ΚΡΙΜΣS ΑΓΑΙΝΣΤ ΑΛΦΑΒΣΤS

 Some things get my goat like no others. One of the major ones, are persons who misspell their parents’ names on their tombstones. Tombstones are civilisation’s lame attempt at a final stab at eternity. The person buried beneath them may no longer be gone but their name is supposed to endure, at least for a little while, so one may as well get it right. For some reason however, many Greek-Australians are oblivious to the fact that the consonantal cluster ΚΣ can ably be represented by a letter known as Ξ, and that ΠΣ can more efficiently be rendered by the letter Ψ. Similarly, the progeny of many a dead Greek appear blissfully unaware of the fact that the letter, not the watch brand, Omega, according to one tradition, was invented by lyric poet Simonides of Ceos and its use became established in Ionia by the sixth century.

In 403BC, at the urging of Eucleides, the Athenians voted to replace the old Attic alphabet with the Ionian one, making the omega official. Someone obviously forgot to inform the Greeks of Melbourne, many of whom universally employ O instead of Ω, and criminally on occasion, Φ. Given that they probably don’t use this alphabet anywhere else, possibly what we are witnessing is the emergence of a unique script which in the future, archaeologists shall term Tomb Script. The ancient, endangered script of the Chams, a linguistic minority of South East Vietnam and Cambodia, is so integral to their identity, they must learn it before they can go to the afterlife. We on the other hand, don’t learn ours, so that our progenitors may stay with us forever.

Alphabetic liberties are taken on a daily basis in our community. From the undertaker who uses a V to write the word Vεκρώσιμη on his premises in Bell Street, thus burying the Greek alphabet as well as his clients for good measure, to the church in the western suburbs that proudly uses the equally and fittingly western Greek alphabet to inscribe upon its entrance: IERA ARXIEΠΙΣΚΟΠΗ, with linguists contending that the said R should be pronounced as it is in English, giving the Greek an Irish tinge, in our hands the alphabet is a pliable instrument, with every single letter being as negotiable as a cheque before the banking reforms of 1908.

Nonetheless, it cannot be disputed that the Greek alphabet forms a major part of our identity. We are inordinately proud of the fact that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is represented by the letter π regardless of the fact that the Babylonians were the first to make a written approximation of it centuries before Archimedes’ calculations. We are also extremely proud of the fact that we “gave” our alphabet both to what ended up being the Latin West and the Slavic East, forgetting that we adapted it from the Phoenicians, according to Herodotus. This, we have difficulty in accepting, except for the Cretans of Melbourne, who still use the Linear B script (the Cretans of Sydney prefer Linear A) and the Cypriots who still use the ancient Cypriot syllabary with an extra two ideoglyphs to represent koumbaroi and shetalies,  leaning more likely to the more facile and elegant solution of the polymath Patriarch Photius who attempted to explain away the reason why the ancients referred to our alphabet as  Φοινικήια γράμματα in the following way:

 

“The Lydians and Ionians [report] that letters came from Phoinix the son of Agenor who invented them. But the Cretans report differently that they were developed from writing on the leaves of palm trees (phoinikes).

Skamon, in the second book of his Inventions, says that they were named for Aktaion’s daughter Phoinike. The story goes that he had no male children, but that he had daughters Aglauros, Erse, and Pandrosos. Phoinike died still a virgin. For this reason, Aktaion named the letters "Phoenician" for her, because he wished to give some honour to his daughter.” We did after all, invent everything, including invention itself.

