The Road to School

 

(Part 3)

There is only one photograph of all three of Maria's children. Sevasti, the oldest, is around eleven; Eleni a year younger; and Nikolas, a baby, ten years behind them both. The photograph was taken at the Kalligeris studio on Stadiou Street, made specifically to send back to Kalymnos so that grandmother Sevasti could see all her grandchildren. They never needed another photograph, and they never took one.

You would expect all of Maria's children to have survived, born as they were in Athens hospitals, not like the old days when medicine was something that happened to other people. But Maria lost a baby — the most beautiful of all of them. A girl, third in line, named Katerina. The godmother had liked the name and had said: "Since you've already given your first two daughters the names of their grandmothers, let me choose the name for your third girl."

Godparents carried real weight in those days, because they gave the Christmas gifts and, more importantly, the Easter candle — along with shoes and dresses for school and presents for special occasions. There was no reason for parents to hurt their feelings. If godparents wanted to choose a name, their wish had to be honored. The godmother baptized the baby Katerina at six months old. She dressed her beautifully, took her to church, and gave her Holy Communion as tradition demands in Greece. But when the baby came home that same night, she died.

People said the baby had been struck by the evil eye — the influence of Satan, working through envious people, capable of bringing every misfortune down on a person. The Greek Orthodox Church even has a specific prayer to dispel it. Katerina had been a particularly beautiful baby, with an angelic little face that everyone admired. It would be no surprise if envy had killed her. No other reason was given for her death. Only the evil eye of jealousy could bring about such a tragic end. The baby was simply small and defenseless. Even the blue eye charm on her white dress hadn't been able to save her — she had been destined to die. At least she died after her baptism, and had therefore secured her place in heaven.

Perhaps Maria asked the godmother why she had chosen the name Katerina, perhaps she didn't. For parents, once the ancestors' names had been honored, any name after that was simply a name dedicated to a saint who would be the person's protector for the rest of their life. Many people, even those without the money to spare for an extra baby's gifts, wanted to become godparents for their own reasons — perhaps to honor an old man who had no descendants to carry his name, or to honor a brother or friend who had died young and childless. So many wars in this country had left so many names floating without bodies that these questions were sometimes beside the point.

Saint Catherine — wise and beautiful — had faced her torturers with courage and died in glory, betrothed to Jesus. Pure and redeemed. Exactly as one might wish a baby to die. Or even as a mother might wish her baby to die, if fate gave her no other choice. In the end, Katerina's death brought, by an unexpected turn, a certain relief to the family — a break from raising girls one after another, and a chance to try again. For a boy this time.

No family was ashamed of its daughters, but no family felt complete without a son. An heir to the father's name, a successor to the family business, someone who could go on making decisions for the people around him.

"Your first child should be a girl, so she can help you with the housework," the wise grandmothers of the island would advise. "She'll help you raise the ones that come after." The ones that came after could be boys or girls. But since older sisters had to be married off before their brothers, it wasn't wise for a family to have too many girls. A son had the duty to defend the honor and fate of his sisters, to find each of them a good husband, and to ensure their well-being in a new household. But what if one of them wasn't quite presentable enough, or was simply a little odd?

Poor little Katerina would no longer have to live in fear of not being beautiful enough, but her death by the evil eye breathed a different fear into the older sisters. Sevasti, at least — who had inherited her mother's beauty — decided to become sufficiently devout and to go to church often. With enough prayer, no evil eye would touch her. She wanted to befriend the priests, to become so pious that she might witness miracles herself.

The church mattered enormously to Sevasti. There was no rational argument against being faithful. The church allowed Sevasti to read books, to have a rich social life, to reassure herself that she was following the rules of society, and to have plenty of people on her side. Which relative would ever reproach her for leaving the house to attend the Sunday girls' catechism? Sevasti wanted to be saved, and she was not about to give up that salvation.

Sevasti had become devout in the first place because of her uncle. Uncle Stefanos — the enlightened brother of her father, who had spent his life praying for his nieces and nephews — was her mentor, her model in all things spiritual. "She could have been born from your uncle," Maria would often say to her firstborn daughter. "She's the spitting image," she'd add, noting the absence of anything in common between them. The other two children, Eleni and Nikolas, took more after their mother — not in looks, but in temperament. Maria wasn't particularly troubled by divine rules, as long as they left her in peace. She would follow them up to a point, but without personal conviction. Maria had never really known what personal desire meant. She was satisfied to have paid her human debt — to raise children.

