ΜΑΥΡΑ

 

“I miss all those old nonnas wearing black, with their cute headscarves, walking back from the shops with their little shopping carts. You just don’t get that kind of authenticity in the area anymore,” the lady exclaims to her friend as she took a sip of her latte, holding a yoga mat in her other hand, while watching a thin, black clad, hunchbacked old woman limp slowly from the supermarket. Unlike so many of her past incarnations, she is not wearing a headscarf today and that must have been the source of her observer’s consternation.

Also, she isn’t a nonna, because as she approaches me, she cranes her neck, like a turtle peering from its carapace, and recognising me, hails me in greeting:

-           -Ω Κώτσιο!

-           -Ω θειά, I respond.

-           -Τι κανς μωρ μάνα’ μ;

-           - Καλά είμαι. Συ τι κανς;

-           -Τι να κάνω η μαύρη; Από τότες πού’ φκε ο συγχωρεμένος, λιάζω το σκατί μου και το τρώω…

I was very young when that happened and yet I remember it distinctly. She would have been in her late thirties, wearing the same black clothes, throwing herself upon her husband’s coffin, rending her hair and scratching at her cheeks until she drew blood, as she railed against fate, against her husband who had the misfortune to have his life taken away from him in an industrial accident, against God himself who in his infinite mercy had saw fit to create orphans and widows. I remember her headscarf getting tangled in her thick plaited hair, the colour of pitch as she tore at it in defiance. When she finally ripped it free, she thrust it up at the sky in fury. «Να!» she screamed at the heavens and then all went black as she collapsed. Over the years, I bore witness to that same lady’s features begin to harden, to dry, eventually to shrivel, encased in her armour of perennial black, but losing none of her bitter rage.

My great-grandmother was in her early thirties when her husband was killed. These, as she would explain, were the “black” years. She was breastfeeding her baby when she was told the news and from the shock, she would relate, her milk “turned black,” and the baby died. This was during the war, far before my time, and yet the memory of my defiant neighbour become conflated with that of my great grandmother, who wore black until the day she died at the age of 104 and who I would see in the mornings, meticulously combing and plaiting her hair only to cover it with a tightly tied black headscarf. First, she would fold the square over to create a triangle. Then she would take the two ends of the triangle and cross them over her throat, up over her head and tie them firmly on top, so that her neck could not be seen. When asked how she was, she would respond sarcastically in the same words as my neighbour: «Τι να κάνω η μαύρη;» For, encased in the garb that rendered her femininity and fertility at naught, that is what she was. Black. Nothingness Personified. The epitome of Uncreation.

Sometimes, at the social gatherings which our widow neighbour would not attend out of propriety, for what widow had the right to express joy in the company of others, I would catch fragments of sentences referring to her as «η καημένη», for, consumed by the black, she no longer had a name and I imagined her, burning in grief and indignation in her shroud of black all these decades. It was then that I finally realised what the word «χαροκαμένη», another word employed to describe widows, actually meant: to be literally burnt by death. To a crisp. To no longer be human but instead, through pressure, through decay, through pain and absence, to lose any humanity left to you and instead, to revert to the basics of all and any carbon-based life forms; to become as incendiary as anthracite, capable of igniting at any moment. Black, black as pitch, black as my great-grandmother’s coal black eyes.

In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland created the Drop Pitch Experiment, to demonstrate that some substances which appear solid are highly viscous fluids. Pitch was placed into a sealed funnel and after it had settled, the neck of the funnel was cut, allowing the pitch to start flowing. Since that time, only eight drops have ever fallen. I imagine the pitch, as black as the widows’ clothes, as dark as my great-grandmother’s mandila to be their congealed life force, impenetrably thick and unyielding, its viscosity, a measure of their resistance to deformation at a given rate. At night I see again my recurrent childhood nightmare: the mandila wrapped like a black viper around the light fitting in my room, venomously dripping pitch down onto the white sheets below. My aunt maintained what I had seen was the head covering of Agia Paraskevi but my great-grandmother, alone in her room, counting her dead among the shadows knew better. In the shadows, the fall of pitch cannot be seen, let alone be counted. I recognise it as Bengt Ekerot, Death in the Seventh Seal and I challenge it to a chess game. But they don’t play chess in my village.