 

Type the words “Ancient Macedonian alphabet,” in Google and a number of Glagolithic and Cyrillic Scripts emerge upon the page. This is of course nonsense, for the ancient Macedonians used the Greek script, but substituting the letter X for Ξ, which is why Social Media Warriors and Defenders of the Faith who secretly lust after Colin Farrell gush over a historical figure they refer to in writing as ΜΕΓΑ ΑΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΟ, pronounced in like fashion to the object of Lady Gaga’s lament:  “Don't call my name, don't call my name Alejandro…”

 

It is this history of license and abuse which cause me to recall possibly the best verse of poetry ever written, by Greek-Australian poet Tina Giannoukos, in “Bull Days:” “The mellifluous alphabet of pain...” It is a pain intensified by another insidious phenomenon: that of the reckless and insensitive abuse of the Greek alphabet by foreigners, especially Westerners. This is not by any means a new phenomenon. College fraternities have appropriated Greek letters for their so-called “Greek Organisations” as far back as the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. At least those initials stand for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης, signifying: “Love of wisdom, the guide of life.” The Chi Phi fraternity at Princeton I am reliably informed by initiated members of the Tierra Del Fuegan chapter of AHEPA, stands for Χέστηκε η Φοράδα στο Αλώνι, which is demotic Greek for when one is up a particular creek, sans paddle. Mysteriously, while we are rightfully enraged when our Slavic cousins appropriate our identity, we seem not to mind when frat prats have the temerity to autoidentify as Greek. This is something, I humbly submit, the international copyright experts employed by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs should look into, and perchance, pursue compensation.

 

I am by persuasion, as anti-Goebbelsian as the next socio-economic entity, but I freely admit I can go the full Savanarola and seek to stoke the pyre of my rage by consigning to it such excremental publications as the prurient Sαlly Griffyη who dares to entitle her “book” on Stone Circles and Sacred Paths: Sαcrεδ joψrηeyξ. Such crimes against alphabets must only be dealt with by condign punishment: the suspension of one’s year four pen license and re-education through labour, self-criticism and failing that, immolation by barbeque.  Similarly, when American property developer Phil South begins to advise you that ΩΗΑΤ ΩΕ ΛΣΑςΣ ΒΣΗΙΝΔ ΦΣ...and the words begin to become as garbled as the time in 1992 when theia Maritsa had a stroke after her daughter brought home a boyfriend who she mistook for an Indian even though he hailed from Rhodes, your rage must be tempered with sympathy, as you recall your Aussie neighbour who goes about his business with the word ΦΡΕΕ emblazoned upon his arm and you recall that in the mid to late nineties when personal computers were still a prestige novelty, countless younger members of Greek-Australian organisations were convinced that if you composed a newsletter in Times New Roman English, highlighted the text and transposed it into Symbol font, the text would magically translate itself into Greek, although you would still have to add the accents in ballpoint pen, Kilometrico for choice. Here then, we transcend the mundane and enter the realms of faith. Just as how Marx never fully explains how the State will wither away, so too are we never to know just how Symbol will convert any alphabet into Greek. You just have to believe.

 

It is for this reason therefore, that try as I might, and egged on by my Neos Kosmos guru, as polymathic as the Patriarch Photius who is his namesake, Fotios Kapetopoulos, I can experience no frenzy and fit into no pique, at the revelation that the divine Queen B’s premier offering to world scholarship “HOMECOMING: A film by Beyoncé (I’ve come to Netflix relatively late in life) is rendered in the promotional material as HΘΜΣCΘΜΙΝG, because I suspect that it either critically treats an imminent delivery of Hommus, or rather, showcases her musical stylings within the context of “black Greek life,” which I understand, refers to African American fraternities and sororities who are federated in an umbrella organisation which has been known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council as far back as 1930, decades before our own Australian Hellenic Council was but a glint in founder Costa Vertzayias’ eye.

