Letter From Athens: The Morning After

“Here on Andros, it has been much easier to focus on a less troubled Greece . . . .  Every day, there is at least one almost miracle to lift the spirits.”—Diana Farr Louis

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS & ANDROS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—10/26/2015—On the day after our third trip to the polls in eight months, Greeks woke up to horrendous weather: thunderstorms, hail, floods, fog so dense it paralyzed ferries, gale-force winds, fallen trees, a 70-car pile-up on the island of Skopelos, and even a twister that made Lakonia look like Dorothy’s Kansas.

Three weeks later, the weather is still unsettled, with rain pelting places like Spetses, for example, that we used to think of as dry; protected by an oversize umbrella. The cruel winds that normally blast the Cyclades in August picked the end of September to shake the apples and olives off our trees, and little sheep and horses (provatákia and alogákia, Greek euphemism for “white caps”) galloped over the sea at a time when we are usually blessed with calm, glittery surfaces. Although we still had some of those, the downpours and floods kept occurring with unpredictable regularity.

It is as though the weather were mirroring our own turbulence or, as some have said, the Almighty were punishing Greece for our iniquities, a kind of heavenly Schauble.

The truth is that we’re in a worse mess than ever. The capital controls on Greek banks have meant that people with money still in them use credit cards instead of cash to buy what they need or crave, but the already fragile economy has been the real victim. There is no sign of the controls being lifted, either.

Even more shops have closed, with empty shop windows appearing even in wealthy Athenian suburbs such as Kifissia. Companies use the controls as an excuse not to pay employees, the number of start-ups dropped this summer by 47 percent over last year, and Tsipras’s decision to call elections to put down an insurrection of the so-called Leftist Platform in his own party fractured our only robust industry, tourism. September is usually a good month for the islands, and August did make up for July, but this year they emptied out in the first week, leaving shopkeepers and taverna owners in despair.

Luckily, our silly season of party rallies, political speechifying, finger-pointing ads, and what are misleadingly called debates lasted but three weeks. The first one lined up seven major candidates—we were handed a sheaf of 22 ballots (roughly half of January’s bundle) at the polling place—but excluded the leader of our third largest, the Nazi Golden Dawn party. This led some of us to question our democratic process, but for many it was a non-event that did not attract nearly as many viewers as the Euro basketball match played that same evening.

The debate was actually just a series of short (1 ½ minute) monologues with no significant interchanges. The second debate, between Tsipras and Meimarakis, the new New Democracy leader, was also disappointingly flat since sparring was not allowed, and the two simply addressed the panel of TV presenters rather than each other.

Tsipras looked tired and less than charismatic but, once again, all the polls were wrong and his party, Syriza, beat New Democracy by seven percentage points, 35 to 28. Naturally, he hailed this as a landslide, but a closer look at the figures reveals that some 45 percent of voters didn’t even bother to vote. Even allowing for the “dead souls” still on the lists, this was hardly cause for celebration.

We are suffering both from voter fatigue and the perception that politicians will go on playing their games as usual no matter who wins. As one friend who didn’t bother to vote said, “Syriza love the poor so much they want to make more of them.”

So, where are we now?

Much worse off than last January, and even than before the referendum. Ironically, the majority who voted No to austerity in July are now about to face much more of it, while cartoonists are depicting Tsipras as a Pinocchio whose nose has become a proboscis with lies dangling off it, and pundits such as former PASOK stalwart Thodoros Pangalos predict that his new government, consisting of many of the same people as the last one with some notable exceptions (Varoufakis, for one), will not last till Christmas.

Almost everyone we talk to fears the future. We need a dozen Herculeses to clean up our rotten systems, inherited but also exacerbated by Syriza’s eight months of non-government. Mucking out the Augean Stables was for boy scouts. Some 150 schools haven’t opened for lack of teachers, 250,000 cars have not undergone the annual inspections, a deluge of new taxes is being invented to shrink our incomes further, while sadder and harder to fix than any of our other chronic problems is the refugee situation.

No country could cope and it’s obvious that no country with more space and resources wants to. Thousands of men, women, and children are actually camping out in downtown Athens, in Viktoria Square not far from Omonia, as well as in city parks. They are periodically herded to some disused Olympic facility but more fill their places.

But I have only seen horrifying images on TV and don’t want to imagine what it must be like to live there, amidst the smells, crowds, and desperation. And Greeks are still behaving more generously than any other EU country towards these unfortunate “guests.”