The first ever shirt I bought for myself was black. I wore it proudly on my nameday and when I went to kiss my great-grandmother she pushed me away sharply and spat:

-          - Τι ειν’αυτό που φοράς;

-           -Ε;

-          - Αυτό το μαύρο τσόλι.

-           -Πουκάμισο είναι.

-           -Να το βγαν’ς. Τι το περάσαμαν; Δε θα ξαναβάνς μαύρα.

I dared not to again, at least not in her presence, this being present continuous, which is why eventually, I threw it away. It is also the reason that I discarded the black cushions I received as a housewarming present and regifted the black t-shirts a well-meaning friend gave my daughters one Christmas. Although my great-grandmother had lost the power of speech a few days before she died, she still took pains to illustrate her point. The priest had arrived and was hunched over his portable communion case, preparing the chalice. Slowly, she raised her gnarled hand, took hold of the fabric of his anteri and looked at me, the fabric and the communion chalice. “See,” her gaze said, in rage. “This is what black signifies.”

I wore black at her funeral and wanted to continue to do so but my great-aunt told me I was too old to expect that acts of such blatant gender transgressive idiocy would be tolerated. Instead, in accordance with tradition, I refrained from shaving for forty days, observing with horror the preponderance of blonde and white hairs sprouting from my chin. In this, as with everything else, my great grandmother had the last laugh.

Kyria Koula has been a widow for fifteen years now. Approaching a hundred, her mind is as fresh as a drop of morning dew. She lies on the bed in her nursing home, clad in a robe whose kaleidoscope of colours would put Joseph’s coat to shame. “You know when my husband died, your «συγχωριανές» took me to task for “removing the black” after forty days. But there was no way I was ever going to wear black longer than that. No way. I was very young when they came to the house to announce that my father had died. At first, I failed to understand. It was only when, amidst the shrieking my mother and my aunt’s began to pull the bedsheets and pillow cases from the beds, remove the tablecloth from the table and the curtains from the windows, that the shock hit me. When they took all these things outside and dyed them black. Imagine living in a house with black curtains, black sheets, black table cloths and having to wear black clothes. I got sick. Yes they judged me. But I cannot abide that colour. When I die, make sure none of people wear it to my funeral.”

“Which colour should we wear instead?” I dare to ask.

“Red!” she exclaims triumphantly.

Try as I might, I cannot remember if we buried my great-grandmother in her black headscarf. I have this sneaking suspicion that we didn’t. It was the only time that her absence of shadow would have signified her own absence, rather than that of my long-departed great-grandfather, obtaining in death, her own shadow, rather than that of another that she wore all her life.

At the funeral of a friend, his life tragically cut short after an unexpected illness, my black-clad neighbour approaches to offer a greeting. Glancing at his widow, her eyes red raw with tears, barely able to stand, she shrugs in sympathy:

-           -Ούι, κρίμα η καημένη. Και δεν της πάνε τα μαύρα.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 23 November 2024

ON AMAZONS, EVZONES AND RUSSOPHILES: GREEKS IN THE CRIMEAN WAR

 

There is a history of Greeks fighting for Russia in the Crimea. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Greek Battalion of Balaklava, comprised of Greeks living in Sebastopol, played an important role in facilitating the Russian annexation of Crimea and the expulsion of the Ottomans from the area.

At the suggestion of Grigory Potemkin and in order to please Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, the Battalion also created an “Amazons” division, made up of one hundred wives and daughters of the Greek soldiers headed by Eleni Ivanovna Sarantova, the wife of officer Ioannis Sarantis. Trained in military drill and the use of the sword, they sufficiently impressed the tsarina so as to grant Eleni Sarantova the rank of captain, together with a diamond bracelet valued at 10,000 roubles.

At home at sea as well as on land, the Battalion was instrumental in the capture of Kaffa as well as Sudak. Later, prior to its disbandment in 1859, the Battalion, whose organisation was modelled on that of the Don Cossacks, as they were considered closer to the Greek character and national traditions, fought strenuously in order to oppose the British occupation of Balaklava during the Crimean War.

