Chapter ten – Taste of salt water

Chapter ten – Taste of salt water

Taste of salt water (a record of Macedonian hell)

How difficult is it to follow you, father! Don’t utter a sound of pain, Even though you hurt so much! Don’t say a word about your plight, About your suffering, About your worries, About your bitterness - and not so much about your screams!

(Blaze Koneski, from the “Black ram”, 1993)

When I thought about my father I felt courageous. He used to say to the Greeks: “I am Macedonian, gentlemen, nothing else but Macedonian, so you can go to hell. I would die as a Macedonian because no one has the right to take that away from me.” He would then look at me with raised shoulders and once again say: “I used to say to the police chief that we are Macedonians and I don’t want to hear anything else from you… That’s what I used to say to him. Look here Mr. Police Chief, I used to say to him, we don’t mind you being Greeks so why do you mind so much that we are Macedonians?”

Today is May 1st and just as I arrived at the city square the street parade ended and the streets started to empty. I looked at my telegram which read: “I will be arriving at 12 o’clock. Wait for me at the station. Your brother Giorgi. Stop.”

It was warm outside. I was feeling uneasy deep down inside of me. The platform was full of people. In the crowd my brother kept raising himself, standing on his toes, looking for me. We stared at each other for a long time as if wanting to ask each other who we were.

I approached him first and hugged him. He picked me up in his arms. After that, while still holding each other, we went to the “shelter for the Aegeans.”

So many years have passed and I don’t know what to say to him. For years I have been dreaming about him coming here to our native land. I welcomed him with a glass full of red wine and asked him to tell me his painful story.

He took a sip of wine and gave me a great big smile, seeming as if his bleeding heart was about to open and I was ready to listen attentively.

He began by saying: “Listen brother, I will tell you everything you want to know about what happened to us…. They caught us outside of the village, about an hour’s walk from here. They surrounded our cabin in broad daylight. The dogs were barking furiously frightening the sheep, which in turn were bleating loudly. Our big grey dog was tied inside and barked the loudest while pulling on its chain furiously. One of the soldiers, an officer, was knocking hard on the door with the butt of his rifle and his fist. The surrounded cabin was teaming with armed soldiers aiming their guns and bayonets at us. The big dog barked relentlessly and growled viciously. It stretched its chain to the limit and bravely lunged at the door where the officer was knocking. After knocking for a while the officer yelled out: “I will kill you all! Open the door!” The officer was a fierce looking man with wide black eyebrows. He had his pistol out ready to shoot us. We looked outside at our barn on the other side of the threshing field; it was burning like a bonfire.

Father and I were terrified and after a while we decided to glance through the cracks of the door. The whole place was teaming with armed men and in front of us stood several dangerous looking men, the kind we called ‘burandari’ who belonged to the Greek army.

Suddenly they broke the door, grabbed me and tossed me in front of the officer and, like I said, the entire place was teaming with armed men. The officer asked me: ‘Whose kid are you?’ Of course he knew everything. I said: ‘Risto Tsigulovski’s’. The man asked me again and several of them pointed their guns at me. Several went inside the cabin and began to look around. The next thing I saw was them dragging father out. They tied us both up and took us to the village Bapchor. All the way there they kept hitting us with the butts of their rifles, kicking us with their boots, punching us with their

fists… all the way to the destination they abused us. There they brought us in front of a man who was sprawled out in his chair looking like he was having a nap. After they dropped us on the floor he got up and asked: ‘Tell us where they are hiding the Macedonian squad Vicho?’ and then whipped us across our backs with his whip.

Mad like a wild cat, the man said to father: ‘Where are your older boys, Risto?’ Before father had a chance to say anything I interrupted and said: ‘They went to fight for their human rights, Sir, they went to fight for our freedom, so that we can speak our mother tongue, so that we can go to school and have great men like yourself, and as a people we can have everything...’ My dear brother, I told him everything. Then he started hitting us, others joined in and they too hit us with everything they could get their hands on and continued to hit us until they locked us in a cold storage room that substituted for a dungeon.

