PLAYGROUND GREEK

After a year of silently observing us while dropping off his grand-daughter at school, the kindly old man with the bright blue eyes finally leant over and commented:

«Είναι καλό που μιλάς στην κόρη σου στα ελληνικά. Η δική μου η εγγονή μόνο παππού ξέρει να λέει.»

Well not quite. The elderly gentleman's grand-daughter calls him "dede," which is Turkish for grandfather and I had spent the mornings of last year, listening to him variously lament in Turkish, in concert with other Turkish parents and guardians, at the inability of their collected offspring to speak that language and, in Cypriot inflected Greek, lamenting with the Greek grandparents of students, the instability of Melbourne's weather.

The Greek grandparents at the school ordinarily speak to their grandchildren in heavily accented English. On my daughter's first day of school, upon hearing me address my daughter on the subject of the Minotaur in Greek, one of them was unable to stifle a sneer. That sneer was soon transformed into an expression of shock, as my daughter proceeded to relate the story of Icarus and Daedalus in response, also in Greek. This is because Greek is the primary language of our relationship. Whenever that particular grandparent arrives at school in the morning, granddaughter in tow, he brushes past me and moves towards the farthest edge of the playground, as if he cannot bear to hear my daughter speak Greek.

One lively old lady chasing her hyperactive grand-daughters around the yard yelling: «Κάμαν κιντς, καμ μπεκ χία» smiles whenever she hears us speaking Greek to each other. «Ελληνικά ακούω,» she beams and then turning to her grandchildren, continues her attempts to return them to the fold, this time, employing hybrid imperatives such as «Καμ μπεκ τώρα,» and «σλάουλη σλάουλη, σιγά, σιγά.» She does so with trepidation however, for as she confides, her daughter has asked her not to speak to her grandchildren in Greek.

Another grandmother, observing us once, remarked, "I wish my grandchildren could speak Greek, but their mother is a ξένη. And you know what ξένες are like.."

"I do indeed," I responded. "I'm married to one." She hasn't spoken to me since.

Sometimes, in the crush of the school corridors, I catch undertones of a mother speaking to her daughter in Greek. She does so in hushed tones, as if she is afraid of censure by passers-by. There is no need to be afraid. The Indian ladies walking past are speaking heavily accented English to their progeny in loud voices. The Cantonese parents are speaking to their children in slow, precise English. As soon as those children are out of earshot, they turn to each other and start speaking Cantonese, the undulating tones of which language are broken by a booming «Έλα εδώ μάνα μου, θα αργήσουμε,» emanating from a tall, young, barrel-chested father, dragging his vociferously protesting daughter across the pavement. Like me, he has been born here and like me, the Greek flows from his mouth, unconsciously and without restraint.

Another father walks past, trailing his daughter's school bag across the yard. He nods by way of perfunctory greeting. I first came across him a month earlier, in the local park. Hearing me sing «Κούνια Μπέλλα» to my youngest daughter as I pushed her on the swing, by way of response, he turned to his daughter and said: "I'm gonna do you Κούνια Μπέλλα like παππού.» At the time I smiled and said nothing, simply because the ensuing conversation deriving from this statement of cultural solidarity, would have invariably led, as it generally does, to a justification as to why my interlocutor's offspring do not speak Greek, a conversation I always seek to avoid, not wishing to make anyone feel that they are being judged, or obliged to justify their own choices, which could be informed by a multitude of complex considerations. I abhor the fact that my own personal discourse may provoke feelings of guilt or ennui in another’s; the condition humane of the twenty first century.

I could not, however, avoid a conversation with the disconcertingly natural platinum blonde, svelte mother replete in active wear, compelling her children to jog to the swing.

"You are Greek as well? When did you arrive here?" she asked.

"In 1977," I responded.

"Huh?"
"I was born here."

She, as it turned out, was Finnish, had married a Greek in Athens and as a result of the Greek Crisis, was seeking opportunities in Australia. Her children, slightly older than my own, were fluent in Greek, Finnish, German and English and she conversed with them in all four languages at the park, expressing the concern that she could not find a decent German school.

