Afternoons in Ithaka Read online

  Getting the flimsy slip of carbon paper that admitted me to a Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University was like getting the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Here was my pass to freedom, my chance to shine and grow and to escape my cloying family life. I dream of being exposed to exciting ideas, of becoming part of the heady world of student radicalism and succumbing to the seductive charms of clever, interesting men. These men will sweep me off my feet, perhaps with a little help from the house red at one of the many pubs that line the campus.

  But there is one small problem: Dad still holds the keys to the Valiant, and I must beg and plead to go out at night. Whatever freedoms I take, I take in the daytime, and furtively at that. Even after months at uni, a sense of not quite belonging still clings to me like an annoying skin, stopping me from stretching my limbs. I blame my woes on Dad and lash out at him daily. In my mind, he is Patriarchy, I am Feminism. He is the Right, I am the Left. He smells Fear, I crave Opportunity.

  ‘Just open your books and learn. Why must you get involved in so many things?’ he spits out, exasperated. ‘And why do you dress like a … like a communist?!’

  ‘You don’t trust me. You still think I’m a baby.’

  ‘It’s not you I don’t trust, Spirithoula. It’s the people around you. Be careful.’

  I got into uni. I try hard. Why can’t you be proud of me? I think these things, but I can’t say them to him. I fear his answer.

  Even within the Greek-Australian group, there are cliques. There are those who organise Greek disco nights, which I’m not allowed to attend. There are the left-leaning, dope-smoking, Philip-Glass-listening Greeks, who get effortless As in politics and philosophy. I hang around the edges of their group, cadging cigarettes and hoping their cool will rub off on me. But they do heavy drugs and they scare me a little – my head is confused enough as it is without the help of mood-altering substances. Then there are those who simply skit in and out between lectures, attached to no group in particular. I hang around the caff because these sub-sections of my own community feel familiar and safe, but I am confused and frustrated; I hanker for an elusive ‘something’ outside my safety zone, a place where I might find my niche.

  The government is talking about introducing student fees, which makes me angry because people who went to schools like mine might never afford to go to university. But the rallies I attend in protest often end in violence. The chaos of limbs connecting with police batons makes me feel sick. This out-of-control mess, led by a few radicals, doesn’t seem likely to lead to change. The right-leaning student politicians are no better. They prance around importantly, their enunciated vowels and ill-concealed arrogance hanging off them like a bad smell. I find myself missing the more innocent student advocacy of high school, the sedate Student Representative Council and the coy regional student forums, but there is no going back. Already I feel paralysed by cynicism and impotence.

  The students ingesting raw eggs and gallons of beer in an ‘Iron Gut’ competition make me feel even more at a loss, as they compete to see who can eat the grossest things. It’s like a primal rite of passage; not surprisingly, the main players are male. I watch, fascinated, as the afternoon ends with someone vomiting into a container and drinking it. He is the undisputed winner, but not the sort of boy I’d like to kiss.

  I loiter around the offices of Farrago, the student newspaper, hoping pitifully that someone will recognise my brilliant journalistic potential. But the students there are too busy meeting deadlines and pasting bits of paper onto a broadsheet to take any notice of me. I pine to write but don’t know how to enter their world. Everything seemed so much easier when I was the editor of our little school rag; now I need to prove myself all over again, in a much more competitive field. I pen angst-ridden poems in my journal and hide them away.

  All the while, I study well into the night, feasting on potato chips and instant coffee. Despite my efforts, my English Literature tutor hands back my first essay with a big red C on it.

  ‘Your sentence construction is muddled at times and sometimes I can’t understand your argument. Is English not your first language?’ she says.

