Athens Calling, Summer 2015

“On a personal level, we are all numb. Even younger people are behaving as though they have dementia. We forget the way to familiar destinations, we lose our keys, we mix up words, we are constantly on the verge of tears.” —By Diana Farr Louis

Editor’s Note: This heartfelt essay was written from the front lines of Greece’s economic and political “Crisis,” now in its fifth year, at perhaps at the most crucial and pivotal moment for Modern-Greece-in-Europe. Diana and her retired surgeon-husband have pieds–à–terre in an Athens suburb and on the nearby island of Andros. Their lives, never extravagant but always lived richly, have been cut closer and closer to the bone due to the slashing of Greek pensions, and Diana has raised her voice, as a citizen-journalist, to report on what she has seen transpire around her over the past five years, and the increasingly alarming plight of Greece’s 80 percent. 

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—(7/27/2015)—Dear Old Friends, some of you have written or called; some of you have not. I can only say to those who have been quiet that it’s OK. I hope you are sending positive vibes and keeping us in your hearts. In any case, I thought you might want to know what it’s like here even if you haven’t asked—and some of you have. I’m sorry not to be able to write to each of you individually.

I keep meaning to keep a diary, write down my thoughts—after all, we’re creating history—but all I seem to be able to do is read about our crisis, a word that no longer has any significance. I have become a Facebook junkie, leaping from opinion to opinion, link to link, and have concluded that I agree with almost every point of view. Greece, with its history of appalling leaders, has made disastrous mistakes over the past four decades and the overlords who regard us as a fiefdom or a crowd of unruly vassals have perhaps been even worse. 

While it is not easy to live in suspense, it’s also fascinating to watch the argument growing, involving all sorts of people, economists, politicians, thinkers, who are unveiling the real corruption that is hurting the lower 99 percent or let’s say 80 percent of us, the infernal gambling games and hide-and-seek that the supposedly morally correct institutions and trustworthy (?) bankers engage in to feather their own nests, not to mention calling into question the supremacy of Germany. 

Why is it that every time the Germans feel superior, the whole continent suffers?

My husband, who experienced the German Occupation first hand, will tell you that the answer to that question involves a combination of rigidity, pathological stinginess, small-mindedness, and lack of the milk of human kindness.

Dare I hope that the result of all this exposure and discussion will be reformation in Greece on the micro-scale and throughout Europe itself? That the huge schisms now glaringly apparent between north and south, rich and poor, right and left may be healed? As if our own mess weren’t enough, too, we have the unsolvable problem of the desperate refugees washing up on our shores by the thousands every day, adding to the more than a million already in place. It’s estimated that more than 60,000 arrived in the first six months of this year inundating a handful of Aegean islands more used to tourists. When you think how many of them were middle-class families living ordinary lives in Syria, it makes you realize how very precarious our own situation is here.

Here is how we spend our day, when we’re not reading, listening to the radio or watching the latest developments on TV. First, we stand in line waiting for our turn at an ATM. Surprisingly, all the queues are orderly and most people are good humored. One friend of mine treats it as an outing and she and her kids and husband dress up and go to a different neighborhood for a stroll each evening, or she arranges to meet friends in the morning and they pass out cookies to the rest of the line. “ATM dates,” a great way to cope. You never know whether you’re going to be allowed 60 or 50 euros (it depends on whether the bank has run out of 20s or 50s). What’s absolutely certain is that they (and we personally) will soon run out of money altogether. We know of someone who has seen the inside of one of the central banks and the bills that once were stacked to the ceiling are now in a low mound in a corner!

But never underestimate Greek ingenuity. Ten days into the bank freeze, some ultra-brilliant souls were marketing an app that would tell you which ATMs had the shortest lines. This would not help an out-of-date pensioner. The elderly without debit cards were allowed into the banks to collect their pensions, but only once a week, and for 120 euros at a time.

Feeling apprehensive about an imminent Grexit, we made some trips to the supermarket to stock up on staples. Most shelves are still full most of the time despite what you might have read. As we stashed essentials in our basement storeroom, I felt as if I were Swiss and preparing for a nuclear winter. But, having said that, a friend’s bomb shelter in Geneva was much better stocked than ours and even had a fridge and a sofa, not to mention quite a lot of booze.

We do see friends and we are not afraid to use the car—gas exists and the price hasn’t yet risen—though some friends are too shell-shocked to even drive the 10 minutes to the park to walk their dog. Of course, when we meet, there is only one subject but, whatever happens, we all agree we have to stick together and pool our resources, whether they be books or casseroles. 

I still get pleasure out of small things, like the cascade of bougainvillea covering the front of our small apartment building, the enormous feline lying in state on a display outside a Kifissia shop, or an interchange with a cheerful pensioner selling hankies outside our closest supermarket. “Hi,” he said in English. “How are you?”

I replied, “Not great.”

“Oh well,” he said, “you can’t be on top of the world every day.”

When I came out, I stopped to talk and gave him 50 cents. Turns out he’s been waiting for his pension for 15 months and his sister who lives in Germany has been trying to send him money but he hasn’t been able to receive it.