A mother trips over the trailing school-bag and I proffer a greeting. She is an occasional Greek school teacher, though her children do not speak Greek. "Just you wait," she warned me affably at the start of the year, when she heard us speaking Greek and I informed her that my daughter spoke no English, "she will pick up the English in no time but she will lose the Greek straight away."

"I'm not convinced that will be the case," I ventured an opinion. “My view is that as long as children have enough words to express the things they want to say in a language and have someone to speak it to, they will use that language. I think that social context and relationships are pivotal here.”

"No," she will definitely lose it, the teacher affirmed. "My kids did. What's more, because she will be speaking English, your daughter will teach your other kids English too and they will learn no Greek whatsoever."

"You sure?" I asked.

"Definitely," she pronounced with an air of finality. "That is what happens to everyone."

Yet on this, the last day of school, my daughter was still speaking Greek, as well as her mother's tongue, and rejoicing in her newly acquired skills in English. In contrast, her sister, though conversant in both her paternal and maternal tongues, knows no English, even though this is the main language of discourse between my life and I, because her relationship with us and her sister, for the moment, is uninformed by that language.

«Μπαμπά, πώς λέμε γοργόνα στα αγγλικά;» my daughter asked me.

“Mermaid,” the Greek school teacher hastened to supply the answer.
"Mermaid is comprised of two words," I interjected. "Mer, means the sea in French and maid means a young unmarried woman. So it means a young woman who lives in the sea."

My daughter sat and thought about this a while. Finally, she observed: "That's like in Assyrian. In Assyrian they say 'Kyalu d' Yama,' which means 'Bride of the Sea.'

The Greek school teacher watched her, her mouth half open.

"But in Greek, the Γοργόνα is Medusa," my daughter continued. "What has that got to do with the sea? It is completely different. And how is she the sister of Alexander the Great if Perseus cut off her head?"

"This is unbelievable," the incredulous Greek school teacher exclaimed.

"Not really," I hastened to explain. "She has to negotiate and switch between three very different linguistic realities at once, so it makes sense that she instinctively seeks meaning in etymology in order to reconcile them. The key here is not the language itself, but the fact that her linguistic contexts are very real and relevant to her day to day existence."

"No," she interrupted. "I mean that you would jeopardise your child's future by burdening her with unnecessary languages. That time could be better spent on focusing on her school subjects. You are impeding her progress. Believe me. When she becomes a teenager she will rebel and turn against everything Greek."

"You sure?" I asked.

"Definitely," she pronounced. " I did."

As the holidays draw to a close, my daughter begins to express the sentiment that she misses both her Greek and English schools and teachers. We venture out into the shops, in order to procure stationary and are confronted with the harried features of an old woman in a hurry. She pushes past us, grandson in tow. Our eyes meet and instantly, a flash of recognition. We have met before, in a playground, some months ago, where my daughters were playing with their maternal cousins. The old woman’s grandson was howling for a turn on the swing and as it was offered to him, the grandmother turned to her daughter and exclaimed:

«Από πού τους έμασαν όλους αυτούς τους κωλοαράπηδες, μου λές;»

«Μπαμπά, τι είναι κωλοαράπηδες;» my daughter asked.

"What is a κωλοαράπη?" my Assyrian nephew, who is learning Greek, asked.

Turning to the lady, I asked: «Θέλετε να τους το εξηγήσετε;»

On this occasion however, I merely smiled, wishing: «Χρόνια πολλά και καλή πρόοδο.»

