A Bed for the Wretched – Chapter 13 - Part 01

A Bed for the Wretched – Chapter 13

“Our mother hugged us silently and kept us in her arms for a long time. All three of us found ourselves in the tight but gentle grasp of her short arms. She kept squeezing us and her tears kept dripping down her cheeks. It seemed that we remained that way, as one, for a long time. Mother then loosened her embrace and, like a hen in fear of losing her scattered chicks, she spread her arms and pushed us into the crowd of children. We left at sunset singing a song. I thought, well we must be already grown up; that is why they let us travel down an unfamiliar road. We did not know how long the road was ahead of us. They told us we would be gone for a while, until things calmed down, until the government troops were pushed south of Mount Olympus, until the airports and the airplanes were destroyed, then we could come back home, so that we would not have to hide in the woods and sleep in caves, or under the open sky. We left in the dark of night and entered an unknown world without knowing what awaited us. There were many, many children. When I turned my head and looked back I saw a long column of children traveling up the hill and many women gathering at the side of the road. Among them was our mother, a short woman with tightly collected shoulders and short arms. Like many others, she too was dressed in black. I recognized her from the distance. Strange, isn’t it? That was my mother. She kept waving with one end of her black head kerchief and had her eyes covered with the other end. I thought why doesn’t mother want to see where we are going? Then I thought that can’t be right. She must be covering her eyes because she wants to keep the image of us imprinted in her memory for ever. But why, we will be back in no time? And the more I thought about these things the smaller I felt. Suddenly it seemed to me like her big blue eyes appeared before me, looking at me, quietly with her watery eyes. At that moment I felt the warmth and bitterness of my mother’s tears. Many of the other children must have felt the same way because I could also hear them sobbing just like me. My sister, holding onto the hem of my coat, was crying loudly. The younger one, three-year-old Kosta, kept looking behind and kept tripping and, with tears running down his cheeks, kept yelling ‘Mamooo’. I tried to calm him down but I could not hide my own tears. When he saw my tears he cried even louder. Then when it became dark I stopped wiping my tears. The leader of the group yelled out: ‘Song! We need to sing a song!’ He started singing first then many joined in and many more kept crying even louder. Someone then said: ‘We have crossed the border.’ I then turned my head and looked back but could not see the hill. I was pretty sure, however, that somewhere back there my mother was standing and waving her black head kerchief.

Before we crossed the border, several men came on horseback, armed with automatic rifles. One of them spoke with our leader and then climbed on top of a big rock, made a funnel with his hands and said: ‘Leave your bags, blankets, extra clothes and food here beside me; you will not need them where you are going. They will give you everything you need in Albania’. We did exactly as they asked and we were left without any food and with only the clothing on our backs. The men collected all our belongings, put them in bags and loaded them on their horses. That night and all the next day we stayed hidden by a brook. During the night we lit large fires but the Albanian border guards came and told us to put them out. Do you think we, the older children, got any sleep that night? No! We went looking around at the border, planning to escape and go back home. Unfortunately the Albanian border guards caught us and took us back. Sometime before sunrise, when from there, far above the mountain, towards Kostur, at the crack of dawn we heard the roar of airplanes. The moment we heard those dreadful sounds we all dispersed as best as we could. The airplanes circled around near the Albanian border a couple of times and disappeared. Then when the sun was up we could clearly see Krchishta in the distance, maybe an hour and a half walking distance. We could see that people were gathering at the old cemetery near the church. I thought surely my mother must be among them... The morning after, when the sun was fully up and everything