Front Matter - Part 01

So you are a Greek, eh?

A man’s struggle to discover his identity

A Novel

By Risto Stefov

So you are a Greek, eh?

A man’s struggle to discover his identity

A Novel

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January 21, 2024

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Part 1 – So you are a Greek, eh?

One day a person named Stefanos approached me on the street seeking information. “My name is Stefanos Georgopoulos. I am Greek,” he said. “I am originally from Florina, Greece. I am in my late fifties now and have been living in Canada since I was a very young child. My father, I believe, was from ‘Otsima’ but I don’t know what that is or where it is? I understand you are a historian and you could possibly help me. I’m looking for information on Florina.”

I have to be honest with you. For the last twenty years or so I have been intimidated, threatened with bodily harm, threatened with death, insulted, ridiculed, called a liar and a number of other things by Greeks, but never, ever have I been “genuinely” asked for help. Oh, except one time a Greek diplomat thanked me for my articles which I’d made available on the internet. What I had written in those articles he said, gave him a different perspective on Macedonian and Greek history, something he wasn’t aware of and which he admitted intrigued him. He was flying out of Greece on a jet plane to another country to attend a meeting and, for some reason, he decided to “Google” something on Greece and ran into my articles on the internet. From what he said, he wanted to know what other people, non-Greeks, thought of Greece and wanted to be prepared if there were questions at his meeting. What was funny about this was that he asked me “where do I get this stuff?” (sources for my articles) because he couldn’t find it on any of the Greek websites. My friend, as you may know, Greece doesn’t recognize the Macedonian people or their history. Greece doesn’t even recognize its own “real” history. Greece lives in a fantasy world where everyone in Greece is Greek and descended from the Greeks of ancient times (from 2700 years ago). Greece also believes and has made it clear to everyone in the world that Macedonians don’t exist. So naturally, you aren’t going to find “this kind” of information on Greek websites.

So going back to my story, when Stefanos Georgopoulos approached me, given my past experience with Greeks, you can imagine the number of things that went through my mind the very moment this man asked me for my help! Was this a setup? A trap? An entanglement? Or was he “genuinely” asking me for help? I didn’t know what to make of it.

My first instinct was to get angry and tell him off. But I took a different approach. I said, “So you are a Greek, eh…?”

“Well, that’s what my parents tell me…” he replied. “My parents don’t tell me much but when the subject comes up they say we are Greek.”

“And what makes you think I can help you?”

“Well, I was thinking of writing my autobiography,” he said, “so I asked around for information and your name came up.”

I was completely stumped by his response and my anger and suspicion turned to sympathy. I felt sorry for the man because, obviously, he was Macedonian, a lost soul, but nonetheless a Macedonian lost soul who wasn’t at fault for what had happened to him. On top of that his father was from “Otsima” or as we Oshchimians call it “Oshchima”, my own village. But obviously he didn’t know that. Or did he?!

“I will help you,” I said, “but you must understand, first I’m not a historian by accreditation, and second you might not like what I tell you.”

He looked at me strangely and said, “Fair enough! But… someone said you were a historian…”

“I am knowledgeable of the history in that part of the world,” I said, “but I have no formal education or degree in history.”

“Why not?” he asked inquisitively.

I didn’t like where this was going. Was I being set up for something? Or was this person genuinely inquisitive?

Let me explain myself here. I have been on this path with Greeks a dozen times. Greeks acting like Stefanos, pretending to be naïve, had approached me, asking me for information and, after spending months researching and trying to help them, would turn around and stab me in the back. Initially I thought they did this to taunt and frustrate me, but later I began to suspect that they wanted to know “what” and “how much” I knew. They didn’t really care about how much I knew about existing material that could easily be accessed in books or on the internet. They were interested in knowing if I knew anything beyond that, new and damaging information to Greece.

One time a guy wrote me and said that he was a history professor teaching history somewhere in South America and he desperately wanted to learn more about Macedonian history… but had a problem. He didn’t believe Macedonians existed before Tito’s time.

