In his estimation, a simple name change would suffice to turn around the destiny of the beleaguered Greek people. 

“Did you know,” I interrupted as an aside, “During the First Balkan War in 1912, when the Greek navy captured Lemnos, it promptly sent soldiers to every village and stationed them in the public squares. Children from all over the island ran to see what these so called Greeks looked like. "What are you looking at?" one of soldiers asked. “At you Greeks” one of the children replied. “Are you not Greek yourselves?” said the soldier. “No, we are Romans” replied the child.”

“No but you see,” my friend interjected, “Roman is one of those words that was used by the Turks to deny us our heritage. To them, anyone who was Orthodox was Rum, or Roman, because they did not want us to have a Hellenic national consciousness that would enable us to tap into our ancestral roots and discover our ancient civilization.”

“Actually,” I objected, “from at least the 400s to 1453, the Greek people did call themselves Romans. If you have a look at the inscriptions on the Byzantine coins, they name the Emperor and describe him as a faithful and august king of the Romans. The inscriptions are in Greek, mind you.”

“It’s the church’s fault,” my friend riposted. “They did that on purpose to keep people away from their Hellenic roots, so they would lose the ability to philosophise and question the priests. Did you know that back then, to be a Hellene meant to be a pagan?”

“Yes,” I concurred, “and to be a Roman, meant being a citizen of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, which was considered to be a continuation of the original Roman empire. Interestingly enough, as the scholar Apostolos Kaldellis has pointed out, non-Greek speaking minorities of the empire, such as Arabs, Armenians and Bulgarians were not considered as Roman unless they were assimilated within the Greek-speaking milieu. To put it plainly, you had to be a Greek, to be a Roman. The reason why other peoples, such as the Arabs and the Turks of the time called the Greeks Romans, was because we called ourselves Roman. Pontians referred to their country as Ρωμανία, the land of the Romans. And even today, when we want to refer to the Greeks of Constantinople, we don’t use the word έλληνες. Instead, we speak of Ρωμιοί.”

“If what you say is true,” my friend mused, “then we have appropriated the Roman identity, in the same way that the Skopjans have appropriated a Macedonian identity for themselves. I wonder why the Italians haven’t realized this. They would sue the pants off us. And it turns out we are no better than those we deride, except that we got away with it.”

“No,” I interjected. “Byzantium was the continuation of the Roman empire, of which the Greek people were citizens. So, they were citizens of the Roman Empire and saw themselves as such. The term was meant politically, not ethnically and this caused confusion. The proof is that while the easterners called the Greeks Romans, the Romans and the western Europeans referred to them as Greeks. For example, there are runic inscriptions in Sweden dating from the eleventh century, mentioning men who went to “Grikkland” to serve the emperor and were known as “Grikkfari” or “Greece-farers.” If this isn’t complicated enough, after the creation of the Holy Roman Empire in the West, the German emperors refused to consider the Byzantines as Romans and called them Greeks instead. The Byzantines found this offensive. As the bishop Luitbrand records, when the Emperor Nikephoros Phokas received a letter from the pope addressing him as emperor of the Greeks, he shouted in fury: “Doesn’t that idiot of a pope know, that Constantine the Great transferred the imperial capital and senate here, to Constantinople and left behind in Rome only slaves, plebeians and common types?” Further, when in the ninth century, in a letter to pope Nicholas I, the emperor Michael III referred to Latin as a “barbarous and Scythian language,” the pope asked: “How then can you call yourself a Roman?” Similarly, when the pope sent a letter inviting the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Ferrara, to discuss union between the churches, Bishop Stephanos of Media exclaimed: “He is insulting us. He is calling us Graikoi. How can we go if he is insulting us?”

“Which is the same thing as the Macedonian issue,” my friend frowned. “Just like we thought we were Romans and promoted a Roman identity, even though the world was telling us we were not, they think they are Macedonians, even though they are not.”

“I think the difference is that we actually were Romans, that is, citizens of the Roman Empire,” I responded. “We knew exactly who our ancestors were and we knew that our language was Greek. The Roman identity was borne of a state, legal and religious ideology, not an ethnic consciousness and this was always understood by the Greeks of Byzantium, which is why, when deprived of that political entity, were able to identify ethnically and linguistically as Greeks, even though the Roman appellation persisted, either in predominance or in parallel, right up until the twentieth century. The Skopjans, on the other hand, do think that they are ethnically Macedonian. That is where they make their blooper. As for calling ourselves Greeks or Hellenes, considering we have called ourselves everything under the sun since we first formed a collective consciousness, does it really matter? What makes us great is not our name but the sum of our collective experiences, including the collected works of Sakis Rouvas.”

“This is doing my head in,” my friend complained. “I can’t have a cup of coffee with you without getting a migraine. You’re a bloody Roman.” 

Having exhausted his patience, I approached the café counter in order to proffer payment. To the side of the cash register, I noticed some suspiciously familiar round biscuits covered in icing sugar, resting on a plate.
Turning to the proprietor I asked:
“What are these?”
“These are called courbiettes,” she responded, affecting a French accent.
“What are they made out of?”
“Crushed almonds.”
“Where do they come from?” I persisted.
“France, I think,” she responded. “Do you want some? They are $4.00 each.”
“Go on,” my friend goaded me. “I want to see you pay $4.00 in a pretentious joint in Toorak for a kourabie. Because that’s what it is. It’s a bloody kourabie masquerading as a courbi-, whatever the hell it is. Πού φτάσαμε. Flogging off Greek kourabiedes to the hoi polloi as French petits biscuits. What a ξεφτίλα.”
I handed over eight dollars and pinkies in their air, we each bit into our respective courbiette. It was unmistakably, a kourabie, despite its gallicised name. The taste however was excremental.
“Alright,” my friend crowed triumphantly, as he blew a gust of icing sugar in my direction. “Tell me, is this a courbiette in the political, linguistic or ethnic sense? Or this is a courbiette that secretly knows that it is a Greek kourabie?”
“Actually,” the proprietor intervened, “it’s a qurabiya. Our chef is Iranian. These originate from the Turks of Tabriz and you can find mention of them in Ottoman sources from the fifteenth century. But of course, being where we are, we need to market them accordingly.”
“So there you go,” I turned to my friend. “Its ethno- linguistically Turkish, culturally Greek and economically French. Does that satisfy you?”
“Bulldust,” my friend muttered defiantly. “They will never take our name.”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

First published in NKEE on Saturday 3 March 2018
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A WEEKEND OF HATE

March 9, 2018, 10:44 pm
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When Slav-FYROM members of the community burnt Greek flags at their protest last Sunday, to the chant of "F*ck Greeks", I became distressed. Had they chanted "F*ck Greece," I would have been just as distressed, but I would have understood that they were venting their frustration at a country that in their opinion, seeks to deny their identity. To direct the imperative to all Greeks, however, is to include, me, my family, my friends and all those of us who live side by side with Slav-Fyromians, go to school with them, work with them, befriend them and marry them. It is in fact, an act that promotes racial hatred in one of the most tolerant, vibrant and multicultural cities of the world. It incites all those who think in the same way, to dehumanise the entire Greek people and if taken literally, to violate them sexually. The next chant, an unintelligible "Ελλάς, Ελλάς, πουτσολιάς," I suspect, though sexually charged, was not a reference to the upcoming visit to Australia of the reputedly well-endowed euzones, on the occasion of Greek national day. Again, it was not clear whether those gifted by nature euzones had any connection to the "Occupied Macedonia" referenced in various irredentist placards.

When Slav-FYROM members of the community paraded bearing a banner which read: “Greeks and Pontians out of Macedonia,” effectively calling for ethnic cleansing, I felt sick.

Sometime later, it emerged from reports that a bunch of hoons, not content with making displays of racial intolerance at their demonstration, rampaged down Lonsdale Street (they think it is still Greek), and bearing flares, attacked Spiros Caras in his iconic Caras Music store, spitting on him and spraying water around his store.


On Sunday morning, in contrast, it became known that the schismatic Slav-FYROMIAN church in Preston was vandalised, the slogan F*k Skopje, ΕΛΛΑΣ ΕΛΛΑΣ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ graffitied on its exterior fence. Members of the Greek community, myself included, immediately banded together to publicly condemn this heinous and disgusting act of desecration. Some of these Greeks even offered to pay for the cleaning of the graffiti itself. Similarly, the appearance of a banner proclaiming: "FYROM = Albania" suspended over a pedestrian bridge and presumably created in response to an earlier banner during the week which read: "Greeks = Turks," and yet another proclaiming "Macedonia, Never Greek,"  was also excoriated by the consensus of the Greek community, as unhelpful. All this took place even though, on closer inspection, the Δin ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑappears to have been written as a Cyrillic Д, giving rise to uncomfortable questions.

 

Furthermore, in the days before the Slav-FYROMIAN hate rally, the Greek community mobilised against one group's stated intention to attend that rally and stage a counter-demonstration, protesting against the way in which they perceive that community has conducted itself during this time. Passions were high, the youth were inflamed. In their anger, they accused various members of the Greek community of being "soft" or not fully committed to the "national cause." After an exhausting round of appeals and counter-appeals, in which Neos Kosmos took an active role and even bureaucrats and Greeks embedded within the political system weighed in, the aggrieved group, while remaining unashamedly attached to their opinions, resolved to listen to their community elders. They chose not to stage their counter-demonstration. Instead, they published a list of their grievances and stated that in the interests of harmony and cohesion, they would refrain from any acts that could provoke racial conflict.

These internal checks and balances exemplify our community at its best. They suggest an organised community that though steadfast in promoting its own views about topics of concern to it, is mature enough to, on the whole, express those views in a focused way, without resorting to the vile racial slurs, acts of intimidation and violence that seem to have permeated through the recent Slav-FYROMIAN approach to protest in Melbourne. They also suggest a community that is possessed of a strong sense of social responsibility, viewing itself, not as an isolated entity within a vacuum, but rather as an integrated constituent of the multicultural fabric of Melbourne and sharing the priorities of that diverse and tolerant city.

As a Melbournian institution, therefore, the Greek community is able to identify potential ruptures within the social fabric and to move quickly to neutralise these in the interests of social cohesion. The fact that it was able to convince the enraged potential counter-demonstrators to desist, shows just how precarious the existence of that social cohesion really is. Had those persons witnessed the derogatory slogans chanted at the Slav-FYROMIAN rally, had they seen Greek flags being burnt, had they seen the placards de-legitimising the victims of the Greek genocide, had they witnessed the attacks upon Spiros Caras, no doubt they would have felt compelled to respond. And then, all hell would have broken loose.

However, it did not. There was no inter-ethnic violence because our community at large is able to see past the political issue, past the nationalist rhetoric employed by both sides and to focus on what is intrinsically important to our existence as an entity here: the human being. No one deserves to have the national symbols they hold dear burnt, so we refrain from doing so. No one deserves to see their friends and family attacked so we refrain from doing so and intervene to stop others from doing so. None of our children deserve to be exposed to raging mobs threatening or delighting in potential violence.  When we see that there is a potential for conflict, we defuse it. When unspeakably disgusting acts such as the vandalism of churches take place we condemn them. And we do all of these things despite the criticism of armchair or keyboard warriors who call all those who exercise such leadership as "soft," call their patriotic credentials into question and seek, in the social media, "an eye for an eye." In the end, our sense of civic responsibility prevails over our hurt feelings and any reactionary instincts. We can, bar a few unsavoury incidents, be very proud of the manner in which we have conducted ourselves.

It would not be an exaggeration to state that there is a marked difference in the manner in which the Greek and the Slav-FYROMIAN communities conducted their respective rallies. It is understood that owing to threats made by members of that community, Victoria police were forced to place six police officers at the Hellenic Australian Memorial for the Commemorative events of New Zealanders that served in both wars in Greece, which was being held concurrently,  attended by the NZ High Commissioner and the Greek Consul General . This establishes a terrible precedent.

  As a result, Melbourne itself is much diminished. Now that the protests have been and gone, and the governments of our respective homelands have consigned both of them to the dustbin of politics, both communities now have to exercise leadership  in coming together to engage with one another, rather than ignore each other's existence, an isolation which permits people to view their co-citizens as 'the enemy' and thus facilitates the terrible incidences of hate speech, vandalism and racial intolerance we have all been subjected to and borne witness to lately. Our communities must find common ground, not in the naming dispute but in co-operating with each other to minimise the racism and hate speech that seems to be endemic to this dispute and must begin this process immediately, using our own successful internal mechanisms as a guide. We owe it to each other, but most importantly to the tolerant society in which we live and which has allowed our communities to flourish. When history will write that our communities focused upon hatred rather than positioning themselves to meet the challenges that lie ahead, linguistically, socially and culturally, our legacy, no matter how much we may proclaim we embrace our 'identity" in the crudest of forms, will be a very poor one indeed.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU


 

First published in NKEE on Saturday 10 March 2018
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SPEAKING ENGLISH IN THE IDES OF MARCH

March 16, 2018, 11:37 pm
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On the morning of the Sunday of the Lonsdale Street Greek Festival, I was ensconced in the Epirus tent, clad in full Vlach regalia. As pedestrians were rather light on the ground, I decided to amuse myself by playing jazzicised versions of Epirot folksongs on the violin. Five bars into: «Δεν μπορώ μανούλα’,μ», a heavily accented voice asked:
"Χαλό, γιου Κών;» It was an elderly gentleman, clad in a suit and wearing an Athens 2004 Olympics cap.
«Ναι,» Ι responded in Greek.
«Γιου δε γουάν σπίκ ον δε ράντιο;» the old man persisted in broken English. He spoke slowly, haltingly, the words stumbling across his tongue and escaping his mouth with perceptible difficulty.
«Ναι, παρουσιάζω το Ηπειρώτικο πρόγραμμα,» I informed him, again in Greek.
«Άι λίσεν έβερυ γουίκ. Γιου βέρυ γκουντ. Άι λάικ βέρυ ματς,» the old man persisted.
«Μιλάτε ελληνικά;» I asked.
«Οφ κόρς ρε. Γιου στιούπιντ;» the elderly gentleman inquired incredulously. Slowly, sonorously, over the course of the next minute, he intoned: «Χάου άι λίσεν του γιου μπλάρρυ ράντιο ιφ άι νο σπικ Γρήκ ρε;» «Δενθαήτανπιοεύκολογιαόλουςμαςανμιλούσατεσταελληνικά;» I asked him, with a view to facilitating a speedier and somewhat more comfortable discourse.
It was at that point that for some inscrutable reason, the old man lost his temper.
«Ά γκε φάκ!» he exclaimed and walked off. I picked up my violin and shaken, played Waltzing Matilda in a minor key, as a tsifteteli, instead.
Sometime later, my daughter joined me in the tent. An elderly woman passed by the tent and noticed her.«Κόρησουείναι;» sheaskedme.
«Ναι.»
«Νατηχαίρεστε.»«Να’στε καλά.»
Turning to my daughter she asked: «Χάβαγιου ντάλι μου;»
My daughter responded with a blank stare of non-comprehension.
«Γιου γκουτ;» the old lady persisted.
“It’s easier if you speak to her in Greek,” I advised. “Her English is still not that strong.”
«Γιου γκο του δα σκούλ;» the old lady inquired.
Silence from my daughter.
«Ουατς γιουρ νάιμ ντάλι;»
«Μιλήστε ελληνικά,» I advised her again. «Δενσαςκαταλαβαίνει.»
«Ουάιγιουνοσπικ; Γιουσάι;» theoldladypersisted, smiling.Having received no response, she gave my daughter a pat on the head and walked off, whereupon my daughter mystified, turning to me, asked: «Γιατί δε μιλούσε η κυρία ελληνικά;»

It is widely held that grandparents are the chief repositories of Greek language and culture within our community. This is because they are the ones that have largely experienced that language and culture in its native context and it still forms the primary medium of their daily discourse. However, of late, a convention has evolved within the community, whereby, while Greek can be and is used as an intra-generational tool for communication and even as an inter-generational mode of communication, this does not extend to the third generation, especially when addressing members of that generation that do not belong to one’s family. Instead, it is customary to address such children in English, regardless as to how bad the speakers English actually is.

In some bizarre cases, as the first dialogue herein suggests, members of the older generation persist in speaking English to their younger interlocutors, even when it is apparent that both speakers are fluent in Greek and that communication would be a good deal more convenient in that language. I remember one particular elderly gent who attended my office in order to seek legal advice. His English was parlous and despite my constant efforts to encourage him to speak in Greek, for the sake of brevity and so that I could understand him, he persisted in speaking a close to unintelligible form of garbled English. Having pleaded with him to speak in Greek and even appealed to his hip-pocket by informing him that most lawyers charge in six minute intervals, so that it would be cheaper for him to speak in Greek, he blissfully ignored my ministrations. At the end of the excruciatingly long consultation, I asked him: “Why didn’t you speak Greek? Wouldn’t it have been easier for both of us?”
“Because English is your language, not Greek, you smart-arse” he snapped. “You were born here.”

Circumstances like these suggest that on the odd occasion, the Greek language or its non-use is wielded by native speakers as a tool of exclusion, against other generations. For reasons of their own, they may feel threatened by members of the younger generation and the only way to preserve a feeling of ascendancy, is by creating a language dichotomy, whereby the ‘legitimate’ language is reserved for use by ‘legitimate’ speakers, while those deemed to be upstarts or not worthy, are directed to speak in English, a language, in this case, of disempowerment. Over the years, in pursuing my own literary endeavours in the Greek language, not a few well-meaning members of the Greek community literati have suggested emphatically that I cease writing in Greek. Apparently, being Australian-born, the only language I am authorized to write in, is English.

Generally however, and especially when it comes to the third generation, the convention of employing English in inter-generational discourse does not come from a desire to exclude, disempower or marginalize. Instead, it seems to derive from the opposite: a deeply held assumption that the latter generation has lost the Greek language altogether, and so, to address a child in Greek, would form a barrier to communication, or indeed, in some instances, cause trauma. This comes in marked contrast to the practices of a generation ago, where grandparents were considered the main point of contact between younger generations and the Greek language, and their use of the Greek language as a means of communication with grandchildren and as a method of ensuring cultural continuity, was unquestioned.

