LEGISLATING REMEMBRANCE.... BY OMISSION

 

On Christmas Eve 2024, a presidential degree of the President of Greece, published on 14 January this year, brought into effect a series of laws around appointing 6 April, as the day upon which “Remembrance days events for the Day of Thracian Hellenism are to be organised.”

It is unclear what exactly that means. When one reads on, one learns from Article 1 of the abovementioned decree that: “The 6^th of April of each year  is appointed as the Day of Thracian Hellenism.” We also learn that: “Remembrance events will have a pan-national character and will be held throughout the country.” Just how a day that specifically invokes Thrace will have a “pan-national character” is not explained. What is made clear however is that such events that will take place, are restricted solely within the boundaries of the Greek state. They thus do not apply to our communities in the diaspora.

Up until now, the presidential decree is quite silent on what exactly it is that Greek citizens are supposed to be remembering on April 6^th. However, article 2 by contrast, sets out in detail just how the unnamed events we have no idea we are remembering, should be remembered. “The commemorative events to which representatives of Thracian organisations and bodies, include a general decoration with flags and illumination of public buildings, the holding of doxologies, the making of speeches, and the laying of wreaths in regional electoral seats.”

If you want to do anything else, you need not apply, save that the decree goes on, almost by way of afterthought, to concede that “In the framework of the abovementioned events, conferences and events by cultural groups within Thrace or the rest of Greece may be held, along with talks in schools at all levels.”

If Greek legislation applied to Greek cultural groups within Australia, imagine the ferment of excitement at these news. Imagine the disputes as to who would co-ordinate the events, which buildings would be festooned with flags, which would be illuminated, which ideologically sound speakers would be invited to give an address and of course, which Dance Groups would be invited to participate, and which would be excluded.

The good people at the Hellenic Parliament have already foreseen the fracas and have acted to nip it in the bud. Consequently, Article 3 of the decree prescribes that “the programme of events will be determined by the relevant regional administrator.” No room for discussion here.

For a long time, 6 April has been commemorated as a day marking the genocide of the Greeks that took place in the region of Thrace. Strangely, the word “genocide” is not mentioned at all in the Presidential Decree, nor is any other terminology employed that would shed light on the significance of April 6^th. We can only speculate why this would be the case. However, making mention of what exactly is to be commemorated or remembered is important for two main reasons: Firstly, how can we expect to take seriously an afford due solemnity to an event that the Greek Stare either neglects or fears to name? Is not the refusal and/or omission to clearly describe such an event tantamount to an insult to the memories of those who [insert description here if you dare] – that is, if it is the suffering of the Thracians that we are supposed to be remembering?

Secondly, delineating the precise nature of the event to be commemorated is important because it provides valuable context by which we can evaluate the extent to which the prescribed forms of commemoration are appropriate. For example, if it is the Genocide we are remembering, then arguably, a doxology within a church is completely inappropriate, given that doxologies are thanksgiving services generally performed in order to celebrate felicitous events, such as the liberation of regions of Greece. National calamities, on the other hand, are times for reflection and for mourning where memorial services, mnymosyna, are much more fitting. During such times, it is also more fitting that rather than bedecking public buildings with flags, as if celebrating a national holiday, that such flags as are flown, are done so at half-mast. But then again, I am not the relevant regional administrator and have absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever.

There are of course three days within the Greek calendar that ostensibly commemorate the Genocide: 6 April in relation to the Greeks of Thrace, 19^th May in relation to the Greeks of Pontus and 14 September in relation to the Holocaust of Smyrna. In contrast, the Armenians, who lived throughout the length and breadth of the Ottoman Empire have only one commemoration date that covers the entire bloody two decades within which the Genocide took place: the 24^th of April. There is no genocide day of Van, genocide day of Harput, of Sivas or of Zeytun. Instead, the Genocide is labelled Armenian, and it is considered as something relevant to all Armenians, not just those who come from or are descended from those who come from the areas in which it was perpetrated.

Similarly, the Assyrians, a people who were traditionally spread over a large geographic area covering modern day Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, and who are split into different linguistic groups and Christian denominations, have only one unified date to remember the many bouts of genocide visited upon their people, as recently as a few years ago: August 7^th.  They don’t refer to the Syriac genocide, the Aramean Genocide or the Chaldean genocide. Instead, it is a unifying event that is supposed to serve as a rallying point for an entire nation that is still yet to achieve emancipation.