was visible, I could clearly see the immense number of children hiding by the brook. There were children from Kosinets, Labanitsa, Krchishta, Dolno Papratsko, Ezerets, Galishte, Breshteni and even some from the Kostenaria villages. We were not allowed to go anywhere so all day long we wandered around in the area. Some children tried to escape and go home but the Albanians were vigilant and kept returning them. A convoy of large trucks arrived at sunset and took us. Where they were taking us we did not know. Around midnight we arrived in Korcha. They then offloaded us and took us to a great big bright house with long hallways and large wide empty rooms. When we arrived we were joined by some Albanian youths. Then someone climbed on a table and announced in both Greek and Macedonian: ‘Tonight and tomorrow night and perhaps longer you will be staying in the houses where these young people will take you.’ The young Albanians then walked among us and chose whoever they wanted to take. I happened to go to a family of good people. I was taken by a couple of young ladies. Their grandfather spoke Macedonian. They were good people but the girls did not have a father. They said that the Italians had shot him. Photographs of him were hung all over the wall above the chimney. Their mother was a bit fat but was a good-natured and peaceful person. When, through the grandfather, I told the woman that I too had no father, she hugged me and began to cry. The next day the girls held me by my hands and took me to a shop. They showed me all kinds of toys, small balls, toy guns, toy machine guns, but all I kept doing was asking to see my brother and sister. Of course they did not understand what I was saying until we returned home and their grandfather explained. They then wrote down the names of my siblings and one of the girls went out. About half an hour later she was back and, through her grandfather, explained that the Committee told her that my siblings were still there and that the girls were going to get them. By noon the three of us were together again and after lunch the girls took us for a walk to the park. It was a very nice place with tall trees, clean walks and many, many roses. And to my surprise we met other children there, some from my village. One day we found ourselves at a playground by the river. We spent a lot of time there. We only split up to go to eat and sleep. We also spent a lot of time exploring the hospital. Many children found their fathers and older brothers and sisters there.

When we were asked where we were going we said we were going to see the Partisans. We became close with some and shared our food with them, we even cried with them when they were in pain. My hostess always gave me a piece of corn bread and some sweets which I then took to the partisans in the hospital. “Do you see that person down there waving his hands?” said Kirche. “The tall one?” asked Pando. “No. The guy next to him,” said Kirche. “I see him…” replied Pando. “Yes, that guy. One day he said to me: ‘Listen. We would like to start a theater. We want to sing partisan songs in two voices. Like the partisan choir which sang in our village. Each will alternately sing a verse like we were taught by our master. After that we will perform the ‘Macedonian Bloody Wedding’ for the Partisans. Kirche you convince one of the girls to play Tsveta and I will play Spase.’ We used to go to the hospital every day to visit the wounded, sing songs and recite poetry for them. Unfortunately, we never did get to perform the ‘Macedonian Bloody Wedding’ to a live audience. One rainy day, during the night, they quickly gathered us together, loaded us on trucks and we were off on the road. I never got the chance to go back and say goodbye to my host family and thank them for looking after me. We traveled most of the night and by dawn we had reached the sea. None of us had ever seen the sea before so we were all wondering what this large body of water could be? There they placed us in a two-storey house about one hundred metres away from the big water. We found out from the kitchen staff and from the facilities manager that we were in ‘Bania’, a place near the city Durres in Albania and that the big water was the Adriatic Sea. Around the houses and all along the seacoast was a great beach covered in fine yellow sand, looking like corn flour. The sand was so hot, you could not walk on it with bare feet during the day.

