An Excursion to Kea, Part I

My wife's yiayia, Asimina, grew up on the island of Kea, Greeks call it Tzia. Most of her relatives from Tzia have either died or moved away, so that our connection with the island is tenuous except for the small chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas that Asimina built. Tzia is covered with these little churches, many built on remote hilltops or overlooking the sea. Asimina scrimped, saved and collected the money to build this simple testament to her devout faith in a loving God. It is a whitewashed building with a small bronze bell. It was built near a stream that runs into a green valley from the barren mountains surrounding it. We usually spend some time there cleaning, censing, filling and lighting the oil lamps while saying our prayers. My wife Anna had a deep affection for her yiayia and it rubbed off very quickly on me. Asimina was in her eighties when I met her, her face covered with the deep lines of old age, her gnarled bony hands and tiny frame covered with a thin layer of almost translucent skin. Despite all this she still cooked and puttered around the small Athens apartment where she lived. The apartment building was built to house refugees from Asia Minor; its deteriorating facade was pockmarked with bullet holes sustained in firefights during the Greek civil war. Asimina came from a poor family eking out a living on a rocky barren plot of land in Tzia. At the age of 23, like other young Greek women of her generation, she left her destitute homeland; in her case to work as a cook for a prosperous Greek family in Alexandria, Egypt. After contracting malaria she returned to Greece and was able to marry a young man who had prospects, a job at the German company, Bauer. For a while, life was good. They began raising a family and built a home in the Athens suburb of Maroussi. As the dark clouds of the Depression descended on Greece, her husband lost his job and subsequently the comfortable home that they shared with their three children. The family ended up in a small shack in Kesariani (a working class Athens neighborhood) and her husband's health began to deteriorate. He died suddenly just before the war came to Greece in 1940. With three children under the age of ten, Asimina managed to keep her family intact and survive the famine during the Nazi Occupation. In 1944, after liberation, the small shack where her family lived burned to the ground in fighting between Communist rebels and British forces. Having lost all their worldly possessions except the clothes on their back, the family's only shelter was some pine trees on the outskirts of Kesariani. They shared a solitary plate for their meals. My mother-in-law reminisced recently about waiting her turn to eat the meager portion of soup she received once a day. Asimina's children eventually grew to adulthood and raised families of their own. In 1989 my wife and I returned to Greece with our six month old first born son, Nicholas. Asimina suffering from Leukemia, had recently fallen and fractured her pelvis. Laying in her hospital bed she smiled broadly as we laid our son, her first great grandchild, in her arms. The blessings tumbled from her lips as she made the sign of the cross repeatedly over him and her eyes slowly welled up with tears. She passed away a few months later.

Technorati : Alexandria, Asia Minor, Bauer, Egypt, Greek Civil War, Greeks, Kea, Kesariani, Maroussi, Nazi Occupation of Greece

Comments

[Scruffy American]

Stavro,

Very nice story. The wife and I will have to make a trip there one day and visit the area you spoke about.

[Stavros]

Scruffy, More to come, stay tuned.

[Steven Boucouvalas]

Yasou Stavraki!

You have a great web site and more so a wonderful admiration for your Greek Heritage !

Stavro, I am glad to know you and wish you the best in your future endeavors !

Best wishes

Steven Boucouvalas

[Stavros]

Welcome aboard,my friend and Thank you for your service to our community. Semper Fi