«Μπαμπά, τι είναι πρόοδος;» my daughter asked.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 26 January 2019

THE ENIGMA OF THE ARRIVAL AND AFTERNOON IN GREEK MELBOURNE

Giorgio De Chirico, an Italian painter who was born and raised in Volos, painted “The Enigma of the Arrival and the Afternoon” in 1912. An eerie mood and strange artificiality pervades the cityscape. Gone are the expected perspectives on places full of movement and everyday incident. Here, he presents us with the kind of haunted streets we might encounter in our dreams. This is a backdrop pregnant with symbols, its collections of objects that resemble still-lifes providing a unique vocabulary to be decoded, all of its own. Here we see De Chirico delving into our sub-conscious, manipulating and re-arranging our most hidden phobias, obsessions and anxieties in the manner of a theatrical set designer. The end result is a visual contrivance, a conceit, conjured out of our psyche to taunt us, accuse us, but ultimately, to console us.

Writer V. S. Naipaul’s novel The Enigma of Arrival refers to De Chirico’ painting, in a personal meditation almost as concentrated as the painting itself, one where Naipaul speaks about his own sense of dislocation, arrival and belonging, as an Indian migrant from Trinidad in London:

“He would walk past that muffled figure on the quayside. He would move from that silence and desolation, that blankness, to a gateway or door. He would enter there and be swallowed by the life and noise of a crowded city . . . Gradually there would come to him a feeling that he was getting nowhere, he would lose his sense of mission; he would begin to know only that he was lost. His feeling of adventure would give way to panic. He would want to escape, to get back to the quayside and his ship. But he wouldn’t know how . . . At the moment of crisis he would come upon a door, open it, and find himself back on the quayside of arrival. He has been saved; the world is as he remembered it. Only one thing is missing now. Above the cut-out walls and buildings there is no mast, no sail. The antique ship is gone. The traveller has lived out his life.”

Seferis, in his collection of poems “Mythistorima,” also paints a scene reminiscent of De Chirico’s painting, one of total, asphyxiating isolation, aridity and infertility, where the past looms large and intrudes into the present and the future, devouring it wholesale. There is no escape, not even in death, as the clashing rocks insulate the inmates of the land from all terminal points and the torture of extraneous immortality itself:

"Our country is closed in, all mountains
that day and night have the low sky as their roof.
We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs,
only a few cisterns — and these empty — that echo, and that we worship.
A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness
the same as our love, the same as our bodies.
We find it strange that once we were able to build
our houses, huts and sheep-folds.
And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers,
become enigmas inexplicable to our soul.
How were our children born, how did they grow strong?

Our country is closed in. The two black Symplegades
close it in. When we go down
to the harbours on Sunday to breathe freely
we see, lit in the sunset,
the broken planks from voyages that never ended,
bodies that no longer know how to love."

In his recently published book: “The Old Greeks” Paul Kouvaros refers to both Naipaul and Seferis’ works, in attempting to analyse how profoundly the perceptual and emotional displacements that define migration are embedded in the discourse produced by photographic media. He postulates that migration and the crossing of boundaries can pave the way for new forms of writing that challenge distinctions between literary genre and style, the result emerging as a new aesthetics of migration shedding light on the complex forms of human interaction surrounding photography and film.

It is easy to see why Kouvaros would be informed by Naipaul, Seferis, and ultimately by De Chirico in order to inform the migrant narrative. The migrant condition, like De Chirico’s creation, is steeped in ambiguity. We do not know whether the lonely figures are seeking to leave, or whether they are waiting for someone to arrive. They are turned away from the quayside, and escape. They have their backs to the vast wall surmounted by the strange rotunda that bars their exit. Does this mean that they have been defeated by forces that seek to pen them in, or that they themselves, too obsessed with their own self, mired in their own endoscopy, are incapable for surmounting the obstacle before them? After all, the wall is only half a head taller than the tallest figure and they could physically jump over it, should they wish to do so. Can they? Do they want to? Are they, since they cannot see it, even aware the wall is there? Is the incline to the right of the wall a shadow or a set of stairs? Do we even know where they lead? De Chirico thus speaks to a migrant condition that makes its home in isolation even though travel is a condition precedent for its engendering. 