Nowadays, many elderly Greeks, will, when questioned as to why they speak to younger generations in English will not only state that it is because they assume that most of them do not speak Greek but also because it is considered rude to do so. The social transgression here apparently comes in the form of unduly exposing a child’s ignorance of the Greek language, if one speaks to that child in Greek, and the child does not respond. Apparently, this is a social transgression identified and excoriated as such by the second, ie. parental generation.

On most mornings, when I take my daughter to school, we sit in the playground while she tells me her favourite vampire stories and tales of Greek mythology, in Greek. An elderly lady sits nearby and smiles. She holds her grand-daughter in her arms and speaks to her in broken English. A few days ago, as we were discussing whether skordalia could be plausibly used as a vampire repellent, she commented:
“It’s good that you speak to your daughter in Greek.”
“Well, we are Greek, what else could I do?” I responded.
“My grand-daughter doesn’t speak Greek. Her mother isn’t Greek,” the old lady offered wistfully.
“My wife isn’t Greek either,” I told her.
“So how does she learn Greek? From her γιαγιά;” the old lady asked.
“From all of us,” I responded. “The family, the community, even from you right now.”
“My son and my daughter-in-law have told me not to speak to my grand-daughter in Greek,” the old lady confided sadly. “They say that it’s going to slow her down at school and that its going to make her feel inferior to the other kids.”
“Do you agree with that assessment?” I asked.
“Well,” the old lady mused, “I brought up my kids speaking Greek. I didn’t think that was a problem. We all thought it was natural that we should pass on our language to our children. But somewhere along the line, we discovered they don’t feel the same way. They don’t want to pass on the language. They speak to their kids in English. In the beginning, I told them: “let them at least learn Greek from me, whatever they learn can only benefit them,” but they told me categorically not to speak to the kids in Greek. What can I do?” she shrugged. “I brought up my kids in the way I thought was best. Now they are doing the same. And even in families where the parents are homogenous, they are not teaching their kids Greek anymore.”
When the bell rang, the grand-daughter was balancing precariously upon a bench. ῾Μη,” her grandmother shouted spontaneously. ῾Θα πέσεις. Σλάουλυ, σλάουλυ.᾽ And she looked up at me and beamed.
Once the last of the first generation of Greek speakers is no longer with us, a tangible linguistic and cultural link of continuity with our place of origin will be sundered. Depriving the latter generations of the rich repository of memory, shared tradition, perspective and outlook that can only be transmitted through the ancestral tongue, even before the demise of the generation that can pass it on, is tantamount to committing cultural suicide. Considering that among native born Greek Australian peer groups, social interaction in the Greek language is by convention rare, contact with native speakers is vital if our community is to retain the Greek language into the future. For this reason, this March, let us encourage the elderly members of the community to defy and ultimately smash pernicious convention and speak to our youth, unashamedly and unhindered, in Greek. And let us actively seek out ways in which we can harness and support their linguistic expertise, tying it to such key concepts as family, connection and community, in order that our emerging youth may contextualise that linguistic expertise to their lived existence, thus ensuring our linguistic survival as a distinct and relevant part of the multicultural fabric of Victorian society, well into the future.

DEAN KALIMNIOU






First published in NKEE on Saturday 17 March 2018






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MISSING THE BUS

March 26, 2018, 11:48 pm
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Eaton Mall does not exist. It has never existed. Instead, if GPY& R advertising agency, on behalf of Public Transport Victoria are to be believed, the space occupied by one of the most vibrant and important centres of Hellenism in Melbourne, is in fact a Greek island.

The scene unfolds like a promotional map of the Mall: the perspective is from the South end of the Mall, facing North. In the foreground, on the right, the more perceptive viewer may discern the old bank which is now a Chemist Warehouse. The metal frame tree guides and the central light diffuser hint pay homage to the Mall, juxtaposing it against the beautifully rendered bus passing the Chester Street crossing. Meanwhile, just before that crossing, a sign bearing the legend: “Glyka” hints at the possibility that sweets are sold along this street. Save for a few passersby, the idyllic streetscape is sterile and devoid of life. The pavement and the buildings are whitewashed, as is, one could argue, the presence of the Greek-Australian community. We are not in Eaton Mall, but rather in Mykonos.

The caption to Public Transport Victoria’s latest campaign reads “Discover a Bit of Hellas in Oakleigh.” This is marginally more neutral than its Footscray poster, which reads “A taste of the east in the west.” It is also in keeping with Eaton Mall marketing itself as “Little Athens,” provoking hoots of derision from newly arrived Greek migrants, who prefer to equate it with a square in a provincial Greek town, not Athens per se but still, a little bit of Hellas. The advertisement, exists in the context of seeking to exoticise areas of ethnic settlement in Melbourne, in order to promote transport use by equating it with a holiday. In doing so however, the commissioners of such a campaign have in fact, inadvertedly indulged in gross orientalisation and alienation of the ethnic communities they have targeted, including the Greek-Australian community.

By its very nature, to exoticise something, is to place it outside the norm. By exoticising Eaton Mall, the advertisement suggests to the mainstream Australian therefore, that Eaton Mall is not an organic part of the Melbournian landscape. It has no legitimate place within the local geography. It cannot be rendered in terms of at least seventy years of Greek settlement in the broader area. Instead, evidently, the advertisers believe that in order to be palatable to the dominant cultural market, Eaton Mall must be depicted as, or reduced to a stereotype, a laid back, sleepy, soulless place, the epitome of a western understanding of a Helladic tourist paradise. For the evocation of such a stereotype to be effective, Greek-Australians may not be afforded any role within it. That this type of activity, one which effaces an entire community, and in the case of the Footscray advertisement, effectively reduces a diverse population to “a bunch of food oriented occidental orientals,” can be indulged in four decades after the advent of multiculturalism as official Australian policy, is deeply disquieting.

Eaton Mall is not Mykonos. It is not even Greece. Instead, it is a lively hive of activity, frequented not just by people of Greek descent, but of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Had the advertisers or Public Transport Victoria bothered to contact or seek to liaise with the traders of Eaton Mall, for some of these were incensed at the lack of communication, they would have learned that the mall id far from the monocultural, ethnic ghetto that is implicit in the poster.Vanilla Lounge, for example, has a diversity policy, by which it employs people of different ethnic backgrounds and even sponsors their visa applications. Had they spent time in the Mall, they would have noticed the significant numbers of Middle Eastern patrons, coming to savour a social experience reminiscent of that which is common in their places of origin. Had they the perspicacity, they would have discerned among the crowd, Anglo-Australians, eager to explore, discover and enjoy a culinary and social tradition that embraces all and excludes no one. Most significantly, had they the sensitivity to do so, they would have witnessed a community that is neither Mykonian, nor Zorban, neither Athenian, nor Spartan, but unselfconsciously Greek-Australian. From the lovers who met and courted each other within the confines of the mall, to the tired and frustrated mother dragging her squalling children across the pavement, all the while managing not to spill a drop of her precious take-away frappe, to the nubile girl who has meticulously brushed every eyebrow lash separately and bronzed out the last remnant of cellulite from view, in order to look stunning and obtain the complements of her friends, to the cranky grandmother, yanking her grown son in a business-suit by the ear, to the svelte newly arrived Greek waiter who magically can appear in more than five places simultaneously in order to take one’s order, to the self-satisfied businessman with the protruding belly and the bejeweled corpulent fingers brandishing an unlit cigar, to the old man, sporting five days growth, smoking the seventeenth cigarette in the row, to the entire population, which is able to play people tennis in unison, turning their heads synchronously as pedestrians promenade down the Mall, in order to give “the glance,” the one from which one can discern the pedestrian’s entire life history, Eaton Mall and its patrons have no relevance to Greece. It is an Australian phenomenon and deserves to be portrayed us such in its own right, not expunged from the discourse.

In their seminal work: "From Foreigner to Citizen: Greek Migrants and Social Change in White Australia 1897-2000," Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos point out that one of the ways that the dominant culture secures and reinforces its position as legitimate owner of this country is by abrogating to itself, the right to determine the discourse of multiculturalism, defining the manner in which the ethnic communities it permits to reside alongside it, shall be portrayed, or shall articulate their own identity. As potentially subversive “eternal foreigners,” ethnic communities, no matter how long they have existed on Australian shores, must be placed on the margins, orientalised and presented, not as an integral part of modern Australian social reality, but rather, as the other, or effaced altogether. According to this paradigm, the reality of Eaton Mall and its people cannot exist. Instead, in Orwellian fashion, it must be replaced by something that does not challenge the hegemony of the dominant culture. This is certainly achieved by portraying the denizens of the Mall, not as Australians, but rather, as people who not only come from somewhere else, but actually, still live there.

The fact that members of our community not only accepted the advertisement but were flattered by it, suggests that we are still suffering from a derivative cultural cringe that does not let us assert our unique identity as Greeks in Australia and instead, makes us feel compelled to seek recourse to stereotypes in order to define ourselves and articulate our ethnic identity, or to employ these and accept these in order to gain the approval of the dominant culture. To these people, the insulted Greek-Australian traders of Eaton Mall ask: Why can we not demand that Eaton Mall be celebrated for what it is, a gritty, aspirational, thriving expression of a community that is inextricably interwoven within the fabric of modern Melbourne.

On the penultimate occasion I visited the Mall, a woman walking in front of me, remarked expansively to her companions, who appeared to be visiting from Greece: "And here are the Exarcheia of Melbourne." Now try depicting that on a Public Transport Victoria poster. Just make sure faithfully to capture the moment where the Molotov cocktail impacts with the bus, and bursts into flames…. Public Transport Victoria, we've got the hots for you.

DEAN KALIMNIOU


First published in NKEE on Saturday 24 March 2018
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REVOLUTION UNHINGED

March 30, 2018, 7:40 pm
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Towards the end of his life, the great scholar of what is referred to as the Greek Enlightenment, Adamantios Korais wrote: “The increase and spread of education in the French nation gave birth to the love of liberty.” In his mind, in order for the physical Greek Revolution to transpire, another, more spiritual one would have to precede it. 

 To this effect, Korais maintained that the entire nation would have to be educated, as a condition precedent to any such a revolution taking place. Greek education would have to be aligned with that of enlightened Europe, in order for a newly emerged Greece to take its proper place among modern nations, via a process which he called metakenosis, or outpouring of one into the other.

 Such a process required, in Korais’ view, a return to fundamentals, that is, the writings of the ancient Greeks and it was for this reason that he produced edited editions of ancient writings he considered suitable for study. Such a revolution would not only grant the renascent Greeks access to the wisdom of their forefathers, but also allow them to regain their virtues as well. Having immersed themselves in the lore of their illustrious ancestors, Korais was confident that they would then, by means of immersion, acquire their military skills as well, or at least such martial valour as was necessary to defeat the Persians in the fifth centur and which would accordingly suffice, to defeat the Ottomans. According to Korais, these martial virtues were lost when the Romans conquered Greece, though mysteriously, he was unable to advance a theory as to how study of the ancient texts could guard against others overcoming the military valour of the Greeks gleaned from such hallowed texts, which probably explains why the German Occupation took place.

 Considering the parlous state of Greek education in the period immediately prior to the Greek Revolution of 1821, it would come as no surprise to learn that Korais always felt that the Greek people were not ready for revolution. In 1807, he argued: “Our people need at least fifty years of education.” In 1821, some months after the Greek revolution had been proclaimed, he mused: “the event has come too soon for our interest. If it had come twenty years later..” Assessing from his home in Paris how the product of the Revolution, the Modern Greek State had developed, Korais lamented in 1831: “the Greek rising was fully justified, but inopportune; the right time would have been 1850.”
The lack of the civilising effects of education upon the Greeks blighted and ultimately damned the Greek Revolution and the State it brought about, in Korais’ eyes. It is easy to understand why. Instead of the enlightened, modern, progressive nation that formed the subject of Korais’ aspirations, the Greek State was fragmented, convulsed by internecine strife that saw some of the greatest proponents of its independence imprisoned or murdered and completely dysfunctional. It was corrupted at its core by self-interested power brokers who did not shy away from provoking a civil war in order to further their grip on power, causing much suffering to an already war-shattered populace and was also manipulated by imperialist powers, to the extent where it was questionable as to whether Greece was truly either “free” or “independent,” as its rulers maintained. As Korais wrote: “That the revolution occurred before time was proved by the recklessness of the leaders of the revolution and by the continuing very foolish conduct of many politician within Greece, conduct that caused the flowing of a great deal of innocent blood.” 

Had the Greeks been cautious, had they been patient instead if impulsive and intemperate, had they undergone the requisite amount of spiritual preparation with dedication and a sense of purpose, then they would have been truly free, and not the colonial plaything of a quadrumvirate of word powers: “If the race had rulers adorned with education, as it certainly would have had if the Revolution had occurred thirty years later, then foreigners would have been inspired with such respect that the wrongs suffered from the anti-Christian Holy Alliance (ie the European powers) would have been avoided.”  
Almost two hundred years after the Great Revolution of 1821, with the image of the heavily moustachioed, amply foustanella’d klepht wielding a ponderous sword emblazoned deeply upon our consciousness as the ultimate harbinger of freedom, it is difficult to conceive of Korais’ preferred alternative revolutionary, a cravat wearing, quill brandishing intellectual, mincing down the mountainside in his spectacles, there to engage the enemy in endless philosophical disputation and textual criticism, until they are finally worn out and depart the land they have appropriated, in frustration. Viewed from this perspective, Korais’ vision is, though grand, ultimately, a utopian one.
Nonetheless, it is a utopia that has inextricably found its way within the narrative of the Greek Revolution, even as power brokers masquerading as freedom-fighters became self-interested politicians, even as those politicians set about running the State that was created in the aftermath of so much spilled blood, for their own benefit and that of their imperial overlords and continue to do so today. Though we extoll and exalt our freedom-fighting captains, though we liken them to the classical warriors that sent the Persians packing, somewhere in the back of our minds, Korais’ exhortation, to educated ourselves, cultivate ourselves and ultimately uplift ourselves, plays on our sub-conscious.

 Korais' call for enlightenment is deeply entrenched within us. It is the continuation of Saint Kosmas the Aetolian’s injunction that it is better to build schools than churches, and accords with visionary Rigas Pheraios’ celebration of reason. It is in fact, the culmination of the entire thrust of the Greek enlightenment, a johnny-cum-lately intellectual movement that was a complete derivative of the west, interpreting the corpus of our ancient legacy through alien, western eyes, but regardless, convinced that the complete espousal of European civilisation was the only pathway by which Greece could extricate itself, mentally, and then physically, from the morass in which it found itself. 

 We have never been able to live up to Korais’ lofty ideals. Surely, our diasporan community has internalised them, for he too was one of us, a Greek living outside Greece, who never saw his homeland again. The first generation of Greek migrant’s irrepressible imperative to educate their children, their drive to build schools and other cultural institutions, even their need to express themselves through poetry and literature and their equation of education with freedom, all comes directly from Korais. Though the Revolution has been gone, there is unfinished business to attend to, for we have not yet attained the goals which Korais has set out for us and which we have espoused. There is an unarticulated sense that as a people, we are not where we want, or set out to be. 

 The Revolution, as the cause of a deeply seated feeling of inadequacy harboured by many, if not most Greeks, is a concept, despite the rhetoric, the speeches, the marches and the flag waving we all rejoice in, tacitly accepted, but rarely spoken of. Yet when Greeks both within and without the State that it engendered, view it, blundering periodically from morass to morass, regardless of their level of pecuniary interest or venality within its paradigm, Korais begins to whisper in their ear: We can do better. We owe it to our ancestors to create the structures that will allow the Greek people to realise their full potential. We owe it to each other to bring out the best in one and other and we do this not through the ossification of culture and tradition, the purveying of prejudice, or the stifling of human endeavour, but rather, through celebrating knowledge, championing innovation and actively engaging with the broader global community.

“The education of a nation is the safest indication of its regeneration and of its political freedom,” wrote Korais. Articulating a particularly Greek approach to our past and to the corpus of global culture as means for the evolution of the modern Greece into a truly independent, self-sufficient State, able to make unique contributions to the world is an objective that lingers still and which has not yet been fulfilled. In many ways, the Revolution for us has somehow, become unhinged, or more likely, has not yet even begun.
 
DEAN KALIMNIOU
 
First published in NKEE on Saturday 31 March 2018
 
 
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PAN-MAC PROBED

April 6, 2018, 8:45 pm
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Interview by Dean Kalimniou with Chris Moutzikis, Chairperson of the Pan-Macedonian Association of Melbourne and Victoria.

Recently, the speaker of the Greek Parliament stated that among other organisations, Pan-Mac signed a letter addressed to the Greek government in which its members were threatened with death. How do you respond to that claim?

I think that the claim is a deliberate exaggeration. The letter urges the government not to compromise on the Naming Dispute. I accept it further states that the penalty for treason is death. We are not threatening to kill anyone. We are merely pointing out what the legal penalty is for a possible act, like saying: “Don’t park here, or you’ll get a fine.”

But the Death Penalty was abolished for High Treason in Greece in 2005. So how else is this letter to be interpreted? Did Pan-Mac obtain legal advice as to the applicable legal remedies before drafting the letter? Does this letter, which is factually incorrect, not damage Pan-Mac’s credibility vis a vis the Greek government?

We did not draft this letter. It was drafted by our sister organisation in America and it was signed by all affiliated Pan-Mac Associations world-wide. We signed to express solidarity with the world body, focusing mainly on our fervent desire that there be no compromise on the Naming Dispute. We were not aware of the legal issues, but I believe focusing on this small point takes attention away from fact that we are on the precipice of a “solution” to this issue that will be disastrous for Greece. This is what the Greek government should be concerned with. It needs to justify its actions to the Greek people.

Pan-Mac’s stance on the Naming Dispute is well known. Basically, you are against Greece recognising FYROM by any name that includes the word “Macedonia.” In the letter Pan-Mac signed, it is stated that such a compromise is tantamount to treason. What is treason in your opinion?