He said, “If you can send me proof that Macedonians existed before Tito’s time, I’ll accept everything you say and have written in your history books…”

After spending considerable time compiling information, over 100 pages of it, that proved Macedonians existed and had used the name “Macedonian” since the 16 hundreds, I thought I had won over at least one professor in the world. I should also mention that the information I compiled was written by many non-Macedonians including foreign kings who recognized the Macedonian identity and the Macedonian people way before Tito’s time. For more information see my essay entitled: ‘Evidence of the Existence of Macedonians Throughout the Ages’, located at this link: http://www.pollitecon.com/Assets/Ebooks/Evidence-of-the-Existence-of-Macedonians-Throughout-the-Ages.pdf.

But when I gave the alleged “professor” my essay the man’s last words to me, in gratitude for doing all this work were: “Macedonia is Greek”. So you can see why I hesitated to help Greeks including Stefanos. I can tell you that it wasn’t an easy feeling I had at that moment… Was I about to be made to look like a chump… again? Or was I about to commit a moral crime by ignoring the man’s plea for help when he needed it? To be on the safe side I often fell for the latter, and without exception I became a victim of ridicule… So, you can call me a sucker for punishment. This time too I decided to help him. I said, “I’m not an accredited historian by choice because I don’t want to be part of a history that doesn’t recognize my identity. I can’t truly subscribe to a history that claims Macedonians don’t exist and that they are Tito’s creation… I can’t accept a history that calls me a liar and a fraud…”

Stefanos looked at me like I was some sort of freak, a bogyman… the kind that his parents had warned him about… and told him to stay away from. He looked at me as if I was “everything” that was wrong in his “Greek life”! I was the kind of monster that hid behind the bushes, lurking, peering at him and waiting for the opportunity to jump on him and take his “precious” Macedonia away from him, just like his parents had told him. Yes, he had been warned about “creatures” just like this… like me… and he didn’t like it a bit. But! But this was precisely the test I needed. To see if he was genuine or another pretender attempting to waste my time and, in the end, make a fool of me.

He turned away and without looking at me said, “Sorry, I made a mistake… I thought you were someone else…” and began to walk away.

“Stefanos, wait…” I yelled. “What? Are you afraid of the truth? Don’t you want to hear the other side of the story? Don’t want to find out that your parents have been lying to you all your life?” But there was nothing I said that could dissuade him from running off. Then in a loud voice I yelled, “Don’t you want to find out that you are a Macedonian!?”

That stopped him in his tracks. He was angry now… visibly angry. I must have pushed his red button and he was about to explode. I continued firing my words...

“You know exactly what your parents told you. You know what the Greek priests told you… You know what the Greek teachers told you… What Greek society told you… and yet I can see that you are struggling to accept all that… refusing to believe any of it! But then you tell yourself ‘that you personally must have a problem…’ How can so many people be so wrong… lying to you…? Especially priests… God’s people… You can’t accept that either because you believe priests and teachers always tell the truth…? This is your dilemma… isn’t it? But here you are, in your fifties, and you still have a dilemma, unable to shake it off… that you might be…”

“Enough! What’s your point!” he yelled back at me without looking at me.

“Please Stefanos, hear me out… I didn’t mean to anger you. Just hear me out… I’m going to tell you my side of the story and you can make up your own mind! You are an adult beyond the age of corruption and there is no way on earth that I can put ‘ideas’ in your head that you don’t want to believe… These are just words…” I said pleading with him to give me a chance to explain myself. I knew what he was feeling because many Macedonians have gone through this kind of process to discover who they really are and it has never been pleasant. In fact it has been awful… families have broken up over it. Children have been “disowned” by their parents…

“Do you want to know what’s bothering me?” he yelled. “I’ll tell you what bothers me! This isn’t the first time I’ve run into someone like you but you are all the same, bringing division to our people, telling us that we aren’t Greeks, making us hate each other… You say they are just words… but… no, my friend, they aren’t just words… they are rulers, sticks and belts… When I was a child I ran into other children who claimed to be Macedonian like you… but when I came home and told my parents, both of them said ‘they can’t possibly be Macedonian because Macedonians don’t exist!!!. Do you understand!?’ But no… stupid me… I insisted they were Macedonian. That’s when my father took his belt out and belted me… many times… I can still feel the pain. This is what I got for ‘just words’…!” he said and looked down.