Yet De Chirico renders the concept that travel or mobility is tantamount to freedom redundant. There is something deeply troubling about the ship in the quay. Though it appears to be moving, or about to move, its sails swell in one direction, while the flag, flutters in its complete opposite. Effectively then, he is implying two contrary winds, each cancelling each other out, making a mockery of movement and rendering it impossible. The ship then, as a mode of conveyance is an illusion, for it cannot go anywhere. There is no going back.

Equally illusory are the pensive figures that inhabit the painting, dwarfed by the tremendous edifices that dominate the city scape. The rotunda on the other side of the wall is white and luminous, suggestive of hope and life. The building on the other side of the wall, is dark, and in contrast to the softness and roundness of the rotunda, is sharp, angular and menacing. It also appears to be as empty and hollow as the existence of the harbor dwellers of Seferis’ poem. Moreover it casts a long shadow across the chiaroscuro of the chessboard pavement. The figures on the other hand, cast no shadow. Do they even actually exist? Can one call an existence, on the margins of light and dark, between egress and regress a reality? Is this then, the diasporic condition: to maintain a half-life in limbo, a pawn, as suggested by the chessboard, in a greater game of narratives played by players much larger, unperceivable and completely incomprehensible? Does this not subvert the entire premises of the mythology of our settlement and ultimate containment upon these shores?

As migrants and descendants of migrants, we are invariably drawn to the harbours and coastlines of our arrival as much as we are drawn to the aeroplanes and airports of our departure. We travel from our place of origin to our place of abode, often increasingly unsure which is which, often realizing that for all of our attempts to put down tangible roots, we abide nowhere, in the space in-between worlds, in that nightmarishly serene, enigmatic, cool, liquid, and bewitching half-world that De Chirico so presciently envisaged. Like the figures in the painting that cast no shadow, we have no identity. We do not exist.

Naipaul’s De Chirico inspired world, similarly, is a half-world, of a not-quite novel-within-the-novel – one the nameless first-person narrator dwells upon but never writes – about a visitor who arrives at an ancient port city and begins a journey of self-discovery that moves toward an unforeseen ending. It is that ending that De Chirico hints at, that both obsesses and terrifies members of the Greek community in Melbourne, especially those of the first generation. But that is a painting, and a tale, for another time.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 19 January 2019

THE PARTY LIASON

It was the eve of Christmas Eve that I saw him at the Deli, inspecting an oversized panettone. He circumambulated it slowly, then gingerly picked it up, and held it in his hand as if to weigh it, looked at it in wonderment and then took six of them into the custody of his shopping trolley. Seeing me observing him, he brightened.

“Just buying some last minute supplies for the Kids’ Christmas Party. You are coming with your kids, right?”

Two years earlier, the elderly gent, a neighbour and a friend, had talked me into becoming a member of his organisation, a club for persons hailing from Southern Greece, in order to boost its ailing membership. “You don’t have to do anything,” he promised. “Just vote for me at the elections, by proxy. Oh, actually, you won’t be eligible to vote, as you are a ‘xenos.’ I hadn’t thought of that.”

“So are you coming, or not?” the old man persisted. “I have to get the numbers. After all, είμαι ο τρέζιουρας.”

“I don’t I’ll be able to,” I responded.
“But είσαι μέμπας,” the old man insisted.
“I know, but we have a lot on and I don't think we can make it,” I explained.
“But there will be presents for the kids,” he pleaded.
“I know and thank you, but we are really especially busy leading up to Christmas, this year,” I elaborated.
“But the presents are free,” the old man pressed on.
“I understand that, but time is an issue,” I reiterated.
“But they are for free,” he repeated, again, so that I could savour the full meaning of his words. “Free presents.”
“Look,” I said, “You know that I only joined your organisation at your insistence, in order to help you boost the membership. I don’t hail from your part of Greece, I never attend your functions and consequently, I don't feel comfortable in taking my kids somewhere they have never been before and with which they have no connection, for the sole purpose of getting a free present. It just doesn’t feel fair.”
“But it’s for free, it’s your right as a μέμπας,” the old man argued.
“That may be so. But what will the other members say? Who is this cheapskate who never supports the club and only turns up to get free presents for his offspring? You can see that the position is untenable,” I riposted.
“But none of our children ever attend any of our functions and they always come along for the free presents, so why shouldn’t you? Κορόϊδο είσαι; Why would you want to deprive your kids of a present?” he continued.”
“They will receive enough presents,” I addressed his concerns, “including one from my own regional brotherhood, where there is a family connection.”
The old treasurer looked at me sullenly. “Δεν σε καταλαβαίνω καθόλου,” he shook his head in exasperation. “What am I going to do now? There is so much to organise and I have barely any help.”

