HIER STAND KANDANOS

I was fifteen when I was taken to Kandanos. I had no idea of the history of that place, nor why I was being taken there. It was a cold, wintry day. The leaden clouds hung low in the sky, as if assailed by an unbearable burden that had seeped into the ground and was somehow dragging them down to it. When I entered the village for the first time, I was overwhelmed by an inexorable sense of dread and despondency. The hairs of my arms began to stand up as if they had been charged with electricity and I broke out into an uncontrollable sweat. I too felt as if I was being dragged, by cthonic forces I could not explain, into a tomb. Somehow, I knew that in this place, ineffably terrible things had taken place. It was a feeling that I would come to recognise again and again, upon subsequent visits to Kondomari in Crete, Kalavryta in the Peloponnese and Lingiades in Epirus yet I will never forget the first time I smelt the earth of a land steeped in bad blood.
I didn't need to be informed by my travelling companions that Kandanos had been completely razed and its inhabitants mercilessly slaughtered. Despite the reconstruction of the village and the prominently displayed eerie Wehrmacht signposts commemorating the destruction of the village at the local memorial, proclaiming: "Here stood Kandanos, destroyed in retribution for the murder of 25 German soldiers, never to be rebuilt again," the sense of overwhelming brutality was and I imagine, still is palpable. It is right that this is so, for the destruction of Kandanos constitutes one of the most atrocious war crimes committed during the occupation of Crete by the Nazis in World War II.
Much is made during the month of May, of the Battle of Crete and the heroic resistance of the Cretan people against the Nazi forces. Lately, Australians have in the media, afforded increasingly greater prominence to the Battle of Crete as heroic ANZAC soldiers fought side by side with local Cretans, despite almost non-existent Allied planning, to provide Allied soldiers with enough time to evacuate the island. Rather than abandoning the Cretans to their fate, a considerable number of ANZAC soldiers remained behind to assist with the Cretan resistance. As a result, instead of being the expected proverbial walk in the park for Hitler, the airborne German invasion of Crete was a disaster, requiring the diversion of further troops and the application of extreme repressive measures in order to cower the local population.
In effect, Kandanos, which had been bombed during the first days of the Nazi attack, was punished for resisting invasion. Three days after the commencement of the battle of Crete, on 23 May 1941, the inhabitants of Kandanos confronted and fought against a motorised German detachment that sought to pass through the village. On the following day, they set an ambush for the advancing German troops of the 5th Gebirgs Division. Being vastly outnumbered, the locals were forced to retreat in the mountains and the Nazis continued their advance to the strategic location of Palaiochora.
By 31 May 1941, Crete surrendered and it was ostensibly all over for the Cretans. A legend was about to be born, one that synthesised the famed recalcitrance of the Cretans with their love of country, worship of freedom, deep sense of cultural identity, a unique sense of machismo and the ability to make the ultimate of sacrifices in order to preserve the aforementioned. Rather than be cowed by the numerical and logistical superiority of the Nazi forces, rather than being subjugated by their increasingly criminal reprisals, the Cretans refused to accept the violent occupation of their land. Extending guest friendship and protection to the few allied soldiers that remained behind, the Cretans fought on, sometimes with nothing more than their bare hands and they paid a terrible price for doing so.
For the Germans, steeped in their own perverted notions of military conduct and racial superiority could not view the resistance of the Cretans as a logical and necessary consequence of a people defending their homes from an invasion. According to them, only professional soldiers could be extended military courtesy and in effect, the locals were naught but pernicious vermin that had to be punished for having the temerity to resist and oppose the devastation and domination of their lands and, exterminated. Thus, temporary commander General Kurt Student issued an order for launching a wave of brutal reprisals against the local population, to be carried out rapidly by the same units who had been confronted by the locals.