Ostensibly caused by Catholic incursions upon Orthodox holy sites in Palestine and the French Emperor’s assertion of sovereignty over all Christians in the region, a prerogative previously enjoyed by the Russians, the Crimean War pitted the major European powers in an alliance with the Ottoman Empire. As opposed to the modern war in the same region, Russia’s only ally was the nascent Kingdom of Greece, which saw the commitment of Ottoman troops far from the Balkans as an opportunity for Greece to invade Thessaly and Epirus. This caused the French and the British to blockade Piraeus for three years between 1854-1857. The Epirus Revolt, incited by King Otto in 1854 failed completely, as did the uprisings in Crete.

Greece was excluded from the ensuing peace conference and gained nothing from the war. Exasperated, Greek leaders held the King responsible for missing the opportunity, leading to a steep decline in his popularity and ultimately his abdication in 1862.

Greek official policy or lack thereof notwithstanding, Greeks also fought in the Crimea itself. In March 1854, the Greek Volunteer Legion was formed in the Danubian Principalities (modern day Romania) where there was a sizeable Greek population and fought in the siege of Sebastopol. In 1855, the Legion received the title Greek Legion of Emperor Nicholas I.

In the wake of the Russian incursion into Moldavia, in December 1853, Prince Mikhail Dmitrievich Gorchakov approved the formation of a volunteer corps under the command of Lieutenant General Salas. A few months later, Lieutenant General Fyodor Ivanovich Soymonov reported that the Greek forces comprised 1,097 men organized into ten companies, forming two battalions, whose primary aim was to support Russian troops fighting in Moldavia. The two battalions were led by commanders of Souliote origin: Konstantinos Zervas, who led the first battalion and Vasileios Balafas who led the second. According to contemporary sources, the vast majority of Greeks enlisting in the Legion where from Thessaly and Epirus, with the remainder coming from the Danubian Principalities. Only a tenth of those enlisted possessed a military background, while half were sailors or merchants.

There were also two independent companies, one led by the priest Konstantinos Doukas and the other by Aristeidis Chrysovergis, from Mesimvria, now Nesebar in modern Bulgaria. In the summer of 1854, Chrysovergis with the rank of captain, at the head of 25 Greek volunteers fought against a British force of 700 soldiers who were trying to take the Russian-held fort of Sulina. During the battle the British lost six officers and 72 enlisted men, including the aristocrat Hyde Parker IV. The loss of the son of Vice-Admiral Hyde Parker was keenly felt in Britain and the battle of Sulina was raised in discussions in the British Parliament. In his memoirs, Chrysovergis mentions that he also fought against Cossacks who were fighting on the side of the Ottomans.

A group of volunteers led by Father Konstantinos Doukas also fought in a battle between the Russian forces led by Soymonov and the Ottomans at Gurgiu on 5 July. Later, in October 1854, the 3rd Company of the 2nd Battalion, commanded by Stergios Harisis, fought at the village of Cherna, suffering nearly 100 casualties.

While the overall strategy was determined by the Russians, the Greek troops were distinctive. They largely armed themselves and chose as their uniform, not Russian military garb, but rather the foustanella, like the evzones who formed the Greek Royal Guard. Greek inspired insignia was adopted for the legion: the phoenix, the double-headed eagle and a cross sitting on top of an upturned crescent being but a few.

Russian occupation of the Danubian Principalities proved untenable, and as they withdrew across the Prut River, other nationalities who had also formed battalions under the Russians such as the Moldavians and the Wallachians disbanded. Of the original 1079 Greeks who enlisted however, 1045 chose to remain. Sympathy of for the Russian cause must have played a part in this, for those who remained did so on reduced pay. However, another factor was the extreme practical difficulty faced by those who would seek to return to their homes during war time, especially considering that the vast majority of Greek volunteers had made their way to the front by ship, the return journey by the same mode of conveyance being made perilous by the Allied Naval Blockade.

