Chapter two - Kostur and its magnificent panoramas

Chapter two - Kostur and its magnificent panoramas

“Our ancestral homes look very beautiful from here. Can you see the beautiful wooden verandas on the other side? It is so nice to look at one and admire it like it was something of yours that you love and cherish…” said Krsto Krapov, sitting next to me.

1. It was morning. The sun had risen and revealed all the beauty of Lake Kostur. It was breathtaking. Dawn in Kostur is hard and grey and sometimes stormy. Today the sky was unexpectedly clear but to me it looked flashy and full of raindrops. Perhaps it was my watery eyes that made it look like that… I don’t know. Every morning I get up and go searching…, searching in the old churches looking for traces of my ancestors. They were pious, humble and extraordinarily hardworking people who served God. I follow in their footsteps and I feel them; I measure their greatness and dedication. Our home has no doors, no windows and the cobblestone path is densely overgrown with grass. It looked like a heap of debris under the open sky. Sometime ago, in sadder times, a lot of wine was drunk here as the streets slowly aged without the running and laughing of children...

Oh God! How I love the home of my ancestors! I remember my mother and grandmother Ianka looking after me right here in this yard. My mother died in Poland and was buried somewhere there. My grandmother Ianka died here in Kostur but I don’t know where she is buried...? I don’t know where their graves are… Not of my mother, or my father and not of my grandmother. My father was killed on the Italian front fighting for Greek interests and for the Greek king.

I cried uncontrollably and teardrops fall on the ground one after another... It hurt me deep inside when I looked at this house, my grandfather’s house where he proudly talked about the Ilinden days and about our proud people.

I played and grew up here, in this house. There was the old quince tree whose aroma reminded me of my childhood. When I was born, my grandmother buried my umbilical cord under the roots of this tree. And now I stand here like a “stranger in my own country”, in

the house where I was born and grew up. This is unreal for me and I feel like I am not here… I feel like a blade of grass in the wind in a strong storm being swirled around and beaten from all sides... I stand here chained before the ruins of my home, which I left during a difficult time. I struggle to find the meaning of why I am being punished in such a severe way? What did I ever do to deserve this isolation and to be cast out of something that I love so much… To be exiled to roam the world… What did I ever do? All my good memories were created right here…

It was right here when, one dark night, Markos’s Parisans came and violently mobilized me and took me away without allowing me to say goodbye. I left without even a goodbye... My beloved ones cried for me… They cried for me for years! I go numb when I think about it. Even to this day…

I was overwhelmed by a strange pain. I felt shaky and my legs were getting weak. I leaned against the wall. I felt sick to my stomach. The truth was cruel to me… The truth was that I was standing in my father’s courtyard… The truth is a human principle when we encounter what belongs to us. Lord, please give me strength and patience! Now nothing belongs to me except my pain and my memories… Not even this heap of rubble and ashes. But...?

The people of Kostur say: Your soul will remain at the very place where you take your first drink of water...

You can’t get away from the love and hope when you encounter something that belongs to you...

* * *

The first question I asked Krapov was: “Is there any evidence that suggests that before Kostur was occupied by the Greeks (1912 – 1913), there were Greeks living there?!”

Krsto Krapov stood up straight, raised his hand and moved it along the edge of the city limits outlining Kostur and began to talk about the city’s history, long banned by the Greeks:

“Kostur is one of the most beautiful cities in Macedonia, now under Greek occupation, a city with its own serene and tranquil nature but with a very rich and long history.

Kostur is a city with Byzantine architecture and a large number of Byzantine and post Byzantine monuments as well as a lot of remnants from the construction carried out by our Tsar Samoil.

Yes, we are heirs of Tsar Samoil. Even our character betrays us. There is no serious academic who does not believe in the bloom of Tsar Samoil’s kingdom. Chills trickle down my spine when I hear people saying Kostur was Greek and now even the colonists, Karamani and Pondi from Turkey, are drowned in this kind of propaganda, saying that they are the descendants of King Samoil and declare themselves Macedonian!”

