Greek identity with a difference, from the inside out and the outside in
(formerly Organically Cooked - Linking Greek food with Greek identity: you eat what you are, or who you want to be)
One of the greatest upheavals in the history of contemporary Greek times is the moment when the Greek citizens of Mikrasia (Asia Minor, as Ottoman Turkey was known before 1923) were forced to leave their homeland and adopt another one, a period in history known as the population exchange. People were literally thrown out of their homes when the Smyrna crisis broke out in 1922. Mikrasiates and Moslems were forced to flee their homes and adopt a new homeland. Much has been written about the stories of the people involved in the population exchange.
Not quite a century has passed since then, so the wounds of this upheaval have had time to heal, but there are still people who will never forget their ancestors' former homelands, people like Mufide Pekin whose grandmother was in her mid-30s when she arrived in Turkey after her family left Crete, and Hakki Bilgehan whose parents lived in Crete up until 1924 when they were forcibly removed from the island in 1924 through the population exchange. Their parents spoke constantly about their life in Crete, about their former neighbours, and the happy days they lived there. These feelings are shared by many other Tourkokritiki (Giritli in Turkish), Turks with Cretan origins. With the help of the Foundation of the Lausanne Treaty Emigrants, many Turks and Cretans have found the sites of their ancestors' former homes in Greece and Turkey.
Monument dedicated to the memory of the Asia Minor catastrophe in Hania, showing a mother and her children sighting for the first time the place where they were brought to after being forcibly removed from their homeland.
"Who am I?", "Where did I come from?", "How did my grandfather live?" To be able to answer all these questions means that you are closely linked to your past; it also shows that you are a wealthy person: you know your past which helps you in the present to see your way to the future.
The descendants of Cretan Turks have never lived in Crete, but still keep close connections with the island, visiting it many times and searching for their ancestors' former homes. Many take back some soil in a jar to spread over their parents' and grandparents' graves. Some Cretan Turks left Crete before the Balkan Wars, and settled in North African countries; these people shed more insight about the origins of the Moslem Cretans, as they often consider themselves Cretan/Greek and have maintained the Cretan dialect, while also speaking Arabic. While Cretan Turks are not considered a minority group, they have their own identity, which was challenged by the local population when they first arrived in the newly formed Republic of Turkey, which was naturally building up its own modern identity once Ottoman rule was dissolved. Despite being Moslem, Cretan Turks were often labelled as 'infidels':
"The Cretan immigrants who landed on the Aegean coast towns and cities after the“Population Exchange” did not speak a word of Turkish when they first arrived. This is especially true for women who were less exposed to the world outside the home. Not being able to communicate with the locals naturally resulted in the Cretan’s isolating themselvesand closing up in their own communities. Greek was spoken in the house and Turkish was a second language to be learned at school or in the neighborhood. During our oral-history interviews, almost all Cretan informants of the first generation immigrants reported thatthey learned Turkish at school. Needless to say, the Cretan Muslims were not received very well by the locals or other immigrants whose mother tongue was Turkish . Just because they spoke Cretan Greek or spoke a very broken Turkish led to their being labelled as “yari gavur” or “half-infidel” in their social environments. They had to face humiliation and “othering” by the locals just because they sounded different.As we can easily see, their “Muslim identity” was challenged or at least questioned because they did not fit wellinto the picture of a Turkish speaking society. The language problem of the Cretans was articulated by all our informants and it seems to be the main factor that held together the Cretans in solidarity and coherence more than anything else. Today, the Cretan Greek is still spoken inside the Cretan house but naturally to a lesser degree as the third and fourth generations are getting more and more assimilatedand are forgettingtheir mother tongue." (Source:http://www.lozanmubadilleri.org.tr/ingilizce/en_mufidepekin_twistedmemories.htm)
Greek cuisine has been heavily influenced by the Asia Minor immigrants, leading many to say that the Greek and Turkish cuisines are very similar. But few people realise just how much Cretan cuisine influenced Turkish cuisine, through the traditions brought by the Cretan Turks, namely through the use of wild greens; it is believed that the use of horta was not common in Turkey until the Cretan Turks introduced the local population to their uses. This new culinary tradition for the Turks gave rise to anecdotes about the newly-arrived refugees:
It is this connection, the relation between Greek food and Greek identity as expressed in Crete, that I have the honour to meet the descendants of a Cretan Turkish family, who came from Istanbul to Crete on a recent visit, and asked to meet me in Hania...