Transported to the Crimea, the Greeks were largely supported by the Odessa Greek community which raised funds for its subsistence. New recruits were compelled to pledge that they would settle in the Crimea after the War was over, renewing a Greek presence that stretched back to times ancient.

In February 1855, the Greeks arrived at Eupatoria and were tasked with assisting the Russians to capture the city from the Ottomans, under the command of Phanariote Prince Mourouzis. The siege was unsuccessful, resulting in the death of sixty Greeks. After the defeat, they were transported to Sevastopol. Trained in the guerilla tactics of the Balkan and unused to regimented European military discipline, they failed to impress Prince Pavel Aleksandrovich Urusov, who wrote of them derisively:

"There exists neither discipline nor any organization. The volunteers absent themselves from distant hospitals and arrive here without any document whatever; the other ranks do not obey the officers; the company commanders, of whom no responsibility is sought, are only in formal command of the companies".

For some reason, the Greeks’ insistence that they wear the foustanella raised Urusov’s ire. He recommended that Russian military uniform be adopted as a means of instilling military discipline, a suggestion welcomed by the erudite and urbane Prince Mourouzis but vehemently opposed by the dashing Chrysovergis. Another suggestion was more practical. It was widely observed that the Greeks were excellent marksmen. However, they were equipped with antiquated flintlocks for whom ammunition was hard to come by in the besieged city.

A typhus epidemic decimated the Legion even though Chrsyovergis distinguished himself with his valour at the Battle of Kurgan and problems with discipline led to the replacement of Mourouzis with Grigorios Kantakouzinos. The members of the Legion began to slip away, heading for Bessarabia, where they attempted to survive under parlous conditions, even though attempts were made to support them by the Odessan Greeks. Historian Maria Todorova claims:

"the files of the Russian war ministry are full of pleas by Greeks and Bulgarians from the beginning of 1856 who, left penniless, begged for a job or assistance".

In June 1856, with the disbandment of the Legion at the close of the wat, some 300 former volunteers arrived at Piraeus but were refused entry to their homeland by a Greek State fearful of French and British reaction. A number of volunteers decided to settle in Russia, being allowed to do so by Tsar Alexander II, primarily in the Greek villages around Mariupol, now destroyed during the current war, as well as Odessa.

Despite their reputation for indiscipline, the volunteers of the Greek Legion were honoured by the Russian Empire. Of the over 1,200 volunteers serving in the Legion, 730 of them received the medal "For the Defence of Sevastopol" while 31 received the highest Russian military decoration, the Cross of St. George.

While a memorial was planned to honour their contribution as early as 1864 in Sebastopol, this was only achieved in 2016. In the intervening period, the Greeks would return to the region, notably in 1919 at the behest of Venizelos, to support pro-White western foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks, with disastrous results both for the Greeks of the region, as well as Greek foreign policy in general, sowing the seeds of the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 16 November 2024

DELPHI

 

Delphi shares the same root with the Greek word for womb, δελφύς. It is thus not only, as the ancient Greeks believed, the centre of the world but the beginning of everything. It is also the end. Prior to receiving its name, Delphi was known as Pytho, which is derived from the verb πύθω, which means to rot. Depending on which version of the myth you ascribe to, Delphi may also have taken its name from the Delphyne, the she-serpent who lived there and was killed by the god Apollo, although in other accounts the serpent was the male Python, who supposedly guarded the navel of the earth and died and rotted at the spot of his death.

All of the above comprises the foundation myth of author Karen Martin’s latest novel: “Delphi,” a sequel to her debut novel “Dancing the Labyrinth.” Like the place and the myths surrounding it, “Delphi” is a sophisticated, nuanced and often disconcerting exploration of trauma and how this manifests itself within a quest for self-identity.

Set in Crete and at Delphi, through the dual narrative of the heroine Cressida and Pythian Ashtar, the author ostensibly seeks to illuminate truths about the misrepresentations inscribed in our records of the past. In doing so however, her text becomes a profound meditation on psychological trauma, its expression in language, and the role of memory in shaping both individual and cultural identities. While the narrative is deceptively simple, as it unfolds it expertly and imperceptibly draws on psychoanalytic theories, particularly Freudian concepts, as well as post-structural, sociocultural, and postcolonial frameworks, in order to examine how extreme experiences are represented and how they influence identity and memory. Cressida’s trauma is both inherited, given her family history, experienced and through her connection, also forged through suffering, with the primordial violence not only against women but also directed by women against women which according to myth, shaped the world and which also, paradoxically, will save it.