Treason is where someone deliberately acts against the interests of their country, knowing that this is harmful for their country. We believe that recognising FYROM as Macedonia or any cognate of that term is harmful for Greece as it impugns the historical, cultural and ethnic character of that region, which is vital for Greece. We believe that the government of Greece knows that to be the case.

Pan-Mac is a Melbourne-based organisation, albeit with an affiliation to a world-wide body, which in reality, refers to America and a few other diasporan communities. It represents people who are domiciled in Australia. Why should the Greek government listen to you, on this issue?

If this was an issue of domestic importance, I would agree that we would have limited standing to express an opinion. However, this is an issue that transcends the borders of the state of Greece. It goes to the core of being Greek, affecting the identity of every single person identifying as Greek throughout the world. Any decision made by the Greek government does not only affect Greek citizens, but all of us. Given this is the case, I believe that Pan-Mac has every right to express an opinion and encourage the Greek government to adopt it. It is an opinion that we believe, is held by the majority of Greeks world-wide.

Pan-Mac is just one of many Greek organisations in Victoria. Why should the combined Greek community listen to you? Why should we be bound by the pronouncements or policies of Pan-Mac on the Naming Dispute?

Ever since the nineties, Pan-Mac has been at the forefront of this campaign. We have organised several mass community rallies, and never ceased our activism for the truth, even when this was not convenient or politically expedient. In the process, we have earned the trust and respect of the community. The outpouring of support we receive on a daily basis, especially lately from younger members of the community validates our standing. Furthermore, there is a convention among community organisations here in Melbourne, that we are the organisation that is best placed to formulate community policy on this issue, just as we respect the Cypriot community’s right to articulate a policy on the Cyprus issue. Pan-Mac, along with other community organisations, is an active member of the Australian Hellenic Council, which is the mouthpiece of the Greek community to Canberra on issues concerning our community. It has adopted our position on this issue.

And your policy is correct, whereas that of the Greek government, according to Pan-Mac, borders on the treasonous. Why are you right and why is the Greek government so wrong? Why is Pan-Mac so vociferously against compromise?

The word Macedonia is inextricably linked to the Greek identity. The government of FYROM, has over the years attempted to appropriate our historical heritage. It has also made irredentist claims against Greek territory. We believe that any use of a compound name that includes the word “Macedonia” merely reinforces their spurious claims. Because the name is already used by those ignorant of the history and context, we believe that for brevity, any prefix arising out of a compromise solution will be dropped and the word “Macedonia” will used, something that is unacceptable. This country must have a name that reflects its own heritage, not ours.

Given the above, why do you think that the Greek government is entertaining a solution that involves the use of the term?

Quite frankly, this is one of the most disquieting things about the issue. The Greek government has not told the people why all of a sudden it has become urgent to solve an issue that has been smouldering away for decades, nor has it explained why it believes it is necessary to compromise by using a compound name when it is clear the majority of the people would be against it. We don’t know what the Greek government thinks it will gain out of such a compromise because they simply are not telling us. We don’t know what pressure is being applied and by whom, or why and this makes us fear that Greek government is being compelled, for whatever reason, to act against the country’s own interests. We cannot sit idly by and let that happen, without voicing our opposition to such a path. It might be politically expedient for the present government, but it is disastrous in the long term of Hellenism.

Is this why you organised the rally as a means of expressing that opposition?

We organised the rally to express solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Greeks in Greece who also held rallies. That is why we felt that it was important to use the same format for protest as that used in Greece. We wanted to be part of a chain of protest all around the world, sending a strong, unwavering message to the Greek government that we are against their policy on this issue, but also, that we are one, we are united.

There are those who state that you only organised the rally because you felt threatened by the rally organised prior to yours by hitherto unknown members of the community. Specifically, that in the light of that rally, that Pan-Mac would look weak and ineffective if it did nothing, given that others had already seized the initiative before it.

I don’t accept that view. At the time, we were doing what we always do: deliberating with members of the community, obtaining a consensus for further action and also liaising with the world-wide Pan-Mac body, so that our actions had the requisite community support and were co-ordinated. In our experience, which is extensive, we feel it is important to gauge events and consider the outcomes of possible courses of action before committing to them.

And do you think you were successful? The number of people attending was, by all accounts, far lower than what was expected, especially compared to past rallies. Does this indicate a community crisis of confidence in Pan-Mac’s leadership on the issue?

As part of a co-ordinated network of worldwide protest it was very effective. It concerned the Greek government enough for it to attempt to downplay the world-wide movement and grossly under-represent the numbers of those protesting in Greece. Furthermore, I believe any comparison between the previous rallies and this one, numbers wise, is unhelpful. There are many reasons why people chose not to attend the rally, and they do not reflect in anyway upon Pan-Mac and its reputation, which if anything has become enhanced over the past few months. The fact that the Premier of Victoria recently, on more than one occasion, stated that: “Macedonian is as Greek as the Parthenon,” a statement which was first made by his representative at the rally, can be attributed to the climate of understanding of the Hellenic character, engendered by Pan-Mac’s activism.

So why did people stay away?

Well, times have changed since the nineties. People have less spare time and more weekend commitments. Some expressed concerns about possible violence from members of the FYROM-Australian community, a fear that was not unjustified considering the appalling way in which some of their members conducted themselves during their own rally. Others found the venue difficult to get to. Also, we need to understand that these days, rallies are not the only means of protest and comprise only one of many facets of our campaign. Compared with the nineties, social media also provides an important forum for activism. There were two significant things about the rally that have gone unnoticed and need to be pointed out. The first is that the youth predominated, a most reassuring sign of the vitality of our campaign. Secondly, that there were members of the Armenian, Assyrian, Chinese, Indian, Russian and Serbian community present to express their solidarity, showing that our outreach is truly a multicultural one. Unity is vital.

On the subject of unity, people in our community lately have commented on an increasingly intolerant attitude displayed by the Pan-Mac executive and members towards those who express different views on how the Naming Dispute should be solved. They state that there is a dualistic, us and them, with us or against us, patriots or traitors stance towards “dissenters” emanating from leading personalities within Pan-Mac. Are those who believe in compromise traitors?

I’m aware of this allegation and I believe it is disingenuous. We encourage debate and discussion because a free and frank exchange of ideas is important. At the same time however, we will not shy away from holding to our deeply-held to our convictions and articulating our point of view. In the lead up to the recent rally, Pan-Mac convened public meetings where a number of diverse views were expressed by attendees. Some of those views were diametrically opposed to our own. Nonetheless, we respect those persons’ right to an opinion and facilitated them being heard. Some of our members feel passionately about this issue and express themselves in a passionate manner. That is no way implies that others do not have the right to put forward a view. However, we also have a right to critique their views, if we think they are incorrect, or not in the national interest. Democracy and debate work both ways.

One of those persons who have articulated a position on the Naming Dispute that differs from that of Pan-Mac is Professor Tamis, of the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies. What is Pan-Mac’s relationship with Professor Tamis? Has it been damaged as a result of the difference in opinion?

We respect Professor Tamis for the brilliant work he has undertaken over many years in studying and promoting scholarship on Macedonian Hellenism. His research on the history of Macedonians in Australia is extremely valuable and will prove to be of enduring importance to the broader Australian historical narrative. We look forward to the development of his further endeavours in the field of historical research. As for his views on the Naming Dispute, I reiterate that Pan-Mac believes that everyone has a right to their own opinion.

The Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies has recently announced that it is seeking legal recourse against those persons/entities responsible for the atrocious acts of racial hatred committed against Greek-Australians, by some of the attendees at the FYROM-Australian rally, held a week after your own. Is this not something that Pan-Mac should be doing, or at least supporting?

I agree with you that some of the incidents of racial vilification and intolerance at the FYROM rally were unprecedented and deeply disturbing. Our rally was peaceful and we made sure that it was focused on the Naming Dispute, not against the FYROM-Australian community. There were no racial slurs, or pejorative sentiments expressed against that community. In contrast, with them, we witnessed the burning of the Greek flag, racist placards against the descendants of victims of the Pontian Genocide, derogatory slogans about the Greeks’ ancestry and even attacks on a Greek store owner. I am astonished that those responsible are so immature and given to hatred that they are willing to disturb the harmony of our multicultural and tolerant city and even make the streets of Melbourne unsafe, in order to pursue their goal. As a result, we have responded favourably to a proposal of mediation by the Victorian Multicultural Commission, in order to ensure that such terrible acts are never again repeated. We are currently engaging with this process, affirming our commitment to a peaceful and tolerant city.

There are many families in Melbourne that because they have either intermarried into both communities or come from regions where their ethnic identity is in flux, are experiencing significant emotional upheaval at the moment, as a result of the Naming Dispute. What guidance if any, has been provided by Pan-Mac to such persons, during this time?

You are right, this latest phase of the dispute has caused a lot of tension and has harmed interpersonal relationships and friendships. I’m aware of situations where family and friends have stopped speaking to each other because of this issue. I find that deplorable. To those who have come to us for guidance, and I need to stress that this includes both people that identify as Greek, and as FYROMian, we have urged them to put the dispute to one side and engage with one another, to relate to each other as human beings. We need to focus on the things that unite us. There are many. We share similar customs and traditions, our music is similar, we share the same religion and our histories are intertwined. This does not mean we cannot share our views on the dispute but if we do, it should be in a respectful and appropriate way.

Recently, the leadership of Pan-Mac has changed. You have been appointed chairperson. What are your aspirations for Pan-Mac moving forward?

Structural reform is necessary if Pan-Mac is going to effectively meet the challenges of the future and remain relevant to emerging generations. Currently, Pan-Mac’s structure does not address the fact that the vast majority of the Greek people, including those coming from Macedonia, no longer feel represented by small, regional brotherhoods. This needs attention, especially since we receive a vast amount of support from youth who are not represented or do not participate in the groups that traditionally constitute our Association. I would like Pan-Mac to be able to better utilise the tremendous groundswell of support it enjoys by people of all walks of life, making more of our extensive contacts within the academic world and especially in local, state and federal government. Greater attention needs to be paid to social media and modern forms of communication. New and novel ways to get our message across are already being trialled. We can always enhance our engagement with the broader mainstream community while also maintaining our close ties with our own community. The recent addition of the Thessaloniki Association as a constituent member of Pan-Mac both underlies the enduring relevance of our Association and acts as blueprint for the future.

Let’s assume that tomorrow, the Naming Dispute is solved. I want to moot two scenarios with you. Firstly, the Greek Government compromises and accepts a composite name. Here in Australia, the government has stated that it will accept any outcome agreed to by Greece.. What will Pan-Mac do? Will it ask the Australian government to go back on that commitment, which has been the focus of the Greek community’s lobbying up until now? Is there a contingency plan? Have feelers been made out to the relevant politicians in this regard?

There is constant communication with stakeholders, on all levels. We do not resile from our position and are prepared to campaign with greater vigour against any unfair outcome, should this prove necessary. We are already circulating a petition to the Australian government that we encourage everyone to sign.

I understand that petition is in response to a FYROM-Australian petition calling upon the Australian government to recognise FYROM as Macedonia. Why is it necessary if the government’s stance already precludes recognition of a name not acceptable to Greece? Isn’t that just duplication of the work already achieved by the Australian Hellenic Council and other community groups? And what if the response is disappointing? How will that reflect upon Pan-mac’s grasp of strategy and credibility?

Times and policies can change easily in response to pressure and expediency. We want to ensure this does not happen. To date, we are satisfied with the response and encourage all Greeks to sign the petition.

Let us assume that by some stroke of good fortune, the Naming Dispute is solved by means of FYROM accepting a name that does not include the term “Macedonia.” Does that make Pan-Mac redundant? Where to from there?

That outcome would be great. Redundant? Not at all. Our aim is to promote Macedonian Hellenism and make it relevant to the country in which we live. A solution to the Naming Dispute would enhance our ability to seek new and novel ways to make lasting contributions to the multicultural fabric of our society, as Macedonian Australians. What is inspiring is the interest we receive from younger, hitherto disengaged members of our community. Many tell us that it was through Pan-Mac’s work that they discovered the relevance of Hellenism to them. Periodically, we even have members of the FYROM-Australian community contact us because they are questioning the veracity of what they have been told by their community, through their reading of reputable historical research. We want to build on that.

Finally, I’d venture to say that apart from the pressing urgent domestic issues of poverty, economic crisis and institutional decay that plague Greece, there are other “national” issues of immediate importance to Greeks, such as the Cyprus issue, given that part of the island is occupied by a foreign army, or the crisis in the Aegean. In Northern Epirus, we have a large native Greek population living within Albania, that does not always have its human rights respected. In the case of Macedonia, we have none of these immediate problems. And yet Greek concern on these issues, save for those who come from these regions, is minimal. What is it about Macedonia that has been able to fuel the passions of the Greek people to such a great extent?

Possibly it is because Macedonia represents one of the greatest and most important period in Greek history. I’m not just referring to Alexander the Great and the enduring awe in which he is held by the Greek people. Rather, it is because it was only through Macedonia that the concept of Greek unity was achieved and it was only through Macedonia that Greek civilisation was able to engage as an equal with those around it and spread, creating the prototype for globalisation. It is this blueprint for a world-wide Hellenism, a Hellenism that transcends borders that is a relevant paradigm for us as a diasporan community. I think that this vision, realised by the Macedonians has been espoused by all of us and that is why Macedonia is at the core of our Greek identity. It is also why we react so strongly when it is threatened. That being said, you are right in stating that the other issues you mentioned are also important and we support and enjoy excellent relations with the Cypriot Community and the Panepirotic Federation.

 DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 7 April 2018
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TIGHT-ROPE WALKING

April 13, 2018, 8:48 pm
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Ακροβασία, renderable in English as “tight-rope walking,” literally signifies walking on tiptoes. In his recently released poetry collection of same name, poet Dimitris Troaditis takes the reader upon a journey through a world poised precariously upon a knife-edge, one in which one steps through unguided, at their peril.

 

Undoubtedly, the world of the text is a dystopian one, a world in crisis. We “discover the world through graves” (Tight-rope walking), this being a cosmos where: “troubles, pains, generous receptions, constitute incidents in our lives,” (The Uprooting), and where “murder [is] completed when the red of the sky become mauve and then black.” (As Blood),  imagery reminiscent of a bloody and bruised Stendhalian charnel house. Poised upon the ends of our toes, we walk “with chains….naked before slaughters/ at the dance of lies,” (Cohabitation).

 

The poet’s blasted landscape of “polluted atmospheres,” (Faith), where “counterfeit unforeseen” dominate “rhythms and symbols” (As Blood), appears to be inimical to life itself. It is for this reason that the first poem of the collection “Tight-rope Walking” commences as a perilous journey and ends up as a manifesto: “Whoever doesn’t adhere to this poetry/ is buried alive/ by regimes of calamity/ in white posthumous circles/ with stones erected in the soul/ giving up the spirit in an unequal battle.”

 

Here then, in the “poetry of our bodies,” the interrelation of human beings, as defined by the poet, lies salvation. As a prophet of the chthonic and the urban, his are words of grit and gravel. Truths here are not to be discovered, but rather, to be constructed: “I want to construct a truth in my heart,” he proclaims in “As Blood”, “one I’ve been seeking for years now, in moments when I resignedly accompany my embrace.” There is no pacifism here. Even embraces are given and guided, rather than merely received,

 

Should we be deemed worthy to be initiated into the poet’s mysteries, he will “engrave [his] secrets on ..our body and all those revealed to [him] by the sun [he] will stamp, and all those revealed to [him] by the birds [he] will draw,” (My Secrets). The inference is that the poet’s insights are nothing miraculous. There are no novel revelations or original patterns of thought. Instead, his mysteries lie in the correct re-articulation of the cosmos, in all its proper constituent parts. Once this is achieved, a glimpse of a Lennonesque paradise is offered, where there is: “no more grief in the valley of thought/ no more souls in the feeble frost on sunrise.”

 

The main body of the poems were written prior to the poet’s arrival in Australia from Greece in 1992. Having borne witness to seminal political changes in Greece, the early poems are strident, self-assured and replete with revolutionary fervour. The poet’s confidence, seems to ebb away by the times we arrive at the poem “The Uprooting.” Here, any sense of a linear progression is arrested and in its place, a multitude of unanswerable questions are posed. Our perseverance may be imperishable, to paraphrase the poem, but what exactly is the product of such an endeavour? The former fervour of the early part of the poetic narrative, viewed in this disillusioned light, almost assumes the form of a cautionary fable. It is the “flame of a fancy which is extinguished after each awakening.”

 

Thus, in the next poem, “Terra Australis,” the poet, having left one reality for another, can only rail at is artificiality and especially that of those like him, who are caught between two ersatz cultures, the ontopathological issues of both not having been resolved, in a lament that is almost a fear at the failure of poetry itself: “So what is left of their own?/ A pruned apathetic language/ a fragmentary movement in infinity/ which also tends towards extinction?”

 

Where words defy or betray us, the old revolutionary, forged in the fires of of the Heimat’s political upheavals will, Mayakovsky-like, “break” the false reality on the “anvil of assimilation.” “And who is the one that will revolt, setting fire to the fast food of culture?” he asks. The problem is, we are also no longer certain that the poet considers himself to the the man for the job. Everything seems to new, too raw, too disconcertingly familiar, and the secret crypt that absorbs his kin, too painful and labyrinthine to traverse.

 

Nonetheless, the prophet, as a victim of the derailment of his own spatial and ideological journey, realises that there is no going back. Reality must be reconciled in the land in which he lives, not in an ambiguous state between the old and the new, for despite any official rhetoric about pluralism, in “On the Community” he observes that: “The flashes of our star/ are not dually voiced.” In such a condition, recourse to tried and tested customs or insights from the old culture are not only cacophonous (“the untuned instruments. Of paleontological orchestras”), but positively fatal as well: “The return to holy landscapes…like being hung from a belfry/ as a harbinger of doom.”