Candia, Crete, 1923. Mostafa's father and grandfather Ibrahim leave their Greek homeland, never to return. Mostafa is born 10 years later in Turkey. At the age of 80, he has come to visit his ancestors' homeland with his son Ibrahim. Mostafa speaks the Cretan dialect that he grew up with in Turkey. Together with the Greek language, he also grew up with the Cretan food customs that his parents took back with them when they were forcibly removed from Crete after the population exchange following the Smyrna catastrophe.
Four generations of Cretan Turks: the men in the photographs were all born in Crete while Mostafa and Ibrahim were born in Turkey. The photo on the left is the maternal grandfather of Mostafa Jnr (pictured here with his son Ibrahim Jnr). The top photo on the right is Mostafa Snr; the bottom photo Mostafa's father, Ibrahim Snr who left Crete in 1923. Ibrahim Snr went by the name Arnaoutakis, which shares the same stem base as the the well-known name (in Greek) of Arnaoutoglou: -akis signifies a Cretan name while -oglou shows Turkish origins.
It is difficult to describe the emotions felt on meeting Ibrahim and his father Mostafa, who trace their Cretan roots back to Ibrahim's grandfather and great-grandfather (also called Mostafa Ibrahim) as they came to my homeland searching for their roots. We had arranged a cafe as a meeting place by the Venetian harbour, and it was there that I realised I was their only human contact in Crete. Mostafa began to speak to me in the Cretan dialect from the moment I met him.
Less than a hundred years ago, there was a place in Crete called Candia, where the Latin script was regularly seen in tandem with the official Greek language, where it was used to represent the Turkish language.
"I speak Romeika," he tells me in Greek with a Cretan accent, "like my afendi did." He does not say 'Ellinika' (Greek), using the word that the Greek language was called when his parents left the island before he was born (Romeika = Roman = language spoken in a Roman-occupied country). Nor does he call his parents 'goneis', as Greeks would now say; he talks of his afendi. "Αλλά δε κατέω καλά", he says apologetically. ("I don't speak it well.") This was hardly the case - I understood what he was saying most of the time. His knowledge of the language has declined now that he doesn't have anyone to speak it with - but it hasn't been purged. He remembers the life of Crete - and the language of Crete - as it was a hundred years ago.
Mostafa speaking with the cafe owner, who wanted to see the photos of his kafetzi grandfather - Mostafa Snr ran a coffee house in Candia (modern-day Iraklio).
Mostafa's mother's family lived in Hania, but his father's family lived in a place he calls Candia, which now goes by the name of Iraklio, known as the capital city of Crete. "Half of us were Haniotes, the other half Kastrini," he said, pointing eastwards in the direction of Iraklio, whose people were also known as 'castle people' (kastro - castle) after the large fortress found in Iraklio. Haniotes also referred to Irakliotes as Kastrini in my parents' times; this is now largely old usage, still heard among old people - just like Mostafa. Mostafa's wife's family also came from Crete, as does his son's wife's mother. The family can trace back their roots to at least three generations before they were born. Like modern people of the second millenia, Mostafa's grandfathers did not stay put in one place - migration is a constant theme since Oddyseus' time, and his grandfathers traveled to and from Crete mainly as soldiers.
Washing down the afternoon with raki (tsikoudia, Cretan firewater).