  I burn with shame. Despite my obsessive reading, my thirst for words and ideas, I have been exposed as the fraud that I am – a girl from a disadvantaged high school with Greek-speaking, factory-working parents. But I am also filled with anger: this woman with the plum accent is no better than I am; she has no right to patronise me. Anger and stubbornness override my sense of shame and I hone my words, spend more time carefully crafting my sentences, and reel in As in no time at all. I think back to Cavafy, whose first language was not Greek, and the widespread criticism of his poems during his lifetime. He triumphed in the end. But after my initial euphoria, there is no real joy in churning out well-constructed diatribes on Jacques Derrida and Arthur Miller, Anaïs Nin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. How is this going to help me in life?

  My sense of inadequacy continues in Modern Greek classes. I join forces with another student, George, and we sit at the back of the class, hoping to avoid the scathing comments of our tutor.

  ‘I will now hand back the first assignment, in which there were some basic grammatical errors that you should have mastered in primary school.’ He casts a look at us. We try not to giggle. Although Greek was my first language, I will never be able to compete with the native-born Greek students in the class. They in turn complain that they have to take Greek with us dummies. But still, we realise we have something to offer each other, and so we barter our skills. I help one student with her essays in English, and she helps me with mine in Greek. Thankfully – to her great amusement and that of everyone around us in the caff – she picks up an error; in writing earnestly about woman’s role in society, I have referred to it repeatedly as ‘yamiki thesi’ – woman’s sexual position in the bedroom. My tutor would have had a field day with that one.

  During my spare time I work at Coles, save my Austudy and open my ‘freedom account’, which will finance an extended trip overseas when I finish my degree.

  The thought makes me smile as the music starts up.

  The man with the honey-coloured eyes plucks at the strings of the bouzouki. His fingers move with strength and grace, and I allow myself to fantasise about what else he might do with those fingers. The bouzouki is accompanied by the higher-pitched chords of the baglama, and then the rhythmic strains of the guitar. A high, almost primal voice rises up, singing of poverty and loyalty, hashish dens and dispossession. I close my eyes and let the music seep into my skin. I become lost in the irresistible lyricism of the language. All thoughts drain from my head and my breath stills. Time seems to slow down; I feel as if my very soul is filling up with the sound of other people’s pain, with their tales of redemption and love. And so it goes, song after song. I could be anywhere; the boundaries of time and space have dissolved.

  I jump with a start when I feel a rough tap on my shoulder. Dad is here. The concert isn’t yet over, but it’s time for me to go home.

  IRINE VELA ON REMBETIKA AND REBELLION

  Irine Vela is a producer, composer and musician of Greek and Albanian heritage. She co-founded the Aria award-winning band The haBiBis, composed the operas Little City and 1975, and has worked as creative producer with the Anti-Racism Action Band (ARAB) and Outer Urban Project (OUP). She plays the bouzouki, the Cretan laouto, the mandolin, guitar and many other fretted instruments. She talks here about the origins of rembetika and how her cultural background has influenced her own music.

  Rembetika is Greek urban popular music. It is the mother or father of modern Greek popular music, in the same way as blues, early jazz and American hymn music are to American popular music. The modes and musical language are similar to Greek folk music but, generally speaking, the instrumentation and lyrics differ. Where folk songs dealt with pastoral and rural life, early rembetika painted life on the city streets.

  Rembetika started around the time of the compulsory exchange of populations fol
lowing the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22. At least 1.5 million Greek Orthodox people living in Turkey were sent to Greece, and 500,000 Muslims living in Greece were sent to Turkey. The refugees from Asia Minor brought their music, their culture and their own folk music to Greece. Some brought urban music from cosmopolitan cities like Constantinople (now Istanbul) or Smyrna (Izmir). Rembetika was a marriage of these different musics and cultures.

  There were quite a few styles of rembetika. One was based on the regional folk music of Asia Minor. Another grew out of Anatolian music, which is shared by the people of Anatolia, both Greek- and Turkish-speaking; this is why you come across Greek songs and Turkish songs that are identical except for the lyrics. There was also a style called Café Aman, which is an eastern cabaret style. It’s quite sexy, a bit burlesque. We’re talking about music from the exotic melting-pot cities of the near east.

