(Chapter 4)
Author's Note
The text that follows is based on true accounts and memories, as experienced by a girl who grew up in a time full of contradictions. It expresses no political position, but captures the personal experience of a child who watched the world around her without fully understanding it.
My intention is to bring out the human dimension behind great events, and to illuminate one corner of women's experience in an era when the voices of girls and women were so often swallowed up by the demands of family, society, and history.
I hope the reader will recognize how grand ideological conflicts always intersect with small, daily battles for freedom, education, and dignity — the ones that quietly, in the end, shape civilization and History itself.
Sevasti knew that since her father wouldn't let her continue at school, she would have to find help somewhere else. Cousin Andreas, who taught literature at an all-boys high school nearby, understood when she came to tell him about the beating, and said: "Leave it with me."
The next day, Andreas stopped by Giorgos's shop. "Uncle, why won't you let Sevasti go to school?" Giorgos was angry, but his anger was difficult to let loose here. This was a conversation between men, and Andreas was a teacher. "That's enough, Andreas. You know she wants the moon right now, but in a few years she'll thank me for teaching her a skill that earns money. These days it matters that women contribute their share to the household finances. She needs some kind of work — not too much, though, because she'll have children."
"She can earn money even if she goes to high school. She can train in something and earn from that."
"My son will go on to study. I have three children. I can't send all of them. My son will have to make his way in the world, so he's the one who needs an education."
"Which son? The one who's two years old? You don't even know if he'll be able to study. It's Sevasti who has the gift. She's first in her class — all her teachers are impressed. If she goes to high school, it'll be nothing for her. As for your other girl, Eleni — she doesn't like studying. She didn't pass to sixth grade and left school because she wanted to become a seamstress. Don't compare them. It's easier to comply when someone tells you to do the thing you actually want to do."
"Sevasti needs to change her mind. Eleni is doing well as a seamstress, and as sisters they should help each other by doing the same thing. In time she'll come to enjoy the craft, just as she now enjoys school."
"Uncle, I respect your view, and this is your family. But I know Sevasti, and it breaks my heart to see what she could do and isn't being allowed to do. She can learn the seamstress's trade at any point — a few years' delay won't matter. But if you don't let her go to school, I'll take Sevasti into my home and teach her myself."
Andreas couldn't enroll Sevasti in his school, since he taught at a boys' high school — his plan was to tutor her privately. Giorgos saw that Andreas meant it, and that if Sevasti wanted to leave home and go live with him, that was exactly what would happen. He knew he couldn't keep an eye on her there, and he knew the whisper it would send through the wider family.
The silence in the house was deafening. Sevasti had put herself above the family. Were six years of high school worth the shame it would bring and the financial strain it would cause? Books were expensive, school uniforms were an added cost, and the family would see no income from Sevasti. When Giorgos finally told her she would be registered for the high school entrance exams, Sevasti couldn't contain herself: "Thank you, thank you, Father! And thank God!" The rest of the family wasn't entirely sure what God had to do with the whole ordeal. Things between them would not be easy again.
Sevasti paid the registration fee, but she would only buy books if she sat the exam and was accepted. She hadn't prepared for it specifically, though Andreas had told her a few things about what to expect. He also told her what he'd said to her father, and Sevasti was grateful that he had fought for her. She never could have managed it alone, or on the strength of a seamstress's opinion. It had taken a philologist to open the door.
Sevasti sat the exam in September and placed directly into second-year high school — as if she had never lost a year in elementary school. Her score was eighteen and a half out of twenty, and from the very first year she was top of her class. A tremendous achievement. For some years after that, Andreas was able to help her with questions about her subjects. Sevasti loved him dearly, enjoyed her visits to his home, and went often to thank him. But soon enough, her protector cousin left suddenly to return to the island, and Sevasti carried on at school entirely on her own.
Sevasti was sociable and well-liked, with many friends, and she thrived in school life — which meant she gradually drifted from her family, who were all absorbed in work and business. She believed that if her family didn't understand this part of her, God did. Who knows what else she might have achieved, had the high school not been cut short so abruptly when war broke out in Greece.
Sevasti's earliest memories were of school, naturally. It was from that point that she began to feel the fact of her own existence — when she left home for first grade. In those days children didn't start school until they turned seven. They learned the Greek language at home and went to school to learn how to write it and to study the rules of grammar. Before school, she had only a few dim memories, since she hadn't yet felt herself to be separate from her family — her first experience of that came with her first day of school.
Elementary school lasted six years, as did high school. During the Occupation the laws had changed and high school ran for eight years, not six. If a child was going on to high school, they left elementary school at the end of fourth grade and went straight into first-year high school, to avoid wasting time on elementary-level subjects and to arrive fully prepared. Sevasti wasn't among the lucky ones who transferred early; she sat through all six years of elementary school before she managed to persuade her father.