"When I die, all of this is for you," Uncle Stefanos would tell little Sevasti. "All of this" meant books of saints' lives, sacred texts, leaflets from local churches filled with prayers and blessings. Most were written in katharevousa — the archaizing form of modern Greek, a language that had shaped the minds of all those who believed salvation would come through the values of the Greek Orthodox tradition. And so Sevasti, though she never had the chance to go as far as she wanted in formal education, always spoke in the manner of ecclesiastical texts, reaching for ornate words and sayings from ancient philosophers and saints.

When Uncle Stefanos died, Sevasti took all of it — and among his things she found a notebook of his personal reflections. His thoughts as he read the Bible. "My uncle was a holy man," she would say often, and she never shared his secrets. But she was determined to be more educated than he had been. After elementary school, she would go to high school.

Her first cousin, Andreas Kalymnios, was a philologist. A high school teacher of language and literature. He had gone to university, studied both ancient and modern Greek, and become an expert in grammar and all the major texts from antiquity to the present. Andreas taught at an all-boys high school near Sevasti's home for as long as the Dodecanese remained under Italian rule. When it became clear that Greece was preparing to bring the islands back in, he went quickly home — to his family and his beloved Kalymnos.

Sevasti's plan was to use the church and cousin Andreas to educate herself. It was her plan and her hope. Because as the first daughter of the family, she was expected to help with the housework, raise the younger children, and marry as soon as possible. She refused none of this. But her parents refused her request to go to high school. Elementary school was more than enough for a homemaker and mother.

Elementary school ran for six years, but children who intended to continue to high school could sit entrance exams at the end of fourth grade and go straight to first-year high school instead of fifth grade. Sevasti was only nine years old when she begged to sit the exams, but her father, thinking her still too young, told her he would allow her to finish through sixth grade, and that was his final concession.

The summer after she finished sixth grade, Maria took Sevasti by the hand and led her to a dressmaker — a Mrs Thalia. Thalia was a childhood friend of Maria's from Kalymnos, and an exceptional seamstress. She had studied in Paris. She had lived in France and learned her trade there. A true scientist of the needle, one might say.

"Thalia, I've brought you my daughter to teach her the craft," Maria asked as a favor. Thalia had no room for apprentices. "Maria, I don't have room for apprentices in my place — but for you, I can make an exception." Maria had told Sevasti that kyria Thalia was a smart, educated woman. The reason she had gone to Paris was that her brother was studying there to become a lawyer. The siblings had shared a small apartment, and her dressmaking had been what paid for his studies. Now this man was a lawyer in Athens, and the devoted siblings still shared a room.

Sevasti glanced around. It was a very small room, with no space for even an extra chair. She said nothing, of course. She respected the lawyer and understood that this compatriot might one day introduce her into some useful circle; and this woman was clearly refined and deserving of respect. She kept her head down.

But Thalia noticed that the girl had her head down and was making no eye contact at all. "But let's see — what does the girl herself want?" She came closer and asked an unexpected question: "Do you want to be a seamstress?"

Little Sevasti didn't raise her head. She didn't dare say no. But she didn't want to say yes either. She was ashamed to say no in front of her mother, but not so ashamed that she would let her education slip away from her that easily. She made a small sound instead — clicking her tongue against her teeth, the sound that means no.

Thalia turned to Maria. "This is where our arrangement falls apart. Even if she stayed with me a hundred years, she'd never learn the trade." Maria was mortified, deeply shamed by her daughter. Before the silence could settle, Thalia turned to Sevasti: "What is it you want, little one?"

"I want to go to school, but they won't let me."

"You want to go to school?" Now it was the seamstress's turn to be surprised. Perhaps she had expected the girl to want to be a singer, or to sell flowers. "No, kyria Maria — this is a crime. I can't take in someone who wants to go to school. If the child wants to learn, you mustn't stop her."

Maria could not change Thalia's mind. She was humiliated. She took Sevasti by the hand and they walked home in absolute silence.

When the father heard the whole story, his rage was volcanic — shouting and threats. Sevasti had been meant to become a seamstress, and it was not Thalia's place to decide the family's future. The daughter's defiance brought shame on the household. The mother was blamed too, for being incapable of controlling the girl. And so a beating followed, as was common enough in those days.

I don't believe Sevasti ever forgot that beating, however ordinary it was for the time. Nor do I believe it changed anything in her mind. Whatever happened in that room, her thoughts were fixed on September — because in September she would have a second chance to sit the high school entrance exams. The law gave her that.

Sevasti knew that her first cousin was a high school teacher. He was educated; he would understand. Cousin Andreas often stopped by her father's shop and drank ouzo with his uncle. But Sevasti didn't know where to find him — she had never been to his home. Still, Sevasti had always cultivated a wide circle of acquaintances, and she made a point of doing favors for them. So when she remembered that one of the girls from the neighborhood was related to Andreas's family, she asked her to take her to him, and the girl agreed.