Consequently, on 3 June 1941, a day after the execution of locals in the village of Kondomari, German troops from the III Battalion of the 1st Air Landing Assault Regiment, led by Oberleutnant Horst Trebes arrived in Kandanos. They slaughtered one hundred and eighty of its people and all their livestock, symbolic both of the manner in which for the Nazis, the Cretans were less than humans and the fact that despite their sense of cultural superiority, the Nazis descended to a level lower than that of a beast.. After its destruction, Kandanos was declared a 'dead zone' and its remaining population was forbidden to return to the village and rebuild it. They only did so, after the war was over.
For me, more than any gun toting, bandana wearing, heavily moustachioed Cretan, or the quite correct celebrations of the bonds between ANZAC's and Cretans forged in battle and resistance, it is the massacre of Kandanos that encapsulates both the true significance and the magnitude of the horror of the Battle of Crete. Its destruction tells an all too terrible a tale of what can happen when people are dehumanised, either by an ideology or a society. Stripped of dignity, totally devoid of empathy or compassion, the murderous Germans considered the wholesale massacre of innocents a completely ordinary consequence of their opposition to their overlord's violent appropriation of them, and thus, were able to kill them without the slightest bit of hesitation. Sadly, this is a scenario repeated again and again throughout Greece and Europe during the war and it appears from subsequent conflicts that the world has learned nothing from the grievous fate of Kandanos, nullifying its sacrifice.
This is ever more so because despite being captured by the British after the war and coming before a military tribunal in order to answer charges of mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war by his forces in Crete, General Karl Student was never extradited to Greece, the Allies refusing Greece's request for him to be tried by the nation he so blighted. Instead, the unspeakable Student was found guilty of three out of eight charges and sentenced to five years in prison. However, he was given a medical discharge and was released in 1948. It goes without saying that Student was never tried for crimes against Cretan civilians and one must ask whether this was because the Allies, despite the protection and Cretan lives lost in order to preserve their soldiers from harm, saw the Greek people through the same dehumanising lens as those who perpetrated the genocidal crime at Kandanos or at least saw it as of less consequence than the London Blitz. Many other perpetrators of similar crimes in Greece also remained unpunished, on occasion, Greece being threatened by the emerging West Germany with economic or other sanctions if she continued to press for claims of justice.
In fact it could be argued that Kandanos is but a mere strand in a longer thread of genocide crimes in which Germans had active involvement, either inplanning, aiding or abetting, including that of the Herero and Namaqua peoples of Namibia between 1904 and 1907, and the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek genocides, where the forced reolcation of Christians from strategic areas and the death marches were carried out with German complicity. The highest-ranking member of Germany’s military mission to Turkey, General Bronsart von Schellendorf, for example directly issued orders for the round up and deportation of Armenians. Crimes of this nature remained unpunished and it is precisely for this reason that in the Second World War, Nazi military leaders felt unrestrained both by the force of the law or the morals of humanity in perpetrating them again and again, especially in Crete.
Kandanos therefore remains as a poignant memoir of the futility of conflict and the precarious nature of human existence. The resistance of its inhabitants did not stop the occupation of Crete, just as Kandanos' destruction did nothing to halt the Cretan resistance. What it does do, is to endure as a stark reminder that we must seek out and actively condemn all crimes of racial violence, wherever and whenever these occur, making sure that the perpetrators are truly punished so that the aforementioned crimes are never committed. Sleep easy victims of Kandanos. The earth continues to rail against the depravities visited upon you and will continue to do so as long as the world endures.
DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@Hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 28 May 2016

