Πέρα από την αγάπη για τον χαλβά και την ανάγκη να ζουν με συμπατριώτες, το απόσπασμα αυτό αγγίζει και ένα άλλο ευαίσθητο θέμα, αυτό της Ελληνοφωνίας των Συλλαίων, που ίσως δεν το τονίζουμε όσο πρέπει. Αλλά γιατί δεν το τονίζουμε; Πολύ απλά, γιατί η Σιλλιώτικη διάλεκτος φαινόταν κατώτερη, ακόμη και 'αστεία', σε σχέση με την κοινή Νεοελληνική δημοτική -- κατώτερη και στους Έλληνες δασκάλους που δίδαξαν στην Σύλλη, όπως τεκμηριώνεται στο βιβλίο. Αλλά και πολλά άλλα πολιτιστικά στοιχεία φαίνονταν κατώτερα, τόσο που πολλοί από εμάς χάσαμε την ευκαιρία για περισσότερες πληροφορίες όσο οι μεγαλύτεροι ήταν ακόμη κοντά μας... (Υπάρχουν ακόμη εν ζωή
της διαλέκτου, και η Ένωση Συλλαίων θα προσπαθήσει να κάνει κάτι γι αυτήν ... όπως και για την
όπου τόσο πολύ ακούγονταν τα Σιλλελίδικα πριν από οκτώ δεκαετίες! Με την ευκαιρία, όσοι από εσάς δεν βρίσκεστε σε επαφή με την Ένωση και ενδιαφέρεστε για τις δραστηριότητες της, παρακαλώ ελάτε να με βρείτε μετά το πέρας της αποψινής εκδήλωσης.)
[I welcome you to the presentation of Nellie Melidou-Kefala's, from here on Nellie's, book about our beloved Sille. Together with our president Takis Salkitzoglou's book, published ten years ago, "Refugees from Sille of/near Konya" mark the beginning of a new search for Sille, by the detached generation I would say: as it often happens, the first, and often the second, immigrant generation has no eyes and ears for the old homeland, but only for the new one ... and they are the next folks, some of them anyway, who have the comfort and the calm to coolly gaze backwards, to unbury heirlooms and testimonies, to recompose what has to a greater or lesser extent stamped them.
Nellie's book is based on invaluable interviews by Silleans recorded 30+ years ago: the most important of those Silleans, the first generation as Nellie calls them, that is those born up to 1914, are no longer with us ... and likewise gone are many from the second generation, those born up to 1933. These interviews, cleverly guided and interpreted by Nellie, formed the core of her unpublished grauate thesis of 1987, written in the context of the graduate Folk Studies seminar led by Professor Alki Kyriakidoy-Nestoros, to whom we are likewise indebted. Indebted we are of course to Kyriakidis Brothers as well, who turned the unpublished thesis into a book half a year ago. And happy we are for the Sillean Union's journey to Sille in August 2010, which, as Nellie herself writes in the introduction, motivated her to finally proceed into publishing the thesis. This delay of publication came with a great side benefit: the accompanying CD ... where the majority of Silleans will hear, very clearly, the narrative of a relative or friend or relative of a friend ... that will certainly be accessible even to their descendants!
I am reading to you a passage I particularly like ... from a third generation Sillean woman:
Among so many houses she has described, her father's, her own, her mother's, her sister's, what has stayed with me most vividly is the backyard of her house with the tiles they used to soap, she says, daily. Now who used to soap them I cannot tell you for sure. Anyhow, the tiles, she says, were soaped daily. And between them, grandma, I said, used to be some grass? Yes, she says, grass sprouted in between but we would cut it. I recall a garden very well taken care of, through a very old photo of grandpa, two days before leaving for Exile and worn out in front of a staircase, I see the staircase right in front of me, I have seen it anyway, with wooden handrail, stone staircase, not of marble, with stones, with flowers on both sides of the staircase, a small porch, not of Turkish style, I can say it looked more like Macedonian, like that, a low balcony in other words, five steps above the ground, about two meters wide all around, flowers underneath climbing up to the handrail and a backyard really large, with all these soaped tiles. And it was creating an image, and "why, even in the winter?" "in the winter, too, she used to say, we would come down and soap the stones in order to be always white". Now did this soaping have to do with her own house or her mother's, that I do not know. What has stayed with me very vividly "alright, I used to say, when it was cold how did you soap them, wasn't there some steam?" "Yes, it would spew out, she used to say, and it kept making little clouds all over when we soaped". This has stayed most vividly with me.