The author, through a clever melding of timelines, characters, dreams, hallucinations, dialogues and inner monologues, portrays the aforementioned as a profoundly disruptive experience that affects the heroine’s emotional organization and perception of her world. Through her recourse to myth and the multiplicity of its variants, both the narrator and the heroine place themselves in a privileged position so as to examine trauma’s psychological, rhetorical, and cultural implications in literature and society, investigating the complex factors that shape the heroine’s appreciation of traumatic experiences and how such experiences are communicated through language.

This in particular is an area where “Delphi” can be distinguished from other novels of like genre. The author artfully places particular emphasis on how texts, stories and narratives illuminate the effects of extreme events on identity, memory, and the unconscious. Trauma studies initially relied on Freudian theory to conceptualize trauma as an experience so extreme it challenges the limits of language and ruptures meaning itself. Such a view posits that certain suffering is unrepresentable. However, a more pluralistic perspective soon followed, suggesting that unspeakability is just one possible response to trauma, not a universal one. The original model, which associates trauma with the fragmentation of the psyche and breakdown of language, set foundational parameters for the field but has since evolved with alternative approaches, expanding the conversation on trauma and representation. In “Delphi,” a deeply verbal novel, the author displays a deep understanding of such theories and converses intertextually with them. Cressida is eloquent and expressive in most of her social intercourse. In relation to her archetype abuser-aunt (not because she committed acts of violence against Cressida but because she stood by and did not prevent them) however, she is often struck dumb, whereas her inner monologue of desperation often deconstructs emotions and thought into fragments in the form of expletives, the process being both harrowing and liberating at the same time.

The heroine Cressida is guided through her trauma via a series of teachers, guides and protective powers. According to the narrator, Delphi and its tutelary deities all stem from the primeval Earth goddess Gaia. Accordingly, Cressida’s protective but emotionally distant lover is called Gorgios, referring not only to the earth but to the chthonic Gorgons, descendant of another primordial serpent, Typhon. While well meaning, he is by his very nature, unable to do more than be present in her emotional periphery. As the narrator states: “Gorgios [which also rhymes with gorgeous] was being a dick.” Her two main female guides however, are Angela, a sort of guardian angel who appears to be replete with wisdom, and true to the etymology of her name, acts as a form of messenger, conveying female lore, kindness and practical advice from the Great Mother, and the mysterious Ashtar, a Pythian, through whom Cressida is to save humanity from catastrophic misery. The ambiguous nature of Ashtar, for she appears in myth as the Moabite adaptation of the North Arabian god Attar, himself a form of the Semitic deity of the planet Venus, and thus as a male, or as an extra-terrestial Nordic humanoid, should not go unnoticed, as indeed should not the fact that we do not know that the agency sought of Cressida by Ashtar is external, or internal, in that Ashtar may merely be an aspect of her personality and by submitting to his/her entreaties, she is merely being enjoined to transcend her self in order to transcend her pain.

The conflation of genders, myths and dysphorias within the novel evokes a Freudian hysteria originating from the heroine’s deeply repressed experiences, here associated with sexual assault, that have been pushed out of conscious awareness. In his Studies in Hysteria, Freud and his collaborator Breuer proposed that the original experience itself may not have felt traumatic at the time but becomes charged with traumatic significance only in retrospect, through the process of memory and reflection. They suggest that the persistent and disruptive influence of this repressed memory necessitates therapeutic intervention, specifically, the “talking cure” or abreaction, where the patient expresses and emotionally relives the past event to mitigate its ongoing, symptom-inducing power. In many ways, and through the intervention of Cressida’s guardians, both supernatural and otherwise, her long process of interpreting, identifying and coming to terms with her trauma and identity embody that undertaking. She confirm this, stating: “Nai, the Sirens called me.”

