Introduction - Part 07

The Chief said to me: “Miss, I called you here for a very important job. Next week the villagers in several of the Kostur Region villages will be taking an oath not to speak the local Slavic dialect. For your sake I advise you to swear that you too will never speak this language.”

I could not help myself… I laughed out loud.

He then said: “We can easily turn laughing into crying, Miss...”

“Oh, yes!” I said. “You are perfectly capable of doing that… Chief… Sir! What else are you going to find next to torment us with?” I said and without requesting his permission, I left the police station.

A few months later I was again in the police station.

“Miss!” the Chief addressed me with a slimy tone of voice. “As far as I know you don’t have a good job here, the kind that will raise your standard of living. Look, I am happy to inform you that there is an opening, a beautiful opportunity for a great job with higher earnings...”

“Where?” I asked.

“It’s your choice,” he said, “in Australia, Canada, or America. All you have to do is call one of these agencies and they will sort out all the necessary documents. Everything will be free to any one of these countries... Yes, everything is free but in one direction only... Call them...”

“No thank you!” I said.

“What then?” he asked.

I did not answer him. Then, after a short pause, he began to threaten me again… with sending me to the islands.

At the same time a large number of people, especially from Kostur and Lerin Regions, accepted these offers and emigrated in large waves. The waves were moving in one direction.

How many chimneys went cold in the Kostur and Lerin Regions? How many padlocks were hung on the doors and gates of Macedonian homes?

HOW MANY?

* * *

Milder winds began to blow during the late 1950’s. They told me that I no longer was obligated to report to the police station and that I was free to go wherever I wanted.

I asked if I could go to my village and they allowed me.

So I went.

In my village, a place where many people had lived, I only found Dedo (grandfather) Giorgi, an old man whom I had met in the city on several occasions.

It was a joy for me to see someone I knew.

Dedo Giorgi was placed in a nursing home but he did not like being there so he often went back to his village. Unfortunately there was no shelter and no one to look after him in the village. Eventually they would take him back to the home but again he would flee to the village. He did not want to go anywhere else. He felt uncomfortable everywhere. Giorgi even refused to leave his village during the war when battles were raging inside it. He stayed there when all the villagers were forced to flee to Albania.

I often visited him at the nursing home. I brought him food and fruits and sometimes wine and rakia. He begged me to sit next to him so that he could tell me stories. He often said to me:

“I constantly tell these people here that when I die I want to be buried in my village... Under the oaks... nowhere else...

We sat on the stones of his destroyed house and sank into silence, staring at the ruins that once were his home. The reality of time began to unravel in me, flooding my mind with memories, burdensome memories, reminding me of my mother and father, my grandparents and my brother who we lost and whose bones lay on one of the hills on Gramos… and of everyone here who was forced to leave… destination unknown… fate unknown… hope of ever returning… unknown…

I felt a spasm in my throat, tear bulging in my eyes and pain...

The silence was interrupted by Dedo Giorgi.

“Let me ask you, my child...” he said.

“Please do, Dedo...” I replied.

“Please tell those at the nursing home to bury me here, in the village cemetery under the oaks, when I die. I don’t want to be buried somewhere else... Please don’t forget to tell them, okay? Don’t forget ... under the oaks… tell them that...” he said.

“I promise you I will not forget,” I said.

I then reached over, took his hand, kissed it, got up and went to the ruins where my grandfather’s house used to be. This was our house. Memories began to boil and with them burning and pain...

Among the rocks overgrown with grass I saw a piece of cloth. I pulled it out and shook the soil off it. I shivered. Holding in my hands was part of my mother’s malina (knitted woolen dress)... I sat on the ruined stairs. I covered my knees with it, caressed it, kissed it

and covered it with tears. A string came off the black malina and fell on my feet...

At that very moment, while looking at the black string, I remembered a story I was told in Trikeri by a professor from Athens.

The story was about Ariadna.

