Fear (or Creeping Dread) & Its Antidote

“To accompany this column, I give you three of the joyful images that lifted our spirits this summer. There were dozens more I couldn’t capture, but can conjure up when a smile is required.” —Diana Farr Louis

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

ANDROS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—October 2016—As opposed to fear, I’d much rather be writing, this month, about tomatoes and figs, the pleasurable monotony of an island summer, the depressing state of our wind-throttled olive trees whose fruit has been black and shriveled since August, or the surprise of having all our almond trees in hyper-production mode.

And yet, at the same time, I appreciate our monthly topics, here at Weekly Hubris, because they challenge me to address concepts I’d rather keep at arm’s length or beyond, somewhere below the horizon of our daily routine. The idea of fear is particularly problematic because I realize I’ve never truly experienced it.

Of course, I’ve been what I’d call “frightened,” as when in childhood we dared each other to do something scary like jump from the high diving board or tightrope on the balcony railing of our third-floor bedroom. (That was just plain stupid.) I remember being timid when sent to the headmaster of the Lawrence School after engineering a naughty prank in 5^th grade, speechless at age six when put on a horse for the first time in Wyoming and the flooded Shoshone River lapped at my stirrups, and rigid when the handsome sailing instructor tried to venture below the belt with 15-year-old me on the dock after a dance.

But visceral, gut-wrenching fear of the kind you see in movies or, alas, read about every day in the news is beyond my ken. As a white Anglo-Saxon (non-practicing) Protestant from a certain background, I have never had to beware of the cops and I haven’t roamed seedy areas at night and alone. I haven’t been raped, beaten up, or accosted, and though my wallet has been pinched more than once, I was never aware of being robbed. I haven’t had to flee a burning home, never felt a serious earthquake, despite living in this heavily seismic zone, or been in any real danger of any kind.

I admit to being afraid of roller coasters and finally decided to master my fright sometime in my 20s (went to Palisades one night and Coney Island the next). Got it out of my system and wondered . . . what was the point? My thrills don’t have their source in an adrenaline rush. Even my long-ago, near fatal car crash inspired no fear in me because I don’t remember a single second of it.

OK, I’ve led a protected life, but you cannot say the same of my husband, who grew up in Athens during the German Occupation. When I asked him about his own experience of fear, he admitted that even when he found out he was on a Communist hit list targeting young Greeks who were anti-Nazi but not Red, he was not afraid. He simply decided, at barely 19, to escape. To hear him tell it, braving the wintry Aegean in a caïque, hiding out in icy coves before reaching refuge in Çesme, in neutral Turkey, was more like an adventure than anything fearful.

Spending time in a British detention camp in Palestine before his brother located him and took him to Alexandria, where he witnessed plans for the ill-fated Greek mutiny, sobered him but did not reduce him to quivering jelly. Nor did a later stint in the navy when, arriving on Limnos to round up stranded Germans, he and the ship he was on were greeted by the rifles of his own countrymen. His brilliant commanding officer negotiated a truce, and Harilaos kept his cool and managed to have a good time, the way young people do, even during the ensuing civil war.

And throughout his life, my surgeon-husband certainly hasn’t been scared of taking a scalpel to a patient’s innards, though he draws the line at cutting up a dead chicken.

But now, as the world as we knew and loved appears to be crumbling, we are beginning to feel if not fear, then certainly dread.

We watch the rise of the Far Right all over Europe responding to the perceived threat of Muslim refugees; we watch our neighbor and would-be sultan Erdogan employ increasingly autocratic methods in his aspirations to recreate the Ottoman Empire; we look on, powerless—despite signing multiple petitions—while Bayer takes over Monsanto; we try not to follow Trump’s outrageous progress as he cultivates hate and false hopes; and we gape in dismay at the blithe platitudes (such as “development will happen no matter what we do”(!)) and utter lies of our own government.

Perhaps what frightens me most is the way we are all, in Europe and in the US, being encouraged to be afraid . . . of the Other, of terrorists, of the future.

The media, pandering to the politicians whether wittingly or not, are for the most part hammering in the message that there is no hope, unless of course we stick with a certain party leader. Those doing the manipulating are fully aware that fear induces paralysis and prevents clear thinking, while stupidity and lack of education—not always the same thing—makes manipulation easier.

