BOOK WEEK AT SAINT JOHN'S COLLEGE

 

“Thank you for coming,” Leading Teacher Kristian Raspa offered a greeting. “You know, one of the most enduring memories our alumni tell us they have of their time at our school, is Book Week.”

I was attending Saint John’s College in the capacity of guest author, invited to speak to Year 5 and 6 students about my recently published children’s book, “The Librarian of Cappadocia.”  As I watched the students file into the room, some smiling, others looking at me with curiosity, I was seized with misgivings. How would it be possible for me, in a short space of time, to through my own publication, attempt to cultivate a love for reading among them and hopefully along the way, ignite their imagination, creativity, and cognitive growth? These are of course ambitious undertakings, and I decided that if the students were at least able to enjoy the story, then their time would not have been wasted.

My first question to them was whether they had heard of Cappadocia. This question, asked of other students, usually and understandably draws a blank, even of students of Greek heritage who struggle to remember, let alone pronounce their grandparent’s place of origin. Yet here, several hands were raised and I decided to investigate.

“It’s a place in Asia Minor,” one girl replied. Not Turkey, mind you. Asia Minor.

“Isn’t it that place where there are all those icons in those caves?” another boy asked.

“The word for painting icons is iconography,” a boy seated at the back informed me solemnly.

“I think Cappadocia is the birthplace of Saint George,” a student offered. In reference to the Greek tradition, he was of course, spot on.

“Does Santa Claus come from there?” came a question out of nowhere, causing the entire class to erupt with laughter, and the enquirer to turn bright red, that is, until I explained that Saint Basil, the Greek version of ‘Santa’ did indeed come from Cappadocia.

“He is important in our Church, isn’t he?” the same child asked. “I think he is called a Church Father.”

Getting the students to enter the world in which the book is set thus required no effort at all, for thanks to a curriculum that provides them with a holistic view of the Greek world over millenia, they did not just only appreciate that world, it was already a part of them.

I beamed as we went on to focus on the main characters of the book. “Sir,” a bespectacled boy enquired. “Is the bearded old man on the front cover Gandalf?”

I did my best to do my famed, at least in my own mind impression of Sir Ian McKellen shouting “You shall not pass,” but it fell flat as the reference was not understood and I suddenly became acutely aware of my age. I spoke to the children of the maze of subterranean tunnels that existed under the surface of the caves of Cappadocia, some of which could house a city and asked them to imagine how an entire library could be hidden within them. Subsequently, I asked them to imagine what manner of things could be secreted down there.

“Treasure,” was one response.

“Books,” was another.

“Books ARE treasure,” the first student replied.

“Livestock,” was another suggestion. When asked why, the student in question explained that his grandparents had told him tales of a time long ago when things were bad and people sought refuge in caves and in secret places and had to take their livestock with them. This then was having recourse to a hive mind of inherited memory and identity and I shuddered in reverence and awe.

“Would Smaug the Dragon be down there?” the Gandalf fan asked.

“Why not?” I smiled. “Anything is possible.”

The Librarian of Cappadocia commences with a foundation myth involving a race of arrogant giants who, in their presumptuous task of attempting to understand the cosmos, block out the rays of the sun, causing humanity to suffer. For their indifference to the suffering of others, they are turned into the rock caves that dot the landscape of Cappadocia today. This was an opportune time I felt, to discuss the connotations of the words light and darkness.

“Illumination is light,” one girl informed me.

“How about illuminated manuscripts?” came another student’s contribution. We spoke of the Byzantine tradition of illuminated manuscripts and I read them passages of the book that place such texts within its vast subterranean library.

“Light also means knowledge,” another girl contributed. I could not suppress a smile, as the students identified and decoded one motif after another. “If the giants are blocking out the light, then are they ignorant or are they making the people ignorant?” she supplemented her response. This was one of the key questions posed by the book. “How do you stay in the light if people are trying to block it?” I pointed to the classroom all around them. “It is quite possible that you find yourselves in the most brilliantly lit place of them all.” They giggled.

The plot of the “Library of Cappadocia” is a simple one and takes the form of a parable. A solitary monk, left abandoned in a desolate landscape is single-mindedly engrossed upon the task of finding the One Book that contains all the knowledge, all the truth of the world..