We looked outside through a tiny window, it was raining something awful. It rained all day and all night. Father and I were concerned about our sheep left alone and unattended. What was going to happen to them? Sad, father said: ‘God help us, we are in a terrible jam…’

Poor father then began to weep and said: ‘Giorgi we screwed up. The sheep are now left out all alone and unattended and are in peril. But the truth is the truth and it was time we told the truth… You did what you had to…’ The poor man was truly sad. He continued: ‘The whole nation needs to stand up and fight for our rights and not hide in their shirts... It was different during Ottoman times… at least we could speak our language freely…’ he said. Early the next day they tied us up and took us to Kostur. When we arrived we saw many people looking at us. There they took us to the Jewish school. Then, on March 12, 1947, when the military court was established in Kostur, they took us to trial. They produced all kinds of witnesses who criticized us a lot, especially those who had caught us. They accused us of wanting to create a Macedonian state, of providing food to the Macedonian partisans and all sorts of other ridiculous things… Poor father could not take it any more so he said: ‘Sir, can you not see how we live? We are citizens yet we live like slaves. All we want is to be free to speak our language, to learn our ways…

You came here to our country, we did not come to yours…’ But before father had a chance to finish, the judge jumped him and hit him in the mouth and broke two of his teeth. I got very angry and I wanted to defend father.

As he kept hitting father, the judge kept yelling furiously: ‘You are Greeks and nothing else!’ I began to yell in Macedonian and father wanted to say something but his mouth was full of blood so he kept motioning with his hands ‘No!’, ‘No!’, ‘No!’ Finally he spit the blood on the floor and yelled out: ‘We are Macedonians!’ I jumped in and said: ‘Listen Sir, it doesn’t bother us that you are Greeks; why are you so tormented that we are Macedonians? You know very well that we have lived here in our ancestral lands since time immemorial. Ask any educated person and they will tell you that… We are not asking you to become Macedonians but it would be nice if people are left alone to be who they are… who their mothers bore them to be…’

In the end, in spite of what we said, the judge still sentenced us to ten years imprisonment. On July 15, 1947 they took us by truck to Solun and dumped us on a train. The cars were truly dirty and seemed like they had not been washed since Ottoman times. They would not give us water and let’s not even talk about food. Thank God father was there with me, he gave me courage… Poor father, he kept talking to me throughout the entire trip. When we arrived in Athens at the ‘Pavlos Melas’ prison, for eight days they fed us salted fish and a bit of bread. It was very hot in Athens, especially when they took us out of the prison, loaded us on trucks, took us to the train station, loaded us on the train and from there they dumped us into the bowels of a ship. Father and I were tied up and we looked at each other wondering where they were taking us. We were very thirsty but there was no water to drink… for anyone...

We heard people whispering, asking where they were taking us… No one knew. After a while it got quiet and we all fell asleep on the floor of the bottom of the ship like animals. It was still dark and we could not see a thing when we heard noises coming from above. Someone yelled: ‘Everyone out!’ This was the first time I had seen an island; land surrounded by water. Looking at all that water made me realize how thirsty we were. We were so thirsty we could not

speak. We got off the ship one by one. My father and I, still tied together, walked one behind the other while we were being hit with sticks… on our heads, bodies and especially on our legs…

We walked for about an hour and a quarter and then we saw the tents. They gathered us all together in front of a person in authority and told us to line up one behind the other and then began to search us. To keep us in line they whipped us with their sticks. We wore no hats so it was especially painful being hit on the head. We screamed and protested but they did not care. We were not allowed to have forks, knives, watches, cigarettes and as they confiscated them they further beat us with their sticks. Many of us protested about that too but they did not care. We lost most of our clothing, shoes and other items on the way here.