“This isn’t easy for me either. I get this from every Greek I speak with… and worse… Physical pain heals but psychological torment lives on and eats way at you. I get nothing but pain from doing this… But I feel I must do it… Because I care…! It eats away at me if I don’t do it. It’s not right for me to walk away from you… from anyone… When someone asks me for my help, I feel compelled to help them… But… but at the same time I’m not going to lie to you to spare your feelings and add insult…” “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry I acted this way too… But I have this problem… this phobia about these things… which chokes me up. I’ll tell you what’s bothering me...” he interrupted, yelling and looking the other way.

We both stopped talking. He took a moment to compose himself and then turned around, walked towards me, looked me in the eyes and said, “You see… here is the problem. I have been repeatedly told that we are Greeks and have been Greeks for thousands of years. I have been told that we come from a large Greek city and, before we left Greece, we had never been out of Greece. I have been told that all Greeks are born Greek and spoke the Greek language since time immemorial. Everyone told me this… Yes, including the Greek priests and Greek teachers in my Greek school. But here is the thing… When I was a young child, my younger sister and I listened to our parents fighting in their room… they spoke another language… They were yelling at each other in another language! Well, if we are Greeks and only Greeks then where did they learn this other language? They tell me our family has never been out of Greece, so where did they learn this other language!? I don’t know because I was afraid to ask them. You never talked about these things in our home…They both would have belted me just for asking… When we were in the Greek church I used to hear Greek people speaking another language. And no, it wasn’t English. Most of these people, especially the old ladies, didn’t speak English at all. Then when the priest came around they stopped talking, smiled and shook their heads… even when the priest asked them questions… They didn’t answer him… like they didn’t understand what he was asking... If they were Greeks, like my parents claimed, then why not speak Greek… why speak a foreign language… and in church of all places. And what language was this? One time a young couple from Athens was visiting our church. They were well dressed and looked prominent. My father couldn’t wait to introduce himself. He told them our names and said that we were very proud and patriotic Greeks. We all smiled. The man and woman looked at each other. When we walked away I overheard them say, ‘what kind of Greeks are they? They can’t even speak the Greek language properly’. Then there were the children at Greek school… They were all Greeks… That’s what their parents told them… Some of them spoke another language… similar to the language my parents spoke in secret. When I asked them what language that was… that they were speaking… they insisted that it was Greek! But it wasn’t Greek. One of them called his grandmother ‘Baba’ instead of ‘Giagia’, which is the Greek word for grandmother… In what language is a grandmother called ‘Baba’…?”

The moment Stefanos said the word “Baba” something clicked in my brain and I lost my concentration. His words began to sound muffled and I could no longer understand what he was saying. My mind was preoccupied and took me back… a long way back… to a different time and place… to fifty years ago.

“I KNOW YOU! I KNOW YOU FROM A LONG TIME AGO!!!” I yelled suddenly, interrupting his story. He looked at me strangely and stopped talking.

“How could you possibly know me, we just met for the first time today. I came from Greece and you from… Where did you come from?”

“I came from Greece too, from Oshchima… from your father’s village… and you are Stefche. I know you… I mean I knew you when you were a little boy… two years old…”

He looked at me with a confused look on his face and said, “Impossible… We came from a big city… not a village… and you… you can’t possibly be Greek… You aren’t Greek… How can you claim that you came from Greece… You aren’t Greek!” he added and then looked down at the ground feeling all kinds of emotions.

“Stefanos believe me when I tell you that I know you. You are Leko’s, Alexander’s, son Stefche. You were named after your grandfather Stefo. Your grandmother’s name was Chona. I don’t remember your mother’s name; she’s not from Oshchima… the village you were born in. My family left Oshchima and went to Canada in the fall of 1966. Your family left about two months before we did. Your grandparents remained behind and died there. Your sister must be about three years younger than you because your mother was pregnant when you left the village.” I didn’t know what else to say so I stopped talking. The two of us stood there on the sidewalk of a street in Toronto like a couple of dummies; him looking down… and me looking at him. We stood there for a few awkward moments. But it seemed like an eternity.

“My name is Stefche!” he whispered barely audibly. “MY NAME IS STEFCHE!!!” he yelled loudly like a crazy man.