Evidently, the same cannot be said about the Greeks. In Australia, and in many other countries in the world where the genocide has been recognised, it has taken years of painstaking work to explain that there was only ever one Genocide, perpetrated in different areas at different times, and that this Genocide was directed at Greeks as a whole, there being no differentiation of or understanding of regional identities. Through such grass-roots campaigning, the various victim communities have also come to the realisation that one genocide cannot be separated from the others, that the root causes, motivations and modus operandi of the perpetrators were the same, which is why the three victim communities nowadays reference the “Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides,” to officials and all other interested parties.

Despite the practice as it relates to discussing the event with the broader community, unlike the other two victim communities, within ours in Australia, the Genocide does not always act as a unifying event. Instead, it is met with general indifference by the broader community, punctuated only by the perfunctory appearance of a few representatives of community organisations at yet another interminable wreath laying event organised by the Pontians, whose preserve the commemoration is widely held to be. In this delineated space, “ownership” of the Genocide reverts by default and through no fault of their own, to the Pontians, and it is known as the Pontian Genocide, or the “Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus,” no doubt to distinguish it from the Genocide of the Armenians in exactly the same area. The events of Thrace or the rest of Asia Minor, have in years past, barely rated a mention, for in a fragmented community such as ours, it is expected that each regional group will look after its own interests, and that no other group should abrogate to themselves that privilege. Despite this, the impetus to refer to the Genocide as “Greek” rather than as “Pontian,” “Thracian,” or “Asia Minor,” comes from the Pontian community itself, and the Pontian community has in recent years commemorated as belonging to the same overarching crime, the harrowing events that took place both in Thrace and Asia Minor, exemplifying just how complicated identity politics of this nature can be among a people who apart from conceding that their common ancestors are Pericles, Alexander the Great and Kolokotronis, seem bent only on emphasising what divides them, rather than what unites them.

The events surrounding the Genocide as it played out in Thrace are not well known and if the official recognition of the 6^th of April as a day of remembrance will assist in promoting increased knowledge of that sad chapter in our history, then this comes as a welcome development. However, this development is much diminished if those establishing the day of remembrance have not the perspicacity or courage to name the event they expect the Greek people to commemorate. The whole cause of Genocide recognition is also diminished if the official appointment of three separate dates to recognise a single overarching crime leads to fragmentation, insularity and an inability of the disparate tribes that coalesce around the commemoration of each date to understand how they interrelate. Let us hope this is not the case.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 26 April 2025

WHOSE IS THIS SONG?

 A few months ago, I was driving to the Assyrian New year Festivities with my family. My wife, who is a member of that tribe, was playing a particularly patriotic and militant Assyrian song on the radio. Suddenly I stopped for a moment looked up and asked: “Hang on which song is this?” On being informed that it is a famous patriotic song that embodies an entire unemancipated people’s aspirations for nationhood, I snorted: “Rubbish, that is Yiorgos Dalaras’: «Παραπονεμένα Λόγια».

“So what?” my wife retorted. “It’s a lovely melody and it complements the words beautifully.”

There are many songs in the Greek repertoire that have found there way into the Assyrian musical canon. This is primarily because as refugees, a good many Assyrians sojourned in Greece before obtaining visas to emigrate to other countries and they were exposed to Greece’s musical culture. Some of the songs however, are contested. I would always argue with my father in law as to the provenance of the Assyrian song Asmar Asmar, which is identical to Giota Lydia’s «Γύρνα Πάλι Γύρνα». I’ve since come to find the same song in the Turkish and Arabic musical canons and cannot conclusively prove its origins. It is easier to point out the Greek influences in the songs of Affifa Iskandar Estefan, nicknamed the “Iraqi Blackbird,” and considered one of the best female singers in Iraqi history. She was after all, half Greek, as is Iranian-born George Chaharbakhshi, whose mother was Greek.

“Why is it important that you establish ownership of any particular song?” my wife laughs whenever I try to prove that the latest Assyrian hit is actually a rip off of one of Notis Sfakianakis hits from the nineties. “For the same reason that you have to prove that Assyrians invented the baklava, that you insist that your people worked out Pythagoras’ theorem a thousand years before the great sage did…” I begin.