 

And it is for this reason that I eagerly await the arrival of the latest version of the filmic medium’s treatment of the Homeric Epic that is being touted as ΤΗΣ ΘΔΨSSΣΨ, which was exactly the same exclamation that I emitted whilst moved to ecstasy the last time I beheld Efi Thodi in concert in Trikala, way back in 2006, when I was still being weaned off the Symbol font. That is to say, I am not so much flattered as confused, for while Odysseus is most definitely described as πολυμήχανος by our Blind Bard, there is nothing in the versions of the text that I have read that refer to Odysseus having ever founded a college fraternity, and I am dying to know more, for I am in the process of preparing my doctored dissertation on Greek-Australian Brotherhoods as frathouses, where according to Grimm’s law in linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European "p" sound evolved into an "f" sound. And after all, we Greeks are not the only victims of Alphabet appropriation. My Russian friends are heartily sick of the letter Я being usurped as either an R or an A, whenever anyone wants to reheat the frozen leftovers of the Cold War. Я is supposed to be pronounced “ya,” which means that yiayia in Russian would be ЯЯ, efficient, cool and eminently inscribable upon a tombstone at a fraction of the cost, to boot. Be thus not dismayed and rejoice,  MY FRIENDS. WE SHALL MAKE GREEK GREAT ΑΓΑΙΝ.

 ΔΕΑΝ ΚΑΛΨΜΝΙΦΨ

Φιrστ ΡθβλισΗεδ ον ΣατθrδαΥ 11 ΜαrcH 2025 

LOOKING FOR THEMIS

 

“I rule in favour the plaintiff,” the judge pronounced. I barely suppressed a whoop of triumph. Being a relatively newly minted lawyer, this was the first case I had undertaken without supervision and my opponent, a compatriot, was a seasoned veteran, prone to provide such sage advice as “Never try to out-bullshit a bullshitter” (which considering the size of his ample posterior, was an eminently proportionate caution) and: “No matter what the outcome of this case, I still get to send my kids to a private school,” an aphorism whose wisdom, only decades later, with offspring of my own that demand to be educated, I have finally come to appreciate. Nonetheless, at that moment, I was eminently enamoured of myself. I had been suave, I had been debonair. I had enunciated my consonants with flair. I had established a rapport with the judge and had gently in cross-examination led the defendant down a path of logical obstacles and contradictions to his testimony. Now was my winter of discontent turned glorious summer by a combination of diligence and over-emphasis. The path of my legal career appeared before me like a wnding, twisty-turny thing….

My client a diminutive elderly man with spare white hair and a luxuriously groomed moustache drooping down from his sunken cheeks glared at the judge with his yellow flecked eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“It means you’ve won Mr Prapalapopoulopou….. I’m I pronouncing it correctly?” the judge continued.

The old man stuck his thumbs in his blue serge suit that looked as if it had last seen use at his daughter’s wedding some twenty years ago and was emitting an acute odour of expired mothballs and said nothing.

“Aren’t you happy? You should be happy that you’ve won?” the judge asked. Turning to me, he directed: “Mr Kalimniou, perhaps you might like to explain to your client that he has won,” before dismissing us.

-Νικήσατε, I said to my client gently. Αυτό σας λέει.

-Να τον χέσω τον τζάτζη και τους νόμους του και εσείς τους δικηγόρους και τη δικαιοσύνη σας (I excrete upon the judge and his laws and upon you lawyers and your justice) he spat and stormed outside the courtroom.

Hastily I gathered the papers of my file as I set out after him, as my colleague, still ensconced in his seat at the bar table guffawed: “Ha, typical! That’s how the old shifty Greeks are my friend. They create a fuss so that they use it as a pretext not to pay you. If you want my advice, stay away from the Greeks. Gone are the days when you can make money from a Greek. And when they come to your office they smell of garlic and χωριατίλα. Its not a good image. Instead, what you need to do is find yourself some corporate clients. Solid payers, not like these pensioner γύφτοι…”

Outside, the elderly gentleman was pacing up and down, visibly irritated. Slowly, I approached him and offered to buy him a coffee. At my offer, he softened.

“You buy me a coffee, my son? I should buy you a coffee.”

We sat down and he took out his komboloi and began to flick it with his fingers, the amber beads clacking as they hit each other again and again. He slurped his coffee with a sense of urgency that can only be found in those who have been denied sustenance at some stage in their lives and fear that those times will inevitably come again.