 

By the time we get to the final poem of the narrative, “Wandering,” what we are treated to is a recapitulation of where we have come thus far with the poet. His trials have taken their toll: “Something [has] broke[n] on the payment of our inner existence…/ it cut us in two:/ a slivered moon and a pale truth.” While the annihilation of the self is usually a condition precedent in many creeds for enlightenment, in this dualistic, shattered, sundered form, is the poet no longer able to guide us?

 

Or does he perceiving that we no longer need him, as he can no longer offer us any meaningful sense of direction? “What truth can we hide/ and which ship shall be board/… when the tremors of this night/ do not allow us to experience/ the joy of life’s overflowing glass?” Either the poet is admitting defeat or ultimately shifting responsibility for social renovation and the hope of a rosy dawn upon the reader. From our journey together, what we do know is that any further voyage in this direction will be anything but painless, for we called upon, albeit grudgingly to defer pleasure, for the greater good.

           

Citing Yiannis Ritsos and Tasos Leivaditis as his great influences, the poet’s own style is unique, bearing no relation to either. His words drench the page with the force of a torrent. Expresses, images swirl and eddy around each other, often incongruously, threatening to sweep away the reader upon their contrapuntal tides. In so doing, the poet is artfully conveying to us, the bewildering force of modern urban life itself, at assails us with all its “rains and hurricanes”  (My secrets), its contradictions, its injustices and iniquities. Indeed, he comes to personify that which he wishes to reform.

 

The poems that comprise this singular narrative, which are presented in the original Greek and in an English form rendered by me, a unique privilege, ultimately accept that the existential problems they seek to address cannot be solved by one person alone, nor should one expect a solution to emanate from any self-appointed guru. Instead, the poet, in keeping with his social philosophy, fully admits that it is only through the communal struggle of his readers that the requisite capacity can be achieved. In producing poetry of such force, refreshing candour and immense sensitivity, the poet’s approach to the fundamental questions of modern society are truly unique within Greek-Australian poetry.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU
 
First published in NKEE on Saturday 14 April 2018
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LARES

April 20, 2018, 7:57 pm
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The image of the Three Hierarchs on the small oval icon can barely be seen. This is because the metal backing has begun to rust and the oxidization has spread to the front, obscuring the august Saints’ faces in a beige haze. Nonetheless, they gaze at me through the smog of time serenely, in their heavy bishop’s attire. If they could speak, I am convinced that they would pronounce: “Be at peace. We’ve got this.”

Ever since my grandmother handed it to me, this icon, measuring no more than five centimetres in height, has been my crisis icon. It was first entrusted to my father and, according to my grandmother, it was solely through its wonderworking powers that he completed his tertiary studies. Throughout the duration of that time, it hung on his bed head, though by the time its custodian passed it on to me, the cord that suspended it had long rotted away.
Consequently, when not afforded a position among our other household gods, the three hierarchs have resided mainly in my chest pocket. They have accompanied me to all of my exams, secondary and tertiary and I am ever compelled to extricate them from my pocket and place them in the tray of the metal detector when periodically attending court, especially when presenting tenuous or rather flimsy cases in which my preparation has been slight. On the odd occasion, a security guard will offer me a knowing wink. I shrug my shoulders by way of salutation and walk away, a common bond having been established in a few seconds. My gods, are his gods.

Custody of these household gods are shared with my sister. They have borne witness to her own anxiety over her examinations, though generally, after they have steadfastly ensured the continuance of her education and progress in her career, they have been restored to my care. Not so, however with the miniscule icon of Saint Nicholas, also entrusted to me by my grandmother during my first trip to Greece. His task is to protect us from harm during voyages and as a result, while on the job, he resides securely in my toiletry bag. These days, reeking of unknown quantities of shampoo and aftershave that have encompassed him at high altitude over the years, Saint Nicholas, also imbued with the beige hue of oxidization, is in the custody of my sister, who is much more peripatetic than I. It is solely through his intercession that the Kalimniou progeny have not befallen to any harm while travelling and no other equivalent icon can take his place for power, or for efficiency. A small painted icon of Saint Fanourios hangs from the rear view mirror of my car. When asked why it is there by the uninitiated, I reply laconically: "Sat-nav."

On my shelf at home, a small square icon of Christ gazes at me accusingly. There is no escape, no justification to be offered, no argument in mitigation to be provided, in order to alleviate its judgment. This icon bores into the innermost recesses of my soul and retrieves the contents therein for interrogation. This was my study icon, given to me by my mother as a young boy with the injunction: “You can fool me that you are studying, but you cannot fool him.” One of my friend’s study icons is of Panagia holding Jesus in his arms. Whereas my icon is ten centimetres in height, his reaches up to the ceiling and was installed in his impossibly small bedroom, by his father. “Whenever I was tempted to look away from my books,” he reminisces, “I would see her looking at me, half in pity, half in pain, and I wouldn’t have the heart to let her down. So back to the books I would return. She is the reason I graduated from university.” Whenever I looked up from my books, the Pantocrator would glare at me severely. Fearing retribution, I too, would return to my desk. I am convinced that it is only through his consent having first been obtained, that the Three Hierarchs were able to prove so efficacious. As I write, he looks down at me sternly, and I look away in guilt. He knows too much.

My youngest daughter, at the age of two, has adopted the Synaxis of the Apostles as her Lares. She carries them about her everywhere, kissing them periodically, and talking to them as if she is one of them. My eldest daughter on the other hand, acknowledges an old icon of Saint George as her titular deity, as she is heavily entranced by dragons and identifies with the princess, standing patiently in the margins, awaiting her rescue with fortitude. I try to tell her that burly men who know how to kill dragons and are infused with conviction make boring dinner party companions, but she will have none of it.

We all have Lares Familiares, the equivalent of the Roman domestic guardian spirits, who in times ancient, cared for the welfare and prosperity of a household. And right around Melbourne, many of us still have, lovingly tended, an equivalent of the Roman household's lararium, a shrine to the Lar Familiaris, in times ancient, usually placed near the hearth or in a corner of the atrium and in the case of the Greeks of Melbourne, most commonly, in the kitchen. The Roman lararium often had the appearance of a cupboard or a niche containing a small statue, a niche painted on a wall, or a small freestanding shrine. Our lararium is called an iconostasis and comes in various forms. From time to time, small wooden cupboards, often intricately carved, make their appearances in sundry second hand shops in my local suburb, their custodians having departed and their progeny, worshipping other, more material deities now. Sometimes, these lararia are still inhabited by their lares, and the countenances of forgotten and discarded saints, stained black by the soot of years of votive lamps being lit before them, gaze disconsolately at me. I purchase them all, because it is not fitting that any lares should be without a home, and adopt the gods of the households of departed compatriots as my own.
On one occasion, I immediately recognized the discarded lar in the dusty opp-shop as belonging to an old lady I once knew. The face that stared at me unobtrusively from behind a copy of a Little Richard LP, was unmistakably that of Saint Eugenios, the patron saint of Pontus. Its custodian’s father, an hagiographer, had begun writing the icon at the time of the Pontian Genocide and had perished before he had time to complete it. Disembodied, save for some drapery and an arm, Saint Eugenios accompanied the rest of the family to Greece and then to Australia, despite his impairment, a constant guardian not only during their many travels but also, a companion to their trauma, a family, as incomplete as the god that protected them. I redeemed the Lar interrupted from his captivity but did not keep him. Instead, I delivered him to his erstwhile custodian’s grandchildren, explaining why the Lar that brought them forth safely from annihilation, should never have been expelled from the hearth in the first place.

There is one icon missing from my lararium. An impossibly small, paper icon of the Resurrection given to me by my grandfather thirty years ago, when he explained to me that quite soon, he was going somewhere very far away but at some time, Christouli would come to raise him from his slumber and we would be reunited again. “I will sleep with one eye open, waiting for him, and for you, pappou,” I had replied. When my grandfather died, my father took the Resurrection icon from our home and placed it in the lararium on his father’s tombstone. It has since faded and diminished to dust, and yet every night since, I have lain, my one open eye fixed upon a space in a lararium now inhabited by other lares, and which no longer exists, waiting and waiting, and waiting, while the rest of the lares, mutely and mournfully, look on in the lamplight.
DEAN KALIMNIOU
First published in NKEE on Saturday 21 April 2018
 
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ON BINSCABS AND LIBRARIES

April 27, 2018, 8:01 pm
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Most nights, I read to my daughters from a rather tattered and worse for wear story book by Georgia Tarsouli, entitled: “Στης Μαμάς την Αγκαλιά.” It has been in my custody ever since my primary school days and holds special significance for me, for it was the reason why, in my early years, I came to bear the soubriquet, of “binscab.”
“Στης Μαμάς την Αγκαλιά,” was the first Greek book I discovered in my school library. A remnant of enlightened government policy that saw a gamut of multi-lingual books purchased for the needs of students who would never read them, I was so astounded and thoroughly gratified that my Anglophone world would pay so great a homage to my Grecophone one, that I borrowed it and the few other books occupying the shelf next to it, repeatedly.
One day, I arrived at the Greek section of the library, only to ascertain that it was no longer there. The surly librarian, even more purse-lipped than usual, refused to offer an explanation and I walked away despondent. I remained in that state all day, that is, until a friend informed me that an interesting array of colourful books had been discovered peeking out of the school dumpster. Without a moment to lose, I ran to the place of disposal, and without hesitation, launched myself within it, coming up for air, only after I had rescued “Στης Μαμάς την Αγκαλιά,” “Τα γενέθλια της Μομόκο,” and other childhood Greek language favourites from certain annihilation. 
So exhilarated was I with my act of ethnosoteric chivalry, that I was, in the beginning at least, oblivious to the rhythmic chant that began to emanate from the recently formed crowd of onlookers. Timid at first, preceded almost by a grace note of derision, it finally assailed my eardrums: “Binscab! Binscab! BINSCAB!”
I cared not. Instinctively, I was convinced that Greek was a sacred language and therefore, every book that contained it was a holy relic that must be protected from profanation and defilement. I bore my soubriquet with pride and though it was hurled at me often enough in the next few years, its wielders, seeing that it had absolutely no psychological effect upon me, ultimately desisted.
Having nowhere now to satiate my thirst for Greek literature, my parents pointed me in the direction of my local municipal library. For the next two decades, I greedily devoured all the children᾽s books, then the works of literature by great Greek authors, then the historical and folkloric works and the religious texts until one day, I came to realise that well-loved favourites, such as Takis Lappas’ series of books on the philhellenes in the Greek Revolution, were vanishing from the shelves, as were works of poetry. On a table, a few metres away, I spied a jumble of books with a piece of paper affixed to the wall above them bearing the stark word: “Sale.” There they all were: Cavafy’s collected works, Thrasos Kastanakis’ strange but compelling “Hatzimanouil” and a host of other tomes that had changed my life forever. Deeply discomposed, I purchased them all, for less than fifty dollars. Thus apprised that my local corpus of Greek literature was endangered, I would periodically return to the library and buy up the remainder of an unwanted collection that would otherwise be destined for the municipal transfer station.
These days, I no longer attend my local library. Its Greek collection has now dwindled to encompass only recipe books, translations of Mills and Boon romances, some lives of the Saints and a few rather sad, dog eared women’s magazines. Apparently, this is all that the Greeks of the area now want to read, a contention supported by the fact that the more erudite texts of the Greek corpus still, though in a sparser fashion than before, make their periodic appearance in the local second hand shops, as lots from deceased estates.
“The foundation of a community library fulfils a higher need. It constitutes the basis for our cultural evolution. It necessarily broadens the intellectual horizons of our community. It enriches and enlivens our one-sided lives and where there is a void – and we have many- it fills it with content.
Most importantly, it elevates us to the level of truly civilised human beings. It gives us depth, it grants us certainty. Because we have no need of gilded superficialities.
We therefore have no further need for endless discussions, interminable delays, or timid prevarications. We demand immediate and prompt action, before our primary enthusiasm, that motivates our first steps, evaporates.”
I never got to meet Yiannis Lillis, possibly the most talented Greek writer ever to migrate to Australian shores, and criminally forgotten, for he died before I was born, in 1967. And I was only able to read the above thoughts on the necessity of founding a Greek community library, which he penned on 25 March 1951, upon a chance discovery late last year, of a copy of Οικογένεια, a remarkable literary magazine which he edited, and in which they were published. Lillis was writing with the same fervour of certainty as Saint Paul, when he wrote of the immanency of the Saviour’s return. For him, a trilingual author, recently arrived in Melbourne and anxious to stimulate the intellectual and cultural life of a community in the process of inventing itself, the concept of a library, created and run by the community, for the community, was axiomatic. The question for him was not ‘if’ a community library would be created but when. 
Sixty seven years later and with the Greek language in terminal decline, its study having been ousted within a generation from the tertiary institutions in which the community fought so tenaciously to introduce it in the first place, Yiannis Lillis would most likely have been shocked to learn that despite some attempts, we have failed to create the community library he and so many others envisaged. Instead, we took the easier path, focusing all our expectations on the local and state governments, entities which, though they undoubtedly took their role of fostering multiculturalism seriously, justifiably diverted funds towards the satisfaction of the literary needs of other emerging communities at the expense of our own and when it was anodyne to do so, jettisoned the surplus burden altogether.
A community library would be more than just a place where Greek-Australians could read Greek books. It would serve as an archive for all Greek language and Greek-related literature published in Melbourne ever since the foundation of our community. It would act as a conduit for research into the impressive intellectual currents that have pervaded our community over the years, and thus, assist us to understand ourselves, not just in relation to our place of origin but also, in relation to the place of our ultimate acculturation, while also constitute a sounding board for analysis and reform. A library that evolves to reflect our own tastes, intellectual pursuits, preoccupations and perspectives, thus remains as an enduring repository of our complex and multifaceted existence, a constant touchstone ensuring that the stories of those that came before us, within our community are never lost. It is this aspect, of the perpetual evolution of memory and identity that so captivated Yiannis Lillis and my own youthful imagination, that is encapsulated in the concept of the library.
Most importantly, a community library, would be OUR library. It would exist not at the pleasure of others, but rather, as a product of our own will, and for as long as we should desire it. We would shape it in our image , keep it and preserve it, long after the vagaries of ever changing governmental policies have left its prototypes behind. We would become it and it, us. Significantly, it would emancipate us as a people, from a crisis of cultural dependency upon the motherland and permit us to assess ourselves within the context of the mighty corpus of cultural achievement we have attained, a process that is necessary if we are to endure as a relevant ethno-cultural entity within Australia, into the future. As such, the community library is, put simply, survival and it is imperative that even at this late stage, as community brotherhoods and organisations face their dotage, kept alive in their senility only via a mercenary interest in property, that the community at large once more consider taking this important step, to ensure its own longevity.
 
Jorge Luis Borges put it this way: “The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information.” If that sounds disturbing, consider that he then went on to say elsewhere, the following: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Paradise at the Greek. Euphonious and benign, but most importantly, ours for the taking.

 DEAN KALIMNIOU
 
First published in NKEE on Saturday 28 April 2018
 
 
 
