slenderbeak: The Season Ending

slenderbeak: The Season Ending: I visit someone in poor health. I tread on almond shells dropping from the trees as I walk up into the heart of the village. Plastic ba...

The Season Ending

I visit someone in poor health. I tread on almond shells dropping from the trees as I walk up into the heart of the village. Plastic bags tied to gateposts wait for the baker to drop in the daily bread. Brittle leaves from the abandoned vines scratch along the road. The sun beats down on the ripening pomegranates.

There is a musty smell coming from the open doorway of a storehouse that nurtures stone jars and an old leather harness from a donkey long since departed. Soapy clean clothes billow in the breeze. The tiny yellow shuttered house on the corner surrounded like a fortress by flower pots of all sizes, roses, jasmine, coral, petunias, geraniums. I pass a garden with a well, its bucket dancing on a rope pulley.

Prickly pears are thudding onto the parched plot behind my house. 

Today we have a fresh westerly wind chasing the clouds, causing a swell in the bay, no ferry today but the boats ride high.

According to Greek myth the pomegranate symbolizes the fruit of the dead and the juice springs from the blood of Adonis. They are supposed to bring prosperity, abundance and luck to all.

Persephone, goddess of the underworld, was kidnapped by Hades and taken to live in the underworld as his wife. Her mother, Demeter, goddess of harvest, went into mourning for her lost daughter and so all things green stopped growing. Zeus, biggest of all gods, couldn’t allow the earth to die so he commanded Hades to return Persephone. The fates ruled that anyone who ate or drank in the underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone had no food but Hades offered her a pomegranate and she ate six seeds (the number varies according to which text you read). From then on she had to spend six months a year in the underworld. During these six months Demeter mourns and no longer gives fertility to the earth

This was the ancient Greek explanation for the seasons and I'm leaving some pomegranate seeds on my doorstep tonight just in case Adonis appears.

Review of The Cleaner of Kastoria

 This novel encapsulates the Greek political scene over the past seventy years through the engaging character and lifestyle of Dina, the Cleaner of Kastoria. She  is a poor and embittered 50 year old Greek woman, whose considerable potential could not flower both as a result of the poverty of her village upbringing  and because she fought for the Democratic Army in the Greek Civil War of 1947.

Dina spends her life battling to make a living as a cleaner in a rich man's mansion. She then returns home at night to further domestic tasks and to tend her sick daughter and a beloved little granddaughter. Rena's lungs are affected by her unhealthy working conditions in a factory. She remembers her time in the woman's brigade as a period when she was respected, although h she was often half starved, exhausted and in danger.  There Greek patriarchal attitudes were replaced by equal treatment and admiration for her courage and that of her fellow women fighters there she enjoyed a close camaraderie and some fun with her fellow women fighters.

This is an extremely well- researched novel giving graphic insight into the horrors the fighters endured during that brutal civil war as well as  the  repression suffered by the Greek people under the Colonels  in the seventies and the resultant inequality . The author manages to evoke the authentic atmosphere and beauty of the Greek landscape and to celebrate the joyous culture as well as the struggle of ordinary people just to survive. Dina despite her travails can often be moved by the beauty of the lake or the mountains. The narrative flows and Dina's character, particularly, is vividly evoked as she struggles between her commitment to her ideology and human compassion, between the needs of her family  and her passion for  her left wing past. The novel is well constructed each chapter headed by apposite historical quotes and it is an engaging read.

Val Simanowitz.

Review of The Cleaner of Kastoria by Edward Wilson (Author of the Midnight Swimmer, The Envoy, The Whitehall Mandarin)

Jacqueline Paizis has written an informative and powerful novel about Greece's struggle for democracy during the country's Civil War. As has happened more recently, democracy in Greece was sacrificed for Western political and economic interests. Jacqueline tells the truth about Greece. I think the Cleaner of Kastoria is a wonderful book.

Review of my first novel The Cleaner of Kastoria

    

By Anastasios Vamvakas

05-May-2016

A compelling account of the life of a former Greek Civil War guerilla fighter. Through flashbacks and the heroine's own reminiscences, the writer sheds light on a troubled era of Greek history which still remains largely uninterpreted and has left a lasting legacy of bitterness between segments of the Greek population. The motives, hopes and subsequent frustration of the Greek Democratic National Army fighters are laid bare in the heroine's simple, everyday yet powerful language, along with a host of issues which are totally relevant to this day, such as women's and workers' rights, as well as the rise of racism and the class divide in Greek society. Drawing on interviews she conducted with real Greek women who had fought in the Civil War, Jacqueline Paizis has managed to create a poignant story with a distinct, original Greek flavour throughout. I heartily recommend it!

slenderbeak: The Good Shepherd and the Bad Shepherd - A Little ...

slenderbeak: The Good Shepherd and the Bad Shepherd - A Little ...: On a fine, balmy late September evening I was sitting on the veranda with two friends when a shepherd appeared silently at the garden railin...

The Good Shepherd and the Bad Shepherd - A Little Tale from Kefalonia

On a fine, balmy late September evening I was sitting on the veranda with two friends when a shepherd appeared silently at the garden railings. His flock were milling around under the big olive tree across the road, some straying onto the road in different directions. He didn't seem to care about gathering them in. He asked for coffee twice. We said no twice but offered water. He grudgingly accepted. After drinking the water he handed the glass back through the railings without saying thank-you and turned. What I heard come out of his mouth I can only describe as a gurgling sound like coffee percolating from his lips - a private language spoken only between shepherd and sheep. He swiped his staff down on one of his flock and they started crowding away down the hill.

On the day of the big storm here I had seen the same shepherd herding his sheep up the hill outside my house. The road was a running river. I heard their little clinking bells and looking out my window, saw them trotting ankle deep in the water. I jumped in surprise when I noticed the shepherd standing still under a large umbrella on the opposite side of the road. I had never associated shepherds with having things like umbrellas. It unnerved me because his gaze was so focussed on my house

When I told Vangelis about him he explained that there were two shepherds in our village, one good, (καλος) and one bad (κακος). The bad one is the one I have described; the good one is Albanian. This good shepherd has a very old car without number plates. He is very poor and lives with his family in one of the semi-derelict buildings that were built many years ago to house the school teachers in a nearby village. He never bothers anyone or asks for anything. He just looks after his sheep and his family, in that order.

To Vangelis this is all black and white but for me? It has haunted me. Our village is populated with Siemens cookers and Samsung televisions, Fiat cars and wifi but we only have two types of shepherd.