After we were settled in the house the ‘mothers’, that’s what we called the women who cared for us, informed us that this would be our last move. They assured us that as soon as the fighting back home subsided and as soon as the government troops were driven out south of Mount Olympus, we would be going home to our parents. ‘And when will that be?’ someone asked. ‘In twenty days!’ we were assured. So, we spent the next twenty days or so with great joy knowing that we were going home. The days passed quickly so when the time expired we became apprehensive and began to look for the trucks. In no time we went from being happy to being depressed. Our low morale greatly affected the mood of the little ones, making them constantly sob and cry, calling for their mothers. The ‘mothers’ who looked after us gathered us around, did whatever they could to distract us. They sang to us, told us stories and invented all kinds of games to keep us busy. They tried their best to stop us from thinking of our mothers, to stop grieving and to stop dreaming of airplanes, trucks, armed men and the wounded... We would often ask: ‘Where are our homes?’ And the mothers would say, ‘Over there where the sun rises’. Since then the younger children, while playing in the sand, would tell each other that their mother was in a place where the sun rises. Then they would argue as to whose mother was the closest, while looking to determine where exactly the sun rose. One day one of the mothers told them that the sun rose where the big trees grew, many little ones fled towards the big trees to look for their mothers. When they were caught and asked where they were going, one of them said: “I am going to my mother, she is over there where the big trees are.’ They constantly cried and looked towards the big trees hoping to catch a glimpse of their mothers. My mother too was where the sun rose… After that, the sun, the trees and the hill became our dream. It was very sad… While we were in Bania, the girls used to go to the grassy areas of the beach near the road and pick flowers. They made headbands with some and gardens with the rest. The boys played near the shoreline and built trenches, bunkers and demolished houses. That is what was familiar to us and that is what we built. One day mother Evgenia came over and began to yell at us. Evgenia was a widow. Her husband’s name was Kosta. He was killed near Prekopana while fighting. He was an old partisan. Kostovitsa, I mean mother Evgenia, had four children of her own. She was also responsible for twenty other children ages two to fourteen years old but in actual fact she looked after all sixty children from our village. There were two other mothers, younger inexperienced women without children of their own. As I said, mother Evgenia began to yell at us, disappointed with the things we were building. After that we began to built sand mills, bridges and a railway line with a locomotive and three cars mimicking the real one that traveled by us. One day the sun was particularly intense and several children became very ill. A doctor was dispatched from Durres to see them. When he was done, he passed by us and when he saw what we had done in the sand he laughed and laughed. When a lot of children and mothers came over to see what the commotion was he put down his briefcase, grabbed a bucket and began to collect sand. He then called one of the mothers from Ianoveni over who spoke Albanian and began to tell us what he was building. The sand structure looked strange, something we had never seen before. It looked like a house with thick walls, high towers, wide doors, guard stalls, but was surrounded by water. He told us it was a castle from very old times in which a king and queen lived. He also talked about an enchanted princess and dragons. The woman who spoke Albanian translated everything for us as we listened intently with our eyes and mouths wide open. During those moments we forgot about everything; about our troubles, about the sea, the endless sands and no one mentioned anything about food or drink.

We even forgot to run over and wave at the passing train. We did not even hear the train whistle… Before that we used to look for the train. We knew when it was going to pass us by from the shadows cast by the linden trees growing on the banks of the sea. Before the train passed by us it blew its whistle and when we heard it we would drop everything and dash for the railway track. But by the time we got there the train, with one locomotive and three cars, would have passed us by on its way to or from Durres. As I said, we intently listened to the doctor. When he was done building the castle he told us a story about it. He said that a beautiful princess, the daughter of the king and queen lived in this castle. Unfortunately she was put to sleep by the magic of a bad witch. Her father and mother were so devastated that they both died from great sorrow. The witch wanted the princess imprisoned so she summoned two fire-breathing dragons and put them in charge of guarding the gates so that no one could rescue the princess. After the doctor left we all got down and started building new castles, palaces, gardens, parks, moats and roadways connecting them together. We did this day after day, toiling and getting dirty in the mud and sand. The entire beach was covered with sand structures. We even built traps to capture the witch… We played and played day after day, forgetting our pain and hunger. We subsisted on a small slice of corn bread and a dry cube of jam. We had corn bread and jam twice a day. Our main meal was a portion of hot soup with a couple of grains of rice and lots and lots of greens. We ate at long tables made of unfinished boards under the shade of a grove of poplar trees. Our bowls were old Italian army issue pans.