“Sir, is that like the One Ring that Frodo is trying to find?” my Lord of the Rings buff interrupted me.

“Quite possibly,” I smiled.

“But the One Ring was bad. It had to be destroyed.” In a few brief sentences, I explained to him J RR Tolkien’s own ethical concerns and the way these were incorporated into the world that he created.

“I think it is a tragedy that he died in 1973,” the boy mused. “Does your monk die?”

The monk in the story, I continued to recount, is interrupted in his task three times by a strange young boy who appears at the mouth of the cave and craves that he be granted access to a book.

“Is that Plato’s cave, sir?” a girl asked.

“Wow, what do you know of Plato’s cave,” I stammered, flabbergasted.

“I’ve heard about it, that’s all,” she responded, embarrassed. Yet again, another reference, nailed, as they say in the vernacular.

The boy in the story appears to the monk three times and three times he is rebuffed in the most dismissive and downright abuse way by a monk intent only upon his task and oblivious to the feelings of those around him.

“He is like those giants,” a boy observed.

“He is like Saruman?” Lord of the Rings buff corrected him.

“Can I make a prediction?” a girl interjected. “Will the boy find the One Book and bring back all the people to that place?

“Is the little boy Jesus? That’s my prediction,” another girl suggested.

The story resolves itself in a place that does not appear to be on earth. The monk, who has fallen from a ladder in the library, finds himself before a gate that will not open. There is darkness behind him and he is desperate to escape it. The young boy to whom he denied entry to the cave appears behind the gate and asks him why he should let him enter when the monk denied him three times…

“I told you, its Jesus!” the girl exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I’m not convinced,” a boy considered.

The monk is now reading words of the One Book on the robes of the young boy.

“Sir,” a girl asked tentatively. “I remember reading somewhere that there is the Word and the Word has something to do with being God?”

I barely suppressed my whoop of excitement as I referred the class to the opening verses of the Gospel of Saint John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

“Yeah, that’s it, sir. So you are trying to tell us that books are holy?”

“No, he is saying that God can be found in a book.”

“No, its how Gandalf the Grey was really Gandalf the White.”

There was something very special about this gifted group of students debating the nuances of a text that I, in my giant-like arrogance, presumed would pass them by. To know that within our community but also within the mainstream, there exists a school that draws upon our heritage in order to infuse its students with analytical tools necessary to make sense of the modern world so effectively, providing them with a unique world-view steeped in precedent but positive and open to all and to witness this being negotiated before me is an experience the oft-cliched word privilege, fails to qualify nearly enough.

As I took my leave, I was accosted by my new Tolkien-loving friend. “I hope you didn’t mind me asking so many questions about the Lord of the Rings. I just really love it.” I confessed that I shared his love of Tolkien, pointing out that the best authors read as widely as they can and then try to give their ideas their own voice. “Can I have your book?” he asked. “I would really love to read it.” As I placed my copy of the “Librarian of Cappadocia,” into his hands, he held it reverently and then clutched it to his chest in a warm embrace. It was this embrace that I felt from all his classmates and from the entire school community. Mr Kristian Raspa was right. Book Week at Saint John’s College is an experience you do not forget.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 31 August 2024.

GOING SOLAR: THE UTOPIANS OF HELIOPOLIS

 

I’ve always been fascinated by Saint Maximus the Greek, especially when one considered that he was a follower of radical Florentine reforming monk Girolamo Savonarola, who swept the Medicis from power in his city and instituted an almost puritanical Utopian regime, where all were treated equally and pomp and privilege were abolished in the hopes of establishing the New Jerusalem, before being pronounced a heretic and burnt at the stake.

Saint Maximus ended up in Russia, where he wrote one of the fullest accounts of Savonarola’s life, in Russian. In his account, Saint Maximus recognised Savonarola as a true religious reformer whose teaching deals with the genuine spirit of Christianity.

It is not known what Saint Maximus thought of earlier attempts to bring about social equality via the foundation of utopian regimes within the Greek world, of which the City of the Sun, is a most prominent example.

In 133BC, Attalus III, king of the Hellenistic Kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor died. In his will, he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, an unprecedented act that created great turmoil. Although Attalus specified that Pergamum and other Greek cities were excluded from the bequest, it made little difference to the Romans. Social reformer Tiberius Gracchus, in particular, was keen to use this gift to support his ambitious land reforms.

