EVERYTHING IS IN NOTHING

By Nikos Konstantinidis

Michalis, the robust son of his parents who settled in Piraeus, was forced to take his life into his own hands and fight for a better tomorrow. Alone, without any help, since his adolescence, he threw himself into the struggle of life with the dream of creating a shipping company.
He will marry the most beautiful woman in the city, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Greece, he will build a huge financial group with a fleet of ships, hotels, and the largest department store in Piraeus, and he will rise to the top of the Greek economic elite, with his foresight and stubbornness.
The Greek crisis and his love for a sweet girl from the island communities will force him to play everything for everything.
Michael is simply the main character of the novel. Around it live and star many immigrants and settlers, whose personal history is described with realism and eloquence.
The author describes people's relationships against the backdrop of Greek society.
Through the portrayal of this full of twists and turns time in the lives of the protagonists, Nikos Konstantinidis, with his magical writing, fascinatingly unfolds the recent history of the last sixty years of Greece, which inspires, disappoints, and fascinates.
The protagonists' dreams, joys and sorrows, successes and failures are described in such a way that they give unparalleled vitality to the book, which you will not want to put down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781446158098

Book preview

Dedicated to all immigrants and locals  with the deepestlove and the Kassians:

Captain Minas Daskalakis, whose first bark took him to the most distant and unknown foreign countries,

Antonis Zoulis, who in all his life travelled us far, far, and deep.

I thank from the bottom of my heart my spiritual fellow traveller professor in the USA Manolis Kassotis for his essential help in publishing the book and the cooperation we have with the House of Letters and Arts of the Dodecanese.

I thank them because they let me in, and I took part in their lives. Sadness does not drive me out of my house; on the contrary, it opens her house to me and becomes my friend. Ultimately, this sadness is the last gift of my loved ones leaving.

OEBPS/images/image0002.png

I asked all the expatriates and locals I met to tell me why they decided to leave the place where they were born.

They all answered me with a question they asked in their youth: But how would we live our lives? they responded: By leaving.

Whatever they achieved in their life, they achieved from nothing.

Now, years later, after being rooted in places far away, they wonder: How will we live the life we have left?

And the answer more and more often is: By going back.

The First Boarding

OEBPS/images/image0002.png

Heavy winter. The cold sea air pierced the bones. On that icy winter night in 1960, the island immigrants were unaware of the role they played in their personal history and the history of their homeland.

The 'foreign lands or poverty' dilemma left them with few choices.

They had heard a lot, but in fact, they knew little. The place they were going to was unknown. They created a mythical image of the destination in their minds and made the decision, imitating the others who had left before them.

The most valuable they took with them was their origin; wherever they went, there were doors that opened for them. What was in their mind and hearts was Greece for the whole universe. They started with nothing to win everything.

The horrible stirring of their stomachs, their nausea, and misery absorbed every other thought.

The ship 'Filippos,' as the Kavounidou steamship was renamed, was a former American cargo ship built in England and purchased in 1955. It had swimming pools, a garage for thirty cars, and air conditioning in the first class. Initially, it traveled to Heraklion every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Later, in the summers, it traveled to Italy, Crete, and in the winter months, it made the route, Piraeus - Ios - Santorini - Agios Nikolaos – Sitia- Kasos - Karpathos - Halki - Rhodes, or from Piraeus to Leros - Kalymnos - Kos - Rhodes.

But the shaking of his small cabin, where thirteen people were stacked, eight adults, four children, and one more in his mother's womb, no one could stand, not even the unborn baby, because her pregnancy and the vomiting made him want to come out an hour earlier in the light of this world.

Most passengers were destined for Piraeus, and from there, with the ocean liner 'Olympia,' they would make the trip of their life to distant America.

The ship was built in 1953 in Glasgow on behalf of the Goulandris 'Greek Line.' The newly built ocean liner made its maiden voyage under the Liberian flag. It had 138 first-class and 1,169 tourist cabins. On each trip, he carried 1,300 passengers. Years later, in February 1972, the legendary captain of 'Olympia' Giannis Katsikis, managed to save it off Bermuda when the winds were blowing at a speed of sixty miles per hour while the waves reached seven meters high.

The islanders were accustomed to the sea but with another type of boat, wooden schooners with one dirty cabin.

The windswept deck for the poor immigrants was a relief from the closure of the cabin, but the rugged Aegean in December 1960 made such an option inaccessible. The deck was wet and icy, full of people throwing up where they were.