He then looked at me and said, “My aunt, who now lives in Australia, used to call me Stefche. When she came to Toronto to visit us she kept calling me Stefche. When I asked her why Stefche, she said I was named after her father Stefo, my father’s father, my grandfather. My father objected to her calling Stefche but she told him off, saying that I looked like my grandfather and reminded her of him. She was my father’s oldest sister,” he concluded and then smiled widely, looked at me, shook my hand, thanked me and walked away.

“What are you thanking me for?” I asked.

“I’ll see you again…” he yelled and vanished into the distance looking happy… He looked like he’d just been freed from a long prison sentence.

“WHAT ABOUT THE INFORMATION ON FLORINA?” I yelled.

He raised his hand up high above his head and waved a couple of times before disappearing behind a building.

I was happy with the way things had turned out with Stefanos… I mean Stefche… but couldn’t help but feel sorry for him… Not because of the burden he’d carried all his life but because of what he was about to face with the new information he had when he revealed it to his own family and the Greek community. Being a loyal Greek and a pillar of the Greek community for years and then admitting that you have been a “fraud” of the worst kind, a Macedonian, would have severe consequences for him…

If Stefche thought it was difficult living with a few “anomalies” in life, as the Greeks like to call them, then I can’t imagine what he would feel like coming out and admitting to everyone that all these years he had been a fraud… that he was a Macedonian, not only pretending to be a Greek but admitting that he was a Macedonian… an arch enemy of the Greeks… a Skopjan… one of Tito’s sleeper agents… a Slav, an old Bulgarian… In other words, the worst kind of human being to walk the earth. Part 2 - My name is Stefche!

I had almost forgotten about Stefche until one Sunday afternoon I received an e-mail from someone with the name Stefche Giorgievski in the subject line. I get a lot of e-mails, mostly junk mail, but the words “Message from Stefche Giorgievski” in the subject line caught my attention. I immediately thought of Stefanos and opened it. To my surprise, it was Stefche from several months earlier. He said that he wanted to meet with me… He had a lot of questions… He had been reading about Macedonia on the internet… and had found a lot of my material, including my books, on the websites of the Macedonian Historical Society and Pollitecon Publications. He said he read something about Oshchima, which opened up a lot of questions for him... He wanted to meet with me in the main lobby of a certain plaza in Mississauga on Friday evening at 7 p.m., the next Friday. He said dinner was on him…

Naturally I agreed and wrote him back. In my reply I said, “It’s nice to hear from you… I’ll be there…”

As the days went by, dozens of questions kept popping into my mind. What would he ask? What would I tell him? How would I begin? Where would I begin? It was tiring thinking about it so, as time drew nearer, I decided to let him take the lead and just answer his questions… one by one… and see where it led.

Not knowing where the place was in Mississauga, I decided to leave my house early and take my time looking for the plaza. I arrived about forty five minutes early. I did get lost but only briefly. I passed the plaza by accident and had to turn around. Traffic at that hour was murder… but I still made it to my destination early. I sat down on a bench inside the main lobby of the plaza, a strategic point from where I could see both hallways leading to the exit doors. Every few minutes I looked at my watch and at the big clock on the wall of the lobby. Finally it was 7 p.m.… but no Stefche… five after seven and no Stefche… ten after seven and still no Stefche. At a quarter past seven I began to have doubts about this encounter. My suspicious side was already accusing me of being a fool… a sucker for pain and humiliation… But my rational side kept telling me there are other explanations… traffic for example… Suddenly I heard a voice in the distance calling “Risto, hey Risto”! I looked up and there he was coming down the escalator. Without thinking, I looked at my watch. It was 7:20 p.m. Stefche saw me and, as he ran towards me, apologized for being late. He said he worked upstairs in this plaza and his boss had him finish some work that needed to be done… that’s why he was late.

The moment I saw Stefche all my fears and suspicions evaporated and I felt like I was meeting a long lost relative whom I hadn’t seen for a long time. But giving him the impression that I was upset with him being late bothered me…

We shook hands and he said, “Come, let’s go upstairs to the cafeteria.”