One beneficiary left out of the will, was Aristonicus, a lyre player from Ephesus who asserted he was the illegitimate son of the earlier Pergamene king, Eumenes II seized the opportunity presented by the uncertainty to claim the throne, adopting the dynastic name Eumenes III. The historian Strabo described him as maintaining: “pretence of being descended from the royal family, but with the intention of usurping the kingdom.”

From the outset, Aristonicus gained substantial support, gathering both troops and ships, and launched his campaign to take over the Kingdom of Pergamum. He initially experienced significant victories on land and sea. Commencing his revolt at Leucae, with Phocaea joining his cause, he conquered Colophon, Notium, Samos, and Myndus. His campaign was further strengthened by his success in acquiring enough precious metals to mint coinage, a firm indication of his attempts to augment his legitimacy.

There were a number of reasons why significant numbers of the inhabitants of western Asia Minor initially supported Aristonicus. Firstly, his purported connection to the royal line of the Attalids gave his claim respectability. Further, there was significant resentment toward Roman interference and the impending direct control over Pergamon. Aristonicus’ resistance thus symbolized broader opposition to Rome's expansionist policies and their impact on local autonomy. Most importantly however, the revolt capitalised on widespread discontent among various social groups, including disenfranchised citizens, slaves, and other marginalized populations. Aristonicus attracted these supporters via radical promises for social reform and liberation which appealed to those dissatisfied with the existing social and economic order.

Such promises coalesced into an inchoate ideology after he experienced significant reverses in his fortunes: His forces never managed to capture the city of Pergamon and struggled in an attack against Smyrna. He experienced a naval defeat near Cyme against Ephesus. Consequently, Aristonicus began recruiting slaves into his ranks, some historians believe likely more out of necessity than a commitment to egalitarianism. This action spurred several Anatolian kings to join the conflict, including Nicomedes II of Bithynia, Mithridates V of Pontus, and Ariarathes V of Cappadocia.

Thus, after losing Ephesus, Aristonicus retreated into the interior of Asia Minor,  establishing a capital which he called Heliopolis, the City of the Sun.  He made it known that this would henceforth become the capital of a new type of state, a veritable utopia where not only would citizenship be afforded to all his subjects, but there would also be blanket equality. According to Strabo, “he went up into the interior and quickly assembled a large number of resource-less people, and also of slaves, invited with a promise of freedom, whom he called Heliopolitae.”

Some scholars contend that Aristonicus was not merely seeking to manipulate the masses for manpower but instead speculate that the utopian leader was influenced in his social programme of recruitment, including emancipation and economic relief, by his reputed association with the Stoic philosopher Blossius of Cumae, hailed by the historian Toynbee as Karl Marx’s “Hellenic Prototype” who supposedly was the instigator of Roman tribune Tiberius Gracchus’ land reforms. After Tiberius’ murder, Blossius fled Rome and joined Aristonicus’ movement. It is argued that Blossius’ ideological influence is apparent in the Heliopolitan movement. As an advocate of the Gracchan reforms, Blossius quite possibly was responsible for introducing a philosophical foundation to Aristonicus’ revolt focused on social justice and reducing inequality. His presence in the court of the rebel king suggests a migration of the radical social ideas that had so agitated the Roman polity, to the local context in Asia Minor. Others still believe that the Solar element in Aristonicus’ ideology was an attempt to placate his powerful Thracian mercenaries, who where particularly devoted to the worship of the god Helios.

Conversely, others contend that while there is no doubt that Aristonicus’ existed, his social programme was in fact inspired not by philosophy or ideolog but rather drew upon widely known tales of a legendary traveller named Iambulus, who, according to Diodorus, visited a utopian society on the “islands of the sun.” The inhabitants of that society were said to belong to an archipelago where day and night were of equal length and the climate was mild. They consumed abundant animals and plants and were never hungry, residing in a community that exhibited communal aspects and placed importance on moderation, beauty, and knowledge.

While we cannot know which policies Aristonicus put into practice among his subjects, we do know that the bourgeoisie of Pergamum feared confiscation of their wealth, class warfare, and a redistribution of property.