Finally we were allowed to go to the tents. Unfortunately there was no water… by now our mouths were so dry our tongues were sticking to them. We heard someone say: ‘There is a well over there!’ so we all ran to it like sheep. It was not a well but a shallow puddle, about a metre deep. We soon realized that it was salt water but we were so thirsty we drank and drank, but no matter how much we drank we were thirstier than when we started. Soon we all began to have terrible diarrhea. What can I tell you, we all got diarrhea, there was not a single person who did not get it. There were no toilets, only some holes dug in the ground below our tents. We were all crouching there naked… Soon after a terrible stench rose and I am telling you this because our tents were only steps away. However, we were not ashamed of what happened and we soon became used to the bad smell. It was not exactly our fault for what happened to us… The worst thing that happened to us was not the smell… it was the prison guards who would not leave us alone… we always had to humble ourselves before them even though we hated them with a passion…

Now when I think of father, how he wandered around all alone, looking after our sheep… but now I couldn’t tell him anything. I often called out to him: ‘Father, it’s me Giorgi.’ He would then go away… the other way. This is how he was… he often knelt under the icon of the Virgin Mary and prayed to her to look after us… to protect us from worse evils…

The only time our souls felt at peace was when we thought about our past. I often spoke to the sun, which made me think of all the times I drank sour milk. I drank it at home when the weather was hot. I drank it and I felt cool all over. Not really, but I managed to convince my brain that I felt cooler. I spent countless sleepless nights looking up and thinking of home, planning what to do but nothing materialized. They separated me from my father and put me with Fote Mechkarov. He constantly told me things… complaining about his own troubles. Sometimes I listened and sometimes I didn’t. I was constantly hungry. One day, I don’t remember the exact date, Fote said ‘Georgi, do you hunger for some bread?’ ‘Of course I do!’ I replied. He then said, ‘Come with me’. We went to a big iron box full of garbage. It was during the night. We began to pick out small chunks of bread and ate them. Some were dirty and some were moldy but we did not care. We couldn’t see them in the dark anyway. We ate and ate. Hunger was an awful thing… We had no idea who threw the bread out and why. Some time later my stomach began to ache and I rushed towards the toilets. Unfortunately the guards did not allow unscheduled visits to the toilets. On my way I looked back and in the dark I saw someone with a long stick running after me, attempting to hit me. I turned away and began to run through the tents. He continued to run after me. Thank God I escaped but he continued to look for me in the tents. I crossed myself and thanked God for giving me the strength to outrun him or I would have been beaten to a pulp.

One day, I don’t remember the exact date, there was no bread. They put us to work hungry with nothing to eat. The next day the same thing. This continued for seven days. By then we were so hungry we could not see properly. No one was going to the toilets either… It was scary… Hunger and thirst are scary things. We completely lost our strength and our morale… however little we had. We had no shoes and we had to walk on sharp stones barefoot. Go ahead… try it… walk barefoot on hot sharp stones, see if you can! We were cursed! We were born to endure pain and humiliation. I often thought we were cursed and born to suffer.

Every day we stood in line for our meal. It was so little it was not worth it but we were so hungry. Often, for no apparent reason, we

were attacked and beaten by the guards for standing in line. Those who stood at the front of the line near the cauldron were always beaten. One time they hit a man in the eye. I don’t remember his name. The guards took his eye out and the man fell on the ground. The guard then became frightened as we all began to yell, ‘Why would you do such a thing!’ Soon many of them rushed to the scene and began to beat us. They then tipped the cauldron and spilled our food on the ground. There was no food for us that day…

One other day, at 12 o’clock, we were returning to our tents as usual. On our way back we always had to carry a stone so that we did not return empty handed. That day I was carrying a large stone. The Greeks who were jailed amongst us, having committed crimes such as theft and murder, never carried stones. They walked amongst us and, just before reaching our destination, they would grab our stones by force and if we complained they would tell the guards that we were lying. As I was carrying this large stone, I looked back and saw one of those Greeks making his way towards me. He grabbed my stone but I refused to let it go so he pushed me and I fell down. Those who did not bring a stone back did not get food. No stone no food, that was the deal! Still refusing to let go of the stone, I fell down with it in my hand. Look here at this hand, I am missing four of my fingers… because of the cursed stone… when I fell it crushed my fingers. The bastard took my stone anyway so there was no food for me that day. I was hungry and in pain all night long. I did not know what to do. I drank some salt water… I can still taste it… my hand kept bleeding. The doctors that were there in the jails asked me what happened. I told them ‘I don’t know… The island Giura began to turn on me and I fell,’ that’s what I told them.

