O Dimitrakis mou: or how Dimitris became my son

By Jörg Witt

The true story of a totally unexpected encounter in Athens. A young homeless man is taken back into life by a visitor.
Die wahre Geschichte einer zufälligen Begegnung in Athen. Ein obdachloser junger Mann wird von einem Besucher der Stadt ins Leben zurück geführt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Aug 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9783347135741

Book preview

Prologue

Today, 4th of August 2017, I am sitting in my childhood and teenage room at my parents’ in Bayreuth and am starting to write about the most significant time in my life. It all started almost 6 years ago, on 10th of August 2011 in Athens. That day when I returned to Athens from two days in Mykonos, I could not have expected that little later my life would change forever.

Exactly three months ago Dimitris, who I first met in 2011, was delivered from all his sufferings. Over the years he had become my son and he will always be.

Acquaintances, colleagues, students and friends, most of all Dimis’ sister (actually one of them, the one who supported us for years and who has become a friend) have often told me I must write a book about what has happened. I myself was never sure about it, thinking I might do so at some point far away in the future, maybe after retiring, hoping maybe one day perhaps my Goddaughter might try and publish our story. Yet in order to ever be allowed to do so, I did ask Dimis once again not so long ago if he would agree. He almost got angry then, asking me if I really believed that I had to ask him this – for yes, he would be very happy if I did. On another occasion in 2014 he had told me that I could always tell everyone everything, especially my students, in the hope that they will never have to suffer the hardship he had seen. In the days leading up to Dimis’ death and funeral I became more and more convinced I needed to make his and our story known to a wider public. And when finally I realized how I could best go about doing this, my mind started working and the structure became crystal clear. I had simply been worried that I would need to start from the start. But throughout the years I had been sending long round robin emails to all my friends. They will now – stripped off irrelevant details, corrected where necessary, etc. – serve as the basis of a book telling a rather unique story. In between I will explain a lot, add from emails, text messages, messages on Facebook, diary entries, notes etc. and I honestly must include photos, too.

I will try to avoid using the full names of people who I tell something negative about and not include photos of people I have not asked for permission. (Now on 6th August 2020 I am also sure I must not use the full names of Dimis’ siblings who want me to write the book, after all this is about their family, too.)

Before I start, one little note on the way I use Greek names in the following. I cannot fully imitate Greek grammar in this respect, names are fully inflected and this may be confusing in a language like English. Thus, for example, the name Dimitris is the nominative form, all other forms including the genitive would be Dimitri. As you will see my use of these forms has changed over the years and is inconsistent, I will not change this in retrospect. Most Greeks have various forms of their names used under different circumstances. Dimitri was baptised Dimitrios, which is also the official name printed in the passport. The frequent everyday form is the modern Dimitris. I would often use the shorter form Dimis, his siblings the form Mimis. And early on he told me he was Dimitrakis, a form I just love, which makes use of the diminutive as a term of en-dearment – similar to Spanish forms ending in –ito and the like or Ger-man approximate Dimitrilein, which does, however, sound very different and might not fully have the same function.

So these, Dimitraki mou (my beloved Dimitri), are some of the memories of your paterouli (as you called me during a period of horrible sufferings), your dear father (Deines Väterchens).

The many emails that make up the major part of this book used to contain links to photos for all my friends, these links were removed in the course of preparing the manuscript for publication. But some important photos will of course be included in the finished book. Some passages that may be interesting but are not central can be read in the appendix.

Bayreuth, 28/8/2011

Dear all,

Some preliminaries to start with: apologies to those who hate letters addressed to many people at the same time and a most warm thank you to all of you who have made my long trip to Greece possible with their generous gifts for my 40th birthday.

I am writing a little more than a week after my return from the first trip to Greece this summer, less than a week before the second one (much much shorter, only to attend the baptism of my Athenian friends’ sec-ond child on 3/9). In the meantime, I have been to two really good classical concerts on the fringe of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth (one with Dad, one with friends). Apart from that, summer is very different from all the summers since 1978 since for the first time since then I am not going to Austria because there simply is no time left to do so. Yesterday I went to see Grandma and to prepare her 85th birthday party, most of the rest of the time has been taken up by visiting Mum. She has been in rehab since Tues, which we had all been looking forward to, the place is very promising and accommodating but, as was to be feared, the stress seems to be too much for her psychiatric constitution once more; this afternoon has left me extremely worried.