FATHERS FROM THE EDGE

There is a reason why Greek men are constantly at war with their fathers,” my obsessed with Greek mythology friend once told me. “The ancient Greeks knew this, which is why it appears in the ancient myths. Gaia, in her quest for emancipation from her husband, Ouranos, gave her son Cronos a sickle, and made him cleave off his father’s genitals. Rhea, Cronos’ wife, gave Zeus the knowledge to defeat his father. The Titanomachy can thus be explained as the struggle for emancipation by a younger Greek generation, against their fathers, who are bent on oppressing them and preventing them from growing up.”

 

There can be no doubt that in ‘Fathers from the Edge,’ a recently published compendium of narratives examining the complex and multi-faceted relationship between Greek-Australian writers and their fathers, examples of latent and sometimes not so latent forms of progenitoral aggression are manifest. As the editor, academic Helen Nickas, for whom this book is a companion to her much acclaimed ‘Mothers from the Edge,’ states: “While there is much affection in the depiction of fathers, these are not from an idealized perspective. The writers don’t seek to romanticize their fathers but to understand them, especially as time has mellowed and matured their feelings about family relationships.” This ‘warts and all’ (from the offspring’s perspective) portrayal of Greek fathers has as its aim, to provide a glimpse of the manifold ways in which life lived within two cultures can impact upon a familial relationship, paving the way to understanding and ultimately compassion.

 

In many respects, the above mythological analysis is an apt one. In most of the twenty-four stories comprising the collection, fathers are portrayed as remote, unintelligible and Sphinx-like figures, impossible to comprehend. Such relationships as are formed between such fathers and their progeny, rather than a meeting of minds, are based on delineation and demarcation of boundaries. Fathers are left to battle their own impenetrable demons, most of which have to do with the trauma of dislocation and relocation to another country, war, or family breakdown, often appearing selfish and thus subverting the Greek-Australian stereotype of the selfless all-providing father, while their Australian-born or reared children look on incomprehensibly and with increasing feelings of resentment and dislocation, a resentment that was often mutual. As Despina Michael writes in ‘The Orange Grove:’ “Dad loved us, but resented us at the same time. We had colonized him. He could never leave.”

 

These titanic fathers, are often figures of childhood terror. Dmetri Kami writes of his father in ‘The Fisherman from Tenedos’: “Although I forgive him for striking his wife, I am haunted by the screams and sobs that put my sister and I to sleep for the first years of our lives.” In ‘Those Three Words’  Dimitri Gonis gives voice to his own Titan, a father formidable and gigantic, whose dimensions can only be appreciated and reconciled with the passage of time and the utterance of the magic words ‘I love you:’ “The truth is, we kids feared my father, We’d hear him turning the key and instead of running to the door, we’d run away from it.” Such intimidating fathers, problematic as they are, (Vrasidas Karalis opens his story ‘The Age of the Father’ thus: “When he died, they all sighed with relief; he had been a problem for years”) also remain an obstacle in their children’s own maturation, for their impenetrability, causes their children to be unable to identify with them and cleaves a rift of culture, time and personality between the generations. Until that rift is healed, it remains as a wound, rendering all before it dysfunctional. “For the son, he remained an enigma,” writes Karalis. “An indecipherable palindrome.”

 

Some authors, such as Nick Trakakis, attempt to render their fathers effable by resorting to classical history, geography and literature. In ‘Of Blood and Spirit,’ Trakakis makes the following observation in his quest to understand his father: “But there is something else, something more remarkable, I have found. My father, as I said is Cretan. And what are Cretan renown for? Love of freedom: fierce independence. Nobility…” It is almost as if a return to the fundamentals, that of ancestral place of origin, provides the key to our viewing of our Titans in a more humane perspective. It is not without coincidence then Dmetri Kakmi defines his father primarily as being ‘from Tenedos.’ As Tina Haralambakis writes in ‘Offshoots:’ “My life-long obsession with my parents’ homeland most likely began in early childhood, while listening to my father strum his guitar and sing along to his old recordings of Greek tangos.” She makes an important point. As progenitors, our fathers defy and transcend temporal classifications. They are both past and present, suggesting that our present with them must in subtle ways, be qualified by the past. Such an idea is taken up by Helen Nickas, when she feels to ask her father in: ‘A Belated Letter from a Daughter ‘Down Under’: “How do I feel about my homeland? Is it still home for me?”

 

On the other hand, in Victoria Kyriakopoulos’ brilliant piece: ‘KISSmania,’ the life-rejecting negativity of the protagonist’s father stems from his geographical background which does not permit him to come to terms with his new environment, and impedes his offsprings’ engagement with their world: “No was her father’s standard, inflexible response to anything alien and threatening from the outside world. Helen was expected to respect his authority, his better judgment, no questions asked.” In that world, dethronement of the Titan is personified in a supreme act of resistance: Attending a KISS concert in defiance of the father’s prohibition.