A CENTURY OF SILENCE SINCE THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEKS (1913 - 2013)

“An unexplored life is not worth living!” (Socrates)

“How and why did Greece declare war on our Macedonian civilization in this occupied part of Macedonia?” I asked.

The old man looked up and said: “Every Greek government since the early beginnings of modern Greece, created for the first time in history in 1829, endeavored to erase everything Macedonian. It strove to erase the feeling of belonging to the Macedonian nation, to the Macedonian identity and to stop Macedonians from speaking their Macedonian language.

In fact we were under Ottoman slavery for over 500 years but our rulers never banned or replaced our language with theirs. We spoke our language freely. But the moment the Greeks occupied our Macedonia, our native Macedonian language was strictly banned from being spoken in public, or in private.”

Krapov abruptly adjusted himself and, with excitement in his voice, said: “I am ready and determined to declare the following to the

entire Macedonian nation: ‘The Greeks came to Macedonia after their own Nation State was established as a Kingdom with one King, with one Nation of people, one Church and one Language. Greece, with Great Power help, was established as a Nation State for the first time in history after its struggle for independence (1821-1829). After its independence, again with Great Power help, Greece made several territorial expansions (1864 to 1947). Greece was not only helped but was directly supervised by the Great Powers who interfered in its internal affairs. Greece was established as a Nation State with its own unique identity, religion, education, culture and science with direct assistance from the Great Powers before it occupied Macedonia.’

Greek governments not only banned everything that was Macedonian, but they also hunted down Macedonians and humiliated them for being Macedonian. Moral and ethical values were forced upon the Macedonian people by these same Greeks who occupied and enslaved our Macedonia. In the process they banned everything Macedonian, including all sorts of cultural and even the musical events. Our songs, dances and all kinds of traditions were forbidden and along with that came forced assimilation and total destruction of the Macedonian people... What horror!”

I silently said: “God protect us and defends us from such evil!”

“Look!” said Krapov, thinking for a moment.

“I can see that you are a man consumed with longing for your fatherland. The people of Kostur, many have said, were well known for being good Christians with strong love, faith and hope. But what happened? Well, after our national traditions and cultural events were banned, we were violently forced to become Greeks. We were strictly forbidden from practicing our Kostur culture, from celebrating traditional holidays, from having traditional weddings and funeral rites. We were instructed to declare that we were Greeks and then they issued us Greek documents.

And as Milan Kundela put it: ‘The destruction of a nation.’ ‘The first step to destroying a nation is to delete its memory; to destroy its scripture and its books; its culture and its history. The second step is

for someone else, a foreigner, to write new books; to form a new education system, to re-educate it and to invent a new history for it.’

It would not take too long before people would start to forget who they are.

Once they start forgetting, the rest of the world all around them will forget them even faster.

This was the crazy Greek plan all along; to fiercely attack everything Macedonian and in the process destroy the Macedonian people.

The Greek essence was to eliminate the Macedonian people by destroying their Macedonian roots, their Macedonian soil and their Macedonian tree and replace it with a Greek planted tree.”

Old man Krapov became very rebellious when he was faced with an attack on his Macedonian identity, which happens practically every day everywhere in Greek occupied Macedonia and not just in his native Kostur. This is what the Greeks have done to us and being a Macedonian is taboo in Greece. It’s been this way since the Greeks came here. “Those people here who speak very loudly about injustices and are enraged and say that the world could be a better place to live, only whisper when it comes to the Macedonian question,” said Krapov, which really upset me.

Meaning, in this way the Greeks wanted to keep the illusion alive that only “Greeks by genus” lived in Greece. This Greek position, as a means to an end, is an everyday dance that celebrates and strengthens their artificial identity, which allows Greece to declare that only Greeks by birth live in Greece and that Greece is a pure nation consisting strictly of Greek people and nothing else. And who exactly are these Greeks outside of the various ethnicities assimilated into the Greek fold? I have yet to meet one such person!

