MARCH MEASURES II and a conversation with writer Gillian Bouras

I. Happy beginning of spring, and the second in lockdown. What a long and winding road we still have to the door leading the way out . With our current measures, I can’t even get into downtown Athens now, much less to the nearby beaches of Attica, but it’s nice to dream of where I’d like to be..

The news is so mixed; have you noticed there’s always a “but” in the sentence “There are so many reasons to feel hopeful, but so many reasons to still hold firmly to anxiety.” We have had lockdowns within lockdowns but record cases and hospitalizations. The vaccine is rolling out but it’s moving so slowly and doubts have been established, which are hard to shake. Generally, it seems that last spring we did everything right, but with the 2nd and 3rd wave, everything wrong…

Taking us a bit out of our malaise, in February (although it seems eons ago) storm Medea came crashing into most of the country, bringing heavy snow to delighted Athenians, including me.

The after effects though: many trees fell on electrical lines, causing power outages for some areas lasting as long as four or five days. The heavy weight of the snow led to thousands of mostly pine trees falling to the earth, the road and on top of cars. The municipalities are still working on cleaning up all the fallen trunks and branches.

Most of the pines that fell were full of the silken-like sacs high in the trees that hold caterpillars. So many were released that this year it’s felt like a Biblical plague, with caravans of hundreds of them together underfoot on their inexorable march to find food. They’re a sure sign of March springtime, along with the fine yellow coating of pollen on balconies and car windows.

Good for our brain, it’s said, is physical exercise and novelty. Physical exercise we do nearly every day in the neighborhood or on our long mountain walks. The wild flowers and bushes are blooming in pastel colors.

But seeing the sea from atop Mt. Hymettus isn’t quite enough, I need to smell it and feel it with my hands (if not my feet) Permitting moving from one area to another was always left vague, and no one wants to tangle with the whims of the police and be given an outrageous 300 euro fine. As the 3rd wave has taken over, for several weeks now we have been allowed exercise only as far as we can walk or bicycle. So besides the mountain, I’m exercising in the park across from my house. (Note the graffiti on the machines).

Novelty? That’s another story:improving our culinary skills maybe.and the different dishes for dinner! I discovered the delicious comfort food of sweet potato and fresh ginger soup, and not only…

The end of Carnival (normally a time full of music, dancing and events) is “Clean Monday,” which fell this year on March 15. The tradition of flying a kite symbolizes purification. Meat and dairy products are not eaten; the tradition is to eat shellfish and also bean soup, pickles, taramosalata, halvah and a special bread. (Both of these photos are from last year.)

The government is giving people hope by “promising” that the Greek Easter on May 2 will be free of moving restrictions, and celebrated in the countryside and villages, and not on city balconies like last year…

But the major celebration is on the 25th, the 1821 Greek war for Independence against the Ottomans. Last year I wrote “Many celebrations are planned for the 200 year anniversary. Let’s hope they happen.” In fact, many online lectures and documentaries, concerts and poetry readings are happening. Radio and TV programs. Newspapers with inserts all about the Revolution. And a large military parade in Athens on the 25th on what’s forecasted to be an unusually cold day. Happy 200th birthday Hellas!

When museums do open again, the Benaki Museum (Pireos branch) is preparing a major exhibit: “1821: Before & After.” Another small museum, the Theocharis, near Syntagma Square, is getting ready for an exhibit on “Women in the 1821 Revolution” (and there were many active women). But the first place I plan to visit is the display around the National Gardens, called “History has a Face.” This includes 22 paintings of Greek revolutionary figures, completed in the early 1840’s by Benjamin Marie, a Belgian diplomat in Athens, part of 320 paintings that disappeared until a few years ago when they surfaced at an auction in London.

The painting below is one we saw last year visiting the Benaki Museum (Kolonaki branch) — the 1821 revolutionary figure (Giorgos Karaiskakis) in traditional foustanella, the pleated skirt, the garb of the Revolutionary fighters.

Speaking of paintings, France is helping to celebrate the 200th anniversary of independence by donating the tapestry of Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” which was unveiled in the Greek parliament several days ago.

And around the world, iconic landmarks such as the Capitol Mall in Washington, the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel, Niagra Falls, the Sydney Opera House and many others, will also celebrate on March 25th by lighting up in the blue and white of the Greek flag.

Greek flags are waving everywhere; this one in my neighborhood is certainly unqiue!

II. Welcome to my Blog: Gillian Bouras

The 1821 Revolution is part of the history of many villages and towns of the Peloponnese.  One such village, Arfara, 22 kilometers north of Kalamata, is where Australian writer Gillian Bouras settled with her husband (who grew up there), and her children.  As she told me, Bouras men fought in 1821 and her husband’s great grandfather in fact fought in the Battle of Tripoli, one of the important battle victories.

In the mid to late 1980’s, many of us expatriate women were eagerly reading Gillian Bouras’ book A Foreign Wife and comparing her experiences of adjustment with our own in Athens.