Aristonicus expanded his campaign into Lydia and Mysia, capturing the strategic city of Cyzicus. In response, the Roman Senate dispatched consul Marcus Perperna to quell the rebellion and secure the Kingdom of Pergamum for Rome. Perperna, who had experience in subduing slave revolts in Sicily, promptly arrived, organized his troops, and marched inland, where he decisively defeated Aristonicus in his first encounter. After his defeat, Aristonicus sought refuge in the city of Stratonicea, named after Aristonicus’ father’s wife, where the Romans besieged him. The siege was prolonged, with the Romans cutting off supplies, leading to the city and its defenders surrendering due to starvation. Eventually, Aristonicus was captured and taken to Rome in chains, where he was paraded around the city. In 129 BC, the Senate ordered his execution by strangulation in the Tullianum prison, ending his challenge to Roman authority.

After the capture and execution of the Sun King, the Romans began to establish their new province of Asia in the old Pergamene kingdom, facing continued resistance from remaining Heliopolitan supporters inspired by Aristonicus's egalitarian ideals. Despite their defiance, the Romans ruthlessly suppressed them, with Consul Marcus Aquilius resorting to poisoning the water sources of their fortified positions, a tactic they themselves found reprehensible. Aquilius was subsequently worshipped as a benefactor god by the Pergamenes. By 127 B.C, the utopian ideal had vanished into obscurity, although it is possible that the king of Pontus was able to tap into lingering local resentment when he attempted decades later, to raise Asia Minor in revolt against the Romans.

Recently archaeologists uncovered a reference at an oracle in Asia Minor to a previously unknown location called the doulon polis, or “City of Slaves,” one of the few possibly concrete pieces of evidence to attest to an early if ultimately unsuccessful social experiment, one of many that would follow and that would ultimately, be brutally suppressed. Today, a statue of the hapless Sun King in Bergama, the modern city of Pergamum, holding a sun shaped harp acts as a symbol of the ideal of social revolution and how easily and harshly, its aspirations can be supressed.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

 kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 24 August 2024

OLYMPIC OBSERVANCES

 

“The fact is,” my friend Dimos exclaimed, “the West is not only degenerate but ignorant. Άκου εκεί, placing transexuals at centre stage in the Olympics. There were no transexuals in Ancient Greece.” Ruddy faced, he slapped his palm on the table indignantly, causing the patrons of Degani’s in Northcote to all turn towards him simultaneously, and then look away.

 

“I don’t agree,” I ventured.

“What don’t you agree with?” he asked. “That the West is ignorant and degenerate, or that there were transexuals in ancient Greece?”

“The Greeks definitely believed there were,” I responded.  “Take Kaineus, for instance. Born as the female Kaineides, she begged Poseidon to turn her into an invulnerable warrior in order to escape sexual abuse. As a man she fought alongside the Lapiths in the war against the Centaurs. Unable to hurt him, the Centaurs got rid of Kaineus by burying him under a stack of uprooted logs and stones, which is the traditional way Greeks employ to bury inconvenient truths. According to Ovid, his soul eventually emerged and escaped into a bird. Did you know by the way, that in ancient Greek, the word psyche, for soul, was the same as the word for butterfly?”

 

“But that is myth, not reality,” Dimos hastened to point out. “So it doesn’t count.”

 

“That depends on which you think is more powerful,” I considered. “Some transexuals were worshipped as deities. Aphroditus who originated from Amathus in Cyprus, was worshiped in Athens in a transvestite rite. The god himself was portrayed with feminine curves and clothing like Aphrodite's but also a phallus. According to Macrobius, who mentions the god/dess at his/her sacrifices men and women exchanged clothing. In describing the rituals involved in the festivals, he noted  that the image the god was accompanied by a large train of followers in which girls mingled with men because the festivals allowed “women to act the part of men, and men put on woman's clothing and play the woman.”

 

“I don’t believe it,” Dimos snorted.

 

“And don’t get me started on Tiresias, prophet of Apollo in Thebes, who is said to have been transformed into a woman for seven years by Hera after striking a couple of copulating snakes with a stick. As a woman, he became a priestess and even had children,” I ventured. “If you are looking for “traditional values” a la the American religious right, perhaps having recourse to the ancient Greeks is slightly misguided.”

 

“All of this is out of context,” Dimos shrugged, incensed. “It is all a Western plot to dominate us by diminishing our achievements and compromising our self-esteem as a people.”