And this of course is true. The Assyrians are a very old people, much older than the Greeks. Until the excavations of Nineveh, one hundred and fifty or so years ago, the only notion of their own history that they had came from the Bible. Having had their history interpreted for them and reconstructed by the West, this for them is a lifeline. Since the dawning of their national consciousness around the same time that national consciousnesses were being formed in the Balkans, the Assyrian people have sought ways to link themselves to the West, and consequently possible acquire statehood.

They firstly did this by emphasising their Christianity. Half of them broke off from their traditional Nestorian church and embraced union with Rome, in the hope that this would cause the West to intervene and intercede on their behalf. Instead of statehood and protection, genocide is what followed however. They then sought to capitalise upon Western interest in the archaeology of their land, actively assisting archaeologists such as Layard unearth and transport wholesale to Britain, their national heritage.  Unlike the Greeks, Assyrians are grateful to the British for removing the remnants of their ancient past to the British Museum for they feel that it would have been destroyed by their oppressors otherwise.

The ensuing pride in their unearthed past, also creates a sense of grievance. One of the major ways in which Assyrian ideologues ideologise the necessity of the existence of an Assyrian state, is by emphasising that Assyria is the mother culture, whence all other cultures come. In order to do this, they must explode the “myth” that it is the Greek culture that gave rise to Western Civilisation. In their opinion, Greek culture could not have arisen if it not were for the Assyrians and they produce evidence, much of it from ancient Greek historians to reinforce their arguments. When I hear the odd aggrieved Assyrian proclaim: “We gave the world the light of our civilisation,” I shudder. They shudder in turn when I respond: “At yet you remain in the dark.” Now how to prove that the Greeks invented this stock and oft-used phrase first.

Indigeneity is thus important. It is the reason why Australian Aborigines emphasise that they are the world’s oldest continuous culture, that they take pains to point out that they have farming and bread-making techniques. Indigeneity provides status, secures a position and is an instrument of ownership. The problem arises, however, when the lore of other nations exists in and contests the same space. I remember my Assyrian family’s outrage in watching a Kurdish folk group dressed in traditional Assyrian clothes sing a war song extolling the exploits of legendary Assyrian fighter Mam Odisho. “They have no right to do that. It’s appropriation,” they grumbled. Borrowing Greek music however, is not. It is a sentiment I felt for the first time when hearing members of the Skopjan community play their version of «Μακεδονία Ξακουστή» to accompany their float in a Moomba procession years ago. These things are complicated.

“Whose is this Song?” a collection of fascinating essays about Balkan Nationalism, Greece and Shared Culture, edited by Eleni Eleftherias-Kostakidis deals precisely with these points. Taking as its thematic starting point a documentary film “Whose is this Song?” by Adera Peeva, through various essays, reflections and travel narratives, the book discusses the manner in which songs and other cultural items far from being shared, are claimed, rendered divisive and ultimately are utilised as tools in a broader quest to claim contested spaces. As Mary Kostakidis observes in her forward to the book: “The Balkan region, with its fascinating historical and geopolitical intricacies and shifting borders, is a cauldron of contested ownership of culture.”

Eleni Eleftherias-Kostakidis in her essay “Whose is this Song,” quotes Adera Peeva as observing: “When I first started searching for the song, I thought it would unite us… I never believed the sparks of hatred can be lit so easily.” Helen Vatsikopoulos readily acknowledges the corrosive effect that constructed cultural memories can have in her essay: “The Balkans In Europe: And the Curse of Too Much History.” The “curse” of invented traditions as underlying a sense of cultural ownership and just how dangerous and divisive cultural customs that are portrayed or understood as being longstanding, rooted in the distant past, when in reality they are relatively modern and often deliberately created by individuals or groups has been identified and explored in the 1983 book “The Invention of Tradition”, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. As is the case with “Whose is this Song?” which in many respects is in dialogue with that book, quite often it is the case that many so-called “old” traditions are actually of recent origin and have been consciously invented. This differs from simply creating a new tradition without claiming it has historical depth. The concept is especially evident in the rise of modern nations and nationalism, where such traditions help foster national identity, unity, and lend legitimacy to institutions or cultural practices.