It was a story about Ariadna’s thread. (Ariadna in the so-called “Greek mythology” was the daughter of Cretan king Minos and Pasifeia. When Theseus set out to kill the Minotaur, before entering the maze, Ariadna gave him a ball of thread. Theseus tied the thread to the entrance of the maze and unraveled it while going through it. After he killed the Minotaur he followed the string and found his way out of the maze. This myth in contemporary culture has given rise to the expression “Ariana’s thread” as a symbol of getting out of difficult situations.)

The thread of assistance, the thread of salvation and hope...

The thread of exit from evil...

My torn thread behind me and my mother’s torn black thread from her malina, on my feet... Our black… our black torn thread...

Our cursed time in which no one gave me the thread of exit from evil...

That day I did not return to the city. I remained in the village.

I spent the night in the church, in our church, in Sveta Nedela (Holy Week). A beam of moonlight entering through the little window faintly illuminated the faces and eyes of the images of saints and angels. They were watching me and following my every move, seeming like they were silently asking what I was doing there. I kept quiet, being drowned in countless questions about the many things that were and that are.

I lit candles for the living and for the dead, for those who were gone and for those who remained. In my thoughts I kept returning to the mountains, hills, trenches, bunkers, ditches, long nights of marches, and there I found the fighters… I sat with them and caressed the soil that lay over them and again returned to my place of birth, a place that once was a house, a home, a garden, a chimney from which a pillar of smoke rose straight up letting the world know that there was life there.

Now I am the sole person alive to walk on this desolate piece of land, on which only thorns and weeds grow… I now have a desire to contact Madame Olga, down there in Athens, and tell her that the good people and the house of goodness are gone...

They are gone...

Why…?

* * *

Dedo Giorgi, a man with long roots and with a very large family, was left all alone waiting to die… He died in the nursing home…

They told me that they buried him at the end of the cemetery, where the rich from Kostur bury their pet cats and dogs.

Dedo Giorgi wanted to be buried in the village cemetery where his ancestors were buried. He wanted to be buried among the century-old oaks that weathered great storms… and flourished…

It was his final wish… an unfulfilled last wish.

I visited him… his grave in Kostur, on a weekly basis…

I always left a piece of bread and a small bottle of wine near the headstone with no name...

Chapter - 10

At that time I remained true to myself, to my own thoughts, in body and soul. Not in some strange place but in my grandfather’s yard, firmly sitting exactly where the foundation stones were set...

I grew up here on this scorched piece of land, which now is my home... even though there was nothing left of the house, not even a foundation... I am at home; I am in my home...

Above me is the blue sky and below me are the ashes of my house covered with weeds and thorns...

And from here, from my home, I stare at the mountains, hills, rocks, stones, forests, meadows… all covered with pain, bitterness, deceit, disappointment, sadness and the blood spilled during bad times… where, after many years, nature covered them with colours and restored their beauty.

There is nothing there to remind us of those burning days. Everything is covered with greenery, grass and trees, the colors of flowers... The history of the living and the stories about Orle, Gorisha, Krusha, Kotelkata, Kula, Kopanche, Odreto, Sveti Ilia, Aliavitsa, Krastavets, Charno, Goliot, Kamenik, Gramos and all the other dozens and dozens of hills and peaks that have disappeared in the deep blue sky...

The mountain landscape with its open space is an illusion making everything seem possible, even to reach the farthest light on the horizon...

When I go there, it is my time, a time for thought about the spiritual dimension of humankind, about dignity and understanding, about human value and the fate of all those who took the road to war, to defeat, to the exodus and to the salty waters that led them to the camps...

That’s where we were, that’s where they remained, they who I constantly think about and want to be in our thoughts and to shine in our memory with honour...

My pain of the memories of those lying here in the Macedonian mountains is great. Every step I take takes me back, to the past, and every hill, every stone, every broken tree, uncovers history and opens festering wounds...

Who, today, speaks for those who died and for those who wasted in the island prison camps?

Very few of us from my partisan generation have remained…

Our partisan generation is slowly going...

... it is leaving betrayed and disappointed...

I keep all of them in my memory and pray to a merciful God to receive them in his bosom...