He dashed up the escalator and I followed. He picked a table in the corner of the large room and sat down on a chair with his back against the wall. I sat beside him with my back against the adjacent (perpendicular) wall. We sat side by side as if expecting company. This is how it would have seemed to someone watching us. We both had a full view of the entire cafeteria and our backs were protected… This is how it would have seemed to someone else watching us. This place and table, as it turned out, would be the place where many things would be discussed and hashed out.

After some silence, he spoke first. I was still feeling disappointed with myself for having looked at my watch. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m fine, and how are you doing?” I then looked at him and said, “Have you been discussing this with anyone else…”

“No!” he answered and looked away.

“Not even with your family?” I asked.

“No! Heavens, no!” he replied, paused for a moment and added, “That would be stupid… My parents would disown me. My children would disown me… if I said anything about…” He looked sad. It seemed like he had been thinking about this a lot. He looked away and said, “My children are fanatic Greeks too you know… I allowed my parents to poison them… My wife is always upset with me because I’m such a wimp… She keeps telling me to tell them to stop but I don’t have the guts. My wife is Canadian and doesn’t much care about these things. She thinks this whole idea of being Greek in Canada is stupid. I mean look… I married a Canadian… And what is she? She is part English, part Scottish, part Chinese, part African, part German, part Italian… and God knows what else? And what are my children? ‘Pure Greek’... according to my parents… I’m not even Greek myself… How can my children be Greek? My parents aren’t Greek either, as I’m finding out… but try to tell them that! I tell you it’s a nightmare.”

He turned towards me, looked at me intensely, pointed his finger at me and said, “We came to Canada and we want to be Greeks but I look at other families who came here before us, much earlier than us, and what do I see? No trace of Greek left in them. They melted away completely… into what… I don’t even know! I can’t say they were assimilated? Assimilated into what? My parents… people in general don’t get this! This idea of being multicultural in Canada… This isn’t multiculturalism… it’s a façade to make you feel like you belong… for a few generations… belong to what? It doesn’t last! Down the line, a few generations later, we all melt away… we become lost souls. That’s what my parents call those who call themselves Canadian and don’t know their ethnicity. But my parents don’t seem to understand that struggling here in Canada to maintain your ethnic identity is useless… a waste of time… most people here don’t know or care about their ethnicity. No one here cares about who you are… My parents want my children to marry Greek girls when they groe up but the ‘real’ Greek girls wanted nothing to do with them… with us… because they know we aren’t ‘real’ Greeks. According to my parents it would be better if they stay single than marry outsiders… visible minorities from worlds apart. God help us if they want to marry Macedonians? Here is a novel idea!” he said, stopped talking and began to take short and quick breaths. I looked away and noticed the people at the next table looking at us. They turned away.

I turned back and looked at him. I noticed he was looking at me. I didn’t know what to say… “Brother, welcome to my world…” I blurted out. It was an automatic response but it did put a smile on his face. I continued:

“I understand you perfectly. We left Greece and came to Canada to be free as Macedonians because the Greeks persecuted us there. I hear this all the time from Macedonians. We came to Canada to be free from the Greeks so that we could speak our language, have our own churches… and so on… all true but… what do I see happening? We who immigrated here love our Macedonia and become even more fanatic Macedonians. But what happened to the next generation or two? Just look at the Macedonians who came here two or three generations ago. You’d be lucky to find one person in ten who still speaks Macedonian or cares about his grandfather’s country. My friend, we lived in Macedonia oppressed for centuries but remained loyal Macedonians until we died. Then came to Canada to be free and in less that a century we disappeared. What does that tell you? But… But nobody seems to want to talk about that. I always get ‘that look’ from people when I say things like this… People don’t like to hear the truth. All they want to hear is how great Canada is and how free we are living here in this so-called ‘democratic country’… Then they start talking about their grandchildren dating and marrying other ethnicities… and how terrible that is…”

I thought I had said enough about that and decided it was time to change direction. I paused for a moment, looked at him and said, “So, where do we go from here?”