George Mihelakakis, in his absorbing essay: “Patriarchy and Nationalism in Adela Peeva’s: Whose is this Song?” invites us to consider exactly that question. While determining the cultural provenance of a given song may be fruitless task, it is important to analyse whose interests the appropriation of that song serve. His view, that there is an overarching class-based patriarchy that transcends borders, delineations, languages and ethnic categorisations, is a poignant one and there are dangers in being so immersed within it, that is proves an impossible task to deconstruct it. As he points out this form of analytical amnesia has implication for the Diaspora communities that transplant and replicate those cultural tropes in their new places of settlement: “In the Greek communities of the diaspora no discussion has ever taken place about the so-called “tradition.” Discussion is always characterised by idealised generalisations without reference to any concrete analysis of reality. Multiculturalism is perceived as the promotion of tradition, even in entertainment, without any connection to the changed social realities in which the migrants now live. Consequently, tradition becomes an ideology which preserves nationalism and as such takes over everyday life by being lived without awareness and self-criticism.”

Vrasidas Karalis, in his “Greek Music and its Formal Complexities,” refutes the concept of ownership by placing Greek music within a cultural continuum where it is constantly replenished by other influences and influences other traditions it turn: “Greek music was always an amalgam of both, having liminality of compositional patterns as the most permanent element of its morphoplastic potentialities. Greek music continues the challenging task of being renewed from elsewhere by absorbing new elements and by establishing novel melodic attractions through instrumental experimentation. It's multimodality remains the foundational grammar of external repertory. It bridges cultural configurations and oral experiences and at the same time repositions itself within its geographical context by incorporating new patterns through the composers of the diaspora and the new voices emerging after the demographic change of the nineties…Music is never owned; it is always reimagined by various people under different conditions of performance and reception.”

Rather than argue, as many of my tribe tend to do, that Ennio Moricone's iconic theme to 1966 film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is a rip off of the Epirot Folk Song «Εγώ για σένα τραγουδώ,» perhaps it is better to adopt the stance of Levitros, the stage name of Levi Mu’alem an Israeli of Iraqi origin who achieved popularity  in Israel for his interpretation of Greek songs. “Hellenising” his name by adding the -tros suffix, he states that even though he “was not born Greek,” he became Greek through Greek music which “penetrates to every place and every person.”

At the end of the day, perhaps the answer to the question “Whose is this Song” belongs to Spotify and Varoufakis’ Technofeudalists, proving analyses such as those of Eleni Eleftherias-Kostakidis prescient and more timely than ever before.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 19 April 2025

LENTEN LOGIC

 

It is Sarakosti, the period of fasting and repentance and in accordance with hallowed tradition, my wife has hung the proverbial potato with the feathers, one for each week of the fast from the kitchen ceiling. While the Pontians maintain that this is their tradition, with the beastly looking apparition bearing the name of koukara, my wife insists it is an Assyrian custom, and my children point out that the Assyrian word for potato, kirtopeh, is close to the Pontic word καρτόφι. I don’t have the heart to tell them that this is derived from the German via the Russian kartofel, because it is Lent and during Lent your mind should be on your own transgressions and not trying to win incessant arguments about obscure linguistic trivialities that would make even the most nonchalant tuber turn green, as our koukara has done.

Sarakosti is also the period in which my children’s birthdays invariably fall and these events need to be marked lest members of the tribe be alienated. Against the objections of my friends who point out that jubilation is not commensurate with the period of repentance, I recall for them the manner in which Theopompus describes how Phillip II of Macedon won over the Thessalians:
"Phillip, knowing that the Thessalians were licentious and wanton in their mode of life, organised parties for them and tried to amuse them in every way, dancing and rioting and submitting to every kind of licentiousness... and so he won over the Thessalians by parties rather than by presents.”

The argument falls flat firstly because none of us are Thessalian, and secondly because we couldn’t even spell licentious, let alone be it, our tastes and pastimes being rather pedestrian. At any rate, if I was to advance a defence, which I won’t because one must not defend themselves during Lent, I would point my accusers gently in the direction of the Gospel of Matthew: “When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting…” This I struggle with, for I refuse to place even the slightest smidgin of product on my ever diminishing tresses, let alone something oleaginous.

Nonetheless, because sundry members of the tribe equate Hellenism with the ritual consumption of burnt flesh, I am compelled to prepare in the backyard on three separate occasions, the pyre upon which the offerings will be immolated. As I breathe the thick smoke and wait for the coals to glow as jewel-like as the coal in my thymiatiri, I marvel that I am more or less immune to the smells of the delicately seasoned souvlakia, sausages, chops, sizzling away, and rising into the heaven.