  Following the exchange, the populations of some Greek cities and towns increased by tenfold over a short period. Some refugees had the skills to set themselves up in business, but many had to start from nothing. Aristotle Onassis is probably the most famous example of a successful Anatolian refugee.

  There was a lot of chaos, hardship and social dislocation. The hashish stands, the prostitutes and the drug overdoses they sang about were real. The name rembetika comes from the word rembetes, which means ‘vagrants’ or ‘rebels’. Early rembetika was often sung by people who weren’t musically trained – they just played as they hung out in cafés and hash dens.

  In the early years, rembetes were underground musicians, offering snapshots of life on the streets, in the same way that blues musicians did in the United States. They were singing it as they were living it. As it evolved, it became a much more sophisticated and self-conscious art form. It took on influences from Europe and became more mainstream. Musicians such as Vassilis Tsitsanis took it to another level. His lyrics were more romantic and more consciously poetic and exotic than those of the early rembetes.

  Rembetika musicians used various folk instruments, but the classic pared-down instrumentation uses the baglama, bouzouki and the guitar. The baglama looks like a miniature bouzouki and is tuned an octave higher. It is often used to play rhythmic chords, but also sometimes for melody. It is the quintessential rembetika instrument, providing a high-pitched metallic pulse that completes the classic rembetika sound.

  The bouzouki was outlawed at one point during the fascist regime of Ioannis Metaxas in the 1930s. It was considered undesirable simply because it was played by undesirable people. The mythology of the baglama held that it was made by people in jail. Prisoners would hollow out pieces of wood to make the instrument, and then slip it into their pockets, out of sight of prison wardens.

  There are quite a few individuals and bands playing rembetika here in Australia. It’s a scene that many second-generation people participate in, as well as non-Greeks. It gives you a real sense of empowerment being able to play a musical style that not everybody can play. It’s a specialised music.

  I myself was obsessed with music from an early age. Part of it was going to Greek weddings and Albanian functions, listening to the clarinets and fiddles. It was like a secret universe, and I had access because of my background. From age four, I wanted the guitar, not the doll. I was proud that I could offer people music from my culture, music that excited me.

  I never really ran away from my roots. I was always very, very proud of my culture. For me it was a source of strength, growing up Australian as a second-generation Greek-Albanian. I never really left it, although in my twenties I moved away from home so that I could follow my passion for Greek music more openly. My mother and father, like many Greek parents, were proud of their culture but didn’t want their kids to end up in the arts.

  I formed bands with other people, played world music. But I was always in awe of Greek composers such as Manos Hatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis. I admired the way they married Greek popular folk music with modern poetry to create a vibrant movement. My opera, Little City, was strongly influenced by Theodorakis. Even though it’s not Greek music, elements of Greek music and political culture influenced the work. I aimed to marry contemporary language and ideas to a traditional base. I wanted very much to create original Australian music.

  Irine’s briam (spiced baked vegetables)

  Serves 6 to 8

  Briam is often made in the summertime with whatever vegetables one has to hand. Good-quality olive oil, slow cooking and seasonal ingredients are the secrets to its success. It can be made with herbs such as parsley and dill, but Irine adds exotic spices for a Middle Eastern take on this popular Greek dish.

  Ingredients

  2 medium eggplants, cut into chunks

  Half a small pumpkin, cut into chunks

  5 tomatoes, blanched, peeled and roughly chopped (or 1 can chopped tomatoes)

  2 onions, sliced

  2 red capsicums, sliced

  4 medium potatoes, cut into chunks

  1 teaspoon dried oregano

  1 teaspoon ground pimento or ground allspice

  Salt and pepper to taste

  A dash of chilli

  ½ cup good quality olive oil

  Method

  Preheat the oven to 160°C.

  Sprinkle the eggplant with salt, or soak it in water, for 20 minutes, then rinse.

