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