Free : A Child and a Country at the End of History (9780393867749) by Free

Author:Free
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

12

A LETTER FROM ATHENS

SOMETIME IN JANUARY 1991, before the first free and fair election, my grandmother received a letter from Athens signed by someone she had never heard of, a woman called Katerina Stamatis. Before we opened it, we brought the envelope to show our neighbours. A small crowd gathered in the Papases’ house. Donika, who had worked in the post office all her life, was handed the letter. She stood in the middle of her living room, surrounded by curious faces, their gazes fixed on the thin, creamy paper, where Greek characters written in ink lined up like hieroglyphs of the future.

I knew that Donika could not read Greek. Only a few weeks before, she had asked my grandmother to translate the list of ingredients on the back of a bottle containing a yellow liquid. It had been brought to her as a present by a cousin who had recently travelled to Athens. She had washed her hair with what she assumed was foreign lemon shampoo, then felt an unusual tingle which made her head itchy. My grandmother’s translation revealed the cause to be an exotic, previously unknown substance called dishwasher liquid.

Donika studied the envelope quietly for several minutes, inspecting the front and back. Her solemn pose cast an expectant silence over the room. Only the sound of wood crackling and burning in the stove could be heard. She put the envelope under her nose and sniffed it in various places, each sniff followed by a deep breath out. She shook her head, then clicked her tongue with disapproval. Then she inserted her index finger under the flap, holding the outside part under her thumb. She dragged both fingers along the edges of the envelope, with a slow, sullen movement and a frown of concentration, as if the act of sliding caused her a pain she was obliged to contain. Once the inspection had been concluded, she looked up with an expression of dismay that, as she began to speak, slowly converted to anger.

“It’s been opened,” she announced, looking towards the door. “They’ve opened it.”

The silence in the room transformed into a collective murmur.

“Bastards,” my mother finally came out with.

“They haven’t just opened it once. Several times,” explained Donika.

“Yes, obviously,” her husband, Mihal, retorted. “It’s not like they’ve hired new people to work in the post office. They just do what they’re used to doing.”

Some neighbours nodded. Others disagreed.

“Post office workers should be instructed to stop opening letters,” Donika replied.

“Privacy,” my mother said. “Privacy is so important. We never had any privacy before.” Then she suggested that nothing would happen before the post office was privatized. Only privatization could respect privacy.

Everyone agreed that privacy was important. “Not just important—it’s your right. It’s a right,” Donika explained, her voice charged with all the wisdom and authority she had accumulated during the many years spent opening envelopes.

After that, my grandmother was invited to read the letter out loud, translating it word for word. The sender, Katerina Stamatis, claimed to be the daughter of Nikos, a business associate of my great-grandfather’s.

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