 

“As for the occasional bout of orientalism, I can’t but agree that this process of denigration on one hand and appropriation on the other hand exists. And it has been going on ever since the Romans and is still with us today” I agreed. “In 1999, Auberon Waugh, son of the great writer Evelyn Waugh wrote of his concern that London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone would return the Parthenon Marbles: “to some short-legged, hairy-bottomed foreigners, who have nothing to do with the ancient Athenians but who happen to occupy the space, being descended from Turkish invaders over the centuries.” Charming no?”

 

“Yeah, when we were building the Parthenon, they were all swinging from tree branches,” Dimos scowled. “It took them until 1832 with the passage of the Reform Act to institute democracy. Meanwhile, Pericles was giving it ago, two thousand, two hundred years earlier. A bunch of Johnny Come Latelies , if you ask me.”

 

“Theirs is a point echoed down the ages,” I responded. “In his 1897 book on the Greco-Turkish War, “What happened in Thessaly,” George Warrington Stevens wrote:
“the Greek is what he was - a dishonest, intelligent, chicken hearted talker, whom nothing will apparently deprive of Britain's sympathy as long as he quotes Byron and lives in the land of Alcibiades.” So as you can see, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

 

“Is that the conclusion you drew?” Dimos shouted. “What about the fact that they are denying our legitimacy? That we are the true descendants of the ancient Greeks? They have been trying to do this since Fallmerayer. Nothing we do has validity for them, because they are jealous of our inheritance.’

 

I considered this for a moment. “The ancient verb used for 'duly recognising' νομίζειν, has the same etymological root as νόμος, law,” I mused. ‘When you recognise something as being valid, (regardless as to whether it actually is or not) you are in effect legitimising it. So isn’t the fact that the West pays lip service to continuity by allowing (and I stress the term allowing because it is they who call the shots) the Greek team to march into the Olympic Opening Ceremony tantamount to recognition of that continuity you so crave?”

 

“But these aren’t the real Games. They are an ersatz and corrupted copy of the original ones. That is the problem. They are not Greeks so they cannot feel the ancient ideals that informed the Games as deeply as we do. First of all, the Games were part of our ancient Hellenic religion…”

 

“Whereas sport happens not to be the national religion of Australia,” I guffawed. “Look, the philosopher Anaxagoras was ostracised by the enlightened Athenians for affirming that the sun was not the god Helios but “an incandescent stone large than the Peloponnese.” He is still banned from the Pallaconian Club in Brunswick. That does not make the sun, any less real. Secondly, since when did Greeks ever really take religion seriously?  A Byzantine canonist, Theodore Balsamon, complained that: “certain clerics, on certain festivals disguise themselves with various masks. With sword in hand and wearing military costumes they enter the middle aisle of the church and then they come out dressed as four-legged animals.”

 

“But that is Byzantium, the most obscure, ignorant and dark period of our history,” Dimos protested. “Surely you can’t equate one with the other. There is no comparison.”

 

“Well, if we are talking about continuity,” I pressed my point, “between the ancients you so idolise and the moderns I absolutely adore, there lies securely wedged, a millenium of Byzantium, who also enshrined the transgendered in their rituals. If you have a look for example at depictions of the Cappadocian Saint Onuphrius, he is always painted nude, with a full beard and prominently displayed breasts. This relates to a legend that states he was once a woman who prayed to be given the features of a man so as to escape the attention of men.

God heard the prayer and granted her a beard. “But what is Plato but Moses speaking in Attic Greek?” as Numenius of Apamea enthused in the second century AD.”

 

“But I never saw any saints competing in the Olympics. And anyway, the Olympics should return to Greece, their birthplace. Having them outside of Greece is a supreme act of appropriation,” Dimos opined.

 

 

 

“Actually, for me, the most supreme appropriators were the Elizabethan playwrights,” I confided. “Part of Byzantine novelist Eustathios Makrembolites’ novel: The Story of Hysmine and Hysminias, specifically the scene of the storm at sea and the heroine offered as a sacrifice was adapted in Book 8 of the Confessio Amantis of John Gower and, by way of that, forms a portion of the plot of William Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. And don’t get me started on the relationship between Hamlet and Orestes, none of whom, you’ll observe, ever went near the Olympics.”

 

“All I’m saying,” Dimos sighed, “is that certain ideals are immortal. You don’t need to give your modern twist on things. Just respect those values and leave them as they are.”

