Raw Footage From Greece

By Giannis Develegas

It all started on a grey morning in the adjuntants’ office of the Boot camp when the phone rang: “Yiannis, Nikos is gone in a road traffic accident! A cab has run down Nikos and his fiancée as they were walking on the pavement outside Uncle Thomas’ restaurant!” I hung up the phone, being unable to believe that! He was just twenty-eight years old! In the very next seconds I completely reconsidered my life choices and attitude towards everything that was happening all around me. Besides the shock that I experienced due to the so unfair loss of my best friend, I also realized that I had so far been living and distinguishing myself in a fictional reality, that I was paying a huge value at facts and circumstances that all of a sudden seemed totally pointless. I woke up, for the first time, to the fact that I had been isolated in a miserable microcosm, peremptorily formulated by the conditions of my working environment.A microcosm that was being constituted by four desk phones that were constantly ringing, perfectly arranged on my desk, as well as by dozens of documents and folders. My microcosm included also an endless line up of militants, officers, parents, suppliers, politicians, contractors, priests and police officers, who were waiting to meet the Commander, either to apologize for some omission of them, or to gain his favor over an issue they were concerned about. My so tiny little world was being desperately completed by a huge list of staff procedures and dates of accomplishment (deadlines). A duties’ list that was following me like a shadow everywhere, like it was meant to bring me down and ruin my happy moments. That tragic news was the reason I admitted to myself that I had passively accepted as normal the enormous pressure that the devious bureaucratic system was forcing on me. That I was unintentionally girdled by an explosive device, threatening my health and the welfare and bliss of the people that surrounded me, and who I loved and loved me back! I had to take action, to react! I left the office without wasting any more time and without informing anyone. I headed to the nearest bookstore and bought myself an eight-color pen and a notepad. I took the decision that since that moment, everything that was going to happen in my working miscrocosm should remain in the office. They should not follow me home, or in my free time and torture me. And, the truth is that, in a certain degree, I managed to do it! I was writing down in my notebook all my tasks, coloring them according to their priority, so whenever I left from work to go home I was feeling careless. I just knew that on the next morning they would be there, laid down on my desk, waiting for...the further actions! As time was passing by, I started to use another notepad, something like a diary as a matter of fact, in which I used to register and write down certain worth mentioning events or personal thoughts, not only from my working environment, but also things that were taking place in the country in general. That second notebook has been the trigger for the creation of the book that you are actually holding in your hands. A book full of short stories, through which, messages and lessons not coming from me but from life itself are emerged. These are short stories, free of pointless chattering, so that you are able to read them slowly on your own pace, without having to employ the...quick reading techniques. It is all about pages filled with independent episodes of life, scattered in time watching! We could say these are somehow like...raw screen shots, taken before and after the burst of the social and financial crisis in Greece. A crisis that might have touched it but didn’t bring it down! Since: “Greece is destined to live and will live”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giannis Develegas
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005800772

Giannis Develegas

Ο Γιάννης Β. Δεβελέγκας, γεννήθηκε το 1956 στα Γιάννενα. Μετά την ολοκλήρωση των σπουδών του στη Στρατιωτική Σχολή των Ευελπίδων, ειδικεύτηκε ως στρατιωτικός μηχανικός και έλαβε ακαδημαϊκή μόρφωση στους τομείς του πολιτικού μηχανικού, της επιχειρησιακής διοίκησης στο πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών και των logistics. Διετέλεσε επί σειρά ετών διοικητής Μονάδων Μάχης Μηχανικού, επιβλέπων μηχανικός τεχνικών και οχυρωματικών έργων και διευθυντής διοικητικής υποστήριξης του ΓΕΣ. Μετά την αφυπηρέτησή του, συγκρότησε το AHEPA Chapter HJ-23 στα Ιωάννινα, με σκοπό, σε συντονισμό με την ομογένεια, την προώθηση του ελληνισμού και της φιλανθρωπίας. Ανέλαβε από το 2014 έως και το 2018 τη Γενική Διεύθυνση της Ηπειρωτικής Όπερας του Πνευματικού Κέντρου «Τσακάλωφ». Αρθρογραφεί στην εφημερίδα «Πρωινός Λόγος» Ιωαννίνων και στον ηλεκτρονικό τύπο. Είναι συγγραφέας, συνθέτης και στιχουργός. Είναι παντρεμένος και έχει τέσσερις γιους.ΑΛΛΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ ΤΟΥ:2017: «Ασπασία - Για το παιδί και την όπερα» (Εκδόσεις, «Άπειρος Χώρα»). Λεύκωμα.2018: «Raw Footege from Greece» (Εκδόσεις, «Amazon»). Αγγλική γλώσσα, διηγήματα.2019: «Αμοντάριστα Πλάνα» (Εκδόσεις, «Λευκό Μελάνι»). Διηγήματα.2020: «ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ΕΙΝΑΙ», ebook, (Εκδόσεις «Amazon»). Ποίηση-Θέατρο.2021: «Με τον Πρωινό Καφέ», Χρονογραφήματα, (Εκδόσεις «Amazon»).2022: «Κουτσομπολιό» , (ebook smashwords), Μικρά πικάντικα κείμενα.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