"Κουβεντιάζω πολύ," Mostafa says to me, "stop me if I am talking too much." But how can you stop someone from talking too much when you want to know more about them? By the end of the afternoon, Mostafa had made friends with all the cafe staff, re-telling his story to them too. He had never forgotten his parents' Cretan language, the one they raised him on in Turkey, and this was his first time in Crete; he was making up for the time he lost after his parents died. By the time we all left the cafe, we were all drinking raki, and the Cretan Turks had made many friends. (That was the biggest honour for me, bringing these people together, helping to forge new friendships.)
My presents from Istanbul - the kalitsounia are home-made in the traditional shape of lichnarakia (as in Crete) and peinirli (Turkish filled pizza). On my part, I bought them some traditional xerotigana from Hania, fried rolled pastry dipped in honey syrup, which were individually wrapped and can be stored for a few days. When I showed them to my guests, they told me they remembered their mothers making long curly-shaped xerotigana, which we call avgokalamara - they are made in similar ways, but the avgokalamara are reminiscent of Southern and Eastern Crete, whereas the round xerotigano that I bought (an ever-present feature of Hania weddings and baptisms) is common in Hania. A century later, The Cretan Turks still remember the food of their ancestors.
Despite being an immigrant of sorts myself, I have always been able to connect with both my homeland and birth country, which has not been possible in Ibrahim's case. It is both a source of pride and humility to know that you have a full grasp of your past: "Obviously without the past, you cannot go into the future with wisdom”.
(This story was read to an audience consisting of Stacy Dunn's family, at Thanksgiving, 2011; Stacy told me that her family all gathered
around the computer and read through all my correspondence with her, together with this story, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house!)
"You use a thick rolling pin to roll out your filo pastry?" My friend sounded surprised. I explained to her that I had gotten used to using this kind of rolling pin and found it trying on my palms to use a thin one.
"That's because you're not using it properly," Hrisida scolded me. "I use a thick rolling pin for the pizza pastry where I only stretch the dough. But for making a pita, you do need the thin one. You're supposed to roll the fyllo and press lightly from the centre outwardly to the ends. It's actually less physical effort than stretching constantly but you need the right tool and a bigger surface area to work. By stretching you can only reach a certain thickness. Even you know that, don't you?" Her voice then softened. "My grandma's rolling pin is very thin and very long. But you can't get one like this now. These days they're much shorter, because we make smaller pies.Our sini are smaller than what my grandmother had." The σινί (sini) is a large baking tray 60cm in diameter with low sides. "We do have a couple that she used to own lying in the storage space in our village home. But people still use them even now - you can see them in bougatsa shops."
"Is your grandmother still alive?" I asked her.
"No, no," she said, shaking her head. "She died a very long time ago." Even though she was smiling, Hrisida's face took on a dull tone, as if it had lost its colour. "My mother's mother was from Eastern Thrace. That's part of Turkey now. She made a lot of pitas. I was a bad eater as a child but I loved her pitas. They were chunky and very filling." He face suddenly lit up. "She also used to make a sweet pitta where she just rolled out the fyllo and then placed it in a circle in the baking tray. My grandma used to call it saragli but it had no filling or topping. All I remember was filo pastry sweetened with syrup. She baked it, maybe with butter and then just added syrup to it. It sounds so simple but for us children it was heaven. And it's strange, but I've never tasted it since then. Not from my mum, nor from my aunties who were very close to my grandma.
Saragli can be filled and rolled up in many different ways, allowing for greater creativity on the part of the cook and a splendid looking array of sweet delicacies for the eater. The ones depicted are home-made with store-bought filo pastry, which is sturdier and drier than home-made pastry, and can therefore be moulded more easily to keep its shape.
As Hrisida told me about her grandmother's story, I was conjuring up the images she was describing: an old woman, dressed in black, with a never-fading smile on her face, her back bent over, her pace quick but short. She would shuffle around her kitchen, preparing food for everyone, and never complain. If anyone told her to take it easy, she'd tell them she wasn't tired. I wondered what her life was like in Eastern Thrace before she came to Greece.