This passage exposes the agony, as well as the intoxication, of diving into the past: no matter how much we hear or read about Sille and our ancestors, their life THERE we cannot quite feel under our skin, and for this reason we struggle to imagine how exactly it was... The passage also exposes, indirectly, the situation of women: this great, maximum I would say, tidiness went hand in hand with maximum submission to the family, the husband, the husband's family... It also went hand in hand with the complexity and beauty of the female traditional dress (about which Nellie lectured to us in great detail in
2013) and, more generally, with the great dexterity in embroidery and tapestry: this dexterity saved many Sillean women in Greece, especially those that arrived here without their husband or brother or father. Indeed, even in the passage I just read, there exists the shadow of man, and of death as well: the grandpa at the staircase mentioned by the narrator never returned from exile. All this is documented in Nellie's book, both the happy life in the Sille house and the deadly exile (as well as the journey to Greece), to which a separate and exceedingly interesting chapter is devoted (
The Cut, 1920-1924). Conversely, we notice that the memory of Sille remains alive primarily with those that had the chance, as the narrator, to be nurtured with the 'tales' of a Sillean grandmother -- let us recall here a dictum from "Our Grand Circus": "what fits into truth tales cannot sustain".
Tales could of course be heard sometimes from men, too, as demonstrated by the following narration of another third generation Sillean woman, which in addition showcases vividly the extroverted and hospitable character of Silleans and, more generally, Karamanlides:
Judging from all the Smyrniots and Constantinopolitans I have known, the behavior of the Greeks from the coast of Asia Minor was very different from that of the Greeks of the heartland, the Karamanlides let's say (...) Karamanlides are usually effusive, open, easy to be friends with, they do not exhibit that elitist reserved behavior, they show some generosity. In other words, to go to their home and not be treated? That "te" of grandma I shall not forget. "Te, te", or "bür'um" . You felt that even the poor man delighted in treating you. Even the poor man who was going to make a sacrifice. He felt it. He was genuine when he said "eat". Not "eat, and should you not, you will do us a favor" but he felt insulted if you did not eat his food. Yes, there is a much more intense effusiveness, open heart behavior, how do I tell you. They need just a small excuse to open up. Quick to cry, to yell, to excessive extroversion, to be overly extroverted in general. A certain hyperbole in their manifestations in general. Crying, laughing, easy (...) That tendancy to use proverbs very often. Proverbs not that common here among the locals, Nastredin stories, oriental proverbs and stories that my father often, all too often, mentioned (...)
From the rest of the narration it follows that Silleans opened their mouth not only to tell tales, but also ... to eat, to eat heavily and excessively! Stunning as well as hilarious is the contrast between the multi-meat-eating Silleans and the frugal-by-necessity islanders: the book cites two incidents -- one from Kerkyra, one from Kefalonia -- where the Sillean goes to buy 'a bit' of meat and the butcher asks him if he owns a tavern! And such incidents certainly showcase a certain feeling of superiority of Silleans toward the local Greeks, which contributed to their successful assimilation into Greek society, and which Nellie documents very well through many narrations: they were more commerce-minded, ambitious and flexible, whereas the locals were somewhat sleepy and of a state employee mentality usually. (But Silleans turned into state employees, too, continuing the railroad tradition from Turkey, a tradition they had developed on account of proximity to Konya and unsuitability of local Turks, "THEIR Turks", as they rather fondly remembered them.)
Since we are in the middle of Lent and I mentioned meat above ... let us also mention some fasting food ... through the words of a second generation Sillean woman:
When we arrived in 1933 (from Athens), in 1934 we moved to the Ikonio district [Thessaloniki] and settled in Apolloniados street. There were all fellow Silleans: Chrysanthou, Mylonas, Charalambos Batzoglou, Agapios Valavanis. They took turns for Saturdays and feasts. They gathered each time in a different house and they played cards -- they played scabili -- all together, men and women. Of course they did not play for money, they just said whoever loses makes halva. Sillean was spoken jocularly. I do not think anyone has forgotten anything, even years afterward when they would see each other, even after the war by when we had moved to other houses, we all continued to be in touch and visit each other. Well, the war created many absences and folks drifted away somewhat. But formal visits went on for several years. Now all these people are gone...
Besides a love for halva and a need to live close to compatriots, this passage also touches upon another sensitive issue, that of the Silleans' Greek tongue, which perhaps we do not stress as much as we should. But, why do we not stress it? Very simply, because Sillean dialect appeared to be inferior, even 'funny', in comparison to modern Greek demotic koine -- inferior also appeared to the Greek teachers who taught in Sille, as is documented in the book. But many other cultural elements also appeared to be inferior, so much so that many of us missed the opportunity for more information while the elders were still among us... (There are still
speakers of the dialect alive, and the Sillean Union will try to do something about it ... as well as for the
neighborhood where so much Sillean was heard eight decades ago! By the way, any of you not in contact with the Sillean Union but interested in its activities, please come find me after the end of tonight's event.)]
