Dear George,
Thank you very much for your letter expressing concern about me and the family on account of the earthquakes.
I am glad to say we are safe and sound although we are all rather stiff and irritable from sleeping in the car these last two weeks and I have a large dent on my forehead from sleeping with my head on the steering wheel.
The reason we had to sleep in the car is that we live on the top floor of an eight-story building which swayed like a samba dancer when the first quake struck on the fateful night of February 24th. The lights went out and Martha, who had been preparing for bed, screamed “earthquake!” and made a beeline for the front door. “Come on,” she cried, “let’s get out of here!”
I turned on the flashlight I always keep on my bedside table for emergencies and said to her, calmly: “The shaking has stopped. You can’t go out in the street in hair-curlers and your nightgown. You’ll be the laughingstock of the neighborhood.”
She said: “All right, let ‘s get dressed quickly and get out of here,” her vanity overcoming her immediate fear.
While she was dressing, I went out on the verandah and saw that the lights had not gone out everywhere and that everything seemed calm in the city, with the exception of a few knots of people talking excitedly in the street below.
I decided the worst was over and I managed to persuade Martha to stay in the apartment and go back to bed. When the second strong quake struck at 4:40 a.m. and the building once more took up its Latin American rhythm, I beat Martha to the front door, stopping only to grab the car keys and a couple of blankets.
Our car was parked in a side-street nearby but I decided it would be safer to park it in an open space. I drove to the first square I could find and was surprised to see that it was already occupied by hundreds of people who had had the same idea.
The car has reclining seats and we were able to get some rest before daylight.
Next day, we heard all the news about the strength of the quakes, the epicenter and the damage that had been caused, mainly in the Corinth area. Martha decided she would rather sleep in the car again so we prepared to make ourselves more comfortable with extra blankets, pillows and a couple of thermos flasks for early-morning coffee. Martha was rather worried by the fact that she had been unable to get through on the phone to her brother Nico, who lived in Corinth, but her anxiety was dispelled by mid-afternoon, when Nico and his wife turned up on our doorstep with their baby and Nico’s mother-in-law, all of them the picture of health.
After the excitement of the happy reunion had died down we were appalled to hear that Nico and his family had no intention of returning to Corinth and had decided to stay with us, considering Athens a safer proposition.
“The apartment is all yours,” I said, grandly. “Martha and I will be sleeping in the car.”
But my generous offer did not seem to have much appeal for Nico and his family.
They drew aside and whispered together for a few minutes. Then Nico turned to me and said : “We’d rather sleep in the car with you, if you don’t mind.”
“But there’s no – ” I began, only to be interrupted by Martha, who said, firmly: “Don’t argue. This is an emergency. We must make do as best we can.”
So that night we made do by making the mother-in-law comfortable in the trunk. She is a small woman and, by assuming the foetal position, managed to fit in. Her bottom is rather large, however, so I could not close the lid of the trunk.
This was just as well, because the poor woman has a weak bladder and had to pop up to the bathroom in the apartment several times during the night. Nico and his wife occupied the back seat and made the baby comfortable on the shelf under the rear window.
Martha and I sat in the front seats which I reclined as far as I could without causing irreparable damage to the couple behind. I tried to sleep by lying back, with my head against the head-rest, but every time Nico turned I felt a bony knee grinding against my second and third lumbar vertebrae. So I leaned forward, and slept with my head on the steering wheel.
The baby had to be fed twice during the night and every time the mother-in-law popped out of the trunk to answer a call of nature, we were all woken up so I doubt whether any of us was able to snatch more than a couple of hours’ sleep on the first night. On the second night, however, we were all so exhausted that we slept right through the baby’s feedings and the mother-in-law’s excursions.
The only trouble with that was that in the morning, the four of us had to be helped out of the car by friendly neighbors and were forced to walk with a slow-motion Groucho Marx lope for the better part of the day.
After two weeks of this and when the two strong after-shocks of March 4th and 5th had come and gone, I decided I had had enough of sleeping in the car. The dent in my forehead was becoming a permanent feature of my not unhandsome physiognomy and I suspected the friendly neighbors were beginning to get a little tired 1 of easing me out of the car every morning.
I was still too scared to sleep in the apartment but I reasoned to myself that if a strong quake did bring the building down, the safest place to be would be on the roof, which was a flat, solid slab. of concrete. So I bought a surplus army pup tent and I have been camping on the roof ever since, only a short flight of stairs from the amenities of our apartment.
The rest of the family said I was crazy and refused to follow my example, but my forehead is now slowly taking on its normal contours and I hope, in a few days’ time, to be able to assume a fully erect posture.
I don’t know how long this will go on, dear George, but I read in the Encyclopedia Britannica that aftershocks can last for anything from one month to fifteen years after the first quake, so if you are planning to visit us this summer, bring a tent with you, or a fairly large car.
Love from us all,
Sotiris