It all started on a grey morning in the adjuntants’ office of the Boot camp when the phone rang:

Yannis, Nikos is gone in a road traffic accident! A cab has run down Nikos and his fiancée as they were walking on the pavement outside Uncle Thomas’ restaurant!

I hung up the phone, being unable to believe that! He was just twenty- eight years old!

In the very next seconds I completely reconsidered my life choices and attitude towards everything that was happening all around me.

Besides the shock that I experienced due to the so unfair loss of my best friend, I also realized that I had so far been living and distinguishing myself in a fictional reality, that I was paying a huge value at facts and circumstances that all of a sudden seemed totally pointless. I woke up, for the first time, to the fact that I had been isolated in a miserable microcosm, peremptorily formulated by the conditions of my working environment.

A microcosm that was being constituted by four desk phones that were constantly ringing, perfectly arranged on my desk, as well as by dozens of documents and folders. My microcosm included also an endless line up of militants, officers, parents, suppliers, politicians, contractors, priests and police officers, who were waiting to meet the Commander, either to apologize for some omission of them, or to gain his favor over an issue they were concerned about. My so tiny little world was being desperately completed by a huge list of staff procedures and dates of accomplishment (deadlines). A duties’ list that was following me like a shadow everywhere, like it was meant to bring me down and ruin my happy moments.

That tragic news was the reason I admitted to myself that I had passively accepted as normal the enormous pressure that the devious bureaucratic system was forcing on me. That I was unintentionally girdled by an explosive device, threatening my health and the welfare and bliss of the people that surrounded me, and who I loved and loved me back!

I had to take action, to react!

I left the office without wasting any more time and without informing anyone. I headed to the nearest bookstore and bought myself an eight- color pen and a notepad. I took the decision that since that moment, everything that was going to happen in my working miscrocosm should remain in the office. They should not follow me home, or in my free time and torture me. And, the truth is that, in a certain degree, I managed to do it! I was writing down in my notebook all my tasks, coloring them according to their priority, so whenever I left from work to go home I was feeling careless. I just knew that on the next morning they would be there, laid down on my desk, waiting for…the further actions!

As time was passing by, I started to use another notepad, something like a diary as a matter of fact, in which I used to register and write down certain worth mentioning events or personal thoughts, not only from my working environment, but also things that were taking place in the country in general. That second notebook has been the trigger for the creation of the book that you are actually holding in your hands. A book full of short stories, through which, messages and lessons not coming from me but from life itself are emerged.

These are short stories, free of pointless chattering, so that you are able to read them slowly on your own pace, without having to employ the…quick reading techniques.

It is all about pages filled with independent episodes of life, scattered in time watching! We could say these are somehow like…raw screen shots, taken before and after the burst of the social and financial crisis in Greece. A crisis that might have touched it but didn’t bring it down!