This is probably because at that moment, I am ruminating over Saint Symeon the Fool, of sixth century Byzantine Syria, who was wont to saunter down the street on Sundays with a string of sausages around his neck like a scarf, chewing on them with one hand, while holding mustard sauce in which to dip them, with the other. I don’t know if this was a nistisimo mustard sauce, but I also recall that as the smoke from the fire bypasses my glasses and gets into my eyes, causing me to rub them incessantly, that Saint Symeon once attempted to assist a man whose eyes were afflicted with leucoma.

Given that Christ had according to the Gospels, once used saliva and clay to cure a man of blindness, when the afflicted man approached Simeon, the Saint anointed the man’s eyes with mustard, burning him and aggravating the condition to the extent that he allegedly went blind. Later, I was pleased to learn, the poor man’s eyes were healed by Saint Simeon, who apparently used his sausage dipping sauce to expose the man's sins and bring him to repentance.
The tradition of striking a person blind in order to make them see the point, is an old one. From an inscription from Silandos in Asia Minor dated 235AD we learn that a certain Theodoros offended the Persian moon god Mes, who was widely worshipped by the Greeks in the area of the time, by committing fornication.

As a result, he was struck blind. His confession read something like this:
"I have been brought to my senses by the gods, by Zeus and the Great Mes Artemidorou...I slept with Trophime the slave of Haplokomas, the wife of Eutychis in the praetorium... While I was a slave of the gods of Nonnos, I slept with the flautist Ariadne...I slept also with Aretousa."

Interestingly, Theodoros states that "I had Zeus as my advocate (παράκλητος) this being the same word used in the first epistle of John, who states that: "if anyone does sin, we have an advocate (παράκλητος) with the Father, Jesus, Christ the righteous.”
With Zeus's advocacy, the council of the gods in an Olympian court reached over the cultural divide and entreated Mes, who appears here to be more powerful than the Olympians to forgive Theodoros. As a result, Mes restored Theodoros' sight, albeit without a sausage, or mustard sauce and it is not known if Theodoros learned his lesson and henceforth led a life of abstinence and prayer as an organic gourmet butcher, or whether he resolved to offend his own gods with whom he had meson, rather than the aloof Mes, instead.

The souvlakia are almost cooked on one side now and I turn them over, munching on my carrot, while taking a gulp of my bottle of Mythos beer, which is one of the key ways in which I manifest my cultural identity. Immediately, we launch into a heated debate as to whether it is permissible to drink alcohol during Sarakosti. The Assyrian members of my family cite an old Church father who stated that if you drink alcohol during the Fast, you might as well eat meat. My Greek family has no idea and attempts to follow the thread of their argument silently, until one of their number resorts to the Internet and announces that while it is mentioned that only on the days you fast from oil, must you also refrain from drinking wine, beer rates not a mention. I do not argue, because you are not supposed to argue with people during Lent, even when a member of the tribe insists that Plato reputedly stated: “It was a wise man who invented beer.” He didn’t.

By this time, the beer has long completed its journey down my smoke-parched oesophagus and someone mentions something about a supermodel called Kate Upton who apparently lives in America. I remember reading somewhere that the said Kate Upton is a direct descendant of Byzantine Isaac II Angelos. Consequently, I posit if there is to be a grand restoration it must be from the Amorian line, where Eva Kaili is a direct descent of Michael the Paphlagonian. This train of thought is alien to most people to whom Kate Upton is cognisant and I refrain from observing when a phone is distributed amongst the staunch attendants of the pyre, bearing images of the said heir to Byzantium in bathing attire.

This is because I am considering how many original compound words relating to love are coined in the Byzantine epic: Livistros and Rodamne, the following being but a few: ἐρωτογλυκοπίκρα, ἐρωτοσχηματίζομαι, φιλέρωτος, ποθομανία, χαριτοερωτοανάπαυσις, καρδιοφωνοκρατῶ, κρυσταλλόσαρκος, ποθοφλόγιστος, ἐρωτοκρατία, ἐρωτοποθοκράτωρ.

An attendee who is currently unattached, posits that he should like to be the ἐρωτοποθοκράτωρ of Upton’s χαριτοερωτοανάπαυσις but I dismiss this as a prosaically unfortunate consequence of what happens when you eat meat during Lent. Far better to stick to φάκες, I always say.