One day a boy from my village, may he rest in peace; he was recruited and sent out to the front with the first group of child fighters and was killed at Bukovik. He told us the greens in the soup were linden leaves. Mother Evgenia begged us not to tell anyone about this and we honoured her wish and told no one. The hardest thing for the ‘mothers’ who looked for us was looking after the youngest children who did not understand what was happening and constantly cried for their own mothers. They would wake up in the middle of the night and cry for their mothers. The worst times were in the outdoors. When one started crying they would all cry and call for their mothers. There would be crying on the beach, near the water, in the meadows, in front of the houses by the street, everywhere. They would be crying and screaming looking for their mothers while rubbing their eyes with their dirty little fists. There were too many of them for the mothers to handle all at once so they relied on the older girls to step in and calm the little ones down. At first, we the older boys helped but after we started playing with the sand we were too busy to be bothered. The sand was a magnificent toy, that is, until one day, while exploring the depths of the beach, we discovered a broken down tank. Discovering the rusty old, broken down tank had a profound effect on all of us. Our time for building castles was over. It was time for war. Waging war on each other became our new preoccupation. We dislocated shoulders, arms and fingers, gave each other black eyes and even spilled blood from our broken noses to possess the tank. We organized ourselves in groups and fought each other for the tank until one day tragedy struck. The game ended for good when a boy caught his leg in the door and by the time he was freed, he lost his leg. Our stupid game crippled that poor boy for life. After that we hated the tank. We didn’t even go near it. We all walked around with long faces because, even though we did not do it on purpose, the boy lost his leg because of us. We were all to blame for his accident... One day we sat by the road waiting for the train to go by. We knew exactly when the train was going to pass by from Durres to Tirana and vice versa by the location of the linden tree shadows. Vangel, another boy from our village, may he rest in peace, he too was killed with the first group of child soldiers, crossed the road and went to the other side. There he came across a man carrying a huge bundle of leeks over his shoulder. Vangel approached him and first pointed to his belly and then to the leeks. The man understood what Vangel wanted so he pulled out one leek and gave it to him. When we saw Vangel with the leek in his hand we all ran across the street. But before we could catch up to the man, mother Evgenia called us back and we all sat on the grass by the road. Mother Evgenia then took off her apron, placed it on the grass, took out her knife and cut the leek into small equal sized portions. When she was done she asked all the children from our village to come over. She then asked Vangel to turn around and look the other way. She again said: ‘Belio, turn around!’ We called him Belio (the white one) because he had blond hair and his eyelashes were white. After Vangel turned around, she picked up a piece of leek and asked: ‘Who is this piece for?’ ‘That one is for me!’ shouted Vangel. After she handed Vangel his piece, she picked up another one and asked: ‘Who is this one for?’ ‘That one is for Kosta,’ Vangel replied. And as such, sixty children got to taste a bit of leek. Mother Evgenia, a widowed woman wearing a black head kerchief tied under her chin, patted each child on the head as they picked up their piece of leek and then left without saying a word. I watched her as she smiled at each child and observed her shoulders vibrate ever so slightly. I and everyone else could tell that while she was smiling on the outside she was crying deep inside. The sight was too sad for me to watch so I went a bit further back, buried my head in the grass and began to cry uncontrollably, calling on my own mother who was too far to hear me.

I wept and wept and wept until I felt a touch on my shoulder. I then stopped and turned around. Squatting beside me was my own sister who had also been crying. Then, after swallowing her tears, she said: ‘Don’t cry Kirche, mother Evgenia just came back and said we are leaving tomorrow… we are going home’...” At that point of telling his story, Kirche fell silent and stared at the hill that swept over Prenies. Two tears, glinting like pearls in the sun, hung from his eyelashes and broke off and rolled down his cheeks. Pando grabbed Kirche by the shoulder and said: “Son, you are wearing a military uniform, it doesn’t look good on you when you have tears in your eyes. Soldiers don’t cry you know, right?” “No they don’t!” said Kirche while wiping his tears with the broad sleeve of his shirt. “They certainly don’t cry… I don’t know what came over me…” At that point Numo gave Kirche his half-smoked lit cigarette and said: “Here Kirche, take a drag of this, it will knock off whatever ails you… Then you can tell us more… Please continue…” “We were awakened early the next morning. What joy, what happiness, we were jumping up and down… we were going home... so we thought. They lined us up in two’s, told us to hold hands and off we went on foot marching along the road. I turned my head and looked back, it was a long line. Only now I noticed that my clothes were in taters and my knees were bare and exposed, my little brothers pants were so dirty and slick they reflected the sun and my sisters dress was torn in two places and so worn out it looked like a rag. The mothers could not catch up with the mending, there were too many of us. We walked and walked and walked, baking in the sun. It was early May but still it was very hot. By afternoon we arrived at the outskirts of a city. The people passing us by were bewildered by how we looked. We were tired and thirsty. The little ones were crying. We entered the city via a long cobblestone road, turned