Hrisida's grandmother reminded me of Stacy Costas Dunn, a third generation Greek in the US who had recently contacted me about trying to track down her dead grandparents' hometown so that she could trace her roots and hopefully bring her American-born mother back to them on a holiday. Stacy had given me the names of the villages that were listed on the documents her grandfather was given when they arrived in Ellis Island: 'Kastaboli' (now Ormanli, meaning 'forest' in Turkish), 'Myriofytou' (now Murefte), 'Ghanochora' (now Gazikoy, possible also Hoskoy) - these were the birthplaces or last known homelands of Stacy's grandfather's family. Stacy remembers her family talking about Thrace (Θράκη). That's all she knew about her grandfather's homeland.
Since Stacy couldn't read Greek herself, I looked up the village names she had given me: Kaστάμπολη, Μυριοφύτου, Γανόχωρα to see what information I could find. There were half a dozen references to them, all of which directed me to the formerly Greek Eastern Thrace region, the little bit of land that is the only part of Turkey which is considered to be part of the European continent - hence where East meets West; only Western Thrace is now part of Greece. The change in land ownership led me to think that perhaps Stacy's family were refugees - did they by any chance leave Greece in or after 1922, when the Greek-Turkish population exchange took place? No, she informed me, her grandparents had migrated in 1912; her grandparents therefore could not have been involved in the population exchange. In that case, what caused them to leave Eastern Thrace?
After checking the names of the villages again, I discovered that there was a major earthquake in the area that completely destroyed the villages of her grandparents; this earthquake occurred in the year her grandparents migrated to the US. It was all starting to come together. Persecution of Christians in Turkish-occupied areas was already common in Stacy's grandparents' time, according to the link, but even if her grandparents had stayed on after the earthquake, or had the desire to come back to visit or live in their part of Thrace one day, the area would have changed hands soon after they left anyway. Not only that, but these ancestral villages in Eastern Thrace would now obviously have Turkish names, and their original Greek names would need to be traced back to them, making the search for her roots sound rather like a jigsaw puzzle. The villages concerned are all located in coastal areas on the way from Greece to Constantinople before reaching the former Greek region of Redestos (now called Tekirdag in Turkish); Myriofyto for example is now called Murefte, and Aydinlar used to be Kastritsa, or possibly Kistritsa. Although there is sometimes a discernible link to the original word, it is not immediately noticeable.
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Every gal in Constantinople Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople So if you've a date in Constantinople She'll be waiting in Istanbul
Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks'.
When Stacy's grandparents came to the US, as immigrants passing through Ellis Island, they would have suffered the stigma of the foreign-sounding name. Names were also often misspelled at the customs offices, as officials were left in the helpless position of transcribing what they think they heard from the newly-arrived non-English-speaking immigrant's mouth, often writing them incorrectly in official documents, which would have remained unchanged (ie uncorrected). Stacy had two possible names for her grandfather: 'Elias Sevricos' and 'Lee Costas', which, to the uninitiated would look wildly different from one another. Her grandfather was probably baptised 'Elias', which was probably changed to 'Lee' in America, while his surname 'Sevricos' was simply dropped - not only did it sound foreign, but it was also difficult to pronounce (again, to the uninitiated). Instead, he used his middle name, which, according to Greek tradition, is always your father's name: according to his US naturalization papers, his parents were Constantinos Sevricoz and Zafireia ('Sapphire', noted as 'Zafery' on the documents) Paraskeva (written as 'Paroskua'; in Modern Greek, 'eu' is pronounced as 'ev' or 'ef' depending on context, and the 'e' was probably seen as superfluous by the customs official).
I recounted Stacy's plight to Hrisida. She agreed that the family's names had undergone an Americanised transformation, which was hindering Stacy from finding her roots. 'Zafiris' is a common Thracian name for men ('Zafireia' is the female variant of the same name). 'Myriofyto' is a village in the region of Kilkis in modern-day Greece, where many former Eastern Thracians settled after leaving their homelands. Interestingly, when we looked up the name 'Sivrikos' in the phone book, nothing came up, unlike for 'Paraskevas' which is relatively more common. If Paraskevas could be associated with the villages names of Kastaboli/Myriofytou, some connection pointing Stacy in the right direction could be made. Hrisida suggested some organisations in Northern Greece which look after the interests of people with roots in Eastern Thrace, like the Thrakiki Estia of Serres. Since we live in a more transparent and connected world, people can now also find the former Greek villages in Eastern Thrace and compare them with the Turkish villages in Google Earth.