 

The inability of fathers and their children to find a common language within which to articulate their relationship is often expressed as a possible impediment to its natural progression within the stories. Dmetri Kakmi, for instance asks: “Would things be different if he and I spoke the same language? Would we be able to share intimate thoughts and feelings, or does he belong to a generation that has no place for such shilly-shallying?” In Justice Emilios Kyrou’s story: ‘Yiannis Kyrou, a courageous spirit,’ such questions are turned on their head, as is the relationship of provider/protector, beneficiary/suppliant, as Justice Kyrou uses his knowledge of the English language in order to shield his parents from experiencing racism. Justice Kyrou’s story is to be distinguished from most of the other contributions as, even though he was made to feel ashamed of his origin, it is apparent throughout the text that he not only fully understood his parents’ perspective, but also shared their values and aspirations. As such, the only gap here, was one of education and considering that in obtaining this, Justice Kyrou was fulfilling his father’s expectations, this in no way impinged upon the maintenance of a close and loving relationship.

           

When I was asked for a contribution to ‘Fathers from the Edge,’ I was unsure as to how to proceed. Unlike Dmetri Kakmi, my father and I do have a common language in which to articulate our relationship: English. Unlike many of the other authors, I have no use or need to seek recourse to history, geography or a grief-stricken past to explain my father to myself, for he arrived in Australia when he was four and has no memory of Greece. Our values, aspirations, attitudes and level of education are commensurate with each other and I revel in no one’s company more than his. Furthermore, how do I put into words my admiration and love for my own creator, friend, advisor and guide, a person who to this day, constitutes my ultimate male role-model, being possessed with a nobility of soul and plethora of attributes that I continue to aspire to attain, despite the flaws in my own character? 

            Ultimately, I decided to attempt to provide an account of what happens when the gods descend from Mount Olympus, assume human form and choose to walk among us, as equals. My story, “Coming out Greek,” is therefore a tale of how my father and I grew up together, seeking to embrace a common ethnic and cultural identity, while reconciling the disparate strands of a linguistic, historical and social melting pot, which we discovered side by side. The act of emancipation that forms the climax of the story is not my own, but rather my father’s, in coming to terms with the same type of racism faced by Justice Kyrou in his own past, but resolving its effects in a radically different way.

            Helen Nickas’ publication of ‘Fathers from the Edge,’ is timely given how many of our fathers and custodians of the foundation myth of our community are now slipping way. Now is the time, if not to reconcile but at least to analyse and appreciate the complexities of a relationship that forms the social and psychological background to the entire history of the Greek community in Australia.

Fathers from the Edge will be launched on Tuesday, 24 May at 6:30pm at the Greek Centre, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.  

