The nefos, however, has not only held its position, but it dared to descend three weeks later to street level at such density that over 800 people were hospitalized for respiratory complaints. On October 9, familiar emergency traffic measures were once again put into effect. It’s a pity that Athenians only take their complaints to the hospital or share them with one another, for, if they joined them up collectively and marched them down the streets, governments might be persuaded to take more effective measures.
The nefos and the long continuation of summer heat and drought far into October this year may be the only explanation for some of the bizarre actions, which seized and dominated the month’s headlines, of people who have to live and cope with this atmosphere. Like the sirocco, the nefos may be the cause of psychological eccentricities.
At the end of September the respected journalist and writer Athanassios Diamandopoulos, was found dead in his Kononaki flat with 92 hammer blows on the head. What was even more surprising is that suspicion for the deed fell on the equally respected writer, Thanassis Nasiotsik, President of the Greek Writers Association. Although he was released after questioning, full clearance depended on the testimony of a taxi driver whose identity could not be’ established.
With the literary world reeling under this shock, violence then struck the world of the theater. One of the pleasanter ways for Athenians to release inner tensions at the beginning of the season is to go to the newly-opened political revues and laugh it all off in good, innocent, below-the-belt hitting fun. Unfortunately, one run was interrupted when the well-known comic actor Yiannis Ghionakis shot his lady friend in the armpit, and he was placed in Korydallos Prison pending trial.
Meanwhile, Parliament opened on October 1. Colorful verbal violence is common in early sessions when deputies are in fit and fighting form after the summer recess. But this year it was accompanied by acrimoniousness. The Prime Minister ignored the entrance of Mr Mitsotakis, who replaced Mr Averof as the new opposition leader, and exchanges of personal hostility continued until the two were persuaded to shake hands at the airport on the occasion of the President’s departure for an offical visit to Spain on October 8. But when the cat’s away, the mice will play, and Mr Mitsotakis has since requested the courts to strip the Prime Minister of parliamentary immunity for labelling him la traitor’.
Then, on October 15, a journalist who moves in circles close to Minister with [sic] the Prime Minister, Akis Tsohatzopoulos, accused the Minister of National Economy Yerassimos Arsenis of being a Mason. Charges of Freemasonry are rather vague threats in Greece, but any idea that Freemasonry is the veiled cause for the drachma’s declining from 100 to 130 to the dollar in the last six months unduly stretches the fiscal imagination.
Perhaps the most bizarre and possibly nefos-oriented episode last month was a series of exchanges between the Prime Minister and his former Under Minister of Foreign Affairs, Assimakis Fotilas. Despite government spokesman Dimitris Maroudas’ joyous announcement at the opening of Parliament that it was the first time in half a century that a democratic government had entered its fourth year of power (grumble, grumble on the Right), Mr. Fotilas accused PASOK of undemocratic procedures. The Prime Minister was quick to retort that his former minister should consult a psychiatrist. Fotilas replied the shoe was on the other foot, and that the Prime Minister had been consulting specialists both here and abroad for some years.
The government did not bother to deny officially these allegations, dismissing the former minister’s words as the ravings of the Right. And, as if to brush aside such accusations out-of-hand, the Prime Minister displayed his usual vigor. Recounting at great length his accomplishments on the third anniversary of his coming to power, the Prime Minister then wined and dined his friends at a nightclub until three o’clook the following morning. And that very same morning, October 18, he flew off for new rendezvous with history in Sweden and Poland. Given his frequent and recent trips, such as to East Germany and Libya, some observers credit the Prime Minister’s admirable vitality to his spending so little time under the baneful influence^ of the nefos.