“Before I ask my questions I want to tell you that I decided to set aside my prejudices… I decided to set aside everything I knew and believed to be near and dear to me… and to open my mind to new possibilities for the sake of understanding… who I am. I want to be open to everything… to anything that is possible. One time when I was young I was talking with my father about something gruesome… a woman had been raped and tortured. I asked him ‘how could one person do that to another person’. He turned to me and said ‘son, people are capable of doing all sorts of things, even evil things… If it’s possible and can be done people will do it.’ This stuck with me. I asked myself ‘am I capable of doing something that evil’? I decided that I would never do that no matter what. But I’m a person just like the other person who did that. What makes us different? I came to the conclusion that it was partly our character and partly the way we were brought up. We have been brought up to believe differently. So it was our belief system, our programming from young that was different. But suppose we were capable of turning off or overpowering this value system, what kind of people would we be then? Would I be evil too? Perhaps! But my point is we have been programmed from young to believe certain things and not to believe other things. These are values we develop as we go along in our early lives. They are important and make us who we are. I thought about this a great deal. These values instilled in us allow us to judge, respect, believe, not believe, hate, love… I had no idea how strong these values could be and how blind they could make us to the many possibilities open to us… to the capabilities we can have. I don’t mean to evil but to good things. They guide us to be good people… bad people… whatever… but at the same time restrict us from achieving certain potentials, good or bad. Let me give you an example. I look at you. You look back at me and smile. That tells me you are a good person. The next day someone accuses you of being a murderer. I wouldn’t believe that because my value system is telling me that you can’t possibly be a murderer because I believe you are a nice guy…”

I must have looked at him funny because his next words to me were, “You don’t believe a word I said do you?”

I didn’t know what to say so I opened out my arms.

He looked at me and said, “If you don’t believe me then let me ask you this. We are all born naked, right? So by rights we should have no problem walking around in public naked, right? So if I’m not right about this value system then you should have no problem taking your clothes off and walking around naked in public. But you won’t do it! Why? Because you were told, you were taught and it has been ‘programmed’ into you, to feel ‘ashamed’ walking around naked in public. Don’t you agree?”

I nodded in agreement.

“Your value system guides you in life. I have been ‘programmed’ to believe that I’m Greek… but not only that… I’ve also been programmed to believe that Macedonians don’t exist… and those who ‘pretend’ to be Macedonians are my mortal enemies! Now you are trying to convince me that I am a Macedonian… and you have convinced my logical side… I am Macedonian. But how can my emotional side deal with this under my current value system? I hope you can appreciate why I’m telling you all this. My current ‘programming’ doesn’t guide me well. Therefore I need to ‘bypass it’ right here… right now…” he concluded. I looked at him and smiled.

He smiled back and said, “Well, I have thought about this a great deal and have decided to open my mind to everything possible… to everything you have to say to me. But my limit ends at having an open mind… I am prepared to listen to all sides and make my own decision… on my own… I am prepared to have an open mind to everything that is possible,” he concluded and waited for my response.

“I hear you brother. I’ve also had the experience with my value system challenged. I too am aware that people will do things beyond the believable. My view of people was that if they did something good… especially for me… I figured they must be good people and there was little one could do to convince me otherwise. I have always thought Canada and the United States could do no harm because they cared about us Macedonians. After all they opened the doors to us when we were down and desperate. We all crowded here when we were driven violently out of our homes back in Greece and there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t thank Canada and America for that. So for me, there was nothing that Canada and the United States could do in the world which I would consider wrong. That is, until people started to point at the Unites States causing problems for our people in Macedonia. At first I didn’t believe any of it. I used to say the United States is our friend, it supports us when we need it… it has given our immigrants a place to go, a place to call home. It provides aid to the Republic of Macedonia… It’s willing to fight for us and keep our enemies out… For God’s sake, the Unites States recognized Macedonia by its rightful name. How could anyone possibly claim that the U.S. is working against us… causing problems for us. I truly believed that those who badmouthed the United States were simply wrong! This went on and on for a long time until, one day, I was sitting in a restaurant in Skopje and a good friend of mine sat me down and opened my mind to ‘possibilities’… as you call them. The clincher for me was when he stuck his face in front of mine and quietly and nervously said ‘these people who you say can do no wrong, as you know, actually bombed Japanese cities, not once but twice, with atomic bombs and killed thousands of civilians… innocent people. What, you think they won’t do that to you? Why? Because you think you are someone special? Yes, they will kill you too if you stand in their way… It’s nothing personal… it is business… they are looking out for their own interests and will bulldoze you if you stand in their way… Kapish?’ That was the moment for me and ever since then I’ve taken a different, a wider approach to things… Now I look at everything without attaching feeling to it… Like you said, ‘If it’s possible and can be done, it will be done!’ Kings in the past and now governments send millions of our sons and now daughters to get killed in senseless wars… for heaven’s sake. And how does our value system interpret that? I don’t know…? We all think we have no choice in the matter and somehow dying in some country… on the other side of the planet… is a noble cause. They tell us we are fighting to bring ‘democracy’ to some people we’ve never heard of and we believe them… and we let our children die. Isn’t it ironic that a mother won’t let her children cross the street because she thinks it’s dangerous but will let them go to war and get killed. How does her value system allow her to do that?! Stefche my friend, you are absolutely right, our value system not only guides us in life but turns us into sheep… getting killed at home in a traffic accident is a tragedy but getting shot to death in some God forsaken country on the other side of the world, is somehow ‘noble’…” I concluded and stopped talking.