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

First published in NKEE on Saturday 21 May 2016

ΔΥΣΑΓΓΕΛΙΣΜΟΣ

Just over a month prior to the recent conflagration which caused untold damage to the Annunciation (Evangelismos) Church in East Melbourne, Athena Giankoulidis undertook an extensive mission to photograph almost every inch of that church accessible to the laity. Her actions were prescient, as the community is now possessed of an archive of photos that could prove invaluable as guides to restoration, should it be determined that the church be restored to exactly the same condition or style as it was prior to the fire, or at least, bear historical witness to the décor of the church and the manner in which the restoration diverged from it.
Of course, much of the interior is irreplaceable. Granted, much of the iconography was executed in the hyper-mannerist, super-baroque Romanesque, cringeworthy style of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, still to be found in a multitude of Greek island churches and beyond. It is neither rare nor important from an art-historical point of view. Yet when I view Athena’s photograph of the now destroyed icon of the Nativity in the church, I cannot help but choke back tears. For the inscription below the icon informs us that this was a donation by Sophia, the mother of the first Greek Orthodox priest in Melbourne, Athanasios Kantopoulos, way back in 1902. The prayers of this pious woman, whose gesture, was made at a time when iconography was extremely costly, in support of a community she knew nothing about and her son’s mission in a completely unknown land have finally come to an end.
Being an old people, we Greeks have a strange, almost contradictory relationship with time. Centuries of history can be conflated into minutes so that the Fall of Constantinople or the Battle of Salamis can be treated in the popular consciousness as if they took place only recently. Conversely, time can also be surprisingly telescoped. The Macedonian struggle of 1908 or the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 are treated by many Greek-Australians as current events, (especially on facebook), but when it comes to our consciousness of our own community’s history, the year 1900, being when the Evangelismos Church was founded, is felt to have taken place aeons ago and is shrouded within the obscurity of the temporal nebulae.
Thus, while many Greek-Australians can identify with an imagined past of at least three millennia prescribed by a modern Greek historical narrative, there appears to be no analogous identification or sense of continuity with the founders of our community, a mere century ago. Rather than inherit a corpus of anecdotes or local lore, there seems to be an almost complete disconnect of knowledge or identification between successive Greek-Australian generations. For most of us, our Greek-Australian community creation myth begins with the arrival of our parents of grandparents on these shores, and it is their values rather than their deeds and those of their peers that are idealized and passed on.
Consequently, the works and deeds of our early pioneers are left to be discovered in the works of dedicated historians such as Hugh Gilchrist, which is where, incidentally, I first came to appreciate the significance of the Evangelismos Church, as a teenager. Prior to that, Evangelismos featured dimly in my own familial tradition as a place my grandparents and father had to travel an inordinate distance in order to celebrate Easter, prior to the erection of our own local church, which is when my own Greek-Melburnian temporal consciousness begins, though it intersects strangely with that of its first Greek priest, with whom being of Samian descent, we all sympathized as a compatriot.
Originally well regarded, Father Athanasios Kantopoulos of Samos, gradually alienated himself from the Greek parishioners of Evangelismos via his insistence upon ministering to the Arabic-speaking members of his flock (for contrary to our version of the founding myth, the Evangelismos was founded as a multi-cultural church for all Orthodox Melburnians, including the Lebanese, Syrians, Russians and Bulgarians) and not excluding them from church governance, despite the insistence of local Greek bourgeois powerbrokers. As a result, Father Athanasios was expelled from the church, along with the Arabic-speaking faithful, who eventually formed the parish of Saint Nicholas a few blocks down, in the same street, in 1932. It is therefore the height of historical irony, but also a lovingly symbolic act of absolution that the descendants of these same exiles from a community that was happy to take their money but not to respect their ethno-linguistic diversity, will house the faithful of Evangelismos in Saint Nicholas, until such time as Evangelismos is liturgical once more (pun definitely intended). In such cases, historical amnesia maybe for the best though sadly, the icons dedicated by the Syrian members of Evangelismos have been destroyed, erasing physical witness to their contribution to this church forever.
No amount of new iconography can bring this, or the fervent prayers of Sophia Kantopoulou back and perhaps the community could look into publishing a photo memoir of the church in its undamaged state in order to act as a point of reference for the future, for I feel that the burning of this church marks a historical watershed in our community, to which the historians of tomorrow will return.
The fact is that despite the rhetoric, Evangelismos was largely neglected and unloved by the majority of Greek-Melburnians. Caught between an ugly and ultimately useless turf war between the Community and the Archdiocese for decades, it remained a reminder of the type of strife celebrated only by the most fervent of partisans on either side. In the meantime, as everyone else built their local brotherhoods, in opposition to or complete disregard of the GOCMV and founded largely architecturally-challenged churches in suburbs close to home, Evangelismos was allowed to lapse into obscurity, the defacing of its foundation stone being symbolic of our lack of historical consciousness and continuity.
In this way, the past tradition of ecclesiastical strife as embodied by Evangelismos arguably constitutes a burden, especially for younger members of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria, who question why their institution should be tasked with overseeing matters of religion and indeed, no longer view the terms ‘Greek’ and ‘Orthodox’ as inextricably entwined. Symptomatic of this, is the recent tacit dropping of the word ‘Orthodox,’ from that entity’s informal communications, hinting that a new direction away from the traditional, is being considered. If so, then the burning of the most significant symbol of the perceived fetters of the past, grants the casting of that new direction, immense bittersweet poignancy.
Nothing ever goes on as before and the real chord struck in the hearts of most of us at the devastation of our community's foundation point, is that it constitutes evidence that the constant niggling feeling we have, that our communal works and deeds will prove to be ephemeral, is now palpable. Yet this does not have to be so. Already the leadership of the GOCMV, with the surprising energy and deep respect for the past that is so characteristic of it, has secured the devastated premises and in consultation with the Archdiocese, is planning its restoration. In doing so, it can tap into the immense groundswell of community sympathy and support it has been able to garner through its astute management of its other projects, as well as the residual and now, in the aftermath of the fire, resurgent attachment to Evangelismos church.
Regardless of the form that such architectural restoration takes, or of the future ideological and religious direction of our institutions, if we can as a whole, memorialise and celebrate the history of Evangelismos, granting it a unique and viable (rather than tokenistic) role within the Greek community, as well as restoring it to its rightful place as the fundament, not only of our own but of all Orthodox communities in Melbourne, making it a place of pilgrimage and a multi-cultural touchstone of identity for all ethnicities that played a role in its foundation, then we have its ensured its relevance and justified the prayers of its donors, if not for eternity (Orthodox conception of time is even more otherworldly than Greek), then at least for the considerable future.
DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@Hotmail.com

