Not for a minute, for a split-second, forgetting that justice on the Greek side is total – and more so; that Macedonia is Greek, and Greek only, until the Second Coming – and then some, yet time-out must sometimes be called just to draw breath.
Remember that even the Spartans at Thermopylae took time out to comb their hair.
Has anyone noticed, by the way, that Athens is running out of water? That stagflation is rampant? That the nefos is upon us as never before? The problems may not be original, but Greeks, when they face them, do so in imaginative and individual ways, Why not talk about them for a change?
For example: One of the ways to get cash-flow moving again is to rob banks and spread the spoils around. Thieves in this country are big spenders like everyone else.
Or take the heist on Ergobank a few weeks ago: beautiful, clever, innovative, romantic, profitable, even with a classical twist. Ergobank is an energetic private concern with a fine reputation in financial circles. It has also acquired neoclassical houses and handsomely restored them as bank-branches, there-by making Athens a prettier place to live in.
One of the first of these stands in Kallirhois Street. It takes its name from the ancient Callirhoe Spring just up the road and the bank stands exactly on the idyllic spot where Socrates and Phaedrus discussed the charms of philosophy under a plane tree growing on the banks of Ilisussone fine afternoon ages ago.
The plane tree is long since gone, but the river, though out of sight, still lies under the asphalt, a fact remembered only by the Water Board, classicists – and robbers. In brief, they dug down from the other side of the street, crossed the riverbed, penetrated an ancient retaining wall, pierced another, inner wall, and, Ιο, there they were among the safety deposit boxes.
Three hundred of them were pilfered containing what value no one knows as none of the deposits were insured by the bank. Ergo, Ergobank only lost a few hundred tin recepticles. Estimates have been made at over a billion dollars. Put that into a slow money market and you’ve got a good thing going. Bank guards admitted that security sirens kept going off, but as the reason could not be traced, it was thought due to an electrical fault. Moral: it’s still profitable to read Plato.
Example two: how to wake up the public to ecological murder? Man’s assault on Nature has become a growing global concern. Greed and arrogance are the usual human traits blamed, but what happened here last month is best explained as destruction-for-the-fun-of-it. The lakes of Langada and Volvis near Thessaloniki are rare preserves for wildfowl particularly during migration season.
The slaughter of 400 swans by poachers last month on these lakes caused an unheard-of public outcry. Hunters have become a greater menace than ever lately, and now with the EC border controls down, bird sanctuaries in Macedonia and Thrace have come under serious threat.
To dramatize the massacre of wild-fowl, the Center for the Treatment of Wild Animals and Birds, recipient of a prize presented by the Academy of Athens a month earlier, staged a silent demonstration in Syntagma where members laid the bodies of slaughtered swans on the pavement in front of parliament. Macedonia is for swans, too.
A third example shows how political obsession may lead to a decline in the birth-rate. So preoccupied has Thessaloniki been with protecting its White Tower from being stolen by Skopje that it quite lost its sense of humor last month. In a move unworthy of the land which hellenized the civilized world, the Public Prosecutor banned from its bookstores at Christmas, American pop-star Madonna’s coffeetable extravaganza Sex. Then Antonios Nikolaides made a further gaffa saying buyers would be prosecuted because “it carries pornographic photos of Madonna with black men.” (Not Skopjians, luckily.)
“Double Racism!” headlined Eleftherotypia, first for banning the book, second for making the color reference to men only. To the rescue of the city’s good name came George Piperopoulos, Professor of law at the Aristotelian University, appointed to examine the prosecutor’s decision, and the offending material.
“It is kitch,” he said. “It has nothing to do with literature, not even with pornography. Far better pornographic magazines are available on the open market with far better photographs demonstrating the art of sex and of love. Madonna fails on both counts. The writing is on the level of an eighth-grader.”
The writing is also on the wall. The government has released statistics that the birthrate is falling fast and the population of Hellas will dwindle by half a million in the next quarter of century unless something’s done about it, while Turks (mark!) without a Skopje problem are proliferating.
Where’s all that kefi, that love of life for which Greeks were once famed? All those beaches and not a dancing Zorba to be seen. Is there even no joy left in procreation?
Esteemed Mr President, we know your name is not Karamanlov, nor your predecessor Alexandrov the Great, as Skopje makes out. Yes, dear Mr Martis, Kuwait is Greek because Alexandrian coins and inscriptions have been found there. Of course, Mr Samaras, the star of Vergina twinkles as brightly over your head as it once did over your role-model, Pavlos Melas. But, please, gentlemen, can’t you give us just one day off?