Last September, on a golden day in early fall, Elias and I met Gillian for a coffee in Kalamata before going for a swim.  Coronavirus then seemed mostly like a dim memory from the spring and we talked of plans for the coming year. A 2^nd wave of Covid, much less a 3^rd wave, seemed remote… Recently I asked Gillian a few questions about her experiences and her books, and here we are.

1.In 1980 you left your native Australia to go live in your husband’s Greek village where he grew up. You also had two small children with you.   What were some of the adjustments – language, culture — that you had to make when you went to live there?

We came to Greece in 1980, planning to stay for 6 months. But then my husband George got a job, and he was very anxious to stay. He would tell me about his mother’s hard life…with tears in his eyes. I agreed to stay; to be honest, I thought of it in terms of having an adventure. I hadn’t had adventures; I got married instead!

It didn’t take me too long to realise that I had tried to leap every possible chasm: country and city/class/education/language/religion/child-rearing practices.  It was often a very isolating experience. When my sons, then aged just on 8 and 6, first arrived, they spoke English to each other. Six months later, to the very day, they began speaking Greek to each other. A very painful moment for me, but of course I had to accept that this was a natural development, and that they would eventually become truly bilingual, a great advantage in life.

I had had Greek lessons in Melbourne, but I found village Greek very different. I persevered however. The ignorance about language  (and other things) floored me. The average person really believed that there was Greek and then there was” ta xena.” (the foreign)  One of my neighbours once wanted me to translate/interpret Russian!

I drove people mad with my questions: I wanted to learn. But I really did feel that nobody understood me very much and that few people were willing even to try. Of course it was up to me: I was younger, more educated, the stranger…so I was the one to adjust. I realised the truth of the anthropological view that the stranger is both dangerous and in danger.

The house I lived in for the first 16 months was very basic. That didn’t bother me too much: my generation of Australians had been conditioned to put up with things and just to get on with whatever needed doing.

Although the house didn’t bother me, the village school did. The teachers had no experience of teaching children with a different background. They were very authoritarian and there was lots of rote learning. In primary school the kids were encouraged to bring wood to school: for the heaters in the winter. The classrooms were in need of repair: the only pictures on the wall were charts explaining what to do in case of earthquake. It was hard to get used to.

I’m not sorry I had these experiences.The whole of life is a learning curve, and I feel I’ve learned a lot.You might agree that when you migrate you use a part of yourself that would never have been used otherwise, and I think that is all to the good, really.  But of course we have to contend with our divided hearts.

2. Migration certainly provides challenges, but you seemed to have more than your share to adjust to… What about you, what did you leave behind in Australia?  Were you a writer there?

I was a full-time teacher of English and English Lit in Melbourne before the move.Writing had always been an ambition, but I had very little time. I’ve always been a fairly prolific correspondent: as in snail mail. The first day at the village school (for my children)was so different and so unexpected that I sat down and wrote it all up, and then sent it off to the Education section of The Age, Melbourne’s leading newspaper. The piece was accepted (to my surprise)and I just went on from there, writing articles. I also wrote a column for SHE magazine in England:that was just luck.

3.  Tell me about your first book, A Foreign Wife. When did you decide to write a book about your experiences?

In 1984-5 I was commissioned to write a full-length work by McPhee Gribble,then a very energetic feminist firm run by two women: Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble. A Foreign Wife appeared in 1986. I still don’t like the title that they gave it. Not sure what I would give it, but that seems not subtle at all! 

4. Maybe not subtle but it immediately conveyed the message! Your book Aphrodite and the Others written about ten years later, focuses on your mother-in-law.  How was your relationship with her?  (I know that’s not easy to summarize…) What did you learn from Aphrodite?  What did she learn from you?  And I understand there’s another “Aphrodite” in the family now; tell me more about her.

My relationship with Yiayia (“grandma” as I called her, because the children did ) was edgy. I started out with a false sense of security, because my mother had a better relationship with her mother-in-law than she did with her own mother. I had to rethink this matter!

Of course I had no idea of the traditional patterns that govern so much of village life. I had no idea that a mother-in-law felt quite free to give a daughter-in-law a bad time, because she had had one from her mother-in-law. She had three sons, and none of the nifes (daughters-in-law) was good enough. She also had three daughters, and had battled very hard for all her children. She had lost three, and had suffered miscarriages. 

Aphrodite was very tyrannical, and would think nothing of screaming at people, whether in public or not. She had no idea of boundaries as I understood them, and would go through my things and plant vegetables and flowers in my garden. I felt my confidence undermined continually, as she told me I didn’t know, couldn’t do A,B or C. She would arrive bearing food for her favourite son because ‘I know you don’t cook this.’ She was always visiting and expecting to be entertained, having no idea about my sort of work, the time-consuming preparation and correction etc. It proved to be quite impossible for her to walk a mile in my moccasins; her imagination was just not up to it. I might as well have been from Mars.