 

First published in NKEE on Saturday 14 May 2016

ΠΙΝΑΚΙΔΑ

As a boy, I was entranced by Gerald Durrell's description, in his brilliant account of his idyllic childhood in Corfu "My Family and other Animals," of how he came to name his coracle-shaped boat the "Bootle," only to have appended onto it, the word "Bumtrinket," at the suggested of his brother, the famous author, Lawrence Durrell.

 My first car was similarly roundish in shape and beetle-like. By that stage, personalized number plates were no longer a novelty of the rich or the petrol-headed but were widely in use. The "Bootle-Bumtrinket" being much too long to fit on a Victorian license plate, I wanted to acquire to the plate: "Bizdouno," a word that I felt carried phonetically beetle-like connotations. The fervor of my youthful enthusiasm was quickly doused by my horrified mother. "You can't call your car 'Bizdouno,'" she exclaimed. "It's the name your aunt uses to refer to one of her neighbours. She will find out and think you've set out to offend her." Apparently the lady in question was given a nickname that referred to her place of origin, Bizdouni, in Epirus. My motor vehicle on the other hand, originated in an assembly line in Geelong, a considerable distance away.

 Unperturbed, I insisted upon my chosen name, or by way of compromise, "Bitsoulas" being a contraction of "Glymbitsoulas" a fictional bogeyman used to scare children, having been told that my driving has similar properties. I was all set to register a plate bearing this name, when I discovered that "Bitsoulas" was the name of an extremely popular discotheque in the Athenian suburb of Glyfada, in the nineteen eighties. In the end, having also rejected other options such "Freno" (to remind me to apply the same in a timely fashion) and "Zhaba" the local word in my maternal ancestral village for a large fat female toad (which is exactly what my car looked like), I finally settled upon a license plate bearing the word KAPO, which is good Greek-Australian for motor-vehicle which is why, I believe, my father surreptitiously consulted Vicroads and obtained personalized license plates n my behalf, bearing my Greek initials, KK. Now, whenever I pull up to family or community functions, I am invariably accosted with the question: "Hey KK, what happened to the E?" referring to the fact that the abbreviation of the Communist Party of Greece is KKE in Greek. "I'm a member of the Communist International," I always reply, "We believe the Revolution will sweep away borders which are bourgeois constructions created in order to dominate workers and thus have no need for the E (which stands for Greece)." This exposition is enough to permit my interlocutors to move on to the next topic.

'Greek' license plates in Victoria are fascinating as they provide a unique insight not only into how their owners view their identity but also, how they choose to express this down the generations. Whereas Anglo-Australians may choose to put their names or nicknames on their plates, the first generation of Greek plate holders have invariably sought to place on their vehicles, their place of origin. Thus, I have throughout the years, beheld plates proudly bearing the words Samos, Sparta, Kalamata, Epirus 1 (whose owner drove on the freeway in front of me, at the same tempo as an Epirot funeral dirge,) Fteri (a village in Achaia), Korinthos, Kriti, Lefkada, Lamia, and countless others. As His Honour Justice Emilios Kyrou outlines in his book "Call Me Emilios," such public assertions of identity can often be liberating for those who have had to suppress aspects of their ethnic origin for whichever reason. The owner of the license plate 'Kosma,' could certainly relate to this.