Since: Greece is destined to live and will live

CHAPTERS

MATHER GREECE…5

THE «DAMNED» BRIDGE…8

JUST AS STONES AND BRICKS…11

BUILT…DREAMS… 14

IT TAKES VIRTUE AND COURAGE…17

THE EAGLE FROM SOULI…20

PACK YOUR THINGS AND LEAVE…YOU CURS…23

WE ALL KNOW WELL THOUGH…26

AND WE SAILED IN THE OPEN SEAS...29

CAN’T YOU SEE? CAN’T YOU HEAR?...31

THE OLD LADY ANAGNOSTAINA…33

A CHRISTMAS STORY…36

THE MOST VALUABLE THINGS IN THE WORLD!...39

I DID NOT WANT TO BE ALONE ON SUCH A DAY …42

MRS FAUX BIJOUX!...45

...IT IS FOR YOU…47

EASTER OF THE GREEEKS (BEING SUCH A DAY TODAY)…51

THE GENEROSITY OF THE KILLED IS TIMELESS …54

A TESTIMONY!...57

WE WILL CONQUER THE MOUNTAIN BEFORE THE DAWN!...58

VALUE OF FREEDOM…61

HE WAS AN…INOBEDIENT BRAVE YOUNG MAN…64

STORIES OF THE BALLOT BOX…67

IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING YOU BOY…70

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME…72

COMMANDO 006, 99 LOBSTER PROJECT …75

THE PROTAGONISTS AND THE WORLD FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP…78

WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU LOST SOUL! THIS IS A HUMAN!...81

THE ALLEY CAT OF…ΙLISSIA…84

BIG GUY…THERE IS NO ONE LIKE YOU…87

AN NGO FOR THE…PULSATING!...89

ON WHAT WE HAVE INHERITED…91

THE QUALITY, THE DISSIMILARITY AND THE CREATIVE INNOVATION …94

THE SLEDGEHAMMER GUY THE POKEMON AND THE CAREER…97

WE DO COEXIST THOUGH!...100

HISTORY IS ON OUR SIDE…104

BOOTLE IN THE SEA…106

THROUGH THE EXAMPLE!...109

AND NEXT…THE CRISIS CAME…!...111

WELL DIMITRAKIS…112

THE BIGGEST INVESTMENT…115

IT MIGHT ALSO BE THE CASE…118

THE CLUNKER…121

CREATIVE ARITHMETIC...122

THE HAUNTED BOAT…125

SUMMER DATE…128

ACCIDENTAL MEETING…130

HANDWRITING S(TING)AMPLE …134

IT WAS A HARD DAY…135

THE TATOO OF SHAME ….138

GOD…WILLING!!!...140

GREECE WOKE UP INSIDE US…145

MATHER GREECE

It had already been fifty years since (the old lad) Mr. Michalis set foot for the first time in his life on the dock of Adelaide’s harbor in the faraway Australia.

He hadn’t even had the time to fold in four the document certifying his release from the Greek Army, when his older sister, being married in the country, invited him to visit her for a few weeks. How could the twenty- year old Michalis, imagine back then, that he was to settle there forever.

He got married and made his own family in Australia and he wouldn’t even return to his homeland, if he hadn’t received that letter sent from a Lawyer in Athens, requesting for some information on an inheritance affair. That was the time when his longing for going back grew strong again, after so many years. He longed to see the place and the house where he grew up and made his first dreams.

And there he is now, in his parental home in Greece, standing all alone between distant memories and little things he used to love. Things being untouched, in the same positions, as his deceased mother had left them. A tear swirled on Mr. Michalis’s, crushed by the years and the migration’s distresses face… ‘Our house is ruined; it got beaten by wilderness’.

He bent over and picked up from the dusty floor a black and white old- fashioned photo, blurry from the humidity and the abandonment.He filled it with his breath and gently scrubbed it on his sleeve, until the blur and dirt went out completely and then through the photo’s white frame his first day at Hatzikiriakou - the silversmith’s workshop came alive in front of his eyes. There were himself, being still a kid, with his father the well- known craftsman, standing between the deep wooden shelves of the workshop, weighed down as full of traditional masterpieces of Giannena.

It was that same day when his own father grabbed him by the hand, in the morning, while preparing to leave for school, and declared to him in a straightforward way that he would no more be able to get him through school and studies and that his son would have to learn a craft.

Michalis learned the niello’s technique shortly and before he even joined the army he started to create his own pieces of art with diligence and using his imagination, carving the metal with an extraordinary talent and ease. And then when, after having completed his military service, he travelled to Australia, fate came there to meet him!

As he was insouciantly strolling in the streets of Adelaide, he stopped in front of a shopfront full of folklore pieces of art, which had been created with the use of a different style than the one he was familiar with. He really loved these and, restless as he was, he popped in the stationary store across the street, bought a painting pad and a soft pencil and threw himself into copying the designs and the exhibits behind the shopfront.

But on the moment that the Australian shop owner noticed him, he got out of his store and full of curiosity asked the young man why he was doing this. ‘This is my job, what I do for living, Michalis replied, I can also create such pieces of art back in Greece as well’.

