It is
November, 17 1974, the first anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising.
The Junta which held sway in Greece since 1967 had fallen already in July. It
is evening, there is a chill in the air, I am ten years old. In front of the Polytechnic there is a dark
throng of people. There are no banners, no chants. There is a raw silence. In
the middle of the dark people there is a light source. I hold on to my mother’s
hand as she presses through the crowd. I smell the people’s breaths and their
clothes as the people part slightly to let us through. I see then what the
light source is. The mangled remnants of the gate the tank crashed that eventful night are illuminated by
a single floodlight and the bodies of the people are standing solemnly before
them. Some kneel down and press red carnations between the gate’s distorted iron
rods. My mother kneels too. With a rough voice an elderly man starts singing “You Have Fallen Victims, Our
Brothers”, an old World War Two Resistance song – a requiem to war victims
to the tune of Shostakovich’s 11th symphony (3rd movement).
A few join in – the song is not yet widely known – and mother sings too. People
stand upright with their palms folded before them as if in church. I stand
there too, proud under the floodlight and I am suddenly grown-up.
37 years later in the evening of my
mother’s death I am searching for memories of her. There is nothing. I remember
nothing. After forty-four days it comes to me: the time when my mother and I
were grown-ups, equal in remembrance, united – so rarely united before and
after that – before a mangled gate.
In memoriam
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