Stefche looked at me and said, “Now that we understand one another let’s have a look at what is happening to us… to our people. Why are we the way we are…? Macedonians fighting against Macedonians… Macedonians pretending to be Greeks... Why is there such hatred between us? Who made us hate each other? How can we reverse this… if it’s even possible…?” He suddenly stopped talking and looked away… towards the restaurant… and said, “Let’s take a break and eat something. The restaurant will be closing soon… we’d better get some food. What would you like to eat?” “I don’t eat out much so I don’t know what to get. What do you suggest?”

“The fish and chips are okay. They’re a bit greasy at this late hour but they’re okay,” he replied.

“Then its fish and chips for me!”

He disappeared for a few minutes and was back. “The server will bring them to us soon. Oh, and I ordered us a jug of beer… I hope you don’t mind…?”

“Beer is fine with me… but just one because later I have to drive…”

He sat in the same place where he had been sitting earlier and we silently looked away waiting for our dinner to arrive. Part 3 - Widening the possibilities

Our fish and chips arrived relatively fast. We both ate quickly. I guess we were both very hungry.

Stefche filled our glasses with beer and we both raised them and toasted… “To wider possibilities,” he toasted.

“To wider possibilities,” I replied.

He picked up the empty plates and put them on the rack on a tray. When he came back he sat down in the same place, smiled, grabbed my right wrist, squeezed it and said, “We would have been great friends back in Oshchima… What happened to us?” he asked, letting go of my wrist.

I looked at him and said, “Despite our ten year age difference, we would certainly have been great friends… maybe…” I grabbed his wrist and said, “Stefche, our division and dislike for one another didn’t start in Canada; its roots go back… back in time… to a time even before our grandfathers were born…”

“I want to know all of it… I want to know everything… But there is too much information… too many details… too many contradictions… and oh, so many lies…! That is why I’m turning to you. You seem to have a better grasp on things. I looked at your stuff on the internet… but there is so much of it… I don’t know where to begin. I need a map… I need to know the big picture… generalities… before I can begin to understand the details… I just don’t want to know what happened… I want to know why it happened and who did this to us...” he said looking frustrated and exhausted.

I let go of his wrist. “I understand… Stefche. I’ll do my best to tell you what I know but first let me clarify one thing… let me explain why we couldn’t have been great friends in Oshchima… You were brought up to believe that you are Greek… and I was brought up to believe I was Macedonian… Mortal enemies… Right? But that didn’t happen with just you and me. That happened way before we were born. It didn’t happen with our fathers or grandfathers. It happened before Macedonia was invaded, occupied and portioned in 1912, 1913 and annexed by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. I hope you know about this… about what happened to Macedonia… Stop me if you don’t…”

“I don’t, but please go on.”

“Our division started around 1875 when the Great Powers, mainly Britain, France, Austro-Hungary and Russia decided to divide Macedonia and give it to Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. At that time Macedonia was occupied and ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Great Powers forced the Ottoman Empire to allow foreign countries to open churches; foreign churches inside Macedonia…”

“Why churches… and why do you call them foreign churches?”