The appearance of Cressida’s long-lost aunt, an archetypal dragon-lady if there ever was one, with whom she has had no contact, illustrates Freud’s theory of latency or deferred action (Nachträglichkeit), which refers to a period during which the effects and meanings of the past event remain dormant, only surfacing later when triggered by a related experience. This latency period suggests that the true impact of the original event is neither immediate nor accessible at the time it occurs; instead, it emerges later, when a current incident reactivates the memory. This process allows the repressed memory to come into conscious awareness, enabling the individual to confront and process it fully, which Freud believed was essential for overcoming the symptoms of trauma. As Angela observes or rather warns: “A brief history recap is begging to be told.” In the case of the heroine, the reactivation of her memory is occasioned by her aunt’s demands upon her time, and her claims upon a filial piety that does not exist and, in a dramatic revelation, is twisted and perverted ab initio, causing Cressida to slay her own monsters, become her own Oracle and realise just how privileged and rich she actually has become through her travails.

The narrative plausibly evokes the magical landscape of Greece and the author masterfully is able to imbue her descriptions with a rhythm, almost that of a dance that leads inexorably to the novel’s conclusion. Her observations of human nature, of the disparity between Greek and British cultures, of commonly held prejudices and stereotypes, of convictions and misconceptions are acute and her attention to detail is awe inspiring. The manner in which she persistently reproduces Cressida’s mispronunciations and ungrammatical Greek is a case in point. The medium in which she attempts to communicate may be flawed but ultimately it is via the deconstruction of language, through the intercession of her pantheon of chthonic deities that ensues that Cressida can work through her past, and save the world, in keeping with the Delphic Oracle, by “knowing herself.”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

Dean Kalimniou will launch Karen Martin’s “Delphi,” at the Greek Centre, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne on Sunday 17 November 2024 at 3pm.

For Bookings: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1310056

First published in NKEE on Saturday 9 November 2024

DIMITRIA

 October is an exceptional month in the Greek calendar. Not only do we celebrate OXI day, but also the liberation of Thessaloniki and the patronal feast of its protector, Saint Dimitrios. A few weeks ago, I had the honour of addressing members of the Pan-Macedonian Association of New South Wales at the opening of their Dimitria Festival and share some reflections on that institution:

“I think there is added poignancy today in acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land upon which we stand and acknowledging their elders past present and emerging because ours too is an indigenous people, a people of remarkably long lineage, with a continuous connection to our land of origin, with our own stories, myths and unbroken memories.

And it in testament to that connection that we are gathered here today. In Thessaloniki, the capital of Macedonia this year, the 59th ever Dimitria Festival will be celebrated. In Australia, and in New South Wales in particular, we will celebrate the 41st Dimitria festival. What we have done over the course of four is to take a Macedonian tradition and make it into something truly Australian. It is an annual fixture in our calendar. I have grown up with it, participated in it, and it is an event that the entire mainstream community enjoys, it is in fact an institution.

It is worth looking back and considering what is so significant about the Dimitria Festival. We know it is generally and traditionally held in October, ostensibly to commemorate two important events in the Greek calendar, the first being the feast day of Saint Dimitrios the Myrrh Bearer and the liberation of Thessaloniki from the Ottoman Empire which conveniently took place on the same day in 1913.

I confess to feeling rather close to Saint Dimitrios. I belong to the parish of Saint Dimitrios in Moonee Ponds, home of course to the great Dame Edna Everage, and I feel that his life exemplifies the essence of that it is to be a Macedonian, what it is to be a Greek. Born and bred in Thessaloniki, a city named after Alexander the Great’s half-sister (and it is worth pointing out that Thessaloniki was likely the first city to be named for a Macedonian woman, but many more followed, like Berenice in Egypt for example – so we were striking blows against the patriarchy even before we knew what it was), Dimitrios was a member of the privileged class – his family had senatorial rank and he became a soldier, rising to the rank of being commander of the Roman forces in Thessaly and Proconsul for Hellas, which is a pretty big deal.

