Wednesday 24 September 2008

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 65th 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).

keratas taverna

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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30 comments:

  1. Good post and an interesting read!
    Thank you for sharing!
    Cheers, Klaus

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  2. You always manage to bring tears in my eyes. Sometimes tears of happiness, sometimes of sadness. You touch my heart. Thank you for being so human.

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  3. What's wrong with us today? I've posted something sad too! Probably it's because of the rain! Your father was the "Americanos", mine the "Athineos".

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  4. Wonderful post. What a great treasure to have the photograph and the story behind it. I was in an immigrant community in the Los Angeles area with lots of Jewish families and families from other nationalities. It was a rich heritage to gain...

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  5. A touching story of friendship indeed:

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. You can write very well and your story is good but a bit sad! That's life, isn't it!?

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  8. A very interesting post... One of the reasons Iblog is for such post...

    Mine's Here

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  9. great post I enjoyed reading it

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  10. Fascinating story - I will be back to read the remainder.
    No the Jawa was sold about two years later. I do wish I had it now.

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  11. I think this is a really heartwarming post in many ways.

    I have nothing so special but I did post a scene I photographed on Canon Pixels right after color slide film came out in 1954.

    Abraham Lincoln
    Canon Pixels

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  12. Well the title caught my eye. But then so did all your links to your other posts. I could read your story and stories all night.

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  13. That was compulsive reading. It is so intereting to note how and why he got the nickname we usually assciate with a particular group of people. Excellent post.

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  14. "Are you left or right?"
    ...Which could easily be mistaken as a question of political preferences especially in Greece, but one which definetly refers to a more practical issue :-D :-D :-D

    Sad for an old calendarist to be missclassified i guess - it's generally hard to leave away from the average.

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  15. A touching post about your Dad's friend. I posted about my Dad today so be sure to come read it. :D

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  16. What a wonderful story! So glad that you learned about it and shared it with us!

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  17. I love the story to go with the picture. I wish my memory was as good as yours. So much detail.

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  18. I love this post! The lives of those you have loved are so beautiful!

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  19. That was a lovely story about your father and his friend.

    Bear((( )))

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  20. I woke up today thinking about how Dimitri the Old Calendarist got his new name. Wo!

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  21. Very interesting and touching story. thanks for shared with us

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  22. Maria, I'll be hoping that visit happens some year soon.

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  23. Touching and so appropriate. Thanks so much for sharing lovely memories.

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  24. You are making piece of art from life...

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  25. what a touching story... poignant

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  26. I love old photos. Very touching

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  27. a fascinating story indeed. and expansive. covering the period of a lifetime.

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  28. What a picture, and an even better story to go with it! It IS interesting how people get labels and how prejudices create those labels. Dimitri apparently was above that.

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  29. This is a very interesting and well written post. Don't know how I got here (from Maine, USA), but glad I did and now I'm going back to read about your father's 65th birthday.

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