The Australian did not miss the chance and invited him into his workshop asking him to make for him something inspired by his own art, the Greek art.

Things went on so fast! The Australian got excited by Michalis’s work that he proposed to him to collaborate. The pieces that the young Greek created had a large impact on the foreigners and they were really loved. At the same time, Michalis and Lina, his new boss’s one and only daughter, also loved each other a lot, and thus a few months later, he became both the son –in- law and the partner of the Australian.

Mr. Michalis walked gently and carefully on the floorboard and went towards the window facing the narrow alley. Nothing had changed through all those years in this very neighborhood which had just recently been characterized as a traditional one, while the old houses were also characterized as heritage houses. The trace from the pot where the orchid, that his mother used to take care of during the winter and summer evenings, was planted remained there still intense on the window sill. ‘The flower of splendor’ as the deceased woman used to say full of proud.All the strangers passing by this cobbled street always stood still either to take a photo of this window or to draw a picture of it, spellbound by its beauty. And of the beauty of this clay pot, the beloved one.

Mr. Michalis wouldn’t waste time! He went across the street in the stationary store and bought a painting pad and a soft pencil. Then, he sat down on a bench across the house and started to draw every scratch, every wound of this wall. But also the long window and the little pot with the orchid and the mother! Oh yes the mother! This unique mother who had raised five children to see them taken away from her, in the foreign countries since she could not feed them!

‘Mother, Mr. Michalis whispered, mother of colonies, of the two continents and of the five seas, universal mother. Mother of arts, of civilization and of wisdom, not being able to keep your children in your arms. It is for you Mother Greece that I shall carve, before I die, my biggest piece of art, my most important achievement and I will bring you with me out there in the foreign. Not to lose you again’!

P.S.: This is the story of Michalis, a twenty- year old Greek- born, who followed the long path meant by fate, from Giannena to Adelaide.

When I met him, many years after he had emigrated in Australia, standing touched in front of his own parental house, I did realize, following his words, that the words Mother, Homeland, House had the exact same meaning for him.

THE «DAMNED» BRIDGE

It all started in the reception room of the Political Bureau of the Minister of Defence in the early eighties. The committee that had arrived from the village intending to meet him was determined: ‘It is either now or never Mr. Minister’. ‘In case you don’t build this goddamned bridge that shall connect the village with the provincial road network and the city, we are going to disappear from the map‘. ‘It is about a five minute trip by car, while it takes us about an hour to travel on mules, not to mention that every time we pass through we risk to get killed’.’ More than two thousand nomads, being totally disconnected from the rest of the world and the civilization, why are you constantly fooling us and not building up this bridge?’. ‘In a few months, elections will take place and we shall decide either we vote for you or not’!

The arguments presented by the committee were disarming and the willingness of the minister to contribute to the …. area was more than clear: ‘You do live in a stunning village, he finally said, which I feel proud of whenever I visit your land, watching it standing hooked on the steep ridges of Pindos mountain range! One out of the few remaining mountain villages where so many residents - and especially young people - still live in. I intend to immediately send the Army to proceed with the construction – on its own means and workers - of a metalbridge - unit construction type - in the frame of the social work offered’.

So things have evolved somehow like this and thus during the winter of the very same year, a step of the Engineer Battalion settled down close to Matsouki village, in order to start with the assembling of the bridge, putting aside the snow and freeze. Once the preliminary work had been successfully completed, what was left to be done was not more than to place the special rollers on which the metal bridge should roll so as to reach the opposite side of the opening formed by the steep ravine.

It was me that got stuck with performing this task. So, having a Reserve Second Lieutenant as an assistant along with ten to twelve well- built fellows from the Company of Sappers, we went across in order to catch and to launch the bridge.

When we reached the other side of the canyon the night was still on. We sneaked into the niche of an enormous rock, wearing helmets on our heads, to protect ourselves from the stones and the broken branches falling continuously all over us from the huge massif that was looming over us like a scarecrow. We were feeling that this was a way that the massif was using to try and chase us away passing us the message of being unwanted, for intending to intervene with the wild and unbelievably beautiful landscape of Tzoumerka.

Skulking the one close to the other, to deal with the cold getting into our bones, we were patiently waiting for the dawn.

Out of the blue, we heard chattering and footsteps coming from the direction of the village. We managed to