along a narrow alley and stopped in front of about a dozen or so houses. The houses were low, wide and each had at least six rooms. The yards were beautiful with all sorts of plants and flowers growing in them. Only two of the dozen laneways had water fountains. They divided us in the street and moved us into the houses. We were so tired we did not move until the next day. The next day we were informed that were free to move around and visit the city but under the condition that we behave ourselves and not steal. We all agreed and day after day we roamed around town returning back to the houses only for meals and sleep. Unfortunately our promises did not last long and some of the children began to misbehave. Some relived themselves in the bushes, some stole fruit from the street vendors and others raided the gardens in the neighbouring houses. The Albanian people complained to the Committee and the Committee’s response to the problem was to erect a barbed wire fence all around the compound and fence us in. After the fence was erected there was no way out. The two fountains did not have sufficient water for all of us to drink, let alone bath and wash our clothing. Life suddenly turned sour and we were not happy. The place was too small to house us all, there were more than one thousand children, so we took our frustration out on the gardens and parks. We began to relieve ourselves on the street, in the gardens and in the front yards. The place began to stink to high heaven, yet no one seemed to mind. On top of that we got lice, the weather was very hot and no one wanted to wait in line. The situation became desperate and caught the attention of the Committee when children began to defecate blood. When the Committee found out that twelve children had died they decided to move us to another place. No child from my village became sick. Mother Evgenia was vigilant in keeping us clean. She and the older girls were busy day and night, without interruption, bathing the small children and boiling our clothes during the night to kill the lice.

About a month later they moved us to larger facilities. The new facilities were a row of large houses located outside of the city, close to the sea. Only the road divided our houses from the sea. Behind our houses there were beautiful two storey white houses surrounded by high iron railings. Inside their yards grew orange, lemon, fig and palm trees. The children from the villages Krchishta, Ezerets, Grache, Chuka, Shak, Rebani, Galishta Ianoveni, Dolno Papratsko and Zhelegozhe lived in one house. Next to the road, beside the barracks of the Albanian sailors, lived the Madzhiri (Asia Minor colonist) children. They were already living there when we arrived. The latrines in this place were wooden sheds located near the seawater. There was no indoor plumbing in the houses and we got our water from the yard. On the east side of our compound there was a cigarette and leather factory and on the north side there was a wide road leading to the king’s palace. There was a park on both sides of the road with many red flowers and rose bushes. A few days after we were moved to the new compound they sent two more young women to look after us. One was a Madzhir (a colonist from Asia Minor) named Marianthi and the other was a Macedonian from Rupishta named Evdoxia. Marianthi immediately put herself in charge after she said that she was sent there by General Markos himself. Marianthi’s arrival put an end to our freedom. The first thing she did was ask the Albanian authorities to surround the compound with barbed wire. The older children were ordered to participate and wire the three entrances. There was no way in or out of the compound without permission. The place looked like a prison. After we finished wiring the gates Marianthi put us to work inside the compound. In the centre of the circle of houses was an older, neglected and abandoned house. Its roof had collapsed and its windows were all broken. Marianthi wanted it removed and replaced with a playground so she ordered all the children to demolish it and remove it piece by piece, by hand. One thousand five hundred children were deployed to remove the house brick by brick, stone by stone and pick up every piece of broken glass by hand. She then ordered us to clear all the debris and level the ground. When we were done we made a nice playground. We were given two flat footballs as reward for our hard work, which we had to patch up before we could play with them. Then she ordered us to clear the grounds under the willow tree. When we were done with that she took some of the older boys and made them clean the basement where she lived. When we were finished with the cleanup she assembled us in a line in front of the mess hall, young and old children together, and announced that from today forward we were going to start a new life. She said: ‘From now on you will get up at six o’clock in the morning, you will eat breakfast at seven, lunch at one and dinner at seven. Before each meal you will assemble here under the willow tree and wait for me’. From that day forward we became a battalion and the children from each village became a unit within the battalion. From that day forward our greeting became ‘forward with Markos’. And thus began our new life, wherever we went we marched in a column of four and always with a song. Before and after each meal we had to wait for Marianthi to inspect us and dismiss us. Nobody was allowed to touch anything without her permission. We stood in line and waited for her. She tirelessly went around scolding, welcoming and dismissing children; always in Greek and always with the greeting ‘forward with Markos’. I don’t know how we endured the abuse but somehow we did. The most difficult part about this was morning gymnastics. Marianthi always admired the Albanian sailors who began their exercises at exactly six o’clock in the morning and practiced for ten minutes with their guns. One day during our meetings she said: ‘Tomorrow we will compete with the sailors. We will get up at five o’clock in the morning and begin exercising at six sharp.