I feel I must use this form of communication because my sensations during the trip were so manifold and overwhelming that I would like to summarize them once. Doing so again or already having done so in sit-uations of a 1-to-1-communication is perfect but it is impossible to adequately render my impressions in a written form over and over again.

I started out on 4/8 and returned to Germany exactly 2 weeks later. All in all, my itinerary included Athens (4 1/2 days and 5 nights), Mykonos (2 1/2 days), the seashore at the foot of Mount Olymp (4 days) and Thessa-loniki. It goes without saying that I enjoyed much food, getting to know completely new dishes, too, like dishes from then Constantinople in a restaurant in Mykonos called like a relatively recent Greek film about a family and a love story revolving around this food, dishes from once Greek Smyrna (Izmir today) in Thessaloniki, the best ice cream ever in the same city and many of its famous and delicious sweets. I simply had to buy many books including recipes by Greek Orthodox monks or from the Sephardic Jews of Thessaloniki, and I did find most of the CDs I wanted to buy (from the long list that I continuously add to when listening to the internet radio) plus many more (my well-tested method is to listen to what is playing in the shops and to then ask for it if I like it). In Mykonos I also bought an astonishing sculpture by a well-known Greek artist, and I do own some hand painted icons now as well as a painting of the Lykabittos (cf. below) in Athens.

What made my trip special were the people I knew I was going to meet but also very many others that I was lucky enough to get to know. In Greece I am almost always spoken to by complete strangers but people to me are not nosy at any time rather simply most naturally friendly and interested. Thus, I had much more of a chance of practicing and in the first place needing my Greek than I could have imagined in any dream. Let me pick out some examples, starting with the one that keeps having a profound impact on m In the afternoon of my last day in Athens after a few happy days in Mykonos and just before starting out to the Olymp the following happened. It was the hottest day of all my stay (42°C), I was on the underground to Omonoia Square (central, emblematic, sur-rounded by good shops I frequently go to but also characterized by enormous poverty, illegal immigration, open drug use and prostitution, the place where some people died in a bank that protesters had set fire to last year) when a young drug addict (as I now know 23, from Athens, living in a rundown hostel when he can afford it) who was obviously totally worn out got on and tried to sell packets of paper handkerchiefs to survive. Usually people, even if they do not help, are friendly on such an occasion in Greece but not in this case, most people were tourists. Therefore in the aisle in front of me so that I saw him at a short distance from the side he suddenly knelt down and begged for help in a voice truly filled with pain. I honestly had never in my life felt so much sym-pathy in the literal meaning of the word: pain with the other one/pos-sibly the same pain. So when we both got off at Omonoia, I asked him if he was hungry and offered to buy some food as I had often seen peo-ple do in Valencia. His pronunciation was hard to understand but not his choice of words or grammar. So he introduced himself and more than once promised not to pick anything expensive but asked if we could go to McDonald’s, which we did. People there were as friendly as I had always experienced them to be. The only thing he then asked me for were cigarettes, no problem, I wanted to post my cards then and offered to buy some new shoes but wanted him to eat and drink first of all. So he described where we could meet and reassured me it was safe for me. However, then I did not find him and searched and searched, this way seeing much more poverty and drug use as well as parts of the places of the protests in Dec 2008. I did want to find him so that he would not think I was merely full of talk. But I had to give up and went to the clothes shop for the sales that I had planned to go to. After that I luckily looked for Dimitri(s) again and was much relieved to find him. Seeing him cross the street I was extremely afraid he would be killed though! [6/8/20: That was already on the way to buying shoes together. I had noticed him in a side street, as I now know most likely just having got rid of his pains by taking some drugs.] We talked a lot more, I even took a photo of him and then I was very amazed when he gave me his email address (the host he could not really remember unfortunately) – the owner of a kiosk (the one most important facility throughout Greece) gave us a piece of paper and lent us a pen. By now I have man-aged to find, on the Internet, an NGO in this part of the city that helps people like this poor young man, I will try to go to their place next week-end when I am back in Athens and maybe I also meet Dimitri(s) on the underground or in the square, who knows. [1, cf. appendix]

Mykonos offers all of what it is known for, an incredible nightlife, white houses plus colourful doors, windows and balconies, amazing sunsets and beaches but I also saw many of the churches and talked with an icon painter for a very long time, getting even deeper into the subject (the first time ever that I was really interested was in the Museum of Arts in Athens shortly before). The 4 hour ferry trip from Pireaus had already been very scenic with the ferry calling at two more islands, the ride to the hotel on the load area of a minute tricycle had been adventurous (I really needed Greek then). Why had I gone to Mykonos? To meet the daughter of my Greek grandma and this was fantastic, we had so many good conversations, she showed me so much (most of all the excavations on the neighbouring island of Delos that she is a specialized guide for) and we went to the beach together.