  Layer the sliced vegetables in a baking dish, preferably a ceramic one with a lid. Sprinkle each layer with some of the herbs and spices. Drizzle the oil over the top and gently toss. Cover the dish with a tight-fitting lid or foil and put it into the oven. Check after 40 minutes and add a little water if it appears to be dry. Cook for a further 30 minutes. When the vegetables are tender, sprinkle them with feta. Cover and cook for a further 10 minutes. Enjoy as a side or main with crusty homemade bread (see here).

  Traversing difference

  He who respects his parents never dies

  Greek proverb

  We are sitting in the bungalow, my parents and I, discussing my future.

  ‘I’m considering journalism.’

  ‘Journalism isn’t a good career for women,’ Dad says. I think he envisages me covering foreign wars; I might get killed. Or worse, I might enjoy my freedom too much and never get married.

  The truth is, I am not sure what I want to do. My Arts degree is nearing completion, and the pressure to make a decision looms large.

  What I do know is that I love observing people, love listening to their stories. I am interested in communities – what makes them tick and what makes them crack. I feel compelled to write, but I am not sure if I’m cut out to survive in the cutthroat world of journalism. I aced Politics and Criminology at uni. I flit about indecisively – Law? Psychology? Criminology?

  I am working part-time now as a receptionist at a medical practice. In the end, a comment by the resident psychotherapist there helps me make the decision.

  ‘Our profession needs good social workers, Spiri. Have you considered that as a career?’

  I look into it and decide it’s a good fit. I think about my mother and the caring role she plays in her community; I will be following in her footsteps, but with two degrees behind me. I wonder if I will ever be as good as she is.

  Classes are held in a row of old terrace houses across the road from the main campus. The setting is intimate; classes are small and discussion intense. What makes a good helper? Are humans intrinsically altruistic? Have social workers helped or hindered in the past? How can social policy contribute to society?

  I write yet more essays, but this time around I explore my own background: I interview my mother about her car accident, about how her lack of English made her feel vulnerable and isolated in an alien health system. I explore the reasons behind alcoholism, look at my relationship with my own father and my pressing desire to save him from himself.

  I meet lots of interesting people. There’s Caroline, who lives with her English boyfriend in a share house just around the corner from our place. We often talk abou
t our families. She grew up in the country, raised by conservative Anglo-Saxon Catholics, and we are grappling with the same issues of identity, both trying to secure our independence and find our place in the world.

  I get into some heady discussions with Grant, an older student who has worked in welfare. He is all experience and cynicism, in contrast to my wide-eyed optimism. Our arguments betray a thinly veiled attraction, and it’s not long before he asks me out.

  ‘It has to be lunch,’ I say.

  He looks confused but doesn’t question me. I don’t want to admit that it’s hard for me to get out at night. I don’t yet have a car, my father is too anxious to lend me his, and being picked up by a boy is out of the question.

  We lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Lygon Street, where we pick at sweet and sour chicken and fried rice. Grant is hungry to find out all about me. I talk about my family life, about how strict my parents are. He is taken aback – this is all unfamiliar territory to him. He was encouraged to be very independent from an early age, but I suspect there is a certain exotic appeal to it all and he continues to pursue me. He calls me at home and I pull the phone with its long cord into the next room, trying to get some privacy. I whisper so that Dad doesn’t hear. Before long, even before we have had a chance to have our first kiss, Grant steps back.

  ‘This is too weird for me, Spiri. I want to see more of you, take you out, have you stay over. When are you going to stand up to your parents?’

  We are sitting in a busy café on campus, students milling around us. But I feel completely alone as the implications of what Grant is saying sink in. Blood rushes to my face, a bubbling up of shame and anger. I am angry at my parents for being so protective, and at Grant for not understanding. But I am angry mostly at myself. How can I have let this go on for so long? I am twenty years old, but I still feel like such a child. I know I have been cosseted, that my most interesting experiences have been through books. I know I need to stand up to my parents and start living my life. But I’ve wanted to do it without hurting them. My course is teaching me that conflict is necessary, that it is healthy. But I’m not prepared to face up to them over a man. I have to do it on my own terms, in my own time.