"What a surprise!" Andreas hadn't expected to see his young cousin — alone, with only one friend, several neighborhoods from home. "Andreas, I need to talk to you. My father won't let me sit the exams for high school. He wants me to become a seamstress." She told him about the beating too. "Leave it with me," he said.

-> Next Chapter 4

<- Go back to Chapter 2

Back to Chapter Index: The Complete True Story

The School Years

 (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.

-> Next Chapter 5

<- Go back to Chapter 3

Back to Chapter Index: The Complete True Story

Love and Degrees: An Invisible Dowry

(Chapter 18)

The Invisible Dowry and the High School Essay

My daughter was an easy child — she didn't wear me out at all. She was quiet at home and did well at school. Nothing bothered her, nothing weighed on her mind. Since she was such a good student, I enrolled her in French lessons too. I started her in fourth grade, because children weren't allowed to begin a foreign language any earlier. The French Academy branch was right downstairs from our front door. That was the one extracurricular she did, because children didn't take all sorts of activities the way they do now — multiple languages, karate, and everything else. Maybe those things existed back then too, but I didn't have the time.

For ten years, until my three children were grown, I didn't know who was sitting next to me. I didn't have time to so much as lean out the window and see what was happening in the street — I was locked inside, within four walls. Helping the children with their lessons on one side, doing the housework on the other, cooking on top of that; I couldn't even get out to do the shopping — my husband did all of it. Uncle Stefanos was still helping, of course, walking the children to school and bringing them back. Sometimes he'd ask: 'Can I bring you anything?' and depending on what we needed I'd send him to the grocer or the bakery for a few slices of bread to have something in the house.

My mother used to say a proverb: 'The load teaches the mule driver.' And that proverb was true through and through. When I got married I didn't know anything, because my mother never let me do a thing — everything passed through her hands, so I didn't even know how to boil an egg. But when I was on my own, I had to do everything, and I learned everything.

I'll tell you — right after we got married I once cooked a whole chicken with all its innards still inside. Because back then you didn't buy your chicken from the supermarket the way you do now, cleaned and ready to go. You bought them whole and had to prepare them yourself. At the market they were sold simply plucked — no feathers, but nothing else done to them. One day Telemachos brought home a chicken for me to cook, and since it had no feathers, I just dropped the whole thing in the pot. As it boiled, it opened up on its own, and everything that was inside — gizzard stones, corn kernels, gravel — came pouring out and filled the pot.

When I opened the lid and saw it — imagine how little I knew — I said, 'But honestly, I didn't put any of that in there! Where did all this come from?' I wasn't from the countryside, I didn't know what chickens do or that they have a stomach. And why would I? Do you think my mother ever bought a whole chicken? We ate meat once a week, and she would buy a little beef and feed it to us — a small piece each. The rest of the days we ate legumes, vegetables, that sort of thing. Meat every day only became normal later, when you could find it pre-packaged at the supermarket.

That gap—not knowing how to manage the practical world because I had been kept so sheltered—was exactly why I became so insistent about my daughter's independence. I didn't just want her to know how to run a house; I wanted her to have the education to stand on her own two feet in the world. So, years later, when she finished elementary school, Lili was ready for high school and it came easily to her. She graduated from the same girls' school I had graduated from, and she even had several of my old teachers. She did very well, except that at the end they gave her grades in language that were simply not fair to her ability — they left her at fifteen or sixteen out of twenty, which was not the grade she deserved. That was proven when she sat the university entrance exams. She did so well that she won a scholarship — meaning she received money. With some of that money she even bought her brothers a bicycle, something they had been longing for for years. From my daughter's school, only a few girls went on to university — very few — so it was remarkable that Lili got in on a scholarship.

I remember once Lili wrote an extraordinary essay on the role of the clergy in the War of Independence. Her teacher refused to believe that a girl could write that well and reprimanded her, accusing her of having it written by me. That was where the injustice showed itself plainly: if a girl stood out, the system moved swiftly to cut her down. I don't remember which grade she was in — third or fourth year of high school, probably — and the next morning I got up and went to find the teacher.

I told her: 'I am deeply sorry that as an educator you have wounded a child who worked hard on this essay. If you wanted the essays to be purely the children's own work, with no input from home, then you should have had them write it in class — you had no business sending the topic home for them to work on. Of course the child sought out information and found it somewhere. How else would a child have knowledge of the past, of the role the priests played in the Greek Revolution? I simply shared a few things with my daughter as her mother — a mother who lived through things, who studied, who gathered knowledge from the Church. Was I not supposed to pass something on to my own child? She found encyclopedias, she read on her own, and instead of praising her — because you surely recognized it as the best essay in the class — you hurt her. I am truly sorry for you.'