The other issue of the personal names also had to be addressed. A web search of 'Sivrikoz' (that sounds like 'Sevricos') returns a
lot of hits where 'Sivrikoz' is used as a Turkish surname. But Stacy's grandparents' given names were clearly all Christian and Greek. How could that be possible? Could a Greek have taken on a Turkish surname in those troubled times and
places? Most likely, in the same way that people westernise their names to make them more 'likeable' to the general society. The
Sivrikoz name returned only two hits in the Greek telephone directory - but not as 'Sivrikos', only as 'Sivrikozis', a Greekifed form of 'Sivrikoz' by adding the very common ending '-is'. Again,
someone who came to Greece in 1918-1922 with the name 'Sivrikoz' would probably want to sound more Greek than Turkish. Greeks in Turkey at the time may have been coerced into changing their language and surnames but
they were allowed to keep their faith, hence the Christian names, in a similar way to what happened in Macedonia with the Bulgarians after WW2: people lived in closed communities - they would often live
in separate villages from mainstream society and would only marry between themselves.
Stacy's story gave Hrisida a chance to reflect on her own grandmother's origins. "Eastern Thracians don't call themselves Asia Minor refugees (the common Greek translation of 'mikrasiates') because they aren't actually from the shores of Asia Minor, which is south of the Bosporus river. My mum's parents were from a village north of Redestos. A lot of the surnames of Eastern Thracians end in -akis, just like yours."
That did not surprise me in the least. The -άκι (-aki) suffix to Cretan names is a Turkish influence (my own surname, and that of nearly all my relatives ends in -aki, and the ones that don't were originally from Asia Minor refugee stock), used to make a name sound inferior, or simply 'small'. It's a remnant of the former Ottoman rule. In its present Greek usage, it gives a diminutive meaning to a word when added to it, eg 'Maria' becomes 'Maraki' (little Mary), 'paidi' (child) becomes 'paidaki' (little child). Hrisida noted that a local Northern Greek diminutive form (as used in Serres, for example) ends in '-ούδ' (-oud), and is attached to any Greek noun or adjective, eg κουρτσούδ', Μαργούδ', π(ai)δούδ'. This -oύδ' ending is also widely used in Greek Thrace today - yet Hrisida's grandmother's 'co-villagers' preferred to use -άκι, from the Turkish influence of their former homeland.
"There were Cretan policemen in Northern Greece at the time they migrated," Hrisida continued, "and it was said that any name they recorded was written down with the '-akis' suffix, although this is disputable. My grandma used to tell us that they migrated twice to Greece; after the first time, they returned back to their Eastern Thrace village. She was born in 1912 and she was 8 when they migrated to Greece in 1920. They didn't wait for the 'Great Catastrophe' (as the Smyrna 1922 incident is often referred to in Greek history); the signs were already there. First they moved to a very poor barren area in Kilkis, and then to the south of Serres where at least the land was arable.
"I remember seeing old men in the 70s using oxen instead of horses for drawing the carts. That's how I keep my grandma in my mind. Her people are short and stout, fair-haired and blue eyed. They sometimes have strange women's names, like Syrmatenia (wiry), Louloudia (flower), Archontia (noble) and Panorea (beautiful), names we don't hear much at all nowadays. She had it very rough in life. She had eight children, and lost four of them, but she never expressed bitterness and she was always a very kind woman. She never stopped working around the house and she always helped her daughter-in-law, even at the age of 80, which was when she died. The epitome of patience and tolerance, I never heard a bad word from her mouth. My Eastern Thracian relatives lived their lives with dignity and respect for themselves, and people in general. They were mild good-natured people, always polite, smiling and very hospitable; you could always drop by with a group of friends, without giving them any notice, and they would go to great lengths to accommodate your needs. They worked hard and enjoyed their lives. Some of these traits are still noticeable in their children. Although they were an impoverished people, they brought civilisation to the area where they settled. For example, they had curtains in their houses, and a more sophisticated cuisine. Despite being peasants, they had been better educated in their homeland and they sought to educate their children."