Marigoula was lying on her bunk for most of the trip, with her bloated belly on her side, forcing her fellow passengers to huddle on top of each other and take care of her.

Marigoula was a beautiful brunette twenty-year-old girl in the seventh month of her pregnancy. She was born and raised in Agia Marina of Kasos. Her Kassian grandparents settled in Syros before the war, where her father had found work in the shipyards after the war and the liberation of the Dodecanese, but her mother lived in Kasos. She did not want to leave her homeland and its people. My place, she said, with a petrified look, as if to say, It is myself, and she burst into tears only at the idea that she had to leave the place where she was born. But when she got married, she set sail for Syros, where her husband, with the efforts of a lifetime saving, managed to repair her parents' house in Ermoupolis. There, she slowly made new friends. Besides, there was an important Kassian community in Syros, which she integrated without much effort.

Her husband, Nicholas, was a distant relative, not by blood but by marriage. His family was poor, partly from Crete and partly from Kasos. Some lived in Crete, others in Kasos, but many emigrated abroad after the war and the liberation of the Dodecanese. Most ended up in America.

After Kasos' holocaust in 1824, many Cretans, who had no estates and especially those with family ties, came and settled in neighboring Kasos.

Nikolas had grown up in Kasos, and with many difficulties, he finished primary school in Agia Marina and high school in Sitia, Crete. He spent Christmas, Easter, and summers in Kasos, helping his grandfather with farm work. Often, when the weather allowed, his grandfather, Michalis, took him fishing with him. He had a wooden rowing boat and needed help. There, he trained his arms and muscles as much as anybody else on the island. They rowed to Armathia and Makra, the islands with fishing grounds opposite Kasos, and returned at night.

His grandmother Kaliope loved him as 'twice her child.' She cooked for him traditional food, 'dolmades' and 'macarounes' with 'sitaka', and fried parrot fish, which he fished with his grandfather.

Now in his thirties, he was strong, unaffected by nausea, full of joy and optimism. With a thousand drachmas in his pocket, saved with lots of effort and bloody economies, he, for the first time, barged for a better life like most of his fellow villagers.

His marriage to Marigoula had been arranged since they were children. Nikolas was about ten, but he was waiting for little Marigoula to grow up. He was very happy at that period. His luck gave him a beautiful woman with bubbly eyes and sweet hugs, happy and pleased with the man who chose her as his wife. They both enjoyed their bodies, and their mixing was strong. Nicholas was absolute: My son, not for a moment did it cross his mind that might be a daughter, he will be born in Piraeus. Most Kassian women gave birth in Sitia, because the island did not have, nor does have today, a hospital. Marigoula preferred to give birth in Sitia. However, she agreed to give birth in Piraeus because from there, they had in mind to go to America, where she had many aunts and cousins.

Expatriate Kassians were everywhere: in America, in Canada, in Australia, in Africa, in Belgium. But most were in Egypt since the Kassians settled there as workers in 1858 to build the Suez Canal.

In 1854, the French diplomat and engineer Count Ferdinand Lesseps, who aroused the interest of the regent of Egypt, Said Pasha, took the order to dig and began the work. Greek Dodecanesians from Kasos and Kastelorizo also participated in the construction of the Canal, many of whom settled permanently there. Significant Kassian communities flourished in Port Said and Ismailia, with a solid economic and cultural presence in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century.

To this day, on the heroic island, the lyre players still sing about the population bleeding off their island for the construction of the Suez Canal. Here is a 'mantinada' that the Kassians sing, with the following meaning: 'If De Lesseps was still alive, I was going to convict him because he settled the desert and depopulated Kasos.' It is no coincidence that the first navigator to sail the Canal was a Kassian.

Thus, Marigoula and Nikolas became part of this human sea of immigrants from different parts of Greece and from different nations who started the unknown long journey to another world.

Nikolas's family had relatives in Syros and Naxos. He had two older brothers, Antonis and George. Both had emigrated to the Bronx right after the independence of the Dodecanese.

The Bronx is one of the five boroughs of New York City, and it is located northeast of Manhattan, where many Dodecanesians, mostly Kassians, immigrated. The Bronx is separated from Manhattan by the Bronx River. Most Kassians live on a hill west of the north end of Manhattan, close to Queens and Long Island. The western part of the Bronx was incorporated into New York City in 1874, and the rest was added in 1895.

Greeks have always been dreamers. They saw and dreamed. And it was not only the Mediterranean climate and the bright sun that were to blame. It was the immigrant inside them who saw these dreams. They left Greece when they put a sea between them and her. Those who had taken the train believed they would soon find their way back. That was the illusion. Immigration follows some patterns stored in the minds of immigrants as a legacy from generation to generation.