After that things got worse for me. I couldn’t work but they kept pushing me anyway. They didn’t believe me that I was in pain. It was better working than having to kneel in front of those bastards all day long acting submissive like a captured beast that had been beaten. They kept talking about how much money the Greek state paid for what we were doing and how they taught us how to do this kind of work. They kept telling us that we should be grateful for the nice things the Greek state was doing for us and for giving us the opportunity to regenerate. But I will tell you this; a person can

understand people well not by what gains they have made in life but by the similar sufferings they have experienced and every soul is left pure... We were all repulsed by the smell of the food, which smelled like cat barf and which made us feel like losing all the humanity in us; love, friendship, envy, mercy, compassion… slowly disappearing from us… evaporating under the bright sunlight. But there were spies in the prison amongst us. There were many but there was this one guy I know of, his name was Stratos. We did not dare compain about anything…

One day a loaded ship arrived. It was loaded with iron, cement, lime and other things. It was loaded to the top. They gathered us all together at the side of it and placed a couple of boards, one to get on the ship and the other to get off it. All day long we worked offloading things while the guards beat us with sticks. My biggest concern was not to get dizzy and fall into the sea. This happened to a man from the Voden or Lerin Region villages, I don’t remember which village, he fell into the sea with a full bag of lime and drowned… May God bless his soul… Where would he have learned to swim? The sailors pulled him out and left him out in the sun. He was left there all day long and by the end of the day he was covered with flies. The captain felt sorry for us and during the evening he let us bury the man… and, by that, gave us a small break from the hard work.

No one spoke at the man’s funeral. This is how it was with us here at the prison for many years. Many had died and no one spoke at their funeral. People died from all sorts of sicknesses; tuberculosis, stomach and intestinal problems, etc. A lot of people became mad after a priest started coming to our camps, preaching to us about all those commandments of God’s while we listened to him hungry. One day, it was Christmas I think, when he again came to tell us things. After talking a while one of us said to him: ‘Look here father, look at the kind of foul food we eat and disgusting water we drink, is this how God intended us to be according your religion?’ They grab our people, having done nothing wrong, and bring them to these islands, only because they were born by a different mother, only because they are not Greek. Then I opened my mouth and said: ‘Dear father, if you are God’s child, you must tell the truth… what is ours, ours will remain… that’s the way it is…’ There is nothing

more to say. The priest kept staring at me like he was paralyzed. I got angry and said, ‘What do you say about these things? Does your book say it is okay, it is human, to do all these things to us, eh? Tell me… answer my question!’ The priest stormed out angry and left us and, like the good Samaritan that he was, he reported us to the authorities.

One day early in the morning the island was surrounded by military ships ready to pulverize us. The priest, among other things, had told the authorities that we were planning an uprising; that we were hardened revolutionaries and refused to receive any of God’s commandments. We all came out and looked around that morning. That’s when we realized that there were many camps on the same island; we were not the only ones. Many of our people (Macedonians) had been sent to the islands. Included amongst them were communists, both Greeks and Macedonians, thieves, murderers… Then we saw them chasing a large group of women and corralling them on a wide slope. I looked for my father but he was nowhere to be found…

Many of these people were running wild, hungry and thirsty… being tormented they lost their minds. Later they forced us to build yards for the mad, with high walls. Many died in those yards… Everyone needs to be told about this… Everyone should know what happened to us… People need to write books about it…

Then came the time to release us from the prisons; it was in the fifties. I came back to our village and found it burned down. Everything was flattened to the ground, there were no people left either. I went down to our small barn and found father wandering around… looking for our lost sheep. I couldn’t say anything to him… I called to him: ‘Father, it’s me Giorgi.’ When he heard my voice he ran off…

Yes, dear brother, this is how it was with us. The Greeks chased us off and we fled everywhere…” concluded my brother.

He then looked me in the eye and said: “You are crying; I know you are sad about father, about our home, about our barns, fields, meadows, gardens… I don’t know if you know but our cemetery has

been destroyed and ploughed over… The Greeks have decided to leave no mark, to erase everything about us… to erase everything about our existence…”