We will march in fours and maintain straight lines and equal distance between each other. I will watch you and all I want to see from you is a single temple on every line and to hear a single step each time the line takes a step! I want our marches to be flawless. You will run up to the palace iron gates, along the road, pass by my house and end the exercises here. I will watch you from my balcony. The unit that performs best in all exercises will be rewarded with lining up first in front of the mess hall! Understood?’ We lived like that day in and day out. One day, during our morning gymnastics, she noticed that one of our four columns was not in a straight line and that our marching was slightly out of step. Our punishment for not being perfect was more grueling exercises. She made us run the uphill course three times and ordered our commanders to physically beat those who performed poorly. Oh how painful it was to run the course. We were unable to catch our breath. When we were done and lined up under the willow tree, Marianthi came over. She climbed on the stage and began to castigate us saying that we were worthless and that we had dishonoured the Partisans and our fathers, brothers and sisters who were struggling in Gramos. Then she ordered us to march again calling out ‘halt’, ‘at ease’, ‘left’, ‘right’, as she watched the line and listened to our steps. When she was satisfied that our march was perfect she ordered us to sing battle songs. There was no breakfast for us that morning… I guess we were not worthy of our allowance of corn bread and our cube of dry marmalade. The place where we regularly met we called ‘Under the Willow’. We gathered there at least three times a day. The most boring and difficult gathering was the one in the afternoon. This gathering began during the Gramos offensive when Marianthi asked the Albanians sailors to mount a speaker on one of the branches of the willow tree. After that every day at eleven o’clock we were summoned to line up under the willow. The signal to line up was delivered by a lame guard, a Greek man from Northern Epirus. At precisely eleven o’clock he would start banging on the metal fence with a metallic rod. As soon as we heard that sound we all dashed outside to line up. Not because we wanted to but because those who arrived first got to stand under the shade of the willow. The rest stood under the burning sun. Marianthi, as I said, enjoyed tormenting the children. I can still hear her slightly hoarse voice, with her Madzhir accent, constantly ordering the children around: ‘halt’, ‘at ease’, ‘left’, ‘right’, etc., for over half an hour. Then exactly at twelve noon the box hanging from the willow branch would begin to crackle, sizzle and blare sounds that sounded like a rockslide in a forest during a windstorm. It was painful to listen to. Following that came a melody of what sounded like ‘Embros ELAS gia tin Elada’ (Forward ELAS for Greece). (This was ELAS’s anthem with which radio station “Free Greece” began its broadcast). We stood still while we listened to the news. Most of us Macedonians did not speak much Greek so we hardly understood what was said but we stood there quietly anyway for fear of Marianthi’s watchful eye. And there on the stage stood Marianthi with her half unbuttoned English Khaki shirt, wearing military boots with socks folded over them and a short skirt, listening dreamily to the broadcast. The children lined up in the sun were baking in the heat. No one dared speak, laugh, or, heaven forbid, wipe the sweat off their drowning eyes. A child falling down from heat stroke meant nothing for her. The only relief for us was the crackling melody signifying the end of the broadcast. At that point Marianthi would dismiss us and quickly dash into the mess hall while the rest of us lined up outside. One day we had to wait for Marianthi for a long time. She had gathered all the mothers in the mess hall and had asked them to support her in dismissing mother Evgenia and another mother from Breshteni.