In between returning to Athens, packing and heading off to the baptism by train the next day I met Dimitri(s) and had food, music and wine at my favourite restaurant once more.

On the first day of my second week in Greece an approximately 5 hour train ride took me from Athens to Katerini, where my next door neigh-bour picked me up. I did sleep a little on the train but soon abandoned my book because of the breathtaking scenery, rugged mountains and deep valleys right next to the track, slush, irrigated coastal plains, little villages, … [2, cf. appendix]

The hotel in Saloniki [where I spent half a week after the baptism] was a fantastic pick again, extremely keen staff, right in the centre, the city seems more Greek than Athens in all places, poor and rich, rundown and brand new or renovated are as close side by side, however, as in the capital. The city rises on gentle slopes from the harbour, which at this time of the year made the humidity almost unbearable to m 42° in Athens was still ok, but only 30° in Thessaloniki could feel horribl Yet I was on the go non-stop again to see the biggest cathedral dedicated to St. Demeter (Dimitrios), who was murdered on the very spot, the house where Kemal Atatürk grew up and of course the Jewish Museum, where I could get very much interesting material and was, sad to say, again confronted with the horrible past of my own country. Until WW II the city boasted the biggest community of Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors settled there after the Catholic kings of Spain expelled them in 1492. No one and no guidebook had told me about the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Metropolis (archdiocese) of Thessaloniki, but I am most happy that I did discover it and could also buy a highly informative book about it. [3, cf. appendix] Never did I get a nasty or aggressive word about Ger-many throughout the entire trip. In Thessaloniki more than in Athens I met people all the time who had worked in Germany or as in the case of a young musician whose relatives work there – in his case the dad is a musician in Munich. The restaurant where I talked to him and his colleagues was like mine in Athens, just a little classier and not almost exclusively frequented by Greeks. On the first night, when the musicians realized that I knew the songs, I was asked what I wanted to listen to – and could tell them. What nights, what nights!