It was this expertly mapped guilt trip that saw me enter the brotherhood hall, that evening, true to my principles, without my offspring, in order to assist. A small sprinkling of children sat at tables in the converted milk bar, engrossed in their mobile telephone screens, next to their grandparents, who were either conversing or huddling around the kitchen, bringing forth multitudes of chops, and chips dripping with deep fried oil of an aroma that had not assailed my olfactory nerves since the eighties and which probably belonged to a vintage of that era, a plausible provenance, since most of the members were proprietors of such enterprises during that decade.

Strangely, no effort was made for the minor concatenation of children to play together or communicate with each other. Save for a few attendees also absorbed by their phones, manifestly oblivious to their surroundings, the children’s parents were also noticeably absent.

In the middle of the hall, a table laden with fairy bread, jelly, red cordial and chocolate crackles, comestibles that I had not seen since completing primary school and thus was convinced of their extinction, took pride of place.

“It’s probably a good idea that you didn’t bring your kids,” the old treasurer observed. “We are having problems with some of our older members who object to newer members having the same privileges as them. They want to introduce a tiered system where members who have joined for so many years enjoy more privileges than those that joined later, on a sliding scale. They want us to amend the Consitution.”

“A kind of deep South Hellenic segregation,” I mused. “Who will play Santa?”

“That is the President’s prereogative usually,” the treasurer revealed. “That way, he gets his photo in the paper, with a caption that states: “Ο Πρόεδρος και το Διοικητικό Συμβούλιο…” Which reminds me. Can you type out the Notice for the Annual General Meeting? The President’s typewriter has given up the ghost, the Secretary is illiterate and my son’s computer has that Symbol font that has no accents.”

“Χο, χο, χο μπόϋς και γκελς,” the President’s voice boomed, as a bedraggled, cigarette wielding Santa strode into the room. “Μέρρυ Νιου Γήαρ! Καμ, έχω πρέζεντς!”

All of a sudden, the denizens of the hall became galvanised with energy. Grandparents simultaneously took hold of the fruit of their progeny’s loins and propelled them onto the dance floor, centimetres before Santa, with the precision of javelin throwers and the grace of synchronised swimmers. Those that missed their mark hurled themselves into the heaving mass of the future of the race, juxtaposing their elbows and jostling errant children out of the way. “Μουβ ντάλι μου. Ο Ethan είναι first.”

As Santa began ponderously to distribute the pile of presents, struggling to pronounce the exotic names of Jacinta, Megan, Troy, Courtney, Dylan and Xavier, said progeny, having ripped their presents from the bearded benefactor began to tear them open eagerly, the old treasurer increased the volume on FOX FM, which up until then was playing quietly in the background.

“Wouldn't it be a good idea to play the children some Greek Christmas Carols, instead of this?” I suggested. “After all this is a Greek organisation and you could give the kids a taste of what Greek Christmas is all about.”

“Τζάϋντεν λαβ, νο όπεν δε πρέζεν τιλ δα Κρίζμας. Πούριτ ντάουν πλιζ...” the distracted treasurer yelled towards a young boy sporting a coiffure that entailed a half shorn head of hair, who having ripped his present, along with the wrapping, was now visiting the same fate upon his sister, Aylana’s present.