Now with great power comes great responsibility and the first thing you learn is how to cover your own posterior, if you are going to have any sort of a future. Saint Dimitrios on the other hand, used his position to protect converts to Christianity, shielding them from the discriminatory laws of the Empire and indeed, breaking the law in order to protect them. When confronted, he refused to back down. He refused to resile from doing that which is decent, proper and right. He continued persistently and fearlessly to advocate for the powerless, the vulnerable, the voiceless and the underprivileged and he paid the ultimate price, being slaughtered in the prisons of the arena after a gladiatorial contest.

In the Orthodox church, St Dimitiros is spoken of as having gained a martyr’s crown and this you will be pleased to know, is a sporting analogy, because the Greeks were possibly even more sports mad than the Australians, which is why you get so many Macedonian Kings competing in the Olympic Games and we know that a criteria for participation in the ancient Games was having to prove you were of Hellenic descent.

Martyrs were referred to as athletes for Christ whose victory was crowned in the same way that athletes were crowned with an olive or a laurel wreath, and we all love a good athlete. Milo by the way, the great Aussie Milk drink was named after a legendary Greek athlete also called Milo who could hold  bull over his head… the links between our two people abound and are enduring and of course you can find remain sporting arenas built by the Macedonians as far east as Uzbekistan.

Because that is another thing that is important about the Dimitria festival: by celebrating the liberation of Thessaloniki, we commemorate the decolonisation of the Greek people. This may at first seem counterintuitive, since Macedonia was the first European colonial kingdom, with a reach as far as China in the east, and Libya in the west. Unlike the European colonial powers that followed however, native populations were treated as equals. Their cultures and languages were respected. There was no impediment to their participation in society. There was a sharing of cultures. We find in Egypt today, relief sculptures of Macedonian Kings depicted as Egyptian Pharaohs, while the Indo-Bactrian king Menander is revered in India as a great apostle of Buddhism. Today, the Greek philosophical tradition forms the basis of two great streams of culture, that of the West, and that of the Middle East, simply because that tradition was shared, not imposed. This, is the Macedonian way.

Now it is fair to say that one of the reasons that we revere Thessaloniki is because it combines both the traditions of Saint Dimitrios and the heritage of ancient Macedonia. First of all, it is a most resilient city. It has endured sieges, sackings and occupation by Romans, Avars, Slavs, Arabs, Latins and finally the Ottomans. Yet in the midst of all this, between 1342-50, it was the epicentre of an amazing and not well known social experiment – the so-called Commune of the Zealots, where the lower social strata of the city seized control of the city, redistributed the wealth of the aristocrats and attempted to institute a classless system of social equity and all this five hundred years before Marx was even invented. This is our lineage, these are the perennial values that inform not only our identity but our own world view. And during all the city’s trials and tribulations, legend has it that its protector Saint Dimitrios intervened at key moments to protect the city, defending it from aggression and protecting its inhabitants from disease and plague.

And of course, Thessaloniki always was and is, a multicultural city, a cosmopolitan city. It is the city from where the Saints Cyril and Methodius set off from and their invention, the Cyrillic alphabet, allowed Slavic speaking peoples from the borders of modern Greece to Siberia, the opportunity to become literate and to create their own unique and distinct identity. It is the city in which Saint Paul preached a Gospel of truth, of fairness and of righteousness and of course it is a city that became for centuries, a refuge and a sanctuary against intolerance and darkness specifically by the Spanish Inquisition, for the Sephardic community. Later on it would be a refuge for the Greeks of Pontus, who would be given an opportunity in that city to re-establish their culture and identity in the aftermath of genocide. On any given day in Thessaloniki, you could hear spoken Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian, Vlach, Albanian, Armenian, Ladino and a host of other languages. It is no coincidence that Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who had similar concerns about social and racial equality was born and bred in Thessaloniki. Or indeed that anthropologists such as Louis Dumont, or  Italian ballerina Lousia Poselli or Soviet-Armenian singer Jean Tatlian were born in that city.