And I added: 'I would ask that this conversation not be used against my child — that it ends here. Because if I find out that my speaking up has been turned against her, I cannot tell you how far I will take this.' She didn't say a word. Not a single apology, nothing. She just sat there like a wet cat.

That injustice stung my daughter, but it hardened her resolve to prove herself in the university entrance exams. When the time came and she had finished school, her father didn't want her to sit them. I had to fight for her right to take those exams. 'Why does she need to go to university?' he would say. 'She's finished high school, she can read and write, her French is advanced. I can arrange a position for her in the public sector, I have property to give her as a dowry. What's the point of her spending all those years at university?'

But she was crying — she wanted to take the exams. I told him: 'The child is going to sit those exams and I will find the money.' Because in those days everything had to be paid for. I told him: 'I'll ask my relatives, I'll find a way, but that child is sitting those exams whether you provide the money or not. You ruined me — do you want to ruin your daughter too?'

He had told me before we married that he would never allow me to work. So later, when I asked for money to continue my own studies, he refused. He said it and he meant it. I had accepted the part about work, but he wouldn't even let me finish my education. He figured that studying would lead to a job, and he was afraid — afraid that if I went out into the world and mixed with educated people, I might meet someone else.

In the end, my husband accepted that his daughter had passed the university entrance exams and allowed her to attend. But the fear of women getting an education was most visible in what he did to me. He said it was a matter of principle that a wife shouldn't work, so as not to suggest that he couldn't provide for her — but I don't believe that was the real reason. Because even if I had needed to work out of necessity, I know he still wouldn't have let me study. He was jealous and he was afraid. Above all, perhaps, he was afraid of me. I think his reasoning went: 'If I let her start university, she might build a different life — I'll lose her.'

It wasn't that Telemachos forbade women from doing what men did — it's not as though he let the boys go out freely while keeping the girls locked in. Though I can't say for certain, because my children generally didn't go out on their own. Imagine — when they were older I used to push them out the door and say 'Go outside, make some friends.' But the two boys especially would always stay together, and since we had no balcony, they'd open the window, push up the shutters, settle themselves on the sill, and let their legs dangle out over the street. They'd sit there for hours on end. That was their way of being outside. They watched who walked by and had their own conversations.

The boys didn't have much of a social life, but my daughter did — especially through university, even though she studied constantly. When she started her first year she came to me and said: 'Mama, I want a favor. The small room next to the kitchen, the one you've turned into a storage room — I want it cleared out completely and given to me as my study. I want to go in there to read and I don't want the noise from the street or from the boys.' That room has a large window looking out onto our courtyard and a lot of light comes through it. We got a small chest of drawers, a little nightstand, a desk, and a chair. Her brother Tassos, who was good with his hands, built her a hanging bookshelf himself and started filling it with her books.

Through all her university years she lived in that little room. If friends came to visit she would take them somewhere else in the house. She never went through a rebellious phase, never did anything reckless the way young people do — she was a straightforward girl. And in those years, love wasn't the simple thing it is now. Lili had met her person, but their studies separated them for a while when he went to another city. When she finally confided in me about the relationship, I understood that if she was telling me, the decision was final — because back then, telling your parents about a relationship meant a lifelong commitment. Even though Telemachos was strict, and I was not exactly an easy mother myself, I decided to become her secret ally. I covered for her so she could write letters and stay in touch — just as my sister and my mother had once done for me. It was a chain of protection, passed down. I wanted my daughter to begin her new life not by running away from something, but with her own voice and her own degrees behind her.

I understood, though, that the world around us was changing. Up through my generation, education for a woman was considered a threat to the peace of the family. But watching Lili and the man she would marry, I grasped something deeper: for the educated men of the new generation, a woman with a university degree was no longer dangerous — she was a necessary partner. The diploma had become the new invisible dowry, perhaps more valuable than land or a government post.

Her father would tell her to go out and give her a little money to enjoy herself. But until she came home, he'd be sitting in the armchair by the front door, waiting. He would not go to bed until he'd seen his daughter walk through that door. She noticed. She saw that when she was out, her father didn't sleep — those were his principles. He stayed awake, and she didn't want to be the cause of that, so she didn't go out much either.

My husband was very proud of his daughter and he proved it by dividing his property while she was still unmarried. He had a soft spot for her and had already put land in her name as a dowry. The boys, too, were steady and never gave him trouble — they didn't bother him at all and he was content with them. It was me who was constantly exhausted, with a large family and endless work. Every last bit of the responsibility had landed on me.

-> Next Chapter 19

<- Go back to Chapter 17

Back to Chapter Index: The Complete True Story