We Macedonians, especially after World War II, without looking at the striking Greek genocidal project put into effect since before 1913, to eliminate us to the last one, responded to them as if they were our brothers. Macedonians! Open your eyes! A man who is

squeezing the last drop of blood from your body cannot possibly be doing it for your own good! Please open your eyes!

We Macedonians never agreed to become Greeks! We proved that during the Greek Civil War (1945-1949). And now the entire civilized world knows that: “A nation can be created from a myth. The Greeks succeeded in doing exactly that! We have been persecuted for over 70 years now. They have taken our properties, our citizenship and will not even recognize us as citizens of Greece.”

* * *

Old man Krapov was now calm. He stood up from the rock he was sitting on and, with a smile on his face, said:

“I don’t know whether you know this or not but Kostur is an international centre for treatment, processing, production and sale of fur and fur products. The famous Kostur fur and leather goods production has operated for centuries along a well-established Kostur tradition. Production of fur in Kostur was the oldest and only craft produced by the people of Kostur with explicit imperial permission. The most wealthy Ottomans traveled to Kostur all the way from Tsari Grad (Istanbul) to purchase the most beautiful dresses for the women in their harems. Kostur produced the most modern clothes in the empire in the entire Balkans.

The population of Kostur had a reputation for being a very traditional community, strongly attached to its Macedonian roots and language, especially to its famous local Kostur dialect... The women who lived in Kostur dressed beautifully in vibrant traditional dresses with their long hair flowing like silk. Especially beautiful were the young unmarried ladies dressed in the most modern and beautiful clothing, standing on their balconies or in front of their windows, driving the bachelors wild.

After the Second World War, a large part of the indigenous population was persecuted and exiled and now lives all over the world. It is very rare now to meet a person from Kostur who will

speak to you in the Kostur dialect and ask you: ‘Are you one of ours?’

Now nobody respects anything, I do not know why…?” concluded the old man as he drifted off somewhere in his own memories.

My grandfather used to say: “When children are torn from the embrace of their motherland and take their own path in life there will no longer be weddings in their old home. They will leave behind a wasteland. The old will sit in the yard with eyes closed and in silence beg the rain to come and wash their tears away. They will be left with only their memories…”

I took a walk down a cobblestone street and passed some narrow alleys, following in the footsteps of my ancestors and stopped in front of a house. It was now occupied by Prosfigi… strangers from Asia Minor. There is very little that I remember from my childhood. But I do remember some striking things which make me emotional to talk about even now. Further down my old neighbourhood I recognized another house and in the backyard I noticed an old woman, a Madzhir from Smirna (Asia Minor), which I found out later, wearing wooden shoes and humming away as she was spreading her colourful Pontian dress, with all its nuances, on a line to dry. I had no idea where my old neighbours were. Obviously they had been persecuted and made to leave but where did they go? I don’t know. They were cheerful and good neighbours.

Are they alive or are they dead? I felt my entire body tightening and cramping and a chill ran down my spine.

I had to step away. I was not feeling good. I had forgotten a lot about this place and now I did not want to remember anything at all. I did not want to accept today’s life and I couldn’t come to terms with this place, which is why I had to walk away. I spit on the ground and felt like a homeless drifter… I felt disgusted...

I spent my entire life searching. Every time I found something I left it and continued on searching. I am disgusted when I think of how much of my time I wasted searching and how little of my life I have left.

Here in Kostur, in my own hometown, I am forced to keep quiet; a person must keep quiet to protect themselves...

What irony that the Prosfigi are now the owners of our country, our homes and we are forced to go elsewhere to find a home. They “cleansed” our country of us...

The communists who led us in the Greek Civil War and encouraged us by saying: “We are fighters and internationalists...” left us to wander the world, to become eternal wanderers. I cannot carry that secret all my life. I am telling you, I cannot hold out. I can’t live detached from everything familiar and dear to me. My life is passing me by… before my eyes.

Suddenly, old man Krapov raised his head, looked at me with a sharp look in his eyes and began to talk again.

He must have heard me talking to myself when he said: “Every drifter and wanderer knows and every person must get it into their heads that we are “victims of the Macedonian ideological activists (communists)”.

* * *