In my absentmindedness, I have neglected to stoke the pyre with enough combustibles and the fire is dying, even before I have the chance to place the kebab swords upon it, and countenance the debate that will surely arise as to whether kebab derives from the original Greek κεμπάμια. For this transgression I am not chided, given that it is Lent, but by means of raised eyebrow I am given to understand that I must immediately make amends, and I consider as I hie away to the shops that had it not been Lent, I would have offered in my defence, the words of Psalm 50, according to the Septuagint: “For hadst Thou desired sacrifice, I would have given it Thee; thou delightest not in burnt offerings. Sacrifices to God are a contrite spirit; a contrite and humble heart.”

I emerge from the store replete with enough coals to enter into serious carbon trading when I chance upon, in the al fresco dining area of the adjoining café, a practitioner of the faith, tucking into a hearty all-day Full English breakfast. “I just can’t help myself,” he stammers, red-faced. “Don’t judge me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I reply. “After all, it’s Lent.”

After the meat is cooked and eaten and the coals have crumbled to ash, I turn to eat a rather fascinating experimental dish my wife has prepared for me, consisting of a small plate of oversized okra and asparagus, which are my nemesis. As I struggle to obtain mastery over my gag reflex and emerge triumphant, one of our guests enquires: “How can you eat that?”
Did not the great Jelaleddin Al Rumi write: “There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less?” I ask in response.

“There are a number of inspirational quotes about fasting,” another of our number, a chartered accountant enthuses. “Look at this one, its by Plato: “I fast for greater and physical efficiency.” I open my mouth to respond and out of nowhere, my wife has transfixed an asparagus stalk on my fork and has shoved it in my mouth. And rightly so. It is, after all, Lent.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 12 April 2025

PHILHELLENE ON THE MARCH

 

A few days before the march commemorating Greek Independence Day was to take place, I received the following text message: «Γεια σου θείο. Μπορούμε να έρθω στην παρέλασι το Κυριακή;». I answered in the affirmative, and as I am wont to do, resent the message with the correct spelling and grammar, highlighting the areas where further revision was required.

The sender of the message was my nineteen year old nephew Ramel, who is Assyrian, although he reliably informs me that my mother in law took a DNA test in which it was revealed that she is seventeen percent Greek, making him at least a member of the tribe as to four percent.

In preparation for the march, Ramel was not content just to try the national dress of Epirus for size. He peppered me with questions as to how and why the costume differed from region to region, what the significance of the embroidery was and what function each component of the costume played. He was considerably taken with the kiousteki, which bore an image of Saint George and we spoke about the important role that Saint has historically played in both our cultures. Then his questions turned to the manner in which the Greek Revolution unfolded in the various regions of Greece, seeking information about the differences, along with the commonalities.

Ramel is no stranger to the march. He is in fact a veteran, having attended a number of parades in full regalia ever since he was a young boy. Back then, his favourite pastime was to assume a fierce hoplarchic expression while proudly pointing a replica flintlock pistol at the dignitaries as he marched past. In those heady days, when as an uncle I was variously considered “funny” and “cool” (in his defence, he was quite young) he proudly wore the costume that I wore as a boy. Now my son wears it and he too aims the same replica pistol at the dignitaries, proving correct the old Greek adage: «το αίμα νερό δεν γίνεται».

Seeing my nephew and his brothers don the Epirus costume so enthusiastically and march down towards the Shrine unself-consciously, without complaint and a large amount of pride made a great impression upon the Greek section of my family who could not understand why there was no consternation expressed over the fact that they were in effect wearing dresses and indeed, instead of being disconcerted about this or embarrassed, were actually enjoying themselves. Back then, I put this down to their affinity with their uncle. However, now Ramel is all grown up and poised to enter Medical School and after two decades of hearing the same anecdotes over and over again, my humour, such that it is, no longer has the spontaneity it once may have had.

The warning signs were there from the beginning though. The lullaby I used to sing to my daughter as a baby was the traditional song Malamo. Unless I held her in my arms and danced the actual dance, she would refuse to sleep. I would sing the song again and again, almost falling asleep myself and forgetting the lyrics until a soft voice would come from the other side of the room: «κι αν σου τσακίσω το σκαμνί» adding the part that in my sleep deprived stupor, I had forgotten. This was Ramel, who unbeknownst to me and just by listening, had learnt the whole song off by heart. He would go on to learn and reproduce much of my vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, until such time as I felt it necessary to take him aside and to explain to him that: «άι στο διάολο» should not be repeated in polite company.