Here on Andros, where we’ve been, apart from two trips to Athens to vote for the losers, it has been much easier to focus on a less troubled Greece. In September the sea starts to sparkle with the changing light as if each ripple were trimmed with tinsel. The water is at its warmest, and each swim is a full-body caress. Sometimes, we are alone on the beach, apart from an odd couple: two snow-white barnyard geese who strut back and forth and nibble our towels hopefully.

Every day, there is at least one almost miracle to lift the spirits. It could be the unexpected flight of a hoopoe, that most attractive of birds, with its brown, black, and white crest, long beak, and wings that spin like a pinwheel; the hillsides that have suddenly metamorphosed from dusty grey-beige thorn bush into billows of pink heather; the reddening pomegranates and yellowing quinces that are taking over from the figs; and the blackening olives, mostly without the tiny punctures that indicate the presence of the destructive dakos, or olive fly, that lays its eggs in them. It could even be something as ludicrous as watching the grass grow. But when you’ve been looking at the same brown expanse for three months, a green blush can seem like a precious gift.

With only a few days left before we return to flat life in the Big Olive, we are savoring every moment here. Even the showers that inconvenience our laundry plans. And especially the ability to just go outside, onto the terrace, into what we can’t really call the garden, without putting on proper clothes or shoes. Physical work like pruning the leggy rosemary and sawing wood for the fireplace can be as distracting as a good book. Like W. Bush, my husband, “Joy of the People,” has been clearing his mind by clearing brush, rescuing two tall olive trees we only just noticed two years ago from a suffocating wild pear thicket, a project that has taken two months.

And lest you think we have become anchorites, we have also welcomed visits from dear friends, who have joined in the play outside and steered the conversation away from politics and pensions, especially when they were not fellow, anxiety-ridden Athenians.

As one newscaster said, we’d better get used to living with insecurity the way we are used to living with earthquakes. It’s not so hard here in the outback, where our pared-down lifestyle comes naturally. But what will we face back in the asphalt jungle?

We’ll just have to try even harder to find those positive moments that can pierce the gloom.

On our return, one presented itself the very next day. A cluster of organizations (WWF, Boroume, Troo Food Liberation, and the British Council, among others) working to end food waste, together with the Municipality, held an event near the Central Market called “Feeding the 5000.” They cut up a ton of fruit and vegetables too “ugly” to be sold, and managed to hand out 4,000 portions of briam (think ratatouille) and 1,500 of fruit salad before the heavens opened up and drowned the party. The copious leftovers, however, were not trashed but distributed among the refugees and the homeless.

Even those thunderclouds had a silver lining.

Recipe

Yogurt Cake/Yiaourtópitta

I made this Cretan version of an American cheesecake the other day for friends. It has a golden crust and a moist center and, although delicious on its own, I topped it with a colorful sauce made from July’s plums, which had been waiting in the freezer for just such an occasion. Any other summer fruit would do as well.

200 grams (1 cup) or so rusk or biscuit crumbs*

300 grams (1 ½ cups) sugar (or less)

225 grams (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened

4 eggs, separated

420 grams (3 cups) flour

400 grams (14 oz) strained Greek yogurt

grated rind of 1 lemon or more

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1 teaspoon baking powder dissolved in 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Butter a baking pan 24 cm (9.5 inches) in diameter and 4 to 5 cm (about 2 inches) deep and line it with the finely ground crumbs of rusks or biscuits of your choice. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

Beat the sugar and butter together until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time. Stir in the flour and the yogurt alternately, a half a cup or so at a time until all the ingredients are completely amalgamated.

Whip the egg whites until they form peaks and fold them into the batter. Sprinkle in the ginger and stir in the baking powder/lemon juice. Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until the top is the color you like. Let the cake cool and invert onto a serving dish, if you feel like it. Serve the sauce separately.

Makes 10-12 portions at least. Keep refrigerated if you don’t eat it at once.

* This time I used oatmeal cookies. Originally published in my Feasting and Fasting in Crete.

Note: The first image above, by AP Photographer Yorgos Karahalis, derives from http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2015/09/20/Greece-is-making-us-look-bad/stories/201509160025; the photos of Andros were taken by Diana Farr Louis; and the image of the Greek Yogurt Cake derives from http://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/greek-yogurt-cake-syrup-recipe-yiaourtopita/.