 Proving that one's region can supply a way of expression of one's personal identity, driving around Melbourne, one can come across Pontos, Pontus and even Pontia, to describe the female of the species. With such plates, one has to be careful however. The owner of Assos, turned out not to be a Greek claiming that he was the best at everything, but rather, a Turk from the homonymous town, on the Asia Minor coast opposite Lesbos. The owner of the license plate Coglan (meaning young boy or catamite), from which the Greek word τσογλάνι (scoundrel) is derived, was also Turkish. This license plate is a menace to society as I almost smashed into a tree when first I noticed it.

 Interestingly enough, just as some personalized number plates display affiliations to community groups such as football teams, (there are numerous Greek Australian license plates bearing versions of Greek football team names, 'PAOK' and 'AEK' being the most common,) members of our community often feel so proud of their local clubs or brotherhoods, that they choose to brand their cars with their names. Thus, in the previous decades, there was a spate of members of the Pontian Association "Pontiaki Estia" obtaining license plates such as 'ESTIA 1,' 'ESTIA 2' and so on. Such persons still continue to drive among us, displaying a dedication to their club that members of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria have not. I am fully in favour of an alteration to that organisation's constitution in order to compel its president to drive around with GOCMV 1 license plates, or in the alternative 'Chief' or its Greek equivalent 'Tsiftis,' though I am reliably informed that the latter has already been taken. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is possessed of numerous number plates bearing the initials GA. Furthermore, I would love to see how the president of the Benevolent Brotherhood of Kolindros, Pafsilypos would devise a number plate for himself.

 Further than ascribing to their cars, their place of origin, Greeks also give them labels denoting abstract concepts, as in the case of 'Agapi,' unquestionably the 'Love Bug' of Greek Australia and paradoxically enough, 'Oneiro' for a motor vehicle that does not appear to be particular expensive, leading the viewer to muse whether in fact the owner is dreaming of a better car, or, whether, owing to limited means, his current mode of conveyance represents the extent of his capacity to dream. I regularly see driving around in my local area an 'Aetos,' though how the vehicle can fly like an eagle given the proliferation of speed humps in our suburb, is anyone's guess. 'Telios,' could well be as described, though evidently he cannot spell, and as for 'Alitis,' the less said about him, the better.

 Finally, driving around Pascoe Vale a few days ago, I came 'Atheos,' meaning Atheist. The fact that someone felt so deeply about denying the existence of a Creator, that they were moved not only to state this in an utterly most public way, but also in Greek, made a profound impression upon me. In years to come, scholars may view this as a public manifestation of the debate that perennially rages within the Greek pages of Neos Kosmos as to the desirability or veracity of Christianity. My own view is that this license plate has been painstakingly calculated so as to elicit the response: «Πω, πω, αυτός δεν έχει το Θεό του.» Incidentally, my parish priest swears that Atheos is often to e seen parked outside the church, for its owner often pops in to light a candle..

As the Greek Australian community becomes assimilated, fewer of its members are choosing to employ Greek upon their personalized license plates, considering such a phenomenon to be outmoded or too 'woggy.' Those that do, often attempt to employ words in their wrong context, such as an acquaintance who attempted to register 'Komvio' because in Google translate, this was provided as the equivalent of 'Stud,' showing how the phenomenon can be used to trace our community's level of understanding of the Greek language and its accompanying cultural connotations and express these in an intelligible form. Yet for Komvio and for others, such as the owner of 'Romios' (literally meaning Roman but referring to a Byzantine/Orthodox identity) the personalised license plate is still a powerful and emotive medium for asserting one's identity within the context of a multicultural society. Historians and sociologists would do well to study this phenomenon, outlining the social and psychological reasons for its existence as it provides a novel yardstick for the acculturation of our community, prior to its inevitable demise.

 DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@Hotmail.com

 

First published in NKEE on Saturday 7 May 2016