“As you know, the Ottomans were Muslims and the Macedonians were Christians. The Ottomans, as well as all Muslims, don’t believe in governments. In fact their legal system was created around the Seriat which had its basis in Islam. The Koran and Hadith were the books from which the ideals and fundamental principles for the construction of their legal system were drawn. No law could be passed which in principle contradicted the Seriat. Only the supreme religious leader, the Sejh-ul-Islam, had the right to interpret and assess the legal norms and only from the point of view of Islamic law.

The Koran dictated Muslim conduct and behaviour, including punishment for crimes. In the Ottoman mind only religion and the word of God had sole authority over the peoples’ lives. Religion was the official government of the Ottoman State. Islam was the only recognized form of rule that suited Muslims… but it couldn’t be directly applied to non-Muslims. So the next best thing was to allow another religion to rule the non-Muslims. The obvious choice, of course, was the Orthodox Christian religion. As a result the Ottomans were literally forced by the Great Powers to allow foreign churches to be established in Macedonia. I call them foreign churches because they weren’t Macedonian churches. Heaven knows how hard the Macedonian people tried to open their own Macedonian church but there were objections from the other churches… these foreign churches… They didn’t want a Macedonian church to be opened in Macedonia. And since no Great Power was willing to support the Macedonian people in getting their own church, their requests were constantly rejected by the Ottoman authorities.

When these churches were introduced in Macedonia, the Macedonian people ‘finally’ had Christian churches where they could go to pray. The Macedonians did have their own Church for centuries but it was banned in 1767 by the Ottoman Sultan. Even though Islam was the dominant religion in the Ottoman Empire, Christianity and Judaism were also allowed to exist. In Macedonia, the powerful Ohrid Archbishopric was active right up to the year 1767 when it was abolished by the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III.

Unbeknownst to the Macedonian people, there was a sinister side to these foreign churches operating in Macedonia. These churches weren’t opened in Macedonia because the world truly cared about the Macedonian people; they were established because the Great Powers wanted to turn the Macedonian people into Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians and wipe out the Macedonian identity… forever… This is how it all started…” I concluded and looked at him.

He looked back at me and said, “So, what did that have to do with our great grandfathers?”

“So naturally our people, the Macedonian people, including our great grandparents began to go to these churches. And in addition to prayer, many were convinced to join the churches… become members. A Greek church was opened in our village and both our families attended prayer. But soon after it was established, the church began to offer benefits to those who wanted to sign up and become members. While my great grandfather said ‘no thanks, I don’t want to get involved’, your great grandfather signed up and became a member… His membership, however, had conditions… He had to declare himself and his family ‘Greek’. However, at the time that meant nothing. Some of the old timers used to joke about it saying ‘I am as much a Greek as my horse is a donkey’. You see, when the Great Powers made up their minds to ‘divide’ Macedonia and give it to Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria they had no idea how they were going to divide it. So to keep the little kingdoms, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, happy and stop them from constantly asking for more territory… the Russian King told them that Macedonia would be divided between them and it was going to be done along ‘national’ lines. This meant that the Macedonian territories where the Greeks were a majority would go to Greece, the Macedonian territories where the Serbians were a majority would go to Serbia, the Macedonian territories where the Bulgarians were a majority would go to Bulgaria and so on. But along what national lines? There were no Greeks, Serbians, or Bulgarians living in Macedonia so they had to be made from the Macedonian population! I hope now you will understand why Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria wanted to put their own churches inside Macedonia. If there were no Greeks inside Macedonia, it meant that Greece couldn’t have a piece of Macedonia. So Greece… and the others… through their churches, had to make Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians out of the Macedonians. Also, this is precisely why the Great Powers insisted that foreign churches be allowed to open inside Macedonia… to make that possible. And in order to wipe out the Macedonian identity the Great Powers made sure the Macedonian people wouldn’t be allowed to open their own church. No Macedonian church in those days meant no Macedonian country. After that, the Great Powers figured the Macedonian people, with propaganda and incentives, would buy into the idea of “becoming” Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians and easily pledge their allegiance to the foreigners…

Both of our families were pressured to become Greek. Your great grandfather took the bait and his family became Greek. My family remained neutral… My great grandfather, it seems, wasn’t adventurous and believed ‘nothing good would come of all this’. So naturally we remained Macedonian.