What are the consequences of living a life your mind does not recognize? You derail like a train and become a stranger even to yourself. Only by luck can he get by. Luck, because there is no conscious tactic to achieve identification with oneself and one's roots.

Immigration is something like partial suicide. Immigrants do not die, but many things die within them. Among other things, their language. When, after years, they are proud that they have learned a foreign language, to the extent that they have learned it, and they remember their mother tongue, to the extent that they remember it, they realize that the former was a work of necessity, while the latter was a work of love. This is the victory of the expatriates against oblivion and indifference.

That is why most immigrants and locals gather around things that remind them of their homeland. They snore or cry like children when something brings their homeland to their minds. They never forget. They hold within themselves what reminds them of history and habits, tastes and smells, sun and sea. All these emotions are the umbilical cord of their origin.

Immigrants were raised in Greece, and they grew the world, embracing a new country and a new language. But when they were together, they stopped speaking English and started speaking as they once did, to know exactly what they were saying and who they really were.

Those who live far away do not ask what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country. No matter how far away they were, no matter how dazzled by what they saw, what they felt about their homeland, deep in their bowels, was completely Greek. The distillation of life in a foreign country was always bitter. Wherever they were destined to live, they did great things. They started from nothing, and they did something, and from something, they did a lot.

Except for the Greek-Turkish population exchange decided by the Treaty of Lausanne, the largest migration of islanders to America began in the late 19th century and peaked in the first quarter of the 20th.

The first Naxians owed an invention, or rather an innovation, which is a real source of wealth, imitated by many Greek immigrants. The American people, and especially the people of Washington, were great consumers of celery, which they used in soups and grilled and seasoned almost all foods. But they also ate it raw as an appetizer. Due to its great use, it was cultivated all year round and sold in the markets. Its disadvantage, however, was that it was sold by the greengrocers as it came from the fields, full of soils and clones, and to clean it needed plenty of water.

This is where Naxian smartness and ingenuity came and triumphed. Before the war, a man from Naxos thought of cleaning celery at home, washing it, putting it in a basket, and selling it in a busy corner, and he started advertising his merchandise with the little English he knew. An hour before, the smart Naxian had sold out. In a little while, he had brought three more baskets of celery and sold them too. By the time the other patriots got the hang of it, he had made good money.

It did not take long for most Naxians in Washington to change into outdoor celery traders, or 'celandines,' as they were called. Celery, lady, twelve cents one, twenty-five cents two.

The fact is, however, that large fortunes were acquired from celery, and many, mainly Naxians, were transformed from small sellers into wholesalers, led by Georgios Deoude, from Apeiranthos, the so-called 'King of celery.'

Antonis initially worked in a grocery store of a Naxian, then in a restaurant, and later his brother George came to America.

For the first time abroad, the main concern of the emigrants was finding a job and a house to stay in. The hardest part was getting accepted. 'Xenitemos' was not only moving to a foreign country but also internal migration. The most difficult of all was to be accepted. In Athens and Piraeus, the Greek Asians and Pontians were called refugees until 1970. One and a half million people were stacked in the mud in makeshift camps, which became permanent over the years, in Kokkinia, Drapetsona, Korydallos, Keratsini, Nea Ionia, Kaisariani, Vyronas, Ymittos, Kallithea. Tents and shacks everywhere.

Over time, 'foreigners' became even more foreign. The superficial isolation of the first years changed into internal, whether they lived in Greece or abroad. The plan of their lives was overturned. When they were in a foreign land and were not with their peers, they avoided speaking their own language. It was not a matter of refinement. There were many who felt a kind of shame, not only because it made it clear that they were strangers but also because it was as if they were shown a part of themselves that they did not want to reveal. At the same time, they felt the same shame and the same embarrassment to speak the new language with the old acquaintances. Their daily life, especially in foreign countries, was determined by their need not to be foreigners to either foreigners or Greeks. And, of course, that made them strangers to both.

But that was not enough. There was another problem, deeper, alienation from themselves. They did not want to because they knew what it meant. Losing the joy of life is like someone else living your life, and you find that deep bitterness that poisons you, the existential embarrassment that makes life routine.

Marigoula was lying in her bunk again, burning and feverish, in a cabin where twelve others were coming in and out, without air. Soon, her mood changed from joy to despair, trembling for her unborn child more than for herself, to the point of giving up life. Her fear was that she might spill her own unborn child.