 

“You remind me of my daughter, who refused to participate in her school Mini-Olympics because they didn’t sing the Olympic Hymn, at the commencement of proceedings.”

 

“How wonderful,” Dimos gushed. “You must be very proud of her.”

 

“She was certainly proud of her principled stance,” I informed him. “Until that is, I informed her that the Olympic Hymn was not sung at the ancient Games, as Kostis Palamas had not been invented yet.”

 

“Seriously,” Dimos spat. “But I think we both agree that the West has lost its way. I can only pray that the goddess Dikaiosyne returns to set things right and to open everyone’s eyes.”

 

“But the ancient Greeks worshipped error. Only they could take the concept of being misled and turn her into a goddess. Πλάνη, was the goddess of Error, and she is generally as present during the competition between Apollo and Marsyas, looking on in horror as Marsyas loses and is about to be flayed alive.”

As Dimos gasped in microtones of horror and incredulity, I concluded: “Dicaearchus, of Aetolia was a pirate in the service of Macedonian King Philip V. He had a tradition in which wherever he landed he would build two temples, one to Ἀσέβεια, (impiety), and another to Παρανομία (lawlessness). It’s always better to hedge one’s bets both ways.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 17 August 2024

WITH SYRMOS IN AGIOI SARANTA

 The sun, bruised and swollen as if ripe to burst from the repeated blows and ravages of the centuries, leaned exhausted over the sea, shining upon it a phosphorescent path in all the brilliant hues of blood, leading absolutely nowhere. Our eyes were fixed upon it and not once did we turn to gaze at the mountains that loomed spitefully behind us. We had completely turned our backs upon them.

 

Beyond, a group of dishevelled seagulls fluttered nervously. They circled us two or three times desultorily and then, by way of unspoken consensus, they disappeared into the sea of ​​sky, as if they could not wait to escape the asphyxiating embrace of the port. A breeze had suddenly picked up and all the dust of the city was hurtling down towards the harbour desperately seeking a means of escape and of anabaptism at the same time.

“The solar equivalent of γιακαμός, (sea phosphorescence) should be  λιακαμός,” I said finally.

“Do you know how many times during those years, we stood at this exact spot and cast our gaze far, desperate to discern a sign, a trace, even a blot on the horizon, anything to signal salvation?” he sighed wearily. “Even the sun deceived us.”

 

Dimly on the horizon, the brooding mass of the island of the Phaeacians was silhouetted, slumbering indifferently and still, more of an introverted idea that still resented the god-abandoned deserters of Troy rather than a place of refuge and asylum.

 

‘The truth is,’ he continued, “During those times we were insanely jealous of the fish.”

He had already deboned the fish on his plate with the delicate, subtle movements of a virtuoso surgeon and was now applying himself to the task of sucking the juices from its bones with gusto.

 

“You know,” he related, a fish tail protruding from his thin lips, “there was once a Russian ascetic on Mount Athos who had a fish bone hanging in his cell. Three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and on August the fifteenth, he would take it down from its allotted place, boil it in an old soup tin and call that a feast. As for me, the first thing I ate that very first night after I was released from Spaç Prison Camp after seventeen years, was fish soup. And my Lord, was that a feast.”

 

‘They say that when Lazarus was raised, he asked to be given something sweet to eat,” I reflected.

“Quite possibly, but he came back from Hades, not from Hell,” he grimaced bitterly, grimly slurping upon his fish bone once again.

 

Iraklis Syrmos’ youth was torn away from him in brutal increments, in the torture chambers and in the gulags of the Hoxha regime in Albania, as a consequence of an inopportune conversation. While performing his military service, he was overheard criticising the efficiency of the collective farms imposed by the communist regime as well as the savage way in which collectivisation was imposed. He lamented the poverty of his homeland, of a country created entirely from stone, possessed of a petrified heart that has aught else to do but to chase away its children, for what else is left to bile and to tears, if they cannot overflow and escape: they thicken, they congeal and petrify, they lurk in the soil like the concrete bunkers constructed by the tyrant in their hundreds of thousands, waiting for you to try to leave so that they can rise up and cast themselves at you. Because misery, hardship, terror; all these things you must tie up in a knot tightly inside you and carry them together like the ballast of a ship that will never make sail, no matter how much you are choked by injustice, disgusted by cruelty and permeated by the longing for escape. “Our country is closed,” a particular poet once wrote in his abject boredom, for he too could not wait to escape the suffocating tedium of another closed, neighbouring metropolis. “Τwo black Symplegades
are closing it in.” It is the destiny of the stone-born never to escape the monolithic fury of the rocks that engendered them.