Here in Greece we are caught up in a spiral of debt, mistakes, corruption, and mismanagement, compounded by the inability to form a common approach to our problems. Most observers agree that the blame for our seven-year depression lies with the IMF, our lenders, our inadequate (successive) governments, and with the Greeks themselves, who are allergic to paying taxes even when they have money.

But our ever worsening plight is scary, not just because most of us are getting poorer by the month, basic products are more expensive here than in the 28 other EU countries, Greece is at the bottom of 41 countries as concerns development prospects and administration, the schools haven’t enough teachers or heat, the state of the hospitals is enough to make you sick, and the more taxes are imposed the lower the revenues.

No, what is making us lose sleep at night are the statements and actions of our Prime Minister, who in early September engineered an auction designed to reduce our private television channels to four, a clear attempt to control the media and limit criticism. Only two existing channels won the right to continue, the two others were assigned to Syriza sympathizers and, if the others close in three months’ time, another two thousand journalists, technicians, cameramen, and cleaners will join the swelling ranks of the unemployed.

We ask ourselves what government except a fascist one would shut down healthy enterprises that pay taxes and social security as well as salaries?

Tsipras promised that the hundreds of millions of euros raised in the auction would go to support the disadvantaged members of our society, but he was dissembling. The money had already been earmarked for another purpose in the budget. Tellingly, Syriza did give a loan with no strings attached of one million euros to the Communist newspaper, Avgi (“Dawn”).

It makes me queasy to watch the birthplace of democracy slouch (not for the first time, alas) towards impoverished totalitarianism, but this is a feeling more of dread than fear. Meanwhile, I heed the words of our half-German granddaughter: “There is no point to giving in to fear. It makes us numb and obedient. Let’s just focus on what is positive and get on with our lives.”

So, shoving fear back below the horizon, I commit to living in the present and affirming what I find to be good. By constantly and consistently acknowledging the positive and insisting on the best possible scenario, we can actually shift the balance.

I remember the words of a wise Turkish friend: “Let’s assume what’s happening is for the best; we don’t want to empower Erdogan by succumbing to fear.”

And those of Sano Halo, the Pontic Greek woman who lived through more horrors than most of us combined and died at 105: “Life is too short. Why should I waste my life hating when there is still so much beauty in the world? . . . I need only watch a flower tilt its lovely face to drink the rain, or hear my children laughing, to know that life is good. Breath is God’s gift. Life is our reward. The rest is up to us.”

She could have said “fearing” instead of “hating.” We owe it to ourselves to follow her example.

Recipe

One of our many gifts this summer was a bumper crop of almonds. When we bought our land, we planted two almond trees, but they reproduce prolifically and now we have seven. One is the soft shell variety; all the others produce hard, tough nuts to crack. So, in the light of all this abundance—which won’t quite compensate for the lack of olives and oil this year—I think of making this delectable dessert from Kythera.

Almond Tart/Pasta Milo

For the Pastry

½ cup (112 g) butter

2 eggs, separated

2 cups (300 g) flour

Filling A

2¼  cups (250 g) blanched almonds

1 cup (200 g) sugar

½ cup (80 g) semolina

1 egg white

Filling B

2 cups (480 ml) milk

½ cup (100 g) sugar

½ cup (75 g) semolina (cream of wheat)

2 whole eggs plus 1 yolk, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

First, prepare the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour and then adding the egg yolks and sugar. If necessary, add a little water to make a stiffish pastry dough. Cover with cellophane, wrap and place in the fridge while you prepare the fillings.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Mix the ingredients for Filling A together and set aside. Prepare Filling B. Heat the milk and sugar together and then throw in the semolina. Stir well over a low heat until it thickens. Remove from the heat and, when it has cooled a little, stir in the beaten eggs and vanilla extract.

Line a round, shallow baking tin, 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter, with the pastry. Spread Filling A over it. Pour Filling B on top of Filling A. Bake for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 375°F (190°C ) and cook for another 35 minutes until the fillings are set. When cool, decorate the top with a glacé icing or leave unadorned. Serves 10-12.

I discovered this recipe, which appears in Prospero’s Kitchen , in a thin paper leaflet of local recipes published by a women’s group on the Greek island of Kythera in the early 90s.