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PYROMANIACS UNREPENTANT

May 5, 2018, 5:30 am
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“The greatest blow given to this beautiful city was dealt by the Greek soldiers, who burnt Izmir at the time of their retreat. Don’t pay attention to those who say that it was burnt by Turks. The greatest blows were delivered by those who consider themselves to be the most civilised in this geographic region…..Our ancestors did not want to destroy, or to burn. They always sought to build, to create, as can be evidenced by the development of Izmir after the war of Independence.”
The Turkish president’s latest outburst is chilling. Not only because it beggars belief that in the technologically and supposedly socially advanced twenty first century, the leader of a major power would resort to such infantile behavior, taunting neighbouring countries, but also, because his denial of his country’s complicity  in one of the most barbarous and criminal acts of the twentieth century, the burning of Smyrna, creates a precedent that is inimical to world peace.
It is trite to mention from the outset that the Greek army did not burn Smyrna. It had no reason to. Thousands of Greeks were still in the city trying to flee after the Greek army, pursued by Kemalist soldiers, effectively abandoned them to their fates. Enough evidence, by way of eyewitness testimony exists, to implicate the Nationalist Turks in the destruction of this great cosmopolitan city. Over the years however, Turkish historians and politicians have sought to blame the victims of the catastrophe, variously attributing blame to the Armenians for the arson, and at other times, the Greeks, depending on who has roused their ire at that particular moment.
Falih Rıfkı Atay, a Turkish journalist and nationally renowned author, for example, in attributing blame to the Turks for the Smyrnan conflagration, does so in the context of addressing Turkish claims that the Armenians were responsible:
“Gavur [infidel] İzmir burned and came to an end with its flames in the darkness and its smoke in daylight. Were those responsible for the fire really the Armenian arsonists as we were told in those days? ... As I have decided to write the truth as far as I know I want to quote a page from the notes I took in those days. 'The plunderers helped spread the fire ... Why were we burning down İzmir? Were we afraid that if waterfront konaks, hotels and taverns stayed in place, we would never be able to get rid of the minorities? When the Armenians were being deported in the First World War, we had burned down all the habitable districts and neighbourhoods in Anatolian towns and cities with this very same fear. This does not solely derive from an urge for destruction. There is also some feeling of inferiority in it. It was as if anywhere that resembled Europe was destined to remain Christian and foreign and to be denied to us.”
Having thus explained that the Turkish army has already engaged in targeted arson of minority areas previously, Aktay also tries to analyse what motivated the Turkish Army, and in particular, its commander in Smyrna, to set fire to the city. Simply put, revenge at the Greek army’s scorched earth tactics in Anatolia and an understanding that this was the most efficient way to ethnically cleanse the hitherto multicultural city, proved the primary motivation:
“If there were another war and we were defeated, would it be sufficient guarantee of preserving the Turkishness of the city if we had left Izmir as a devastated expanse of vacant lots? Were it not for Nureddin Pasha, whom I know to be a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic and rabblerouser, I do not think this tragedy would have gone to the bitter end. He has doubtless been gaining added strength from the unforgiving vengeful feelings of the soldiers and officers who have seen the debris and the weeping and agonized population of the Turkish towns which the Greeks have burned to ashes all the way from Afyon.”
This sentiment is echoed by Professor Biray Kolluoğlu Kırlı a professor of Sociology at Bogazici University, Istanbul, who in a 2005 paper, argued Smyrna was burned by the Turkish Army to create a Turkish city out of the cosmopolitan fabric of the old city. Aktay, on the other hand, is careful to distance Turkish national leader Ataturk from the act, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of Nureddin Pasha, who had a reputation for brutality:
"At the time it was said that Armenian arsonists were responsible. But was this so? There were many who assigned a part in it to Nureddin Pasha, commander of the First Army, a man whom Kemal had long disliked..."
In his influential 2008 book, Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922, Giles Martin provides plausible evidence that that in fact, it was the Turkish army that brought in thousands of barrels from the Petroleum Company of Smyrna and poured them over all of the buildings except those in the Turkish quarter of the city. He also suggests that this was done with the full approval of Atatürk, who was determined to ride Turkey of its minorities, in order to establish a new ethnically homogenous republic.
American industrial engineer Mark Prentiss was present in Smyrna during its holocaust. He wrote: 
“Many of us personally saw – and are ready to affirm the statement – Turkish soldiers often directed by officers throwing petroleum in the street and houses. Vice-Consul Barnes watched a Turkish officer leisurely fire the Custom House and the Passport Bureau while at least fifty Turkish soldiers stood by. Major Davis saw Turkish soldiers throwing oil in many houses. The Navy patrol reported seeing a complete horseshoe of fires started by the Turks around the American school.”
Turkey loses nothing is accepting its culpability for the Great Fire. Subsequent to the destruction of Smyrna, peace treaties were signed with its adversaries, including Greece and the city was rebuilt as a Turkish one. Had Turkey admitted liability and apologized, the nations concerned and affected would have moved on, forged closer ties and relegated the affair, albeit painfully, to history. Instead, Turkey has done the opposite. By committing the act in the first place, it has proven that persistent aggression and violence can allow one to violate international treaties and evade international law, a practice it has employed again during the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and in its current invasion of Syria. By then denying it committed that act and transposing the blame for it on its victims, its political culture has shown that not only does it lack the requisite moral introspection to understand that evasion of responsibility is tantamount to a wholesale endorsement of the crime itself but also, that the State is capable of committing such acts in the future. Finally, by returning to this event, it does not grant victims and their families the ability to surmount its trauma, retaining it, unnecessarily, as a “live” issue.
Just before the end of his term in office, US President Barack Obama gave a speech in Athens, extolling the virtues of democracy, to those who invented the concept. At no stage did he state that the United States, a country that has constantly interfered in Greek affairs and in the case of the Junta, supported the subversion of the Greek democratic system, stands with Greece against foreign aggression. As a result, an emboldened Turkey has been encouraged to turn the clock back to the horrific days of 1922. Where before, its jets flew over Greek airspace and sabre rattling was formulaic and ritualistic, today, its politicians gleefully threaten to “throw the Greeks into the sea,” threaten war, and kidnap and imprison disoriented Greek soldiers, all because the powers that be, have turned a blind eye to Turkish state aggression, have tacitly permitted Turkey to cover up past crimes and thus, encouraged Turkey in its conviction that aggression and bullying is a viable foreign policy option.
Culprits aside, the Great Fire of 1922 was a catastrophe for humanity. It showed that despite humankind’s level of technological and social advancement, we were unable to learn anything at all from the carnage of the First World War. It proved that despite the rhetoric about modernity and the new man, there is no evolution, but rather only revolution around the axis of a vicious cycle of savagery. Greece, which has not fought an aggressive war since 1922, has put its trust in international structures of security and jurisprudence that while paying lip service to the rudiments of civilization that Turkish politicians so parody, actually reward their behaviour. Nonetheless, Greece constantly affirms its commitment to peace and amity between nations by responding to ever-increasing racist taunts and threats of violence from across the water, in a mature and composed fashion, as truly behooves a modern civilized nation. It does so because it understands just how catastrophic the irresponsible remarks of the petulant and powerful can prove for the lives of its people and because it knows that the safety of its peoples are much more important than the outmoded egotistical posturings of the bellicose.
We do not really need to prove that a holocaust that took place one hundred years ago, and which signaled the demise of 3,000 years of Greek civilization in Asia Minor was not our fault. As the poet Yiannis Ritsos wrote: «Λοιπόν δεν είναι ανάγκη να φωνάξω για να με πιστέψουν, να πουν: « Όποιος φωνάζει έχει το δίκιο». Εμείς το δίκιο το `χουμε μαζί μας και το ξέρουμε». What Turkey’s politicians need to prove, is that in the ensuing century, their nation has been able to draw valuable lessons about the necessity for peaceful co-existence and tolerance. Their leader’s latest verbal paroxysm casts grave doubts in that direction and dashes hopes for achieving stability in the region, stoking fires that will smoulder for generations to come.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com
First published in NKEE on Saturday 5 May 2018

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THE EUROVISION CODE

May 10, 2018, 5:36 am
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I don’t know about you, but I am incensed but not unduly astonished at the poor reception afforded by Europeans to Greece’s worthy contribution to the Eurovision song contest.
In the song “Όνειρο μου,” (My dream), the anglic Yianna Terzi ostensibly articulates a melancholy tone poem that, just like the current Greek government, broadcasts a profound message to the effect that she will not change, she will not adapt, she will not adulterate even one note of her song in order to pander to the questionable and of considerably less pedigree than our own, aesthetic preferences and preconceptions of the Europeans. Her song, a typical Greek ballad, is a sad, lonely one.
Just like modern Greece, it is composed of a few variations that repeat themselves ad nauseum, contributing to that bitter-sweet sense of ennui that so encapsulates the modern Greek condition. Just like modern Greece, these variations drag on and on, leading nowhere. What the noble and possessed of incredible poise Yianna Terzi has remarkably done, is to convincingly interpret a song that personifies contemporary crisis-ridden Greece, and to compel the rest of the Europeans, finally to come face to face with her, a musical J’ accuse, if there ever was one.
The Europeans of course have turned that vision away, voting Greece out of the competition, for in the crass Babylon of Eurovision, true images are heresy and must be covered up. That they have done so, is derisory for encoded within Terzi’s ostensible J’accuse and staunch assertion of the Greek identity within the cacophonous melting pot of Europe united, is in fact, a deep and heart-felt profession of love, loyalty and devotion, to Europe, its leaders and of course, its bankers.
Thus, while in the first stanza, Terzi attributes European disdain at modern Greeks to a misunderstanding, that does not deserve condemnation. Our supposed inability to conform to European norms or indeed the regulations of the troika can be justified. What is required here is a deep connection, an opportunity for the West to penetrate our inner most sanctum, deeply and thoroughly, in order to allow a satisfied Greece to whole-heatedly embrace the dream that is Europe. Terzi thus implores: “If you plumb my depths/ you will awaken my dream./ And if you see my heart/ I will embrace you.”
Articulation and words are important because though Greece means well, it is obvious the bankers are not getting the message. They think Greece is defying them, or is being deliberately recalcitrant, not realising that this is solely due to Prime Minister Tsipras’ novel but brave command of the English language. Terzi’s second stanza, bravely and boldly, addresses the bankers and seeks clarification: “Who do you want me to say it?” What she/Greece wants to tell Europe and the bankers is that domestic reference aside and adopting Elena Paparizou’s sure-fire proven method for Eurovision success, “that I would die for you.” As if to drive this powerful message home, she rephrases: “I would give you my life,” going on to enunciate a profession of faith, in which there can be no reality without the totality of Europe and its financiers, and accordingly no recourse against it: “Beginning and End, you are Everything.”
Obviously, as heartfelt these professions of utter subjection are, Terzi feels that they are nowhere near enough to mitigate the righteous anger of the bankers. For this reason, she feels that the time has come to discard the mouthing of platitudes and address the root cause of the bankers’ wrath. This is, in her opinion, the constant threats by the Greek government to “rip up” the Greek Memorandum of Understanding and its supplements, struck between it and its creditors, or expressions of defiance as to its provisions. Consequently, Terzi is quick to reassure the bankers that the memoranda will be adhered to, to the letter, no matter the cost: “As much as I am in pain/ I would never erase you from my charter.” Again, everything is just a misunderstanding. The bankers’ ire seems to be intense and they must be receiving her affirmations of obedience with scepticism, for at this juncture, Terzi feels that she needs to underwrite her performance of the Memorandum with the only security she/Greece has left to her disposal, her life: “I would give you my life.” This reflects her legal understanding of the Memorandum as the sole repository of any agreement between the parties, as she reaffirms: “Beginning and End, you are Everything.”
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It is only at the end of this dolorous dirge to Greece’s divested dignity, that Terzi offers us insight as to the reasons for such abject submission and she offers these by way of justification: “Because you want to change me/ and wash away my blue.” The stanza is laden with ambiguity. Are we lamenting the demographic and social changes affecting Greece over the past decade, or are we applauding Europe’s presiding over these? Given that blue is the colour of Greece, is Terzi protesting against a perceived de-Hellenisation of Greece, lamenting the loss of its sovereignty, therefore placing her prior expressions of devotion in the context of a Stalinist purge victim professing love for the Party prior to being sent to the Gulag? Or is blue, in fact, the blues, with Terzi variously offering gratitude to the bankers for stamping on a derivative and clichéd emerging blues culture in Athens, or by means of a financial lobotomy, thanking them for curing her of depression?
The last verse in the stanza, offers a clue: “If you speak to my mountains/ my loneliness will hear you.” Here Terzi again is offering collateral. The mountains are prefaced by a proprietorial “my.” The mountains of Greece, unlike everything else, are still owned by Greece, and therefore, Terzi points out, they too can be mortgaged. Moreover, as they are unoccupied, their erstwhile inhabitants having had to migrate to seek a sane and better life elsewhere in the wake of the Greek Crisis, vacant possession can immediately be provided.
This profound and thought-provoking aside however, is lost towards the end of the song, which consists of Terzi repeating that she would give her live for the bankers and again mouthing the mantra that they are all. The song is bone-crushingly heavy. It places itself firmly under the jackboot of European financial benevolence and yet by its end fails to resolve itself. Furthermore, no one likes a victim whining, especially its bully, and predators are known to treat ‘sure things’ with contempt, instead becoming aroused by the pursuit of more lively and possibly inflammatory prey. It is unfortunate but unsurprisingly therefore, that after being granted the statutory one audience, Terzi and Greece, are relegated to the outer darkness. Obviously submission has come too late.
Enter the infernal Entela Fureraj, also known as Eleni Foureira, representing Cyprus in Eurovision with her explosive song “Fuego.” Rather than sook in an obscure language no other European can understand, the elusive Entela, who can slip as seamlessly between cultures, identities and languages as she can slip into impossibly tight-fitting garb, therein to mimic Beyonce and Shakira respectively, energetically and orgiastically gyrates and bounces on stage as she conveys a simple message for the bankers in English, even as her posterior leaves them breathless: “‘Cause I’m way up and I ain’t comin’ down/
Keep taking me higher. /’Cause I’m burning up and I ain’t coolin’ down/ Yeah I got the the fire.” In other words, Cyprus is on the way up because it acknowledges that it can only do so in partnership with the bankers, who are the real ones who are taking her higher. Most importantly, Eleni/ Cyprus is possessed of commercially viable quantities of combustibles. Literally, she has the “fire,” and the possession of this resource, makes Cyprus and Eleni, a greatly to be preferred economic resource.
Unlike Terzi’s the funereal Greek lament, Eleni’s defiance of the bankers is nuanced and sophisticated. It too however has a message encoded within it. At the same time that she is placating the bankers by attributing to them, everything that she needs: “I was looking for some high-high-highs, yeah ‘Til I got a dose of you,” Eleni goes on to evoke a bizarre image: “You got me pelican fly-fly-flyin.'” Bizarre that is, until one realises that traditionally, the pelican was believed to pierce its own breast with its beak and feed its young of its blood. As such, the pelican became a symbol of Christ sacrificing himself for mankind and need one be reminded who it was that threw the money-lenders of the Temple in the first place?
“Cause I’m… Fuego Fuego Ah yeah ah yeah ah yeah, yeah ah yeah ah yeah Fuego,” warns Eleni. Fire also destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. In the books of Hosea and Nahum, God’s anger burns and pours out like fire. In Isaiah, the ability for God to eliminate sin and purify his people, is expressed as fire, and in Thessalonians and the Revelation, God’s future and final judgment is often depicted as fire as well. The decoded message is now clear: A conflagration of Biblical proportions awaits any European or banker who purports to mess with Eleni and Cyprus. Eurovision you have been warned: You play with fire at your peril.
DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com
First published in NKEE on Thursday 10 May 2018

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DEFINITION SHIFT

May 12, 2018, 5:38 am
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Some years ago, I was re-reading Stratis Myrivilis’ classic anti-war novel «Η ζωή εν τάφω,» (Life in the Tomb), a harrowing account of life in the trenches of the Macedonian Front during the First World War, first published in 1924. Suddenly I stopped. In a scene describing how he was billeted with a Slav family, the author describes the woman as a «Μακεδονίτισσα,» that is, a Macedonian woman. In another passage, the author goes on to observe that the Slavs of the region he found himself in, «δὲ θέλουν νά ᾽ναι μήτε Μπουλγκάρ, μήτε Σρρπ, μήτε Γκρρτς. Μονάχα Μακεντὸν ὀρτοντόξ,» that is, “they don't want to be neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian nor Greek. Only Macedonian Orthodox." Tellingly, in later editions, Myrivilis, who came from the island of Lesbos, removed this most contentious sentence, but allowed the reference to the Μακεδονίτισσα to remain.

I was dumfounded. Here was no less a personage than Stratis Myrvilis, three time nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and strident anti-communist, in a novel that established him as a master craftsman of Greek prose, and with the work itself constituting a turning point in the development of Modern Greek prose fiction, describing Slavs as Macedonian, at a time when, according to the vast majority of accounts, the so-called “Macedonian ethnic identity” had neither been invented nor articulated. Furthermore, his subsequently deleted observation seemed to attest to the fact that despite Greek and Bulgarian assertions to the contrary, in some sections of the regional Slavic population at least, there must have, during the First World War, which is the period Myrivilis describes, some sort of conviction that they had a “Macedonian identity,” regardless of whether this was historically plausible. I was deeply disquieted.
 My sense of mystification grew upon discovering in Ion Dragoumis’ influential  book «Μαρτύρων και ηρώων αίμα, (Blood of Martyrs and Heroes) published in 1907, presents a dialogue between a Greek and Bulgarian prisoner in Thessaloniki, in which reference to a «Μακεδονικὴ γλῶσσα» (a Macedonian language) is made. In the dialogue, the Greek protagonist goes on to deny that the language is Bulgarian, stating: «Σεῖς θέλετε νὰκάμετε δικὸ σας τὸ διαμέρισμα τοῦ Μοναστηριοῦ καὶ τὸ Μοναστήρι, ἐπειδὴ βρίσκονται μερικὰ χωριὰ ἐκεῖποὺ μιλοῦν τὴν μακεδονικὴ γλῶσσα, ποὺ τὴ λέτε σεῖς βουλγάρικη». (You want to make the region of Monastiri and Monastiri yours, because there are a few villages there  that speak the Macedonian language, which you call Bulgarian). Astoundingly, Ioan Dragoumis has the Greek prisoner go on to state that: «Τὴ γλῶσσα αὐτὴπρῶτα-πρῶτα δὲν τὴν μιλοῦν ὅλοι, ἀλλὰ μόνο μερικοὶ Μακεδόνες, χωριάτες. Ἔπειτα, ἐκεῖνοι ποὺ τὴσυνηθίζουν, τὴ μιλοῦν μόνο στὸ σπίτι καὶ ὄχι στὴν ἀγορὰ, ὅπου μιλιοῦνται τὰ ἑλληνικὰ, καὶ τέλος ἡ γλῶσσααὐτὴ δὲν εἶναι βουλγάρικη, ἀλλὰ ἕνα ἀνακάτωμα ἀπὸ σλαυικὰ καὶ ἑλληνικἀ. Βουλγαρικὴ γλῶσσα δὲνεἶναι…» (Firstly, this language is not spoken by all but only by some Macedonians, villagers. Further, those who use it, only speak it at home and not in the marketplace, where Greek is used and finally, this language is not Bulgarian, but a mixture of Slavic and Greek. It is not Bulgarian.” In one fell swoop, Ion Dragoumis not only appears to disagree with the Modern Greek contention that the language of FYROM is Bulgarian, but is adamant in showing that it has not relationship with Bulgarian whatsoever.

This is significant because Ion Dragoumis was one of the main instigators of the Macedonian Struggle and it is arguable that if it was not for him, Macedonia would not have been liberated and included within the Modern Greek State at all. Indeed, his book Blood of Martyrs and Heroes which contains the above contentious passages, was written by Dragoumis in order to tacitly argue for the annexation of the region to Greece. What possible reason could this ultra-patriotic nationalist Greek hero have to advance a position which if propounded today, would have him branded a traitor and a communist by even mild-mannered contemporary Greek patriots?