As we found out later, mother Evgenia had had a word with Marianthi and had told her to stop tormenting the children with these military exercises. ‘They are children, not soldiers,’ Evgenia said, ‘so stop treating them like soldiers!’ Marianthi did not like that and wanted to get rid of Evgenia but none of the mothers would support her. Mother Evgenia got to stay but after that refused to speak to Marianthi. Marianthi, on the other hand, continued with business as usual and extended her torment. In late June they decided to send us to work. There was a huge field near Duress, planted with wheat. A rain and wind storm had flattened sections of the wheat and it was impossible for the machine harvesters to collect it. So, here is where we came in. Our job, or at least that’s what Marianthi called it, was to pick each wheat plant by hand and place it on a pile. After the piles were large enough, the older children fed them to the harvesters. There were two harvesters in the field. We did this for fifteen days. Marianthi made it into a game by asking children to compete against each other to see who could make the biggest pile in the shortest time. It was fun when the weather was cool but a nightmare when it was really hot. We did not have sufficient drinking water so during the hot days children slipped under Marianthi’s radar and went for a drink in the neighbouring gardens and drank from the wells. Beyond the gardens was a beautiful white house from which we could hear sad melodies.” “Was it a madhouse, Kirche?” interrupted Numo. “Yes, it was!” replied Kirche, “that’s what our quartermaster, the only Albanian in the camp, told us. One day Marianthi caught a bunch of children returning from having left to drink water. She searched them and found wild plums in their pockets. When we all returned to the compound and lined up under the willow, she invited those children to come up on the stage. She then scolded them and when she was done she locked them up in a shed. Their punishment, one day’s food deprivation. She then ordered all the children to go and spit on them while they cried and begged for forgiveness... After our work was done in the wheat field, Marianthi told us that we now needed to help the Partisans in the hospitals. Our job was to go out to the fields and collect flowers and grasses for making medicines. We had to walk long distances and collect petals from flowers that were taller than us. We had to fill baskets. They told us that they boiled the flowers and used the juice to wash the wounds of the partisans... After lunch they usually took us to see a movie. The entire theater was reserved just for us. We would enter the theater at two o’clock in the afternoon and they would close the doors behind us. The film would start about two or three hours later. What did we do in the meantime? We slept, talked, went to the washroom... What else could we do being locked inside? They only showed us Russian military movies. The first time, before we realized that the movie was a projection on a cloth screen, we thought that everything was real and we ran and hid under the chairs when we saw the images appear, especially when a locomotive was rushing straight for us or when soldiers pointed their gun toward us. Many of the children were crying and screaming as they fled to hide. Even after we found out that the images were not real, the sound of the aircraft, the guns, and the machine guns still terrified us. We found it hard to watch the films. One time, while watching a Russian story, huge tables loaded with grapes, baked bread, roasted chickens, piglets, ducks… appeared on the screen. Stacks of meat and bread appeared before our eyes. I could hear whispering behind me, children saying: ‘You watch that no one sees me and I will go up there and pick up some of that food!’ Then I heard another one say: ‘Go! Go! Go!’ But as soon as the boy reached for the food all he could see was the shadow of his hand on the screen… We marched with a single step in a straight line and after about twenty minutes we were back lined up under the willow tree.