Anxiety overwhelmed her and made her believe that her end had come. Her only consolation was that she had married a sweet and patient man sitting beside her. For endless hours, he wiped her forehead with a wet cloth and spoke enthusiastically about what life would be like in the new land of faraway America that they would go to a few months later.

Oh, my Saint George, Hadioti, she said at one point. No, Niko, I will die here. I will not make it.

I do not want to listen to such things, Marigoula, he told her categorically. You are my wife. Trust me. With God's help, we will reach our destination. The New World is waiting for us.

I'm losing my world, he cried, I'm so unhappy.

Eventually, she did not die, and the time came when the ship's shaking stopped. He picked her up in his arms and pulled her to the deck. She was weak and exhausted, but when she saw the sun, the sky, and the calm waters of the port of Piraeus, she felt that she would live and that she wanted to live.

They were standing side by side on the deck as Philippos, our ark, as Marigoula later called the ship, was approaching the port.

Everyone got out. Old and young, children screaming, babies crying, people silent, frightened, sick, full of hope, a torrent of islanders and linguistic island idioms, tears and laughter. Motherland Greece welcomed them and, at the same time, expelled them.

The unknown fascinated me; the fear was hidden, and the hope was rising. Inside the pandemonium, information was heard about how to move as soon as they hit the ground. Almost everyone boarded a large ship for the first time and left their islands, with quiet streets and low-whitewashed houses.

Beyond the sea, you could see the imposing mass of large buildings and the traffic on the sidewalks and cars.

When they got out of the ship, they were huddled next to each other like a herd of animals and were whining in terror at the strange things happening around them. There were Cretans, Dodecanesians, and Cycladics, with traditional dresses that immediately distinguished them from the people of Piraeus. They had an appearance that made them different.

Most immigrants had relatives. Many others had arrived before them. Before and during the war, many islanders created communities in Piraeus and Athens.

Nikolas' father, Michalis, was among the twenty-five Kassians who went voluntarily to the front with the Dodecanesian Regiment, which was based on the over-optimistic estimates of the Dodecanesian community. It was November 1940, twenty years ago. One thousand five hundred and eighty-six Dodecanesians ran to the front line with the Regiment's commander, Markos Kladakis. None of them had Greek citizenship because the islands were under Italian Occupation, and their volunteering in the Greek Army was considered 'national treason.' Whoever was captured was executed.

'Paroikos' is someone who lives in a foreign country without having political rights. Communities of Greeks abroad, on all continents, were created from the 15th to 20th century. However, the internal migration of the Dodecanesians took place mainly to the capital of the Dodecanese, Rhodes, Piraeus, and Athens. In the past, after the Holocaust of 1824, many Kassians ended up in Syros and fewer in Naxos.

Nikolas and Marigoula had no relatives in either Piraeus or Athens. But they had in America. Nikolas's two older brothers, Antonis and Giorgos, already lived there. They were the first to leave after the liberation. Antonis was eighteen years older than Nikolas, and Giorgos was sixteen years older. Nicholas was their little brother. Many times, he was asked to go and find them in America. Thus, Piraeus was a stop for them for about three months until their child was born. Then, they would follow with the big boat to America. They planned to barge in the spring.

A man from Piraeus, a man of the 'world,' introduced himself to them as Konstantinos. Warm and friendly, he put them aside. They both felt relieved after the initial surprise in a 'foreign place.' Under Constantine's guidance, Nicholas lifted the baggage, which contained everything they had in this world, and with one hand around Marigoula's waist, followed Konstantinos away from the crowd.

Konstantinos handed them over to a friend of his, Theodoros. He was short, had a sharp eye, a long nose, and an insidious and whining style. He made it clear from the beginning to the ignorant islanders: he suffered to do favors to simple people like Nicholas. Eventually, as if on cue, he accepted fifty drachmas to guide them where to go. He put them in an old car and led them, the atheist, to the refugee district of Kokkinia. There, he had a relative who rented them a room.

Kokkinia was full of refugees from Pontus and Armenia. The houses and stables were surrounded by yards with large doors so the horses could enter and leave, dragging their carts, which transported goods until 1960, to and from the port of Piraeus. Later, with a beneficial law, their owners obtained truck permits.

Theodoros received another sixty drachmas from Nikolas as a commission and eighty drachmas for the first rent for the one-room shack without electricity.