In her children's book about the Macedonian Struggle: Τα μυστικά του βάλτου (Mysteries of the Swamp) (1937) Penelope Delta referred to the slavic idiom as "Μακεδονική διάλεκτο" (the Macedonian Dialect). Elsewhere, she states: «Ἦταν ἕνα κράμα ὅλων τῶν βαλκανικῶν ἐθνικοτήτων τότε ἡ Μακεδονία. Ἕλληνες, Βούλγαροι, Ρουμάνοι, Σέρβοι, Αλβανοί, Χριστιανοὶ καὶ Μουσουλμάνοι, ζοῦσαν φύρδην-μίγδην κάτω ἀπόταὸν βαρύ ζυγὸ τῶν Τούρκων. Ἡ γλῶσσα τους ἦταν ἡ ἴδια, μακεδονίτικη, ἕνα κράμα καὶ αὐτή ἀπὸ σλαβικὰκαὶ ἑλληνικά, ἀνακατωμένα μὲ λέξεις τούρκικες..» (“Macedonia was then a conglomeration of all the Balkan ethnicities. Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanian, Serbs, Albanian, Christians and Muslim lived higgledy piggedly under the heavy Turkish yoke. Their language was the same, Macedonic, a conglomeration of Slavic and Greek, mixed in with Turkish words.”)
Quite apart from the fact that Penelope Delta was Ion Dragoumis’ lover, in possibly one of the most powerful and tragic love-affairs of early Modern Greece, like Dragoumis, Delta was a staunch proponent of the necessity to liberate and annex Macedonia to the Greek state. How is it possible then, that she would advance a position about the language of the region that appears to refute the oft-cited Greek contention that there is no such thing as a Macedonian language and that the concept was invented by Tito in 1944, especially when Delta predates Tito by seven years and Dragoumis, by thirty seven? 
 Furthermore, as  early as 1858, in the newspaper Αυγή, (Dawn) intellectual Alexander Rhangavis made fun of Bulgarian philhellene and accomplished poet in the Greek language Gregor Parlichev, also known as Grigorios Stavridis for writing a poem protesting against the disrespect shown by a visiting Russian, in a Greek church. Rhangavis stated that as Parlichev, who was the winner of the prestigious Academy of Athens poetry prize and was hailed as the “Second Homer” was a “Macedonian” (he was born in Ohrid) he ought to be grateful to the Russians. Parlichev himself identified as Bulgarian. Why would Rhangavis, refer to him as a Macedonian, almost a century before the concept of such an ethnic identity existed?
From the above examples we can see that even among nationalistic Greeks there has been inconsistency in the use of terms to describe the Slavs of the region and/or their language. In Rhangavis’ example, the term Macedonian is used maliciously, he seeking to impugn Parlichev’s attachment to Greece by emphasising his Slavic roots supposedly giving him an affinity to the Russians he so derides. There is no evidence however, that Rhangavis is using the term in an ethnic sense. He is merely being extremely nasty and stupid.
Even in the cases of Dragoumis and Delta, their musings over the “Macedonian language,” should not necessarily be taken as supporting the linguistic aspirations of the modern inhabitants of FYROM.  None of them were linguists. Instead, their observations are deeply political. In the face of Bulgarian claims on the region and the irrefutable fact that a Slavic idiom was spoken there, both Dragoumis and Delta are seeking to differentiate that idiom from Bulgarian as much as possible, by emphasizing its hybrid quality (both claim it is a conglomeration) and its regional quality, which is why Dragoumis describes it as “Macedonian” and Delta as “Macedonic.” None of them recognize a “Macedonian” ethnic identity. Dragoumis’ dialogue in  his book then cleverly goes on to state that language is no determinate of ethnic  identity, having his Greek protagonist state:  «Θέλουν ὅμως ἢ δὲν θέλουν νὰ εἶναι ἕλληνες; Καὶ ἀφοῦ τὸ θέλουν, δὲν ξέρω ἂν ἡ γλῶσσα ποὺ μιλεῖ κανεὶςεἶναι ἀρκετὴ ὰπόδειξη τοῦ ἐθνισμοῦ ἑνὸς λαοῦ.» (“Do they or do they not want to be Greeks? And since they do, I don’t know whether the language one speaks constitutes adequate proof of a people’s ethnic identity.”) In other words, in a period before any “Macedonian identity” was claimed, Dragoumis tried to differentiate a regional language from Bulgarian nationalist aspirations by regionally rebranding it, in a manner what would have been completely out of context today. He then goes on to advance the contention that the Slavs speaking the idiom he terms Macedonian, are lapsed Greeks, which is why linguistic considerations, in his view, are unimportant when assessing ethnic identity.
As for Myrivilis’ observation that persons he came across identified as “Macedonian Orthodox,” does this constitute evidence of the emergence of such an identity, much earlier than is commonly accepted by Greeks? Or does it merely evidence a reaction of a people, caught between competing nationalist claims, not wishing to buy into either, a theory considered by historian Nada Boskovska, in her book “Macedonia (sic) before Tito.” The fact that he caused the observation to be removed in later editions, when the Macedonian issue took a different turn, probably suggests that he too, was merely trying to distance the Slav speakers he came across from the Bulgarians, in order to “gain them from Hellenism,” in a manner which would be unacceptable to the contemporary Greek position on the Macedonian Issue. After all, just because the people Myrivilis describes felt that they were “Macedonian,” doesn’t mean that they actually were.

Ultimately, the terms we use reflect political necessities and context, of the times. Their meanings and connotations shift over time in a manner in which their original coiners have no control and if taken out of their historical frame of reference can give rise to misunderstandings and misconceptions.  Had they lived now, it is most likely that the above mentioned authors would have avoided those contentious terms. Nonetheless, the way they employed them in their own writing testifies to crucial changes in the negotiation of identity, within the geographical region of Macedonia, prior to the emergence of the Macedonian issue in its most modern form.
DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com
First published in NKEE on Saturday 12 May 2018
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THE HOLOCAUST OF THE OLD GODS

May 19, 2018, 5:47 am
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Superficially, at least, Constantine Cavafy’s enigmatic last ever poem, completed just days before his death in 1933, “On the Outskirts of Antioch,” focuses upon an episode in the life of the controversial Emperor Julian the Apostate, who decreed that the Roman Empire discard Christianity as its official religion and return to the old gods instead. In the poem, Cavafy relates how the god Apollo refused to provide any more oracles until the remains of Christian martyrs were removed from the environs of his temple. Thus:
“We in Antioch were astonished when we heard/ what Julian was up to now./ Apollo had made things clear to him at Daphni:/ he didn’t want to give an oracle (as though we cared!),/ he didn’t intend to speak prophetically, unless/ his temple at Daphni was purified first./ The nearby dead, he declared, got on his nerves.”

The most offensive of the dead to the god Apollo, was the martyr Vavylas, and the removal of his remains seemed to have been a matter of some urgency: “There are many tombs at Daphni./ One of those buried there/ was the triumphant and holy martyr Vavylas,/ wonder and glory of our church./ It was him the false god hinted at, him, he feared./ As long as he felt him near he didn’t dare/ pronounce his oracle: not a murmur./ The false gods are terrified of our martyrs.)
Unholy Julian got worked up,/ lost his temper and shouted: “Raise him, carry him out,/ take him away immediately, this Vavylas./ You there, do you hear? He gets on Apollo’s nerves./ Grab him, raise him at once,/ dig him out, take him away, throw him out,/ take him/ wherever you want. This isn’t a joke./ Apollo said the temple has to be cleansed.”

In accordance with Julian’s wishes, the faithful gather to remove the bones of the saint: “We took it, the holy relic, and carried it elsewhere./ We took it, we carried it away in love and in honour.” This having been done, retribution, whether by divine, or other means, is not long in coming: “And hasn’t the temple done brilliantly since!/ In no time at all a colossal fire/ broke out, a terrible fire,/ and both the temple and Apollo burned to nothing./ Ashes the idol: dirt to be swept away. Julian exploded, and he spread it around/—what else could he do?—that we, the Christians,/ had set the fire. Let him say so./ It hasn’t been proved. Let him say so./ The essential thing is—he exploded.”
As with all his works, Cavafy’s poem is imbued with a multiplicity of meanings. Ostensibly referring to the triumph of Christianity over paganism, a close reading of the text reveals that the poem acts also, as a coded metaphor for the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the annihilation of the Greek presence in that region, in 1922.
According to this reading, given that Apollo is the god of civilisation, it is the Allied Powers, through the League of Nations that order Eleutherios Venizelos, (equally as revisionist and apostatic in the eyes of half of the Greek population at the time, as Julian himself), to remove the remains of the martyred Greeks of Asia Minor (personified by the remains of Vavylas), somewhere else, so that the problem of the co-existence of Christians and Muslims, Turks and Greeks within Asia Minor, cease to vex the International Community and “get on their nerves.” They threaten to withhold their aid, (“the oracle”) until this is done. In particular, the verse describing the translation of the relics of Vavylas are eerily reminiscent of harrowing accounts of the long processions of Asia Minor refugees, fleeing their villages, carrying their church labara, relics and the bones of their ancestors before them, to a new land.
The irreverent Cavafy has “false gods” tremble before such martyrs. Here, he is quite possibly parodying what he perceived to be Eleutherios Venizelos’ blind trust and belief in the absolute benevolence of the Allies, even as they betray him. Without question, he agrees to their demands, lest he incur the ire of his gods, for after all, in an expression that is a disquieting precursor for ethnic cleansing, “the temple has to be cleansed,” and no alternative course of action is to be considered. As such, he becomes the unwitting tool for the destruction of Hellenism in the East. We know from the writings of his friends, that Cavafy had mild monarchist leanings and thought poorly of Venizelos and his politics, for his conception of Hellenism transcended the bounds of the nation-state.
Having left Asia Minor/ the temple, a great conflagration breaks out which renders everything before it to ashes. Is this a not-so veiled reference to the great Holocaust of Smyrna, where the warships of the World Powers remained anchored in the harbour, watching the city being burnt and its inhabitants massacred without intervening? When Cavafy relates that Apollo is burnt to nothing, is he implying that in the aftermath of one of the greatest ever humanitarian disasters, caused in no small part by the cynicism and vested interests of the powers underwriting the League of Nations, that our faith in those International Institutions that supposedly bring about justice are now ashes? He is certainly prescient, given that the League of Nations went on to perish in an even large conflagration, that of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Furthermore, given the destruction of Smyrna, is it one of the most powerful driving forces of Modern Greek foreign policy, the “Megali Idea,” that is the idol that is consumed to dust in Apollo’s conflagration? 
Certainly, the final verse, supports the view that in the arson of the god Apollo’s temple, Smyrna’s destruction is being referenced. When he states: “he spread it around—
what else could he do?—that we, the Christians, had set the fire,” Cavafy seems to conflate Julian/ Venizelos with Venizelos’ partner in achieving the population exchange in Asia Minor: Kemal Atatürk, who famously blamed the burning of Smyrna on the Christian Greeks and Armenians. Similarly, Eleutherios Venizelos blamed the mismanagement of the war which saw the Greek presence in Asia Minor go up in flames upon the royalists. If it is Atatürk that Cavafy is inferring, then his last line, in which he is said to have “exploded,” (the Greek is έσκασε and here means to be upset) is doubly ironic, for the condition of exploding/being upset (σκασίλα), translates in the colloquial as not caring in the slightest.

Considering that Cavafy was an inhabitant of Alexandria, one of the greatest Hellenistic cities, that his historical poems generally are set during Hellenistic and/or Byzantine times, when the lands ruled by Greeks reached their greatest geographical extent and that he was attracted to characters and themes existing upon the margins of Hellenism and which expressed its decline in multi-faceted forms, it is ironic but not unexpected, that in the last poem of his life, he chose to deal with the final act of the most marked contraction and reversal of the geographical spread of Hellenism, the Holocaust of Smyrna. His paralleling of Antioch with Smyrna is inspired because in many ways Antioch is its counterpart: historically a vibrant and important centre of Greek civilisation that was repeatedly and violently sacked, burnt and fell into decay, until it was written out of the Greek discourse altogether. 
Despite his lament and deeply emotive evocation of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, embedded within Cavafy’s poem are the seeds of survival, the prophetic keys to the regeneration of Hellenism, unconstrained by borders and narrow ideologies: “We took it, the holy relic, and carried it elsewhere./ We took it, we carried it away in love and in honour.” And we did take it, that holy relic, far from the blasted lands of conflict and genocide, into continents Cavafy‘s heroes never imagined existed. We retained it, and founded colonies of such hellenisticity as to rival Cavafy’s own poetic geography. And though we declined in the same bittersweet and disarmingly innocent manner in which Cavafy’s described our forefathers’ fate, we keep it still, and will continue to do so, preserving the ashes and the memory of those who burned to keep it for us, until the time comes for that imperishable holy relic, in love and honour, to be carried away, somewhere else.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 19 May 2018
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THE BATTLE FOR ARAB CRETE

May 26, 2018, 5:49 am
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For the approximately one hundred and thirty five years, Crete, an island that is in the Greek popular consciousness, inextricably linked to the foundations of civilization and Greece itself, was one of the major foes of Byzantium. Commanding the sea lanes of the Eastern Mediterranean and functioning as a forward base and haven for pirate fleets that ravaged the Byzantine-controlled shores of the Aegean Sea, Crete was able to achieve considerable prosperity, not just through naval plundering but also, through more mainstream agriculture and trade. Moreover, its rulers did not speak Greek. Instead, for just over a century and a quarter, in the ninth century AD, the island of Crete was Arab speaking and formed an integral part of the Islamic world.

Though parts of Crete were temporarily occupied during the reign of the Caliph al-Walid I in approximately 710AD, it was, according to Arab legends, a revolt against Emir al Hakam I of Córdoba in Islamic Spain that caused a mass exodus of rebels to Alexandria in 818. Numbering over 10,000, they took over that city and held it until 827. Expelled in that year, according to Muslim sources, they landed, most probably on the north of the island, in 828, during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Michael. In time, they would come to found a city and main fortress near their landing place, to which they gave the name Chandax, from the Arabic “rabḍ al-kḫandaq,” meaning Castle of the Moat, a name that persisted until modern times, when the city was renamed Heracleion.

The leader of the Arabs, Abu Hafs, known in Byzantine sources as Απόχαψις, set about defeating a number of Byzantine attempts to reconquer Crete, commencing with an expedition under Photeinos, strategos of the Anatolic Theme, and Damianos, Count of the Stable, in which Damianos was killed. A year later, a Byzantine armada of seventy ships under the strategos of the Cibyrrhaeots, Krateros successfully landed on the island, but was then routed in an Arab night attack. Krateros managed to flee to Kos, but there he was captured by the Arabs and crucified.
Byzantine efforts to reconquer Crete were hampered by the Arab invasion of Sicily, where the Aghlabid Arabs set about establishing a polyethnic, sophisticated, multicultural and religiously tolerant regime in which the Sicilian Greeks played a key role, and the revolt of Thomas the Slav, which took place in Asia Minor. Unlike their counterparts in Sicily, the Cretan Arabs seem to have treated the land they conquered, at least in the early years as merely a base from which to conduct piratical expeditions, though this was to change. Consequently, the Arab conquest transformed the naval balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and opened the hitherto secure Aegean Sea littoral to frequent raids. 
The Cretan Arabs thus were able to occupy several of the Cyclades islands, destroyed a Byzantine fleet off Thasos, raiding and pillaging Euboea, Lesbos, north western Asia Minor, the Peloponnese and Mount Athos. So devastating were the Cretan raids upon the Byzantine Empire that in 829, the Emperor Theophilos was compelled to send an embassy to Arab Emir Abd ar-Rahman II of Córdoba proposing a joint action against the erstwhile Andalusian rebel Cretans, though this proved fruitless. In an early exercise of global warfare and proving just how extensive the Arab world had become at this time, in 853, the Byzantines attacked the Egyptian naval base of Damietta, capturing weapons intended for Crete.
During the early 870s, the Cretan raids against the Byzantine intensified, aided as they were, by Byzantine renegades who adopted Islam. One such raid in 873 under the renegade Photios penetrated into the Marmara Sea and unsuccessfully attacked Proconnesos, near Constantinople. Though many of these raids were repulsed, the Cretan Arabs returned again and again, often reinforced by the Arab North African and Syrian fleets. As a result, the islands of Patmos, Karpathos and Sokastro came under Arab Cretan control, with Cretan Arab rule extending as far north as Aegina in the Saronic Gulf, and to Elafonisos and Cythera off the southern coast of the Peloponnese, while Naxos, Paros and Ios, was forced to pay the poll-tax or jizya, prescribed as payable by subject Christians to Muslim rulers. The impact of this wave of Arab raids from Crete, caused some Aegean islands to be deserted altogether, and many other coastal sites were abandoned for inland locations. It also appears that Athens may have been occupied between 896–902, by Cretan Arabs while in 904, Cretan Arabs took part in a Syrian expedition that sacked Thessalonica, the Byzantine Empire’s second most important city. 

While the Arabs of Crete ravaged the Byzantine Empire, we know little of prevailing social conditions on the island itself. Apart from a few place names recalling the presence of Arabs, there is little in terms of surviving archaeological evidence attesting to their long rule. Byzantine sources, unsurprisingly, given the amount of devastation caused by the Cretan Arabs, are extremely negative and this has traditionally influenced western scholars’ attitudes towards Arab rule in Crete.

From contemporary Muslim chroniclers, however, we can glean references of Arab Crete as being an orderly state with a balanced economy and enjoying extensive trading ties in the region, especially with Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world. Finds of gold, silver and copper coins of standardized weight attest to state regulated commerce, while it is believed that the Arab capital, Chandax, was a significant Islamic cultural centre. It is also considered that Arab rule saw an agricultural boom in Crete, with sugar cane first being introduced to the island during this time.

The fate of the Christian population of Crete during Arab rule is also a matter of debate. In the past, it was believed that the Cretans were either expelled, killed or converted to Islam in droves, a process that was repeated again during the Ottoman conquest. Careful analysis of the sources however, suggests that while large numbers of Cretans did convert to Islam especially in cities and along with the original invaders and other muslim migrants formed the majority of the population, Christians remained as a subject class, most particularly in the countryside. Theodosius the Deacon, for example, records that rural Christian Cretans, “inhabitants of crags and caves,” a metaphor that is reminiscent of Rhigas Pheraios’ “Thourion," almost a millennium later, descended from the mountains under their leader Karamountes during the siege of Chandax by Nikephoros Phokas to assist the besieged Muslim Arabs, against the Byzantines, their co-religionists. Further, in a surviving letter sent by the Patriarch Nikolaos Mystikos of Constnatinople to the Emir of Crete about the release of Byzantine prisoners the patriarch calls the emir an honourable man and praises his administration . He also adds that the Cretans and Romans (and it is noteworthy that the patriarchs considers the Cretans to be Arabs) could live side by side even though they have many religious differences. 
Eventually, successive Byzantine Emperors began a converted effort to rid the Empire of the Cretan menace for good. In 960, Emperor, Romanos II entrusted his general Nikephoros Phokas with a vast armada. In or July 960, Phokas landed on the island, and defeated the initial Muslim resistance. A long siege of Chandax followed, which endured until 6 March 961, when the Byzantines stormed the city. According to chroniclers, the Byzantines pillaged Chandax, and tore down its mosques and city walls. A massacre of its Muslim inhabitants took place, with many killed and others carted off to slavery, while Crete’s last Emir, Abd al-Aziz ibn Shu'ayb , known in the Byzantine sources as Kouroupas, and his son al-Numan, known as Anemas were taken captive and brought to Constantinople, where Phokas celebrated a triumph. Crete was converted into a Byzantine theme, and the remaining Muslims were converted to Christianity by such missionaries as St Nikon Metanoeite (meaning "Repent"), so called because his zeal in converting the population to Christianity. Among the Muslim converts was prince Anemas himself. He joined the Byznatine army and died at Dorystolon in 970, fighting against the Rus.