Reading this again years after I am extremely surprised at how almost matter-of-fact I describe my first encounter with Dimis that was to change my life forever. There are so many details that I did not write about but have told so many. Dimis in the past few years wanted to hear the story again and again and I had to tell it so often when we met someone. I can honestly not say why I left out all those cherished details then, maybe for lack of time, maybe because the email was so long al-ready or for fear of being taken for quite foolish to revel about them. Maybe all my feelings were so immense I could not write about them correctly; just now have I had a look at the few remarks scribbled down in travel diary and this suggests the last interpretation. In any case, I will now write down what I remember and what has been so important to tell others for such a long time. Why I was in Greece anyway and why I speak Greek will be explained later. On the day I first met Dimi I had already spent four and a half days in Athens and another two and a half in Mykonos and come back to Athens in the early afternoon. When I had had a fantastic kaimaki ice-cream (with mastix) after getting off the ferry in Piraeus and gone back to my hotel, I decided to spend the rest of my last day there having coffee, going shopping, posting my post-cards and going out at night. So I got on the underground train at nearby Thission station right in the centre to go to Omonia Square. While I was waiting for the doors to shut, Dimis just about made it and I immedi-ately was aware of how bad his condition was. At once he told the pas-sengers his name and that he had nothing but did not steal and asked if they could, please, buy a packet of handkerchiefs. As already said, I was really astonished that not a single person did so. But then again most people seemed to be tourists and did not understand what he said. I myself was not quick enough. But he never noticed me or look at me at all, not even when he knelt down right in front of me. He stared down the aisle and I faced his profile. The moment I understood what the real meaning of sympathy/compassion is, was when he then also raised his hands and said boitheia (help) in a most desperate voice. Maybe some people took him raising his hands for a planned theatrical gesture, to me it looked like a gesture of ultimate despair and from that moment on my mind started working. Yet I was not quick enough to do anything, he got up and dragged his feet down the aisle towards the door next to the one where he had got on and where I was to get off a few minutes later. Intuitively I took 20 euro out of my wallet and made sure I would get off in time to stop him. I knew we were both going to get off at Omonia Square, not only for the works on the tracks that I knew about but more so for the reasons explained in the email. I managed to find Dimis the moment he was going to step off the train, once more he did not see me at all until I reached him the money and tried my very best to be friendly, saying There you are, my friend. He could not speak or rather did not know what to say since he was so surprised and thankful and instead used a most Greek gesture instead, one I had seen used in return for a present I had given once before, one that can fill my eyes with tears when I remember Dimis then. This gesture consists of moving your right fist towards your heart, touching your chest and imitating the heartbeat. Its meaning is that your thanks are heartfelt, that there are no adequate words to express them. Just the hand placed on your heart can be used to say thank you from a distance and seems less intense. So there I was, heading towards the stairs. Once more totally intuitively I stopped after about ten metres hoping that Dimis would appear be-cause I wanted to buy him something to eat. Thinking about it now, this is incredible –what was to follow is much more so – but then it felt com-pletely natural. I had never done so in Germany, mostly also because it is not usually done. But on my many annual trips taking students to Va-lencia I had seen this. I especially remember queuing for cinema tickets one night when a young homeless man approached people asking for help and the elderly lady who was waiting in front of me most naturally opened her handbag and offered him her sandwich, which he thankfully accepted. I was much impressed then, wishing this would be easier in Germany, too. Back to Athens, where my mind was working rattling just the way I write and remember it all now. It did not take long for Dimis to appear, again he did not see me – for years I would only see him walk bent down by life with his eyes staring at the pavement. I stopped him and simply asked Peinas; (Are you hungry?). Once he had told me he was and I had asked him where he would like to go, he kept promising that he would not buy anything expensive, told me his name and age and asked about me. I was a little worried then he might mistake my offer and think I was trying to chat him up as a rentboy, which I know he had never been, not that it mattered anyway. Years later I told him about this fear and I would learn how probable this would have been in his situation. As I have written above, we ended up in the small McDon-ald’s that then, before the onset of the economic crisis still existed in Omonia Square. Dimis kept asking questions and was extremely proud and this once smiled a heartwarming smile when repeated my answer to where I was from with a surprisingly good German pronunciation. Even though I only work there, I had said Nurembergi thinking he might know it. While we were waiting, I noticed that his shoes were falling apart. When he realized I had seen this, he dryly said They will be gone soon. And again just as if I had done so many times before, I automat-ically offered to buy him a new pair. The little exchange that followed still leaves me wondering about myself, shaking my head and smiling incredulously. I said to Dimis something like: First you take your time to eat and drink something. In the meantime I will go and post my post-cards, just tell me where to meet again. As I knew how rundown and possibly dangerous the area behind the shops was, I did at least ask him if it was dangerous for me. No, he said and explained; thinking I might not know the Greek word for corner, he explained indicating what he meant with his right foot. Off I went to the post office and then did not find him. I ventured into streets I would never ever have entered before (by now I do not fear them at all anymore) and kept looking for him for what seemed like an unbearable eternity and did not find him! This was horrible, I felt miserable because I had promised to buy him shoes and did not want him to believe that I walked off after all. But as it could not be helped I did in the end go to, what has become my favourite clothes shop, as originally planned. I still own and wear the T-shirt I was wearing when I met Dimis (bought on another occasion in another shop in more central Athens) and the T-shirt bought then. Luckily, I decided to one more time try and find Dimis in order to make sure I really had try all that I could. Not far from the shop I did find him, as I now know very close to where he had been spending almost 6 years of his life already trying to survive by selling his paper handkerchiefs. He used to sell them at the crossroads next to the Polytechnic University close to the Archae-ological Museum (which I may at long last go and visit next time I am in Athens). When I told Dimis how worried I had been about not finding him, he simply answered he thought I might have missed him in a way that meant something like I would not have been angry. So we started to head to a shop that he knew, he dashed off making his way through heavy rush hour traffic. I of course could not follow his example, at which he laughed and stopped the cars so that I could cross the street. I was so scared then, fearing he would be killed in front of my very eyes. My mind was rattling, trying to think of things I could ask. So I learnt that he was from Athens and that he was not in touch with his family, not wanting to talk about them at all. His gesture indicated that they were a thing of the past to be totally forgotten. It was extremely im-portant for him, however, that I did not misunderstand who he was. For he used the English word junkie to tell me he was an addict. Rereading my travel notes such a long time later, I discovered that he then already told me that he stayed in a cheap hotel the few times he had enough money. This detail I had completely forgotten about. In general he could talk a little better then – he surely for the 20 euro I had given him he had found some heroin to snort while I was at the post office. When I asked him years later, he was not sure anymore but assumed so. While we were on our way to the shoe shop, I did dare ask him if I could take a photo of him. I actually was really ashamed to ask but honestly needed one and under no circumstances did I want to take one just like that or trying to hide it. Of course, he said and immediately stopped and posed. Ever since my return from the second trip to Athens that sum-mer, I have had this photo in my living room. And as you will see later, it was lucky that I took it. Most likely there would not be much I could write about without it! When we finally got to the shoe shop, it was closed unfortunately. I seemed more disappointed than Dimis. I am not sure anymore if we tried to find another one then or simply carried on walking for a while. when we got back to Omonia Square from Patission Street. In any case, Dimis all of a sudden asked me if I had email and wanted to give me his email address, which left me very surprised. Of course I did want it, but did not have anything to write on me. So we went to a kiosk (the most important institution in Greece, which in many cases is like a 24-hour-shop) but not surprisingly the owner did not want to sell me pen and paper for the 50-euro-note I only had on me anymore. When he saw how disappointed I was, he asked why we needed them and I told him. As Greek people are wonderfully friendly and helpful, he simply tore out a leaf from a pad and handed it us to-gether with a pen and told Dimis to take his time writing down what he wanted. He was completely exhausted by then. I did not understand his explanation of the word full stop and he could not fully remember his email address. This would play a role later on but did not worry me then. Somehow we both realized the time had come for us to part. I decided to give him the 50 euro and told him to try and buy shoes from them as well, rather thinking he might only invest them in drugs. But this did not matter the least bit, I am so glad now that I understood and felt this then. Shoes as I learnt later are the most valuable good for any home-less, they are easily stolen by others when someone falls asleep. They would throughout all the years I looked after Dimis remain both a spe-cial bond between us and one thing I had to buy frequently. Therefore it was very moving the day before yesterday (9/8/2017) when a friend [6/8/20: to be more precise, his one sister’s then fiancé and now hus-band.] called me from Athens just to let me know he was just standing outside the shop near Omonia where I used to go with him later on for him to find sneakers that he wanted to hav On 10/8/2011 after having given him the money, I told him to take care and he thanked me in much the same way as outside the underground earlier that afternoon and crossed himself when I left. That night I had to go to my steki (my regular food and music place) more than ever before, I bought a whole bottle of rosé and dared dance on my own from time to time just like the locals. That was exactly what I needed then! In my travel notes that day amongst my observations are the following (they astonish me when I re-read them and at the same time they do not): I assume that Dimis takes cocaine (not knowing that in Greece it has always been customary to snort heroin called preza) and that he will not live much longer (Dimis himself later actually always used to tell me he would not have survived the winter had he not met me). I describe him as completely dirty (which he was, having however made an attempt at keeping his hair neat) but handsome and charming underneath.

