ABC Wednesday: J for 'the Jew'

The last time I ever dined at Mylos taverna in Platanias (the modern-age boogie capital of summertime Hania) was at my father’s 65^th birthday. His whole family was there: his two daughters, their children, quite a few holidaying relatives from abroad – and his wife. She was a malevolent peasant woman who had divorced her husband and left her 10-year old daughter in the care of her two older daughters so that she could marry the 'rich Americano', as my father was known, because he had recently come from overseas (which is all called ‘America’) and anyone who had lived 30 years of their life abroad was considered rich (as all ‘Americanos’ are believed to be).

Here's my Dad - left - as a teenager at the said taverna, with the restaurant owner Kavros in the middle and one of his best friends, Dimitri, on the right, who also lived in Platanias. When my father came back to Hania after a 30-year absence, he ran across Dimitri quite by chance in Hania. They immediately recognised each other, and Dimitri told him that he had a photo of my father when he was a teenager. Dad told him he'd like to see it one day, and Dimitri patted the breast pocket of his jacket: "I can give it to you now," he said to my father, and took the photograph out of his pocket.

Dimitri was a tailor. When he measured a man for a suit, he always asked him: "Are you left or right?" Everyone called him 'the Jew'. At first I thought he might have been Jewish; either that, or he charged high prices for the suits he made, or some other trait that categorised Dimitri into the limited knowledge that his fellow villagers had about the Jewish people. But that wasn't the case at all; he was an Old Calendarist, meaning he celebrated Christmas on the 6th of January and not the 25th of December, like the Russians, followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was a Christian, but because his religion deviated slightly from the Christian Greek Orthodox norm in his home environment, he was given the label 'Jew', without even being one, judged by his difference, which is of course how most prejudices are born.

Dimitri visited my father when he was very ill and in hospital. He was probably at his funeral, and the memorial services too, so I must have shaken his hand at some point, but I didn't know him at the time to have thanked him for his loyal friendship, a rare thing in our times. Sadly, I found out that Dimitri died only a few months ago. I never got the chance to meet him, but at least I got the story behind the photograph, and managed to write it.

If you want to read what happened at my father's 65th birthday, click here.

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