“Oh sick, George Michael,” a mother whooped, as she put her mobile phone in the back pocket of her pants. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart….Oh my God, I’m such a wog. I’m even worse that these olds, koumbs,” she giggled, nudging the lady sporting antique highlights and hair extensions seated next to her, who judging by the patois employed, was the godmother to her child. “But at least the kids are getting some Greek kultcha.”

“The problem is,” a bespectacled man in his forties dressed in an immaculately pressed Tommy Hilfiger polo top, elucidated in English, to a glass-eyed elderly gentleman clasping a bottle of Melbourne Bitter and wearing the last surviving Foster’s singlet in the Melbourne Metropolitan Region, enunciating each and every of his consonants as a syllable, “that this club is not run as a business. You have to run it as a business.”

“And instead of these foods, why not introduce them to traditional sweets such as melomakarona and kourabiedes so they know that there are special foods that we prepare at this time?” I persevered. “You could also make it even more interesting and tell them also about the kallikantzaroi.”

The old treasurer shuddered. “Tό’ χεις χαμένο; Νομίζεις ότι θα καταλάβουν τίποτε; Αφόύ δεν ξέρουν ελληνικά. Θα σκωθούνε να φύγουν... Άκου καλικάτζαροι…”

I wanted to enquire into the mechanics of exactly how the children would vacate the premises, given that it was their grandparents who had conveyed them there in the first place, but before I could do so, an old lady sporting a DKNY T-shirt interrupted: “The only kallikantzaroi around here are the συμβούλιο which organises trips at cost, inflates the value and pockets the difference.” Raising her voice, she shouted: “You are all liars and cheats. Τρώτε τα λεφτά μας. Μόνο για να μας κουβαλάτε εδώ ξένους είστε ικανοί. You should all resign.”

The hapless treasurers brow was furrowed. His mouth was half-open in preparation for the broadcast of an invective of titanic proportions, when a large, visibly enraged woman clad in activewear interposed herself between DKNY and the treasurer, snapping in lisping English:

"What kind of present do you call this? Why does Elsbeth get the Barbie and my Sienna only gets this $2 shop troll doll? My dad has been a member for thirty years you know. This is unprofessional. No wonder you've lost the νεολαία. We don't have to be here, you know. We were supposed to go to Santa's Magical Kingdom instead. And you pull this crap. You will never see us again. Come on Sienna, mummy’s going to get you a chai latte.”

I looked around, expecting there to be a confrontation with Elsbeth's mother or grandfather but there was no one there. Having received and opened their presents, the children and their grandparents had now departed, leaving an artfully arranged installation of wrapping paper and plastic packaging on the dance floor, of a complexity that would make Pro Hart jealous, even beyond the grave.

“Καλές γιορτές,” the treasurer sighed.

“’Ὀ,τι επιθυμείς,” I responded, in sympathy.

Moments later, and to this day, I will never understand how, we found ourselves arm in arm, tapping forks on the empty beer wine bottles, our mouths intoning the κάλαντα, listening to them echo tidings of joy and good will to all men, as they reverberated, around the empty room.

I saw the treasurer again a few days after New Years Day, looking ruddy and decidedly worse for wear.

“Καλή χρονιά,” I wished him. “How was the New Year’s Eve dance?”

“Well,” he confided thoughtfully. “From a point of view of numbers it was unprecedented. We haven’t had an attendance like this since the nineties..”

“But you don’t look happy.”

“Why should I be? Do you know what those members and their κωλόπαιδα did? They turned up demanding a free present for their ill-begotten brood because they were too busy to attend and then, do you know what? They then had the temerity to demand an extra present for New Year, since Άγιος Βασίλης visits the Greeks on New Year’s Eve.”

“So what did you do?”

“What did I do? I told them: Θέλεις δώρα; Σύρε στην Καισαρεία, βρες τον Άγιο Βασίλη και πάρε. Κακό χρόνο να᾽χουν όλοι τους.”

And it is with these benign words of intense goodwill, that I wish, you all on behalf of beleaguered treasurers everywhere, a most superlative Year.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 12 January 2019