 

He was disinclined to refer to his suffering in the sadistic labour camps of the Regime, his punishment for identifying Greece as a place of possible refuge. When he mentioned his father, however, tears came to his eyes and welled up in mine too, the salty tears of fish out of water, because at this pivotal point, the narratives of the stone-born and the alien born under foreign skies converged. In 1947, the Military Court of Argyrokastro sentenced Giorgis Syrmos to a suspended prison term, for aiding and abetting a fugitive and concealing a crime. One of these fugitives was his relative "pappou” Nikos Syrmos, an ardent patriot and fighter for the liberation of Northern Epirus, who fled imminent and execution in Albania for Australia and settled in Brunswick, where he was left alone with his ennui, abandoning to the fury of the dictator, his wife and children, whom he never saw again, conversing with them only through notes in his diary, a diary that was only discovered when Nikos Syrmos passed away desolate, wracked by loneliness, despair and guilt, a despondency the regime must have been feeding upon, for it having been spent, it collapsed shortly after.

 

“Poisonous xenitia, you have poisoned me.” That is the traditional song your uncle used to sing when he missed you all,” I told him. “He would sit and say the names of all his relatives, as if they were the thirty-three prayers of the komoskoini. All of them far away, all of them fleeting but none of them unremembered.”

 

I told him more, about his prominent fellow villagers from Dervitsiani who had made a name for themselves in Australia. About the Lillis brothers, one of whom lay the foundations of the literary activity of our community but died too young and the other, who kept alive the flame of the struggle for the object of our most ardent desire and passed it on to us. About Stamoulis, the great benefactor who mobilized the entire community when he learned that Iraklis had once again been imprisoned by the new regime that had inherited the same hatreds, the same paranoias from the old one. Iraklis, in the euphoria that only the delusion of new beginnings can bring was arrested because he was one of the infamous OMONOIA Five, daring to dream that our people could take participate in the political process of a truly democratic Albania, only to have this called treason. “We tried to help,” I pleaded. “But what could we do? We are too far away, it is not easy, this damnably toxic xenitia gets in the way.”

 

He listened to me thoughtfully, chewing on his fish bone all the while. Finally he blurted out:

“Of all the poisons, Xenitia is the most poisonous of all. Why don't all our people come back? Fish do not live on land. Our suffering has taught us this.”

“Because between us now lies a vast ocean of pain that is no longer navigable. Because it is expressed in vocabularies and idioms that are now not mutually intelligible,” I responded and he shook his head with understanding and sorrow,  turning to listening to the sound of the waves. It was getting dark now and some lunar gravitational force was gathering the waters and pulling them towards the Adriatic. Everything that could leave, was leaving.

 

When I took my leave of him that Summer night in Agioi Saranda, I wanted to tell Iraklis that by his suffering, by his uncompromising stance as a staunch defender of the rights of the Greeks of Northern Epirus, by his refusal to be cowed during his show trial in 1994, by the physical and psychological pressure, the beatings, the sleep deprivation, and the threats of torture he endured,  he had set an example for all of us, especially in the Antipodes, as to exactly how one should guard the Pass at Thermopylae and mean it. But as he turned and looked at me sharply with his twinkling eyes, all I managed to gush was:

“You are a hero. This is what I will tell our people down under. That you are a hero.”

“I'm not a hero,” he interjected. “Don’t tell them that. Tell them that I am Iraklis Syrmos and I send my respects.”

 

When I learned last Thursday that Iraklis had died, I went to the kitchen and prepared a dish of fish stuffed with rice. I chose a snapper with venerable bones, full of history. And as I sucked upon its bones, reserving the head for psarosoupa, at the precise moment I finally understood the relationship between Kakavia, as fish soup and Kakavia, the border crossing into Albania, I recalled his final words to me:

“Kiss all our people down there, for me.”

“Do you have people in Australia?”

“You are all my people.”

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 10 August 2024