It did not take long for Nikolas to realize that the process of being mocked, exploited, stolen, and deceived was part of the life of all immigrants in Piraeus who had no relatives or friends. Otherwise, were things on his island, there was cordiality. In the big city, friendliness was replaced by mutual distrust, which he himself hated. Phrases like: 'What news, neighbor?' and 'What good wind brought you?' and words like 'duty' and 'responsibility' began to disappear.

The questions in Marigoula's dark and aching eyes were silent but clear.

Look at my bloated belly. Will I give birth in a shack? Will this be my child's legacy?

Relax, Marigoula, Nikolas comforted her. That is why we came to Piraeus, which also has a hospital. It is a start; things will change.

At the demand of the owner, before the end of the first fortnight, they had paid the second monthly rent in advance, and a lot of their money, before they set foot in the 'new land,' had gone away.

Thus, the newlyweds, at least initially, found themselves in the slum of Kokkinia, far from the island communities of Piraeus. The light came in through a dirty window, which was impossible to clean. From dawn to dusk, Nikolas offered his body, his mind, and his strength. He was trying to find a job as a porter or a fisherman in the port of Piraeus, without counting the humiliations since he had some education that was not easy for those years. With the knowledge he had, he could find a job even as a teacher, which was his dream.

But there were no jobs. It was winter, a cold, icy winter, and only the big ships were going out. He did not want to set sail for a long journey as a sailor because he did not want to leave his wife alone. However, he offered himself 'unconditionally' for any other job.

Kokkinia, sixteen before, during the Occupation, had experienced her own drama.

At dawn on March 7, 1944, the invaders surrounded the city. A group of about forty guards working with Germans marched to Thebes Street, at the height of Karaiskaki Street, and four Nazi trucks in Koutsikari, in the area where Eleftherias Square is today, and at six in the morning, ELAS launched a general attack. After fierce battles around Perivolaki, in today's Davaki Square, ELAS forces retreated due to lack of ammunition, and the Germans occupied the area. Some of them headed towards Karaiskaki Street, where the 2nd Battalion of ELAS pushed the Germans away. On the contrary, from the side of the City Hall, the Germans invaded the city. However, the fighters of the 3rd Battalion, with a machine gun and five grenades thrown by the fighter Stelios Kardaras, forced them to retreat. Then, it was decided to attack with all the ammunition that was left, surprising the Germans, who, despite their superiority, retreated and fortified the school that was between Grevenon and Redestou streets. They stayed at the school all night, looking for members of EAM and ELAS. They made small raids on streets and houses, arresting many local people. The next morning, they chose which of the prisoners would be held and which would be executed in Saint Anargyroi Square. Among others, they arrested police Lieutenant N. Savvaidis, teacher G. Venetos, D. Tsakanikas, and Tsakaras. Late in the afternoon, the Nazis and the Guards gradually withdrew from Kokkinia, taking with them a total of three hundred captives, and led to the Haidari camp. A total of 37 people from Kokkinia were executed there, five of whom were Armenians, while the rest were tortured in the basement of the camp by Gestapo men. Five months later, mass executions followed in Kokkinia in retaliation for the resistance.

The memories of the war were fresh. But what hurt the people of Kokkinia most of all was not that they had lost their own people from the rage of the conquerors but from the treacherous 'nationalistic' attitude of the Guards working with the Germans.

Nicholas, every morning, at dawn, moved in the cold to find work. He put aside the islander's pride and begged whatever he could find.

There is nothing, patriot; come again next week, was the reply.

Marigoula persuaded him, after a big fight, to give five drachmas to buy a heavily used jacket. But Nicholas was counting the last penny. They had to go to the doctor, who took ten drachmas each time.

At the port, Nikolas met a man called Stavros. He told him he could find him a job on a cruise ship. But Nikolas did not know that the small excursion boats did not work in the winter. In addition, to secure a job, Stavros told him that he wanted twenty drachmas in advance. They scheduled their meeting for ten in the morning at the port. There, Nikolas waited for four hours in the cold and rain, and then, disappointed and full of bitterness at the way he was deceived, he, an honest man, returned to Marigoula.

The shack was always cold. At night, they wandered like two lost children, that one man deprived of his manhood, and she deprived of the joy and fun of her youth. Nikolas lightly hugged her swollen body and wiped her tears. He knew his wife needed good food. They came from a place where food was life, enjoyment, and tradition. However, as their little money became less and less, they ate only bread, pasta, and fish that Nikolas caught with a fishing line in Pasalimani, counting even the few pennies. In a little while, they would not exist either. What would happen then? How would they leave for America?