It goes without saying that my knowledge of Greek was fundamental to getting to know Dimis in the first place and to helping him for years. I have often been asked (in Greece itself and elsewhere) and asked my-self why I had always wanted to learn it. I guess one reason was my fascination whenever I heard Greek spoken in Germany’s oldest, longest running soap opera [It stopped being produced and shown in 2020 during the second week of the lockdown.], where there is a Greek restaurant of course and the Greek spoken in its context has always been subtitled into German. The more long-term effect must be that Greek music has always touched me in a most special way, I had already loved it whenever I went to a Greek restaurant with my Parents or Grandpar-ents. This love developed into a wish to also understand the lyrics and my love for Greek music has never ceased, on the contrary it is growing stronger and stronger the more I know. Music, throughout my years with Dimis, also served as a very special bond between us. The first time I tried to learn some Greek was when still at school in the 1980s, then I learned quite a bit from a friend from Athens who I taught some Ger-man when we both studied at Sheffield University in the winter term of 1993/1994. This contact made me get to know the kind of laika (the popular song that developed out of the rembetiko), both in Sheffield and on my first visit to Athens in October 1995, that I still adore. Both times I stopped learning Greek when the difficulties of the Greek past tense aoristos left me completely frustrated. Because of this and other complications especially in the verbal system a standard Greek response to me speaking Greek is that people tell me they have an extremely difficult language. This is true, I can tell, starting to learn it dili-gently ín December 2006 I understood that I would for years need to apply all the tricks that I have been teaching my own students for a long time! My interest in Greek had been sparkled again when I received a CD with Greek Christmas songs from a student. Then in September 2008 after quite a long time of only reading and writing Greek and starting to understand more and more of the songs I decided to go back to Athens and especially find out how useful my Greek was. Ever since I have not stopped going back frequently on a regular basis. Then I was extremely lucky to find a traditional music place in Psirri (a