Capitalising upon his experience as the re-conqueror of Crete, Phokas went on to re-conquer Cilicia in Southern Asia Minor and Cyprus from the Arabs. His fame was so great, that he was able to utilise it in order to make an imperial marriage and propel himself to the Byzantine throne. Crete, on the other hand, thoroughly cleansed of one hundred and thirty five years of Islamic Arab rule, to the extent that little lasting legacy or memory remained of it, abided in Byzantine hands until 1204, when it was occupied by the Venetians. Today, all that remains to bear witness of the time when the Cretans were Arabs and the Arabs, Cretans, is a few scattered placenames: Sarkenos, Souda, Aposelemis (Abu Salim) and Choumeri. This is a battle for Crete that to all intents and purposes, has been  forgotten.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 26 May 2018
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ΚΕΦΙ

June 2, 2018, 5:54 am
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“Do you know why we Greeks are so successful?” the bright eyed, animated lady with the most luminous teeth asked me as she adjusted her necklace upon which was strung a Santorini-blue, evil eye.

“We are?” I enquired.

Side-stepping the question, she continued. “Because we have something else no one else has. And do you know what that is?”

“A language of such dexterity that is able to reduce the words Notis Sfakianakis to a short and easily compactable ‘Sfax’?” I responded.

“Kefi,” she answered, jingling her bracelet covered arms. “Kefi. An attitude to life that lets us surmount all challenges. The Greek succeeds where others fail because he has kefi. No one can stop him. You can see that when we dance. Take a Greek wedding for example. It’s all about the dancing, whereas with Italians it’s all about the food.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I reflected. “At all the Greek dances I’ve been to lately, the MC had to plead with the attendees, who were mostly in their eighties, to get onto the dance floor. They seemed to be more interested in complaining about the price of the ticket.”
My interlocutor raised her perfectly delineated, fleshy Kardiashian ™ eyebrow. “Very funny. No, Kefi is a whole life philosophy. Did you know that kefi is so unique to Greece that there is no word for it in any other language? That tells you something.” She struck her marble kitchen counter triumphantly, with the flourish of a barrister concluding a particularly difficult case.
“I don’t think that is correct,” I ventured. “For starters..”
“No, one hundred percent. This guy from Greece said it on youtube. I’ll try to find the url,” she fiddled with her telephone. “Filotimo and kefi, two Greek words with no equivalents in any language.”

“But kefi is not a Greek word.” I persisted. “It has been adopted from the Turkish keyif ‎(“merriment”‎), which in turn is borrowed from the Arabic kayf. It also exists in Aramaic as keip. So in actual fact, this is a Middle Eastern concept, imported, or adopted by Greeks.”
A long silence ensued. At first my interlocutor was shocked, something could be discerned from the manner in which her lips pursed and unpursed like a fish gulping when exposed to air. Then she scrambled for her mobile phone and after her incredibly long, ring bedecked fingers caressed it a number of times, she looked up and signed in resignation. “But kefi…” Then her lustrous eyebrows met together in a frown and she asserted. “This is garbage. They must have stolen that concept from Alexander the Great’s army when he conquered them.”
“But why are you so adamant we are possessed of kefi?” I asked. “Take your people, the Epirots. If we consider, as the ancient geographer Strabo did, that Epirus was the ancestral home of the Greeks, then it follows logically that they should be abounding in kefi and that consequently, Epirot folk songs should be oozing with joie de vivre. Shall we consider some of those songs?”

“Ummm,” she murmured reluctantly.

“Exhibit A,” I continued, “an old and popular favourite, with which many an Epirotic dance commences: «Δεν μπορώ μανούλα ‘μ, δεν μπορώ, άι σύρε να φέρεις το γιατρό.» Is this a song about a person so full of kefi that he has to invade the dance floor, thereupon to bust his manifold Epirotic moves in a spirit of mirth or goodwill? No, simply, this is the lament of a person who has been rendered thoroughly ill by means of a psychosomatic malady relating to his compluslive/obsessive love of an unnamed individual, who now requires urgent hospitalisation.
“Exhibit B,” I droned on inexorably. “A love song: «Δεν στο ‘πα χαλασιά μου, στον μύλο να μην πας. Μη σε πατήσει η ρόδα, και γίνω εγώ φονιάς.» Which aspect of kefi would you say that this song particularly rejoices in? Here we have a song in which a would be lover, fulfills Occupational Health and Safety requirements by warning the object of his affection of a particular hazard within the workplace, in this instance, a questionable mill stone. He goes on further, to comply with disclosure requirements in order to confirm that the only reason why he is providing such a warning is so that he does not end up accused of industrial manslaughter. The last verse of the song is also revealing: «Μωρή κακιά κοπέλα, πού πας για λάχανα. Καρτέρα μωρή και μένα, να σου πω τα βάσανα.» So replete then with kefi is this song, that not only is the girl it is addressed to considered as bad, it is nothing more than an injunction for her to remain in situ, while her admirer unloads his psychological baggage upon her and has a good whinge. Sounds like vast quantities of allegria, the Italian word for kefi, were had by all.”
“Yes but in the context of a glendi….” the kefi proponent protested.
“Exhibit C,” I persisted. “Also much loved among Epirots: «Έπεσε από το φράχτη, κύρα Γιώργαινα, ο Γιωργάκης σου,» or if you prefer, this: «Λενίτσα μου, τον άντρα σου, πάνε να τον κρεμάσουν.» Among songs about people falling from fences, or being taken away to be hanged, I supposed the only kefi that could possibly arise, would do so when the song actually stops and the person’s misfortune ceases to be rubbed in their face. If the Epirots, as archetypal Greeks partake of the kefi tradition, then why do all of their celebrations traditionally begin with a funeral dirge?”

“No that is not what I mean,” Mrs Kefi asserted herself. “I’m talking about that devil may care, who worries about what happens tomorrow, let’s have fun, spend all our money on a good time and «έχει ο Θεός» attitude we have. Going to the bouzoukia, blowing our cash on a bottle of whisky and καλή παρέα.»

“Are you sure that this more Black Eyed Peas, than Greek?” I countered. “Aren’t attitudes encapsulated in such lyrics as “Tonight's the night, let's live it up/ I got my money, let's spend it up/ Go out and smash it like oh my God,” more relevant to a certain western sub-set of socio-economic wage earners than our own people? After all, I seem to remember that the price of dance tickets and the cost of potatoes, meat and other comestibles served therein appear to be of prime concern at the Annual General Meetings of sundry Greek brotherhoods about town. And back in the homeland, the cost of vegetables and the immanence of tax concessions are perennially a feature of prime time new bulletins. Furthermore, I seem to harbour memories of being subjected to repeated interrogations by friends from Greece as to the cost of living in Australia, including but not limited to the cost of bread, milk, petrol and clothing, the basic wage, the tax brackets and the banking regime, even as we were out at the so-called bouzoukia, my answers being received with a stock «εμείς στην Ελλάδα γλεντάμε,» only to have them ask for a loan the next day.”

“Stop twisting my words,” the apostle of Kefi enjoined angrily. “Just because you were obviously born without a funny bone doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a good time, Mr Killjoy. Sheesh. Obviously it is you who aren’t Greek, otherwise you would understand what I’m talking about. Xeftila.”

Some months after this exchange took place, I found myself attending a Greco-Lebanese wedding. Seated providentially to my right was, my kefi-advocating friend. I watched her intently, her face frozen in horror as the newly-wed couple entered the reception, thronged by ululating and dancing relatives obscuring the photographer. I watched her cluck her tongue in disapprobation as the MC vainly implored the Lebanese guests, too intent on dancing and having a good time, to sit down, in order to allow the speeches to take place. Upon the advent of the moustachioed genius Tony Hanna’s classic “Yaba yaba lah,” my Greek-Australian composure deserted me and surrendering to kayf, I threw myself into the dance, ululating with the best of them. As I did so, I noticed that all the Greeks in the room were still seated at their tables, glaring at the dancers contemptuously. Eventually, when the musical mood switched from Lebanese to Greek, I observed that of the Greek guests, only a very small proportion were going through the motions of a stately and rather lacklustre kalamatiano. They did so defiantly, as if staking an important cultural claim upon the floor, in a somnolent manner, utterly devoid of joy. 

Leaving any sort of void in the dance floor among the Lebanese is perilous, for kayf abhors a vacuum. Instantaneously, the floor was flooded with ululating dancers, first attempting the intricate steps of the kalamatiano and then, finding them of little interest, discarding them for infinitely more lively steps of their own, the sound of the ubiquitous dawla dictating the beat.
Exhausted and covered in sweat, I found my way back to my table, only to see a distressed Mrs Kefi in the process of being forcibly removed from her seat and dragged towards the dance floor by some exuberant Lebanese beauties. She looked at me pleadingly, one perfect eyebrow raised in a mute cry for help, finger marks of enthusiasm leavning their marks obtrusively upon her fake tan. “Surrender yourself to the kayf,” I advised gravely. “Aiwa habibti, shushla!”

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 2 June 2018
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MACEDONIA MALIGN

June 9, 2018, 12:53 am
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When the Macedonian Issue caused an anti-semitic pogrom.


Though the omens were there for those who could read them, it was an article in what is now the oldest newspaper of Northern Greece, “Macedonia,” that provided the spark for the general conflagration that followed. Its editor, the Venizelist politician Petros Levantis and editor in chief, Nikos Fardis, alleged that one year prior, in 1930, Maccabi Salonica, a multi-sport athletic club for the Jewish community of that city, had taken part in an event in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, in which Maccabi’s Bulgarian Jewish counterpart, had supported Bulgarian irredentist claims to Macedonia.

On 23 June 1931, in an editorial entitled: “We will settle our accounts,” (the original Greek uses the phrase «Θα εκκαθαρίσωμεν τους λογαριασμούς,» Fardis warned darkly: 
“We Greeks may be tolerant, but we aren’t stupid. We may forgive various transgressions, but we will not leave unchecked, those who seek to undermine the sovereignty of the State. We have decided to settle our accounts with the bad Israelites, who misunderstand us. We hope that the latter are few. But even if they are more, the reckoning is inevitable.”

In the early thirties, northern Greece was divided as never before. Cut off from their traditional trading links to the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan hinterland, the Jews of Salonica, who formerly comprised the majority of the population and dominated the city’s trade, and generally had not supported the Greek liberation of the city, found themselves the target of hatred by significant groups of refugees from Asia Minor, desperate to settle in the city, and gain access to the city’s limited resources and economic opportunities. On the whole, the Jewish community, like other minority groups such as the Slav-speakers of the area, gravitated to the royalist parties, which offered them concessions and were almost hysterical in their denigration of the refugees, who were, at this early stage, staunch supporters of the politics of Eleutherios Venizelos.

Venizelos was a liberal, the royalists extra-ordinary reactionary, but in the game of ethnic politics, it was expedient for the royalists to seek support in the newly liberated areas of Greece, from those who felt threatened by the mass influx of refugees from Asia Minor. Conversely, though Venizelos’ social policies were, for the time, extraordinarily progressive, his deputies in Macedonia, cemented the loyalty of their customary voting base among the refugees, by cynically tapping into traditional reserves of anti-semitism that subsisted within noteworthy sections of the social fabric of the Greek polity.

Although on 23 June 1931, the Jewish member of parliament Mendes Bensanzi, demanded in Parliament, that minister of the Interior Kostas Lidorikis officially refute the allegations against Maccabi Salonica, he refused to do so. It was facile then, for “Macedonia’s” editors to whip up hysteria, in the cause of “saving” Macedonia from its perceived fifth columnist enemies. As “Macedonia” reported on 25 June 1931, the proto-fascist group EEE, (National Union of Greece), founded in 1927 by anti-communist and anti-semitic Asia Minor refugees, and headed by former prime-minister Stylianos Gonatas, who was at that time, Governor General of Macedonia, and the Salonica branch of the National Union of Students, “decided to punish their criminal fellow citizens” attacked the offices of Maccabi Salonica, injuring a number of its personnel and randomly harassing Salonican Jews in the city.

Deputy Mendes Bensanzi made an impassioned speech in Parliament on the same day, stating that for the past two days, the Jews of Salonica were living under a “reign of terror,” unprotected by the authorities. It was only then that Prime Minister Venizelos, made some broad remarks condemning anti-semitism in General, as did royalist leader of the opposition Tsaldaris , with Venizelos refuting “Macedonia’s” allegation that Maccabi Salonica actively participated in any anti-Greek event in Sofia.

The newspaper “Macedonia,” proceeded to pour further oil on the fire of ethnic tension by misrepresenting Jewish attempts to defend themselves and their property as follows, in an article of 29 June 1931:“Organising themselves into battalions of thugs, yesterday they gave the signal for a general attack against the Greek citizens of Salonica.”

These lines served, perversely as a general signal for an all-out attack, especially against poorer Jews who had been forced to move out of their traditional neighbourhoods in the centre of the city after the Great Fire of 1917, and had been relocated to peripheral districts, where they competed for land and jobs with resettled refugees. Thus, EEE and its followers, arrived at the Jewish district of Camp Campbell, in modern day Kalamaria, where they methodically set fire to twenty homes, the local Jewish school and pharmacy, leaving two dead, a number injured and rendering 150 out of the 220 Jews living in the district, homeless.

As the situation began to spiral out of control, with EEE rampaging through the streets and terrorizing Salonica’s Jewish population and those Geeks brave enough to raise their voices in protest against the pogrom, the editor of “Macedonia,” began to be concerned about the newspaper’s own legal liability in inciting the pogrom. Accordingly, on 30 June 1931, the editorial opined in a manner clearly still laying blame of the incident at the feet of the Jewish community: “It is imperative that we rise above the passions that have been created and assist in calming things down. But by God, let this provocation cease.”

In the aftermath of the pogrom, Agrarian Party deputy for Salonica Ioannis Mihail labelled EEE a “gang” and demanded in parliament that it be disbanded. However, the Governor General of Macedonia, Stylianos Gonatas, rose to its defence, as did the Pontian minister for welfare, Leonidas Iasonides. EEE was as a result, not disbanded as a result of the pogrom and those of its members that were brought to trial for their involvement in it, were acquitted by a court in 1932 and afforded a triumphal entry into Salonica. In 1933, 3,000 of its members staged a march to Athens, in apparent imitation of Benito Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome. After failed attempts to enter Greek politics as a party, the organisation was suppressed by the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in 1936. It was revived however, by the Nazi occupation authorities in 1942. Consequently, many members of EEE became prominent collaborators of the Nazis, and many more joined the infamous Security Battalions and helped in the identification of Greek Jews, who were then deported to the death camps. The creation of the Security Battalions, was the mastermind of Stylianos Gonatas.

By October 1931, the Greek parliament had voted to grant compensation payouts to the victim of the pogrom. It also purchased the district of Camp Campbell from the Jewish community of Salonica, relocating its inhabitants elsewhere in the city. Nonetheless, despite contemporary rhetoric, which obscures the depth of anti-Semitic prejudice in the city, in favour of highlighting only, those instances where Greeks admirably made efforts to save their Jewish compatriots from the Nazis, sectarian tension remained, with the loyalty of Jews constantly being called into question by sections of the press. 

The Macedonian Issue, in all of its protean and ever changing forms has ever served as a lightning rod for the exposition and exacerbation of other, deeper fault lines running within Greek society. The Jewish pogrom of 1931, was one of the first of these, but judging by current events, is definitely not the last.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 9 June 2018

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THE MAGIC OF PILLOWS

June 16, 2018, 1:01 am
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Why a recent play staged by young Greek-Australians in Melbourne, is historically significant.




The illustration accompanying this text has been supplied by my five year old daughter, two days after she was privileged to attend the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria Creative Drama and Arts Group's recent staging of their production of renowned Greek children’s writer Eugenios Trivizas’ story, “The Magic Pillows,” (Τα Μαγικά Μαξιλάρια.)

The rather ferocious crown bearing figure that dominates the picture is the egotistical and thoroughly oppressive king of Ouranoupolis, the aptly named Arpatilaos, since he is wont to arbitrarily seize his subject’s goods, upon a whim, hence the precarious speech bubble that purports to say: «Το θέλω,» one of Arpatilaos’ usual catchphrases. To his left, is the rather oily, obsequious and thoroughly unpleasant archmage of the palace, Saurilios Vriselie, the inventor of a particularly horrific method of ensuring suppression of social and political discontent within the kingdom. According to him, the reason why the subjects of Ouranoupolis poke fun at their king, thus contravening the relevant legislation which provides that they should worship him, is because they are able to dream of a better world, and in their waking hours, compare and contrast it to the drab and repressive regime of Arpatilaos. The cynical Saurilios sets out to deprive the kingdom’s subjects of their dreams and thus, their last vestige of hope and freedom, by making them sleep upon magic pillows, which send them nightly nightmares, tormenting them and turning them into compliant, law abiding drones, too frightened and exhausted to resist the ever increasing oppression visited upon them. Thus, a small child languishes in Arpatilaos' clutches, a victim of his totalitarian bent. By virtue of the fact that he is so infernally evil, my daughter has also exercised artistic license and depicted Saurilios with a devil's tail.