I asked him why he didn’t move to be with her.

“What on earth would I do there!” He looked disgusted at the very notion, and took a swig out of his water bottle, which I noticed was half-filled with red plonk. He’d switched to wine because it’s cheaper than beer, but we both agreed that alcohol of any kind helps improve the mood. 

As of this week, it looks as though the measures heaped upon us will bring even more austerity than we’ve endured in the past five years. We are hoping that at least they may bring some stability, enough to get the tourists to come back. It is so sad to have this chaos in summer, crippling our only industry. However, as of Monday night, the government seems to have fallen apart, with defections on both left and right; a general strike (!) was called for Wednesday; the pharmacies have closed and, most serious of all, there’s still no word on when the banks will open. Rumors abound of pensions and salaries to be paid in IOUs.

Lack of cash is strangling businesses, small and large. Shops roll down their shutters permanently every week, leaving strange gaps and the ghosts of shattered dreams. What used to be there?

On a personal level, we are all numb. Even younger people are behaving as though they have dementia. We forget the way to familiar destinations, we lose our keys, we mix up words, we are constantly on the verge of tears. Having been “unable” to listen to music for weeks, yesterday in the car I switched on the Third Program, which miraculously is still playing. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was on the air and it was too much for me. I heard it first when I was 14. I could hardly see to drive.

We are among the luckier ones, even if impoverished, because we can go back to summer. Andros awaits us, a stripped down life with simple pleasures: swims on deserted beaches, chats with the neighbors (sheep and goats plus three new pigs), figs (in August), and perhaps tomatoes and zucchini if they have survived our longer than planned absence. We will carpool with our two-legged neighbors, ration the wine to a 3-liter box a week (that may be unrealistically low), and ration the news as well, to the bare essentials, hoping of course that the gas supplies do not give out.

I don’t know what to hope for any more, just that we can manage, stay healthy, and get by with a little help from our friends. And, please, don’t forget us after some other crisis has dislodged us from the front pages. That’s when we’ll need you even more.

PS: Alas, on Friday, July 18^th, we were in the news again, this time because the whole country was in flames. Fifty-two fires were raging from Mt. Hymettus to the tip of the Peloponnese, as well as on Zakynthos, Evia, and Skyros, most set by sick arsonists. By Sunday, they’d been extinguished, and the radio coverage shifted to the 60,000 businesses reported to have left Greece for more hospitable conditions in neighboring Bulgaria (which has a thriving mafia) and the prospect of early elections in September.

But we had arrived on Andros and paid little attention. A family of five voracious goats was chomping on our fruit trees. We chased them out only to have them reappear at dusk. Much as we hate their destructive ways, we find ourselves oddly pleased to be tackling an actual enemy, rather than contemplating the unbeatable threat of higher prices, higher taxes, lower income, political chaos, and widespread poverty. And I’m reminded that the word tragedy/tragodia originally meant goat song or ode to the Billy Goat. We have far too many goats in this country, both two- and four-legged.

Recipe

Luckily, Greece, having navigated all manner of dire straits, has a huge repertoire of hardship recipes, which turn the simplest of ingredients into the most delectable of meals. We no longer buy much meat in any case, I make my own fresh cheese from kefir grains, and most vegetables cost under a euro per kilo. We ourselves have already lost a kilo each. Here’s a lovely dish, taken from my book Feasting and Fasting in Crete.

Sautéed Summer Greens

(Tsigariastá Hórta, Kalokairiná)

The ingredients for this dish will be easy to round up if you have a vegetable patch. Otherwise, if you can’t get hold of zucchini leaves or tomato plant tips, don’t worry: add more parsley or more beans or anything else that takes your fancy. This is an anything goes recipe.

All the vegetables should be washed, trimmed and coarsely chopped unless otherwise noted.

120 ml (1/2 cup) olive oil

1 bunch spring onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

6 baby zucchini, left whole

4 baby carrots (optional), left whole or halved

6 tiny new potatoes, left whole

1 cup string beans, runner beans (cut into 6 cm/2 1/2 inch pieces) or fresh Borlotti beans

1 bunch zucchini blossoms

small bunch tender tomato leaves

a few tender zucchini leaves, deveined and trimmed

500 grams (1 lb) amaranth (vlita), blanched for 1 minute in boiling water

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 cup finely chopped parsley

2 tablespoons finely chopped basil

Heat the oil in a deep stew pot and gently sauté the onions and garlic for about 2 minutes. Add the zucchini, carrots, potatoes and beans and roll in the oil for another 3 minutes. Add all the greens, toss them in the oil, mix in the chopped tomatoes and parsley and 120 ml (1/2 cup) water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat to moderate and cover. After about 10 minutes, stir gently, and add a bit more water if necessary. Just before all the vegetables are as tender as you like them (20-30 minutes), season with salt and pepper and sprinkle in the basil. Serves 4.

Note: Photograph 1: “Street art,” at Mama Roux Restaurant on Aghia Irini Square, Athens.