Again it is no coincidence that Thessaloniki, is by all accounts, the home of the rebetiko genre of Greek music, a form of music that is subversive, critiques the establishment and which like the city itself, is a melting pot of different styles and traditions. Here in Australia, that tradition, just like that of the Dimitria itself, is has been transplanted, has become part of the urban landscape and is thriving. This is what Thessaloniki is about: It is a city of good people, people who want to make a difference, who want to make the world a better place. Today, the city is home to people of diverse backgrounds, especially those from the former soviet bloc.

While we celebrate the liberation of Thessaloniki, we take the opportunity during Dimitria to pay homage to the fact that it was in Macedonia that unbreakable bonds of kinship were formed with Australia, the country we proudly call home. During the First World War, Australian army personnel provided valuable support to the Macedonian Front, especially doctors and nurses who were stationed in Thessaloniki. We therefore pay particular homage to Principal Matron Jessie McHardie White, as well as  matrons Beryl A. Campbell, Christense Sorensen and Grace Wilson.

We pay tribute to two Australians who went on to senior command during World War II served with the Imperial Forces in Salonika: then Major John Laverack, Brigade Major Royal Artillery with the 22nd British Division and then Second Lieutenant Edmund Herring who was also with the 22nd Division's artillery.

On a sombre note, it is perhaps poignant to recognise that the Commonwealth Military Cemetery at Mikra on the outskirts of Thessaloniki contains the graves of two Australians who did not return. One is Sapper E Heron from Cottesloe in Western Australia who died in 1918 aged 28.

But Mikra also contains the grave of the only Australian nurse to be buried in Greece in the First World War – Nurse Gertrude Evelyn Munro. She arrived in Thessaloniki in 1916, serving with the 60th British General Hospital at Hortiatis until 1918. From Ballarat, she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in August 1916. Like many who served in the campaign, she became ill, having contracted malaria and dysentery, succumbing on 10 October 1918. She was 34 years old.

In the aftermath of the war, Australian humanitarians such as Joyce Nankievell Loch would set up refugee camps on the outskirts of Thessaloniki before moving to Ouranoupolis near Mount Athos, not only saving lives from disease and privation but also providing valuable space and love to allow shattered human beings to slowly rebuild their lives and actually envisage a future for themselves.

Another of these amazing humanitarians was of course George Devine Treloar who was engaged in the resettlement of Greek refugees from Asia Minor; at first he worked at in Thrace where there is a village named after him and later in Salonika.

It is important to remember these brave Australians because Australians would return in 1941 to Macedonia to defence Greece from the Nazi invaders at the Battle of Vevi. The Mackay force, named after its commander, the Australian Major General Iven Mackay, was tasked with preventing blitzkrieg down the Florina valley.

When we celebrate Dimitria, therefore, we commemorate and cherish the memories of all those Australians whose story is inextricably linked with that of Macedonia, there are many more.

Given the above history, I think it is more than obvious why Dimitria is such an important Australian festival. I am inordinately proud of the fact that the connection between Thessaloniki and the rest of Macedonia and Australia has been formalised in the sister-city relationship between Thessaloniki and Melbourne but really this is a bond that has been forged between two special peoples, the Greeks and the Australians, in a very special place: Macedonia and it is cemented by us, hyphenated Greek-Australians, here today in this very room. And the proof is in the Australian landscape. There are the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, and here in Sydney, in Bossley Park, there is Macedon Park. In Macedonia, we truly are one.

In a complex world whose paradigm shifts occur by the second, and in which all truths are now subjective and personal, the Macedonian tradition that informs our discourse, is perennial. It is one of adhering steadfast to the tenets of decency, of inclusivity, of friendship, of democracy and of equality. It is a tradition that though spanning millenia, embraces all and celebrates diversity. Dimitria symbolises all of this rich and multifaceted historical and cultural experience, adding its own unique Australian flair to create something that is truly unique and authentic, that speaks to people of all cultures and climes. Something definitely worth a party.

Enough talking and more celebrating I say. I would like to end by exclaiming boisterously and jubilantly in the language of Aristotle, in the language of Alexander the Great, of Saint Dimitrios: Ζήτω η Μακεδονία!

DEAN KALIMNIOU

First published in NKEE on Saturday 2 November 2024