Many years later, Nicholas would say that he owed his life, as well as that of their child, to Mr. Tryphon. When he said this, Marigoula's lips tightened, her eyes tightened, and Nicholas shrugged and said that a man and a woman did not see things the same way.

Tryphon was an elegant gentleman. He wore an expensive suit that made him stand out from the crowd. His black coat with the collar was made of fine dark mink, which was not available in the Greek market. He always wore a silk tie and scarf. His polished shoes sparkled. Every morning, he would stop at the harbor, where little Lefteris from Syros would polish and varnish his shoes and give him his newspaper since he also worked as a newspaper boy.

Mr. Tryphon stopped outside their house, parked the Austin Morris sports car on the dirt road, knocked on the wooden door with his ring, and entered the dirty shack where Nikolas and Marigoula lived as if entering a palace. He took off his hat and said his name. He informed them that he had taken their address from Stavros, the gimmick of the square.

He was introduced to them as a construction contractor. He had a technical company that built apartment buildings for a fee. He was continuing a job that his father had started before the war.

In 1834, the urban plan of Klentze was approved, which adversely modified the original plan of the two architects Cleanthes and Schubert, who then gave a stunning image of Athens with wide streets, gardens, squares, and emblematic public buildings.

Over the next ten years, almost nothing was left standing. Engineers, architects, and contractors had been given the green light by the state to build everything. Not even a basic perimeter ban was observed to protect the Acropolis. Athens, although in the years of Otto, was destined to become a beautiful and functional city, after about one hundred and twenty years of life, it was leveled for the housing needs that increased terribly from the urbanization.

Mr. Tryphon had a large construction site and employed engineers, drivers, and workers, skilled and unskilled. They listened to him in surprise. It was the first time that someone entered their poor shack, and in fact, someone so elegant that he left them speechless. Quite simply, they got lost.

Tryphon! I am a construction contractor and a supplier of workers, he announced to them. Sorry, I'm an Athenian, and I forget that there are other places, like the small islands. I forget that Greece is not only Athens. Have you heard of the 'Athenian Construction'?

Nikolas wondered if it would be right and polite to suggest to Mr. Tryphon to take off his coat. It was cold in the shack. He was wearing the jacket that Marigoula insisted on buying, and Marigoula had three cotton swabs under her woolen blouse. He thought he could be ridiculed if he dealt with formalities.

Athenian Construction?

They shook their heads.

It's the largest construction company. Builds with the compensation system in all areas of the basin. During this period, we put forward three new apartment buildings in Piraeus. We need strong men with the will to work hard without looking at their watch.

Sit down, please, Marigoula said. She had forgotten the kindness that suited the occasion. But where would the man sit? They only had two old prewar wicker chairs. She had forgotten that whatever this miserable place was, it was still their home and that the rich and elegant Mr. Tryphon was a visitor to them. If they were on their island, they would treat him with 'muskrats,' 'xerotigana,' and 'soumada.'

Mr. Tryphon examined the two old wicker chairs. He took an uncertain expression, and Nikolas looked at Marigoula disapprovingly. Then, after checking the chair to see if it was stable, he sat down carefully and went on to explain what qualifications were needed to work in his construction business. The most important was to be strong and have courage.

We want such men, he continued, not to be afraid of hard work.

My God, said Nicholas, This is what I ask for, a job to afford my bread. My wife is pregnant, and we need living wages. I am not afraid of hard work.

I see it. Good freedom. Like I told you, the work is hard. I would not like to deceive a compatriot. I am also an islander from Corfu. The work is hard, but the daily wage is good, thirty drachmas a day for the unskilled. When you become a carpenter, you will get thirty-five, and if you work until the night, you can reach forty drachmas. Sundays are holidays. It's yours to do whatever you want.

He continued to talk to them about the joys and benefits of the hard but healthy life of the builders. Then he took some papers out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He explained that it was a simple employment contract.

I do not think you have been involved in any demonstrations! We do not want fuss and problems. Away from the communist riots. It is better for you.

We do not know of such things in our islands, Nikolas assured him, but even if I knew, I would say the same. Marigoula looked anxiously at Nikolas as he put his signature. The baby was kicking and rocking incessantly now. She wondered if she had calculated the weeks and months correctly. Her husband would be missing all day. They had no acquaintances in the slum. If she was in pain, he would be missing.

So tomorrow, said Tryphon, in the taxi station on Aggelou Metaxa Street (today's Passarela), at exactly six in the morning. Nicholas nodded in agreement. He had learned like the palm of his hand all over Pasalimani looking for a job, any job. Now, thank God, he had found a job, even a temporary one.