In elementary school, Sevasti's experience of education was colored heavily by personal connections and favoritism. The same teacher instructed children from first through fourth grade, and preferential treatment based on acquaintances or family ties was common. Many parents worked their connections to secure better treatment for their children. Sevasti had no one to advocate for her or ask after her progress. This changed when she reached high school, where teachers were more numerous and specialized, and where recognition was based on merit — something that gave her both satisfaction and a sense of vindication.
Sevasti's mother, Maria, was illiterate and felt ashamed whenever she had to visit the school. She usually went only when Sevasti pleaded. When a teacher praised Sevasti, Maria felt uncomfortable — as if she were the one being scolded — and would lower her head. Her father, though he could read and write, worked and couldn't come.
Maria was an island woman, introverted by nature, and the move to Athens had made her more so. She gave herself over entirely to raising her children, with no friends and no social life. Any neighbor who had come from her part of the world was living the same quiet isolation. And yet Maria was an exceptional homemaker, devoted to the care of the house and the children. All of them — both parents, three children, and the uncle — lived in a one-room house with a kitchen. Maria managed to keep the space clean and orderly despite everything.
Sleep was a nightly negotiation. There was a double bed where the parents slept, and two singles: one for the uncle, and one that was the subject of ongoing dispute between the two girls. It was settled that the younger one would sleep in the bed, while Sevasti, as the older, had to give up her place. And so every evening Maria would make up the floor mattress for Sevasti and her little brother.
Maria set great store by cleanliness — as people say, cleanliness is half of dignity. Many people, even those who couldn't afford fine clothes, made sure they always appeared clean and presentable. Maria would make pretty dresses for each of her daughters and liked to put large bows in their hair. Once a week there was laundry day. Even if the children had changed clothes the day before and their things were still clean, they had to change again on laundry day, because the laundry needed to be done.
When Sevasti was in fourth grade, a circular arrived at the school: all children were to be enrolled in the EON, the youth organization of the dictator Metaxas. In theory parental consent was required, but since this was a dictatorship, refusal wasn't really on the table. Sevasti's father was a democrat and bristled when he saw the document, but there was nothing he could do. In the end he signed, and both his daughters were enrolled in the youth wing of the dictatorship.
Sevasti knew nothing of politics. She hadn't heard political conversations at home, and if there had been any, she hadn't paid attention. Her dream was to be the best student in her class. She wanted to go out with friends, to socialize at parties and on outings. So not only was she unbothered by being a "Phalangist," she saw it as a chance to get out of the house.
Once enrolled, the officers took the groups of children to a location in Athens to collect their uniforms — a blue skirt, jacket, and a white tie — and the youngest were called "Little Pioneers." From time to time, the children of Athens put on their uniform caps with the double peak and went to various events around the city to receive what they already called "brainwashing." They heard about Metaxas and the necessity of his actions. Every morning they sang the national anthem, said prayers, and gave the fascist salute.
But Sevasti never felt like a Nazi. For Sevasti, the salute was something Greece had borrowed from abroad in its effort to become a modern state, but they had no love for Italy or Germany. Which was precisely why, when Italy one day gave Greece an ultimatum — surrender or fight, answer within three hours — the Greek people gave that historic "No."
Until then, Sevasti had seen no organized resistance to the regime, no strong political expression of any kind. Most people kept their opinions to themselves; there was no freedom of speech, and whatever was said was said in a whisper. Her father, like many then, had endured a great deal. He valued what he had without bitterness for what he lacked. Most people simply wanted to raise their children without persecution. Sevasti knew that only the communists expressed their ideology openly. There weren't many parties; citizens either accepted the dictatorship or they were on the Left.
In sharp contrast to the political silence, when the air raid sirens sounded and the church bells rang, when the few radio stations that existed called all military reserves to arms with martial music — the Greek people went with enthusiasm, as if heading to a village fair. The men left singing. The front had opened on the border between Greece and Albania, and it was waiting for them.
High school was suspended for a year when war was declared, and the following year students covered two years' worth of material in one. All three years of the German Occupation — 1941, 1942, and 1943 — life in Athens was very hard. Schools operated with constant interruptions, buildings were requisitioned, staff disappeared, and the students went hungry. It was only on October 12, 1944, when the Germans withdrew from Athens and the Nazi flag came down from the Acropolis, that Sevasti felt she might finally get to study in peace.
But barely six weeks later, on December 4th, the Civil War began — with gunfire coming from a checkpoint just two streets below her home. Only one year of actual schooling in all of that — with not a break in between. And so even once it was all over, Sevasti — who had fought against family expectations, hunger, and gunfire simply to go to school — could never quite understand certain things, and above all could never understand students who cut class or went on strike.
Sevasti was a child who grew up in the shadow of events she didn't understand and that no one ever explained to her in any coherent or honest way. In a country that had no shared historical narrative, the defining events of her era — the dictatorship, the war, the Occupation, the Civil War — marked her silently and permanently. She became what she had lived through; she was shaped by experiences she never had time to interpret. And if one desire stayed with her as a constant, it was the need for education — not just for knowledge, but for an understanding that never seemed to come. Her childhood eyes held many stories from that turbulent time: stories she had never told anyone, but that she would share with me.
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