In normal times this month would be one of great celebration in Greece and throughout the diaspora, for 25 March marks 200 years since the Greeks rose in revolt against the Ottoman Turks, who had ruled them for 400 years. Of course there had been many attempts at revolt before, but all had met with failure. And the Greece that became free in 1821 was not the Greece of today. Parts of northern Greece were still under Ottoman rule until 1883, while Crete and Thessaloniki did not become Greek until 1912.
It is fair to say, I think, that every society has a chain of memories clanking along behind it. But in the case of some that the chain is broken, or has a few links missing. I have a vague idea about villages in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, with firmer notions of Acle in Norfolk and Wendron in Cornwall, but they are still very sketchy.
My half-Greek children, however, grew up just down the mountain from their ancestral home, from which place seven men of their line joined the rebels in 1821. It is documented fact that their great-great-grandfather fought in the Battle of Tripoli. And what a bloody battle that was.
Even when we were still in Australia their father would hire national dress for the boys to wear on 25 March, and tell them about rebels in Kalamata leading the way on 23 March. (Kalamata was the first city to fall to the Greeks.) In Greece they took it in turns to wear the outfit that their great-grandfather had bought by dint of walking his donkey, loaded with oil, through the mountains to Tripoli, which is about 80km away.
This costume has now been worn by four generations. It consists of the pleated kilt, the fustanella, all nine metres of it (and a devil to iron), an embroidered waistcoat, and a very elaborate leather belt, tucked and folded: it was in one of the pockets that the old man’s will was found after his death in 1940. The boys recited poems, joined school marches, sang patriotic songs and danced traditional dances every year. And now my grandchildren do the same.
But not this year: student parades have been banned, while military ones will go ahead with strict safety measures in place. Politicians are, as so often, engaged in a tense juggling act, that of trying to keep the population safe while simultaneously satisfying their need and desire for this celebration, one of such importance in the national story and communal memory. One is reminded of famous Cretan writer Nikos Kazantzakis, and his idea that mind and heart are continually in conflict within the human psyche.
'Celebrations will of necessity be subdued in Greece this year, but the blue and white will be flying from every flagpole.'
Kazantzakis also believed that foreigners travelling in Greece often experience ‘an innocent tremor of beauty’, and that for them the journey takes place without any great convulsion. For Greeks, however, the landscape is bound up with memory, history, blood and shame, and ‘the Greek pilgrim’s whole spirit is thrown into confusion.’ The Greek earth, he said, is a ‘deep, twelve-levelled tomb, from which voices rise up calling… For a Greek, the journey through Greece is a fascinating, exhausting ordeal,’ for they cannot decide which voice of the twelve levels to listen to: the 1821 rebel, the Turk, the Frank, the Byzantine, the Roman, the Hellenistic, the Classic, the Dorian, the Mycenaean, the Aegean, or finally the voice of the Stone Age.
The writer died long ago, and I don’t imagine there is any debate at present: the voices of the Greek rebels must be drowning out all others. But Kazantzakis also quotes the idea of Hellenism being like a warm and mighty river. As such, it has flowed into 140 countries around the world, with 700,000 people of Greek origin being resident in Australia, the first coming to New South Wales in 1829 as convicts. They were seven sailors, who had been sentenced by a British naval court to transportation for piracy. Now there are Greek communities in every capital city in the land.
Celebrations will of necessity be subdued in Greece this year, but the blue and white will be flying from every flagpole. It will also be flying in many parts of Australia, including the place I remember best, Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.
Gillian Bouras is an expatriate Australian writer who has written several books, stories and articles, many of them dealing with her experiences as an Australian woman in Greece.