Towards the right of the picture, Arpatilaos is about to obtain his just desserts as the nightmares he has inflicted upon his subjects, emerge from the pillows that once contained them and are turned against him, annihilating him and his cronies.


The GOCMV Creative Drama and Arts Group’s recent translation of “The Magic Pillows,” onto the stage, is an event of historical significance for our community.
The actors that so vividly brought the complex story to life were all young members of the second and third generation of Greek-Australians, the ones who supposedly, shouldn’t have to learn Greek, let alone be fluent in it enough to be able to use it as a medium for acting, because it is just too hard to master.

Admittedly, the pronunciation of these second and third generation of Greek-Australian actors was not always of an Athenian standard, their Greek often heavily inflected with an Australian accent, yet at a time when watching terrorised, barely prepared children clutching pieces of paper almost to their nose and then stumbling incomprehensibly over the Greek text contained therein at poorly organized Greek school presentations around Melbourne, as their bored and uninspired teachers blandly look on, not even prompting, has become a commonplace, these remarkable children managed to learn and deliver all of their lines not only faithfully, but with feeling and a true acting flair, the glints in the eyes of the populous cast betraying their absolute delight in their performance. On the stage, anything is possible, even the speaking of modern Greek.

For it is evident that their thespian training, provided by talented and dedicated drama teacher Katerina Poutachidou, has granted these acting students added self-confidence and a true appreciation for the translation of the Greek written word into performance art. To witness an imperious young Miss Koukouvitakis, in her role as King Arpatilaos, strut upon the stage as if she is entitled to it, assume fearsome poses but at the same, through artfully contrived expressions and gestures, subvert her own narrative, in order to subtly convey to the audience how farcical a figure the character she is portraying actually is, is a truly breath-taking experience. To observe in wonder as the rest of the young cast feed off her energy in order to expertly lend extra cheekiness to the narrative, through carefully choreographed and brilliantly executed movements, all the while exposing to us just how much they have grown and matured in participating in this singular experience, is simply awe-inspiring and profoundly moving.

Even more astounding is the fact that this production evidences the fact that within the GOCMV’s schools, an artistic renaissance is, humbly and surreptitiously, taking place before our very eyes, when all indications should suggest that our community should be traversing an artistic, cultural and linguistic decline. In having committed local students and gifted Greek teachers combine to create magic on stage, the GOCMV is providing a blue print for the future of Greek language studies, one in which the Greek language is not only taught, but is made relevant and rendered an object of delight and artistic communication for those learning it. In this remarkable way, it actually indicates one of many sure pathways, that ensure our linguistic and cultural survival as a Greek entity within the broader Australian multicultural fabric. After all, it is through shared experiences of this nature that we not only build language proficiency, but also, through working together, community as well. Our community has largely up until now, ignored the power of drama in pedagogy, to its peril.

The mark of a well-executed play is in whether it serves to move the audience sufficiently to make it ponder the deeper issues that it seeks to address. Travelling home at the conclusion of “The Magic Pillows,” and each day since, my five year old daughter has been plying me continuously with such questions as:

“Why was King Arpatilaos evil? Why did he have a different crown for each month? Why did he abolish Sunday and call it “Pre-Monday?” Why did he want to take everyone’s things for himself? Why was he spying on his subjects with a telescope? Who made him that way? Why did Saurilios Vriselie want to send the children nightmares? Why did the nightmares agree to scare the children? Why wasn’t Saurilios punished by the people? Where did the nightmares go after they finished off Arpatilaos?”

All of her queries, ethical dilemmas deriving out of a masterwork, that eerily find their parallels in the modern world, are centered around the nature of power and its exercise, suggesting just how powerful and transformative great works of literature can be for children. Even her two year old sister, who also watched the play with her, turned to me and asked: «Βασιλιάς, θα σε φάω, μπαμπούλας, γιατί;» which is, I suppose, as close a discourse as to the exercise of arbitrary power by the ruling classes, as an infant can articulate.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the GOCMV, its teachers and its associates for exposing our children to such magic and inculcating within them, a palpable and practicable love for the Greek language and its literary tradition. We owe them our thanks for positioning drama on the forefront of Greek language education, where, in the context of a multi-faceted approach to our offspring’s Greek pedagogy, it most certainly belongs. We owe them appreciation for showing us that we do not have to accept language decline as a given and suggesting to us, enjoyable ways in which we can arrest decline. Most importantly, it is incumbent upon all of us to get involved and to support the amazing cultural commitments of the GOCMV and its equally amazing children, who exhaust superlatives, in any way possible.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First pubished in NKEE on Saturday 16 June 2018

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MACEDONIAN MALADROITNESS

June 16, 2018, 1:04 am
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In the nineties, which is the time that most Greek-Melburnians became aware of the “Macedonian” issue, the natural inclination of the community, was to express its solidarity with the Greek people by means of a rally. The first rally was met with such enthusiasm and mass participation, that soon after, we held another, equally blessed with a cast of thousands. All of us who attended were convinced our communal endeavour could move mountains.

The legacy of the rally was such that in 2007, when it was felt that the issue had reached a particularly critical stage, it was considered axiomatic that the community would, once more, express its concerns and solidarity with the Greek government and people, by taking to the streets, in another rally.

I was in the organising committee of the 2007 rally. I remember that a representative of the Greek state at the time flew down to meet with us, and told us in no uncertain terms that he could not openly direct us to stage the rally or endorse it. However, he continued, if we were to stage a rally, it would have to be according to parameters that he then proceeded to set out in detail, including but not limited to the slogans that were acceptable to the government of the time. When I sought a clarification as to the nature of the slogans, the gentleman snapped: “I never told you anything. Don’t you dare put words in my mouth.”

A few years later, I attended a meeting of the Australian Hellenic Council, where a representative of the Greek government, in consideration of the Greeks of Melbourne undertaking NOT to hold a rally on the Macedonian issue, offered to bring the Parthenon Marbles held by the Louvre, to Australia. My question to her, as to what powers she had to do so, given that this was a matter relating to the bilateral relations between Australia, France and their respective museums and had nothing to do with Greece was met with a stony glare, and silence. Nonetheless, the proposed rally never took place and the Parisian Parthenon marbles, remained in place.

This year, when as if out of nowhere, the Greek government indicated that the “Macedonian” issue had yet again reached a turning point, conditioned by our pre-history, we took to the streets again twice: the first time in a rally that was not endorsed by the organisations that by popular consensus traditionally “managed” the issue on behalf of the community, and the second time, in an “endorsed” version, both of which were poorly attended, in comparison with the previous mega-rallies and rather than express solidarity with the Greek government, significantly, openly protested against its perceived positions. This rally was held in support of the other massive rallies held in various cities of Greece, which, members of the Athens government stated at the time, would not influence their negotiations with their Skopjan counterparts one iota.

A week prior to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announcing an “agreement” on the “Macedonian” issue, the Greek people organised rallies in various cities, again calling upon their government not to make undue concessions in the naming dispute. In the aftermath of the Greek PMs announcement, one that has left a large section of the Greek people around the world reeling with anger and disbelief, the call has come again: Let us take to the streets and stage a rally. That will show those miscreants a thing or two.

The “agreement” which Alexis Tsipras termed, a “great victory” and a “singular opportunity” is fraught with ambiguities and gives cause for concern. It basically overturns decades of Greek government policy and rendering its previously held arguments about the ethnicity and language of the Slavic peoples of the region, bankrupt. According to the Prime Minister, Greece will recognise their language as “Macedonian,” provided that a qualifier is added to show the Slavonic provenance of that language. However he does not state what that qualifier would be, and how that qualifier would be applied in the case of speech, where brevity is required. The Prime Minister considers it a great deal that the country which he now wants to call “Northern Macedonia” will completely change its national narrative, disassociating itself from the Greek heritage of ancient Macedonia, and formally undertaking to give up any irredentist claims over the Greek region of Macedonia. No explanation of course, is provided as to how this will take place. Further, no indication is given as to how this agreement will in any way, bind the diasporan communities that have so blatantly and aggressively, purloined Greek history in order to construct their own identities and as a result, have caused ethnic tension in the countries in which they reside.

Most significantly, the Greek government’s inexplicable reversal of years of policy (and it is inexplicable because the Greek government is yet to come clean with the Greek people and its diaspora as to the reasons why such an agreement was necessary, revealing what if any pressures or undue duress was placed upon the Greek representatives by third parties and why, to come to such a bizarre agreement), is a slap in the face of diasporan communities such as our own, which were told and directed by successive Greek government representatives, among other things, that there is no such thing as a “Macedonian” language, just as there is, as we were told, no such thing as a Macedonian ethnicity and that it is in fact a “Bulgarian idiom,” of a Bulgarian people. In his announcement, however, Prime Minister Tsipras justified his agreement to recognise the language as “Macedonian” on the spurious basis that this language had allegedly thus been recognised by the United Nations since 1977. Consequently, past Greek governments had us taking to the streets and lobbying politicians about the nature of this contentious language, either if Tsipras is to be believed, knowing that this language had already been recognised, or oblivious to the fact that the modern incarnation of the Greek government would simply refute its own argument. Similarly, we were now being told and expected to believe without question, that there is such a thing as a North Macedonian ethnicity, and that this North Macedonian ethnicity has nothing to do with Macedonia, because while Macedonia is Greek, North is not.

This singular and arbitrary feat of nullification on the part of the Tsipras government, of all of our considerable efforts expended in campaigning for the Greek cause on the Macedonian issue, often at the expense of other pertinent issues such as that of Cyprus, has tremendous consequences for our community. Whatever happens (and it is unlikely that Skopje will ratify the Tsipras-Zaev agreement, with President Ivanov stating that he will veto any ratification of the agreement by the Parliament, something to which he is legally entitled and which probably means that Greece will be dragged to the negotiating table again sometime in the future, only this time, with our counterparts knowing just how far Greece is willing to compromise even before it begins), our community, which up until now, has been careful to co-ordinate its approach to Greek national issues and its lobby, such that it is, with that of the Greek government, is no longer willing to do so.

The Greek community has lost its faith and trust in the Greek government and consequently, the Greek government has lost its most powerful advocate abroad. We are no longer willing to expend the limited political capital we possess within the societies in which we live, promoting the concerns of a government that can and will, change these or resile from them, without consultation, at a drop of a hat, in the hope of validation from the increasingly remote motherland.

Instead, we will utilise that political capital in order to do that which we should have been doing all along: creating strong communal structures, tailored to the demands placed on us by local conditions, that will ensure that our communities will endure as distinct but socially integrated Greek entities, within the broader multicultural fabric of Australia, well into the future. The Greek government must no longer take our cooperation for granted. If it is to be provided, it must be earned. We, not the Greek government, will be responsible for formulating our own ethnic narrative and culture, and in this act of disassociation, protected from manipulation by the disingenuous over the seas, shall lie our ultimate emancipation.

Those within the community who cut their patriotic teeth in the nineties organising rallies and looking up obscure references to Macedonian tombstones in universities libraries, those who spent countless hours in the noughties on online forums posting on obscure aspects of Macedonian archaeology or Balkan linguistics are angry. They are angry at not being consulted. They are angry at not being provided the context by which such a momentous and controversial agreement was reached. They want to take to the streets. Their natural inclination is to hold a rally….and yet….

Rallies, as a means of influencing governments are manifestly no longer effective. Instead, they have become a tradition of state sanctioned dissent, whereby governments allow people to blow off steam, knowing full well that they neither bound by, nor subject to pressure by protesters. This is something fervent patriots in our community, struggling for any means to engage in activism, have difficulty in appreciate. The latest bout of maladroitness displayed over the Macedonian issue indicate that it is high time, both we and our compatriots in the motherland, abandon the exhausted rally as a means of exerting pressure and explore and invent new and novel ways in which to cause elected representatives to truly take heed of the will of the people, or at least account to them for their actions. If the sole legacy of this latest, most sorry but most likely not the last chapter of the Naming Dispute, is the creation of such novel methods of political participation, that will prove revolutionarily influential, then surely after all, there is a little balm left over for all, in Gilead.

DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 16 June 2018

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PHOS: LIGHT ON TROUBLED WATERS

June 23, 2018, 1:12 am
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“A little farther, we will see the almond trees blossoming
the marble gleaming in the sun
the sea breaking into waves.” Giorgos Seferis

There is a common narrative within our culture that seeks to reduce the discourse of Hellenism into its elemental constituent parts. With Seferis, this was marble, sun and sea. Nobel Prize winning poet Odysseas Elytis on the other hand, identified other significant elements: “If Greece is completely destroyed, what will remain is an olive tree, a vine and a boat. It is enough to begin again.”



When one views the photographic collection ‘Horizons,’ a sub-set of son of the former king of Greece, Nikolaos’, exhibition: “Phos, a Journey of Light,” currently at the Hellenic Museum, one is immediately reminded of that narrative, and is left in no doubt that the artist is partaking in it. In a darkened room, a series of haunting photographs of dawns and sunsets, taken so that the dividing line between sea and sky is distinct and level, instead, brings to mind not so much the identification of the elemental components that comprise our identity, as something that transcends them, Greece and the natural world altogether, the archetypal process of Creation itself: “And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Though our lowly terrestrial position may circumscribe our perspective, inhibiting our surveying the broader aspects of our identity, the artist descends from on high to illumine us that further than narrow conceptions of Hellenism as a world view, here are higher powers at play here. The artist, as light bearer, beams these cryptic messages in their infinite permutations upon the waves of his creations.



The entrance to the exhibition is marked by a video installation depicting an animated silhouette of the artist, in the process of executing a zeimbekiko dance behind a luminous Greek flag. It is easy to be immediately transfixed by it. On the one hand the piece appears to replicate every single western stereotype there is, of modern Greece. It suggests, at first glance, a person, much like most of us here in the Antipodes, who has spent most of his life outside of Greece and thus primarily engages with Greece from the perspective of the stereotypes he has imbibed in the countries of his sojourn, identifiably, in a visual vocabulary that is not Helladic but contrived. Viewed from this perspective, this installation thus serves as a powerful and poignant post-modern-critique of orientalism, its effects upon concepts of identity in a globalised but nonetheless imperialist world, and the search for an emancipated Greek identity, on Greek terms, whatever these may be.

The reason why this installation has a deeper meaning and is thus intriguing, is because it convinces the viewer that it serves as a parody of stereotype. The lines on the Greek flag assume the role of jail bars. The artist executing the zeimbekiko is trapped beneath a heavy corpus of stereotypical symbols, the meanings that derive from them, and already laid out expectations as to how one is to appreciate these, that control the manner of his identity and its expression. Thus, the silhouette dances the dance of free men, ostensibly unscripted, but according to tightly choreographed steps dictated by tradition, a myriad of movies, posters and an evolved Greek political culture that demands that those holding the reins of power prove their virility by becoming Lords of the Dance, in a closeted and stifling space that in actual fact overturns the concept of freedom that both it and the Greek flag are supposed to connote.

The bars on the flag, which are traditionally held to represent the syllables of the words: Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος, (Liberty or Death) further illustrate the paradox. According to the popular discourse, one is either to choose one OR the other. One is NOT FREE, within the parameters of this banner of freedom to explore the nuances in between the two absolutes, presumably just as one is, within the increasingly polarised zeitgeist both within Greece and its diasporan communities, not able to comfortably traverse the varying gradations and facets of the Hellenic paradigm. Instead, if one is to satisfactorily “prove” their Hellenic credentials, they must funnel their actions within a pre-determined and pre-approved time loop, and replicate these for legitimacy, over and over again. Consequently, Nikolaos’ is a profound and vastly subversive discourse.

Except for his very personal appearance, trapped behind the flag, and a print of his wife’s heavily stylised silhouette, like a regal postage stamp, over that most Seferic Greek elemental medium, marble, no other humans people the artist’s creations. Does this betray an intensely personal interaction with the constituent elements of identity that must be resolved by each person alone, without the impingement or intervention of others? Does one here combine the artist with the person in his historical context and consider whether such a stance derives from a reaction to the attempts by others who identity as Greek to deny him the same properties? There is safety of expression in the elemental.

Nikolaos’ other ‘Greek’ seascapes, generally reminiscent of other artists’ renditions of the genre, may, superficially at least, appear to be eminently generic. Yet the seascape entitled “Phantom” is immediately arresting, deliberately shattering the beguiling placidity of the other vistas framing it. From the unnervingly deep blue waters, a ghostly figure stirs. The monocular visage of a spectre, part Cyclops, part robotic nightmare suggests that light not only liberates, but also reveals within depths, menaces that lurk undisturbed. It is to us to determine whether or not such fault-lines as subsist through our culture should be addressed. Viewed at an angle, the Cyclops seems to be screaming the identity of he who has caused his pain. “No one.” Because in the entirety of Nikolaos’ exhibition, full of pregnant pauses and fleeting nuances, there is no one ever there.

An intense, unbearable and crushing sense of loneliness and isolation permeates “Phos.” It is this sense of dislocation, masterfully rendered, that suggests that Nikolaos’ work must be interpreted through the lens of a Greek abroad, a diasporan, who though his artistic syntax may not be ‘Helladic’ per se and references western-derived constructions of Greece, is able to articulate highly emotive artwork which challenges these very constructs and raises interesting questions about the nature of the Greek identity, its antipodean permutations and the manner in which these are received and extrapolated within diasporan communities, mythologised and ultimately, stereotyped, all through a remarkable homage to the elemental discourse of some of the most profound thinkers on the subject of Greek identity that ever existed.

Poet of the Sea, Zisimos Lorentzatos once wrote: “Just like the kings, on coins worn away in the hands of the people/ the face of Empedocles emerges/ observing blood upon the bay….. Dark and wild power, reveal yourself/ an enemy of classical Greece/ and save me from its white column/ that closes me in.” Nikolaos’ attempt at mastery over the elements offers him and so many others, a bridge over troubled waters, to destinations undisclosed.


DEAN KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 23 June 2018

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