That night, Marigoula begged Nikolas not to go, not to waste. She had a very vague knowledge of the city and the distances. For many days, she had already regretted that they left their quiet island, even though he did not have a day's work there. She could not reach out and touch relatives or friends or do household chores, so she was stocked in their wretched room like something they at least knew.

If we stay here, we will die, was Nikolas's response to all her objections.

But she thought, I will die anyway.

Before dawn, Nicholas put on his oldest clothes and started in the cold for Pasalimani.

When he arrived at Aggelou Metaxa Street, he saw about fifteen men waiting. Were there for the same purpose? To the left of the square was Mantis's Pantheon cafe. That's what they called its owner. Everyone was holding a hot cup, but he had no money for personal pleasure.

Piraeus was then like a small town. The walls of the cafes were dominated by some chromolithographic paintings with figures of the struggle for independence, as well as the politicians of the time.

The ghost of the Left at that time was now hovering in the air again, about ten years after the end of the Civil War, giving self-confidence to the Left itself and sparking the imagination of 'nationalists' thinking of a threatened red seizure of power. Going from the realm of fantasies to that of the reality of the moment, the great winner of the 1958 elections was Konstantinos Karamanlis, who consolidated political stability and his own position in his party after the internal challenges and overthrow. The crash of the Liberal Party was not the reason to remove the portraits from the cafes.

Piraeus' cafes at that time were mainly labor or popular cafes intended for port workers, porters, and sailors. For a certain period, however, there were cafes that had a cosmopolitan atmosphere, such as Susanna, Dionysiadis in Pasalimani, and the old cafes of Terpsithea, which was a gathering place for the best people in town. Cafes were not places where people just gathered to spend their time, but places of work, as there were bargain agreements, rental, maritime work, and more. The people of the square gathered there by branches of work; elsewhere, the workers of the roller mills, the private servants, and the sailors, but also by places of origin elsewhere, the people of Hydra, the Cretans, the Chians, the Dodecanesians, and the Laconians.

Patriots, are you of the Athenian Construction? Nikolas asked hesitantly. Are you waiting?

Yes, patriot, he got the answer from a bored Hydraean.

We are waiting for George, the foreman, with the truck, added a Chian, blowing his hands to warm up.

Half an hour later, when George appeared, he gave the signal, and with the engine running, everyone jumped in the carriage except for Mastro-Kostas, who was a Karpathian, the eldest of them all. He got in the passenger compartment.

Thus began Nicholas' first day of foreign work. What he did not know was that the construction industry that year employed more than one hundred thousand workers in Piraeus and Athens. Hard work, the means were meager, and most of the time, they were without insurance. Not only did immigrants and locals find refuge in the building, but many were persecuted for their beliefs by the authorities, but the notorious 'Certificate of Social Believes' was not required there. Most of the builders were the husky lads of the time from all parts of Greece, while the relation of the profession with the Left was understandable.

Even though by May 1958, the EDA had emerged as the official opposition with 24.4% and claimed better conditions for the working class, things had not changed substantially. Every conquest in the industry for the improvement of working conditions and earnings the workers achieved was only with sweat and blood. The 'reform' of the social security system in the late 1960s by the Karamanlis government, always under the fear of communism, along with positive improvements, had many 'traps.' The apartment building had become synonymous with profitability.

Nikolas worked overtime until nightfall. His comrades tried in vain to persuade him not to serve Capitalism and to acquire a class consciousness.

Leave him alone. Nikolas has a birth ahead of him and debts. His will does not count, said most workers when they gave up the tools when it was time to finish.

There were only two or three left, including Nikolas, and they continued until late.

Until the third week of work, Nikolas did not appear in the square for work. Everyone was amazed.

Is it time to give birth? Or he found a better job on the ships?

The wait in the hall of Tzanio Hospital was endless and martyrdom. Nicholas' pain and the agony of waiting seemed like a century.

As he waited, he read the bitterness on the face of a mother from Astypalea, who accompanied her twenty-year-old son, on whom, as she whispered in his confidence, there was a suspicion that the evil disease was 'working.'

At one point, the whispered conversation came to life. Everyone with his pain and problems. He read it in the eyes of that mother's face, which he would remember forever. A man who was in the next room, a man of the sea, a seafarer from Kalymnos, also opened his own notebook with his sufferings, discussed them confidently with strangers, and shared them out loud with everyone. The lingering evil found him in the ocean; the disease did not wait. He took the plane and returned home to have the surgery, which was necessary and urgent. He counted differently and turned out differently. The surgery was delayed, and so he had to give an envelope (bribe). From there, he started the bills, which depleted his savings.