I also had to explain that it was probably not a good idea for him to call me «ρε» for by this time he had joined a local Greek soccer team and his vocabulary of expostulations had grown exponentially, causing me to give him a crash cause in the polite and the profane registers. Some time later Ramel informed me that he had decided to study Greek at his high school and henceforth our interactions were about grammar and pronunciation as well as arguments still unresolved, such as whether the word ταύρος is Indo-European, or in fact a Semitic loanword, for the same word appears in ancient Assyrian as well.

Of a sensitive and devout nature, having felt he had grasped the basic rudiments of the language, Ramel began to read the Bible in Greek. He particularly enjoyed the Psalms and recall to this day how he made my hair stand on end during a family function, where, in the midst of a conversation with his father about Trump being a harbinger of the end of the World, Ramel began to chant with perfect Byzantine intonation, the 135^th Psalm: «Ἐξομολογεῖσθε τῷ Κυρίῳ, ὅτι ἀγαθός…» What? How? I spluttered. “That’s nothing,” he smiled. “Listen to this…” and he began to chant «Ἀγνή Παρθένε Δέσποινα», going to explain the circumstances in which Saint Nektarios composed the hymn, analysing the lyrics and describing how the life of the Saint had inspired him during various times in his life.

It was at that point that our relationship changed. By this time, while studying for VCE, Ramel was scouring the Church Fathers in the original Greek and peppering me with questions as to how the Assyrian theological terms qnume and kyana relate to the Greek ὑπόστασις and φύσις and to what extent πρόσωπον and its derivative parsopa mean the same thing. Then there was the time that he messaged me at a rather ungodly hour to discuss the incongruity of Christ's observation "its easier to pass through the eye of the needle." In particular, he explained to me that in  Aramaic, the primary language of Jesus, the word for camel, gyumla, sounds like the word for rope (gimla). This is used as an argument that the Bible was first written in Aramaic as for those who maintain this, to say "its easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle" is more consistent imagery. Compounding this, there is the Greek word for camel κάμηλος and the old Greek word for naval rope (κάμιλος) which sound exactly the same. It was at this point that I decided to refer to the need for him to concentrate on his exams, introducing him to a rather erudite Greek expression that goes something like this: «Βάλε κώλο και διάβασε».

On the way to the National Day march, Ramel insisted upon playing us a hymn to the Byzantine General Belisarius. I was not at all sure what the relevance of the Justinianic general to Kolokotronis, Karaiskakis and the Panimian Brotherhood of Victoria until Ramel explained to me that in many ways, the Revolution picked up where Belisarius left off, restoring the ancestral lands that granted a people their primary identity, back to them. I did not have the heart to insist upon Zafeiris Melas instead.

Marching proudly down Birdwood Avenue, holding his Souliote rifle, Ramel was adored by the elderly spectators who cannot resist a strapping young man in a skirt bearing arms. To their acclamations he enthusiastically shouted «Χρόνια πολλά!» and «Ζήτω!» before turning to me to ask if there were any other responses he could use. I suggested: «Προλετάριοι όλων των χωρών ενωθείτε!» but I received some especially dark looks from the ladies marching behind us and we proceeded as if that unfortunate incident had never taken place. Instead, Ramel began to teach the other members of our motley band of Epirots assorted Assyrian phrases, mostly relating to the consumption of foodstuffs, for by this time, we were all ravenously hungry.

Having received a blessing from Metropolitan Ezekiel moments before, Ramel was in such high spirits that he didn’t notice when we had marched past the dignitaries and that the parelasi was over. He made us all sing the Greek national anthem over and over again in the car on the way home, instructing me: «κλείσε την πόρτα» so that the door did not close over his foustanella, an occupational hazard unique to the Greek-Australian, but also to the hybrid Greco-Assyrian-Australian as it turns out.

“You know what draws me to the parelasi?” he turned to me suddenly,  adopting a pensive pose. “I know,” I smiled sadly, “but go ahead.”

“I can’t celebrate my own people’s Independence Day. Instead, for us it is massacre after massacre, genocide after genocide. Sometimes I think we will never be free. But then I see what you people did against all odds, and how you keep the memory alive until today, I know that anything is possible. Your liberation is the liberation of all of us. I just wish that one day, you will be standing beside me when we celebrate Assyrian Independence.”

Sending him on his way, he wished me: «και του χρόνου». Between you and I, I can’t wait.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 5 April 2025