Endemic discord

The ancient Macedonians, a branch of the Dorians that settled in the northern periphery of ancient Greece, were known as a hardened people. It's no coincidence therefore that their most famous king conquered more or less half of the then known world. All around the Middle East there are still traces of it to be found. There even seem to be a few villages somewhere in the wilds of Pakistan where it is said a kind of Greek is spoken. Alexander achieved much indeed, but he died too young out in Babylon to consolidate his empire and without taking care of his succession. He wasn't that great after all. As soon as he died his generals began fighting each other over Alexander's legacy as a result of which the empire split up. In recent history some people, even some historians, doubted whether the Macedonians were Greek, but the violent quarrel amongst Alexander's generals is typical for the endemic discord which characterises the Greeks from ancient times until today.

Part of the present day Greeks, broken in spirit by sky-rising unemployment, one pay-cut after the other and a wave of new taxes introduced by a panicking government, seems to have resigned itself to waiting until the economy will have collapsed completely or until the drachma will be reintroduced with everything it may bring: famine, civil war, even more mass emigration or Utopia. Another part frantically supports the trade unions which seem to think that strikes are the only adequate answer to the collapse of Greece's economy. It's like a doctor prescribing continuous bleedings to cure a patient suffering from anaemia. Anyone who seriously looks at the situation in Greece must conclude that the medicine which is being forced on the country (austerity, austerity and again and again austerity) is terrifyingly counterproductive, destroying the social fabric of society.

There is no sign however of the Greek people uniting to face the problems caused by successive Pasok and Nea Democratia governments and by the harsh and stupid medicine sprung from the poisonous belief in neoliberalism prescribed by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF. The Greeks are as deeply divided as ever. You would expect them to have set up a government of national unity to head off disaster as the British did at the outbreak of the Second World War. Instead they remain bickering amongst themselves. There's always hope of a change for the better, for less shouting and more listening in parliament, but whether the elections of January 26 are going to bring about that change is rather a rhetoric question I fear.

Foto: Kees Klok

Lost for words

Returning to Holland at the end of the summer we would find the garden that we left well attended at the end of June overgrown, harnessing itself for the inevitable autumn. 

We gradually began putting it a bit into shape again, knowing it would all be in vain. The autumn covered it with fallen leaves, sometimes winter would bring a blanket of snow after which most of it turned into mud for weeks. We looked for the spring and the magic of new life. 

Shortly after the picture was taken you fell terminally ill. Three months later I stood at your grave, looking at the mountains in the distance. It was a sharp day in Thessaloniki. A man appeared and silently began shifting earth into the grave, while I turned away, lost for words.

Photo: Kees Klok