Then came the turn of another islander, a builder from Halki. He entered the hall with the CT scanners. The plates, the films had cherished every day and every page of his hard life. He could not hide anything; everything was read, and everything had a name and date. His lungs had been patiently written. And the doctor read them correctly after so many years.

Nikolas thought it was his turn to find out about his wife. But the doctor wanted to add something more to the builder who was groaning in bed: Let's do it, he said politely, kindly, and a 'Mantoux.' He smiled in his pain and offered his hand to embroider the 'Mantoux,' with whom he had known since the first post-war years, as a nurse he had known for years was trying to identify the bodies that infected the children of the popular neighborhood with tuberculosis.

The disease in those corridors of the hospital came in with the sack and came out with the needle; this proverb said it all. The sums demanded by the doctors were unbearable for the everyday laborer, the poor family man, and the pensioner, but also often unbearable for many who considered them very rich because they lived in luxurious apartments. The treasures of the Greek plutocracy were collected from the poor workers.

Within a few hours, Nikolas realized for the first time how immense was the pain of the disease and the ordeal of the poor. A sailor, Lefteris from Symi, introduced himself to him, saying that if the pain was a man, he would fight it to the end. His thoughts dragged him from the night by the awaking of his wife, groaning in pain.

From the next room, he heard Captain Lefteris say aloud:

Everything needs a fight. War and struggle. Nothing is won without vigilance and struggle. The pension, the bed, our bread, our humanity.

Shut up, old man, a voice said, Patients need to sleep. I will take you to the corridor. He was the doctor who worked overnight.

Before dawn, Marigoula gave birth to their child in horrible pain. Nikolas heard her screams from the hallway, and it was as if his heart was torn. His strong legs trembled like thin reeds. When they brought the newborn in his arms, he asked anxiously:

Son? Is he a son?

The doctor showed him the male symbol with his index finger outstretched, and his joy turned into a dangerous desire to dance a Kassian dance with the newborn in his arms.

In a little while, he was holding his son in one hand, and with the other, he was holding Marigoula's sweaty palm. She had her eyes half closed. He was not sure if she was crying or smiling. Before they even discussed it, he lifted the child up and gave him his father's name: Michalis.

So, Michalis was born in the Tzanio Hospital of Piraeus on December 1, 1960, crying non-stop until the time he started and was moaning insatiably. However, the newborn nor his parents knew that on the day he was born, fifteen thousand builders gathered outside the Athens Labor Center and started marching towards the Ministry of Labor.

On paper, at first, things looked good, but the reality was different. At the time, it was a miracle for a builder to work until he was sixty-five to retire. The challenge concerned the stamps 'in favor of the strangers' category, which raged throughout the country. In the general political climate, the strike was certain. In the beginning, the state mechanism was ready. For the first time in Greece, chemicals were used to disperse popular demonstrations.

But the builders turned out not to be handled easily. They did not disperse, and by setting up roadblocks, they went on the counterattack, forcing the police to retreat. Hours later, the report said 120 were wounded, three from police bullets, and 173 abductions, 139 builders, and the rest in solidarity, mostly young people. Twenty-two were referred to trial, which lasted from December 5 to 18 and monopolized the news.

The heroic reaction of the builders, on the one hand, caused panic among those in charge; on the other hand, it revived the morale of the working classes.

At the same time, the passions came back to the forefront. The front page of Kathimerini, on December 2, wrote: 'With the perfect organization, developing unprecedented militancy, the communists caused a bloody riot in Athens yesterday.' But the other front page of Avgi wrote: 'Builders. The streets are watered by your poor blood, but look, the hungry people are walking by your side ...'.

The next day, there was a protest strike with solidarity and other sectors of workers in Athens and Piraeus. Forty-five thousand people took to the streets: gas workers, drivers, accountants, machinists, printers and more.

Nicholas was more worried about the uncertainty of his job. He watched the days go by and went to burst. By asking, he learned a lot, which was difficult to know on his small island.

A few years after the liberation of the country from German Occupation and the end of the Civil War, which marked the heavy defeat of the popular movement in Athens and other major cities, the long period of reconstruction had already begun. People from all over Greece came to the construction sites and found work. People whose main Occupation in their villages was agriculture and animal husbandry, young but also older, who dreamed of a better life, wanting