“This is some profession you have chosen for yourself,” the old man observed as I went through some final details with him. “Like marionettes in a puppet show, each being controlled by invisible strings. Actually no, like that cricket that these Australians are so crazy about. That was not a courtroom. That was not justice. That was a game of cricket that you people played, with assigned roles. Your turn to bat, your turn to bowl, well played sir, wow you hit a six but nothing to do with people’s lives. We, are completely ignored.”

I looked at him thoughtfully.

“Listen,” he said, grasping my arm tightly. “I came to this country when I was eighteen years old. An orphan with three sisters back in Greece to look after. I came here so that I could make enough money to be able to feed them and provide for their dowries. The things I saw and experienced, you will never be able to know or understand. The injustice of being denied a place in the sun, simply because you are destitute and here in Australia, to be laughed at and considered a second-class citizen every time you open your mouth. Oh, I’ve seen things. In the cane fields in Queensland, in the farms up in the Mallee and in down here business. Do you know what it is when you don’t have enough money to buy milk for your kids and the landlord is telling you that if you don’t pay the rent he will through you and your family out onto the street? That was how I lived my life. But as hard as people were with me, I was always honest and gentle in my dealings with others. I never asked and I never took a cent more from anyone in business. If someone needed help, to the best of my ability, I helped them. And I never told a lie or gossip about anyone. That is who I am, at the core of my being.”

I had heard these stories from so many people of that generation and my countenance must have betrayed my thoughts. “This is important,” the old man increased his grip on my arm and looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m telling you thing so you can learn. I am a man of honour. I wanted the judge to know this. I wanted to look into the judge’s eyes, the way I am looking into yours now and tell him what is in my heart. I wanted him to understand who I am, where I am coming from, what kind of character I have, as a man to a man. Most of all, I wanted him to understand that I am not the type of person that takes others to court, for him to know that for me it is a terrible thing. That I had no other choice but to take my best friend’s son, my best friend who was like my brother ever since I arrived in this country so many decades ago….I had no choice. The κοροϊδία was too great. It wasn’t about the money. I needed the judge to understand this. He needed to know that I’m not a greedy person. It was about the betrayal. He was like a son to me. It was not right what he did, it was the αδικία.... He didn’t let me say anything about this. None of you allowed me to speak what needed to be spoken.”

There were tears in his eyes and I felt uncomfortable that such a proud and dignified man was weeping in my presence. “What I wanted to tell the judge that in memory of my ancestors, no one ever took anyone to court. But what could I do? If I am to remain destitute in my old age, so be it, but it wasn’t right what that boy did, I merely wanted the judge to understand it wasn’t right. I wanted him to know that I agonised over my decision, that I gave the boy so many chances to make things right and for him to make the boy understand that as well, but…. I was denied justice. The judge was not at all interested in me, or my story. He was not concerned about getting to know me or my motivation. Instead, it was all about the money. The money, the money, the money, as if there is nothing else important in this world, as if people and their relationships count for nothing. So yes, I’ve won. What exactly? Humiliation and the loss of my friend’s esteem up there in heaven. English justice.”

Carefully, he removed a painstakingly ironed, monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped one eye after another. “You know once I was told that the English word Justice comes from the Latin word Ius which means law. But the Greek word δικαιοσύνη means fairness. There is a big difference. A lot of truth is hidden in words. But of course, for the ancient Greeks, there was a goddess of Justice, Themis. Justice is part of our religion. And I also remember hearing that in the Byzantine conception of Justice, she is not blind. Instead, she sees all, for context is everything.”

He stood up and reached out his hand. As I extended mine, I felt something cold and hard pressing against my palm. “I wish you every success in your career,” he farewelled me. “But take this komboloi as a memento of our meeting, and remember an old man who tried to teach you the difference between law and justice.” That was decades ago and yet I have carried it into each of my court appearances, ever since.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 1 March 2025