After that we were given a plate of pasta which we ate quickly and then off to bed. We slept 15 to 20 children per room on a concrete floor with one blanket over and one blanket under us. This is how we lived, lying next to one other until five o’clock in the morning when we were awakened for gymnastics. While we slept we dreamt of guns, aircraft, of wounded and killed, of Marianthi’s cursing, of our mothers and of bread. And if any one of us were awake we would hear heavy sighs, quiet sobbing and calling for mothers. There was no time for sorrow or grieving. We grieved during the night when we slept. We grieved silently while staring at an invisible spot on the ceiling in the dark of night. We saw what we wanted to see; the faces of our loved ones and the places where we would rather be. But that too would be stolen from us by the crying of a child who had just awakened from a nightmare. Then mother Evgenia from the other room, where she slept with the younger children, would come in and lie there among us, caressing each one of us and kissing us on the eyes. She kept the room doors wide open. That’s how she wanted it. We also liked the doors wide open. When we heard her voice in the night we felt safe and at peace. We each, in our own way, craved a moment of her time, of her gentle touch and of her breath gently blowing on our faces. We all loved mother Evgenia. She often told us stories and taught us Macedonian songs. She talked to us about our village, about our people and about older times. Most of us had never heard the stories she told us about Marko Krale (king Marko). We loved those stories the best. The evenings and nights were ours. The days unfortunately belonged to Marianthi and to Markos. During the day we were shaped for Markos; we sang for him, we collected wheat for him, we ran uphill for him, we competed with the sailors for him, we marched barefoot on the hot asphalt for him, we baked in the hot sun for him,… And he, Markos, standing there on the stage, wearing his dirty boots with his left leg slightly bent, his right hand hidden behind his hip where he hanged his gun, leaning on a stick, with a wide belt tight against his waist and two other belts crossing his chest, was frowning under his mustache telling us to: ‘Behave you little bastards and pay attention to Marianthi!’... We could smell the sea day and night. When the winds were strong, especially in the morning, we could feel the dampness and salty droplets fall on our faces. From that we knew that sea water was really salty. We lived about one hundred metres away from the sea but were not allowed to go near it. One morning when we were lined up under the willow, I don’t know what came over Marianthi, but she, with a solemn voice, announced that we were going on an excursion. After breakfast we all got together and off we went. We marched along a cobblestone road with the sea on our left side. The water was very calm that day. And on our right was the slope of a mountain dotted with vineyards. When the cobblestone road ended we continued our march on some fine yellow sand that looked like corn flour. There was an immense field of sand in front of us. It was a wasteland. Only small white waves repeatedly washed the sand and retreated again. The sand was fine and parted slightly as we stepped on it with our bare feet. ‘Halt!’ commanded Marianthi and climbed on a stone. We all turned our heads in her direction. She placed her hands on her waist, raised her chin and looked at us. Then she looked into the distance, gazing far behind us into the big water. Everyone went silent. All we could hear was the barely audible waves splashing on the seashore. We all had our backs turned to the water so we continued to stare at the green slopes of the mountain in front of us. ‘Stop!’ screamed Marianthi. ‘When I blow the whistle once,’ she said, ‘it means stop and when I blow it twice its means march.’ We began to march on the sand, and all she did was constantly blow the whistle.

She then waved her hand and gathered us together again ordering the boys to go to one side, the girls to another. She then asked us to strip naked! We all got undressed. And then suddenly there was one whistle. We stopped and stood at attention. She asked us to stretch our arms down and start slapping our legs with our hands all in unison making only a single sound. If there was a delay she started us again from the beginning. After we mastered the craft of slapping ourselves in unison, Marianthi went to the girls. She said something to them and came back to us. ‘This time a short whistle,’ she said, ‘means get into the water. A long whistle means get out of the water. The person who does not come out on time will not be eating lunch and supper today! Is that clear?’ ‘Clear!’ we all said in a single voice. ‘Simioton!’ she yelled out instead of march and we started to march on the sand with our bare feet. She blew a short whistle so we all ran frantically into the water. The water was shallow. We ran, fell down, laughed, splashed each other and spit a lot. The water was very salty. Then there was a long whistle which took away all our joy... We all rushed out of the water like mad dogs and put on our clothes. Then there was the whistle to stop. As soon as we lined up there were two sharp penetrating whistles to march. Forward, left, right, left, right, left, right… About half an hour of marching and singing military songs, our unit arrived at its destination without any faults. Then after enduring the box that hung on the branch of the willow tree and after listening to the latest news about our struggle at Gramos, we went ‘forward with Markos’ to a plate of macaroni. Several of us who failed to get out of the water fast enough, in accordance with Marianthi’s instructions, went ‘forward with Markos’ without any lunch or dinner. The next day, after morning gymnastics, we stood on the roadside waiting for Marianthi to arrive but she was nowhere to be found. The ‘Major’ who conducted the exercises went to look for her but came back with a frown on his face. He would not tell us what had happened. We later found out from the old Greek night watchman from Epirus that she was sleeping with the Albanian man. The only Albanian man in the camp was Alia, the man responsible for purchasing goods for us. There were no other Albanian men living inside our compound.