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PAPPOU AND OXI
My grandmother’s prayers usually lasted over two hours. Before the end, listening to the whispered tones of her entreaties from my bedroom across the hall, while being pinned to the mattress by the...
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ORTHODOXY AND THE MACRO ERRORS OF MACRON
Open the Orthodox Synaxarion in any given month and you are bound to come across a number of persons who achieved martyrdom for either refusing to convert to Islam, or for converting to Islam and then...
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2021 AND THE GREEK HITLERJUGEND
Here is an idea: If you have some left over footage, from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, for example, instead of discarding it, why not recycle, rehash and reproduce it as something original, say, in...
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THE DOOR AND OTHER UNCANNY TALES
Just before the commencement of the most important part of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, the priest intones “The Doors, the Doors, in Wisdom let us attend.” This is an injunction for the Doors of the...
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CULTURAL RUBBLE, MODERN GREEK STUDIES AND LOTOPHAGY: A MEMOIR
I met Sanaz, now an ACT Government Solicitor, on my first day of Law School, at the University of Melbourne. She was a new arrival to Australia. Having fled Iran with her Armenian and Persian parents,...
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MAKING OUR MARK ON MELBOURNE
Recently, Hume City Mayor Joseph Haweil, who is of Assyrian and Greek descent has ensured that the significant presence of Assyrian-Australians in his municipality is reflected in the local topography...
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ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF MANNY
«Οι μάγκες δεν υπάρχουν πια, τους πάτησε το τραίνο»……Manolis Rasoulis. “C’mon Latrobe, I’m doing the best to educate the masses but we have to work in tandem. You give them Kazantzakis, I’ll give them...
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GUARDING THERMOPYLAE
«Εμείς εδώ φυλάμε Θερμοπύλες», the elderly president of a regional brotherhood remarked as he showed me around the mouldy, crumbling club premises. He was off course, referring to Cavafy’s renowned...
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BLACK CHRISTMAS AMONG THE OLIVE LEAVES
One month before my sixteenth Christmas, my uncle in Athens telephoned my maternal grandmother to tell her that he would be over for lunch, as soon as he finished work. Complaining of a headache, he...
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ΔΩΔΕΚΑΜΕΡΟ
Joy be to the twelve days of Christmas, that usher in the New Year. While rejoicing in the birth of the Saviour and the imminent demise of the year COVID, I was privy on Christmas morning to the...
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ΕΝ ΑΓΑΛΛΙΑΣΕΙ (IN JOYFUL STRAINS)
Εὐφραίνεσθε πάντες Αὐστραλοί,χοῦν χρυσόν ἔχομενκαί διἀ τόν ἡμέτερον κάματον, πλοῦτον,ἡ δε οἱκία ἡμῶν, πόντου περιβάλλεται…ὅτι ἐλεύθεροι γάρ καί νέοι ἐσμέν,Superannuated Neos Kosmos writer and culinary...
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KAFE KOSMOS
After enduring twelve years of my devoted patronage, my local café is closing its doors, as it is being merged into a conglomeration of a soon to be constructed faceless monument to superseded...
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DOGS OF DEMOCRITUS
Every day, in order to catch the bus whenever I would stay with my grandmother in Athens, I would have to cross a busy road, the fringes of which were populated by strays. About fifteen or so dogs, of...
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EUPHRATES SISTER
Some months after our wedding, my wife and I were driving in the car listening to Assyrian music. A particularly jaunty tune engaged my attention and I asked: “What is all that about? Is this a song of...
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ΕΠΕΑ ΠΤΕΡΟΕΝΤΑ (Winged Words)
If you were an ancient Greek birdwatcher, chances are that the birds you were watching, were actually people, transformed into avifauna after unfortunate encounters with the temperamental but always...
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SERBS IN THE GREEK REVOLUTION
Ν΄ ἀνάψωμεν μία φλόγα, σὲ ὅλην τὴν Τουρκιά,Νὰ τρέξ΄ ἀπὸ τὴν Μπόσνα, καὶ ὡς τὴν Ἀραπιά. “We will light a flame throughout the Turkish lands That will spread from Bosnia to Arabia.” Rhigas Pheraios. It...
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SAVING FACE
One can do naught else but praise Social Media god Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan for posting a selfie from the Acropolis a few years ago, which they visited as part of their wedding...
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BYZANTINE ECCLESIATICAL MUSIC
As far as I can remember, Byzantine music has been part of my life. One of my earliest memories is of waking up to the smell of incense and listening to my grandmother chanting troparia as she censed...
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THE GREEK MATA HARI AND THE REVOLUTION
In her book, “Women of ‘21,” Greek historian and feminist Koula Xiradaki observes that the historiography of the 1821 Revolution has become “like the monasteries of Mount Athos: a place where no women...
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DREAMING THAT GREECE MIGHT STILL BE FREE
Last Wednesday, the 17th of March, the City of Moreland, home to one of the most historically significant Greek communities in Melbourne, held a Greek Bicentennial Day Celebration and Flag Raising...
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