The fact that she was illiterate was another problem, but I soon realized that I was learning a lot about an oral world from her. It is very difficult to get into that mindset, but I admired the store-house of memory and her complete knowledge of family genealogy.  I also learned a lot about customs and traditions and folk-lore. I observed the making of soap and pasto (smoked pork) etc. I also learned about the endurance of the spirit, so necessary in order to cope with hard times. With her practical skills, she could have crawled out of a nuclear fall-out shelter and started again, whereas I would have had no hope. I learned that there is always a different way of looking at things.

I also learned that sons are on a pedestal and I resolved never to erect pedestals for my three sons!

As Yiayia began to fail, she began to mellow, and gave up the desire to dominate. She became much softer; I realised then that hard lives make hard people, and that much of her character was a response to the demands of survival. I felt this understanding as a great sadness, as it had come too late, really.

I don’t know that Aphrodite learned anything from me, but her world widened a little: she visited Melbourne, my parents visited me, and everybody got on well. Perhaps she understood, observing my cross-cultural, bi-lingual children, that it is possible to inhabit two worlds.

I don’t know that my eldest son believes me, but I was pleased when my youngest son and his wife decided to call their new baby girl after her great-grandmother. She is two months old now, and trying very hard to communicate. Yiayia was the youngest of her family, but that fact certainly didn’t hold her back. I don’t imagine the new Aphrodite will be held back either.  

By the way the publishers said that they didn’t like the title Aphrodite and the Others. Because it was too Greek! ( I ask you.) They wasted a whole lot of time ‘brainstorming’ the matter, and couldn’t think of anything better!

6. I believe you spent some time in England.  How did that influence you?

Yes, I lived in England for a while, first in Northumberland, and then in London. I went back and forth between London and the village for years. But eventually I realised I was never going to make it financially in London, and so had to return here, a move I regretted very bitterly at the time.

Many Australians of my generation grew up thinking that life was happening somewhere else, and that London was the place to be. Famous Australians like Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes felt they had to leave in order to be part of a wider cultural scene. Of course this attitude has changed over the decades.

I learned for myself that England is not Australia with bad weather, as the British have to learn that Australia is not Britain in the sun. But I did feel quite at home, and I loved getting in touch with the literary life of London, and so on. I joined the Royal Society of Literature, and so was able to see and hear various greats like Harold Pinter, Antonia Fraser, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd. I loved all that. I also haunted the School of Australian Studies, University of London. In short I felt that there were people whose sensibilities matched mine, if that is not too grandiose a way of putting it. I was also able to get back to some of my ancestral roots, and I ‘m glad I was able to do that.

7. That must have been very gratifying to you and a welcome change from life in the village!  What writers have made a mark on you (Greek and others)?   What are you working on at the moment?

I am not well-read in Greek at all. But I have read Zorba in Greek, and also part of Freedom and Death (Kazantzakis) in Greek, as well as Life in the Tomb by Mirivilis. (A struggle). When the boys were at school I read quite widely in their anthologies. I still try to read some Greek every day, and am currently reading Hatzis’s Το Τελος της Μικρης Μας Πολης. [The end of our small town ]Αnd I’ve always been very  fond of the poetry of Kavafis. And some of the old folk poems such as The Last Mass in Santa Sophia.

I retain a fondness for Dickens, and have re-read Eliot’s Middlemarch recently. I’m currently re-reading Hilary Mantel’s trilogy. I adored Anita Brookner’s work, and that of Barbara Pym. I’ve read a fair amount of Australian writing, which is still not well known in Europe or the USA. Peter Carey, David Malouf, Kate Grenville, Robert Drewe, Lucy Treloar. (I’m always reading, as you might imagine!)

I’m trying to write a travel book about the Peloponese, comparing and contrasting the trips made by the Scottish Smith twins (redoubtable women ) in 1883, and Nikos Kazantzakis in 1937. Agnes and Margaret were formidable scholars who later discovered the Sinai Codex at St Catherine’s Monastery. And I discovered Kazantzakis round about the time I met George!

That sounds fascinating.  Looking forward to it. Thank you so much Gillian for sharing your experiences and observations.  I hope the lockdown ends soon so you can finally see your new little granddaughter, your Aphrodite, and that we can meet again face to face!

Gillian’s book Aphrodite and the Others is available in Greece from Gialos Books: info@gialosbooks.gr.  Another of her books Seeing and Believing picks up where A Foreign Wife left off (describing the lives of her adult children)  is also available in print from Gialos, as well as on Amazon kindle.

Gillian can be reached at gillianbouras@gmail.com. Check out her website www.gillianbouras.com for more information as well as links to her articles about life in Greece and Australia and a monthly diary, where with her keen eye for nature, Gillian writes about her life in Kalamata and the world beyond.

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.