Hrisida grew up amongst 'immigrants' from Turkey, like the Pontiacs and Eastern
Thracians, Turkish-speaking but Orthodox Karamanlides from Kappadokia,
and she used to hear countless stories as a child from other yiayias about how they came
to Greece, and the poverty, the struggle, the grief they felt for their lost
homeland. "There wasn't much TV in those days to distract us," Hrisida noted. "Even though you have 'mikrasiates' in Crete, you come out as a more uniform society. In
Macedonia, every family has an immigrant root. In my grandparents' time,
around WW2, there were no mixed marriages between locals and new arrivals, but in the 60s, this
slowly changed and I now have aunties who are Eastern Thracians, locals from
Serres, a Saracatsan and a Pontiac. The immigrants were Orthodox Christians who always identified themselves as Greek. But
these marriages were frowned upon until the 60s."
I knew exactly what Hrisida was talking about. My Cretan mother often spoke about Greek refugees in a condescending tone, something I could never understand and would often reprimand her for doing. This distinction between 'real Greeks' and 'other Greeks' was also apparent in the Greek community of Wellington, as I recall one of the oldest members of the community recounting (while I was interviewing him for my Master's thesis work) what happened in the 50s with the newly arrived Greek-Romanian refugees on the SS Goya. At first they were welcomed as fellow Greeks. But slowly, the differences between the rural Greek-Greeks and the urban Romanian-Greeks came to the fore: one group was obviously more educated, hence more sophisticated, than the other. The community split into two factions: some supported the older more-established Wellington Greek community, while the others joined the newly established Apollo club, the name given to the association created for the welfare and interests of the new arrivals*.
This very much summarises the treatment of the Greek Asia Minor refugees when they first arrived in Greece (and vice-versa, meaning the Turks who were forced to leave Greece and return to Turkey, many of whom did not speak Turkish, had been in Greece for many generations and had never thought of Turkey as their home): it is not surprising that many of those immigrants/refugees left Greece and made their way to the West. When they first arrived in Greece, which had become impoverished after the Smyrna catastrophe, they were given inferior land and treated in an inferior manner. Of those who stayed in Northern Greece, they founded new villages wherever they could. Their former homelands were often in the foothills (where firewood was plentiful) near a major spring (with a water source), and not in the middle of a plain where they had no
refuge from attacks. These villages may have lacked the character of the typical Greek villages but the personalities of the residents were colourful and vibrant, reminiscent of their struggle for survival in an inhospitable environment. In their newly found villages, they carried on their agricultural work in a more or less similar landscape. Their main problem may have been that they had not been given enough land: up to one hectare for
each family, when they may have been raising 4-8 children. Tobacco was often the main crop in Northern Greece because of the good turnover from a small plot of land. Many migrated to Germany and Australia in the 60s.
Οι Έλληνες ήταν, είναι και θα έιναι πάντα για τα πανηγύρια**...
At this point, Hrisida broke out into a smile. "And with all that
Greekness in us, look at how well our men are doing at dancing the tsifteteli! They
dance the best tsifteteli, not with the belly but with the torso. I've been watching them dancing since I was a child. Children practise it with their
parents at weddings and paniyiria (feasts). My favourite one is the Konyali from Kappadokia, but the same tune was very popular
throughout Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace and the Black Sea region, and there are
different versions of it, which is why I love it so much. It's performed to the same tune as that popular Cypriot song Η βράκα ('The pants')."
After a moment's pause, Hrisida added: "I suppose we can say that Greeks have always been for the paniyiria**, can't we?" We both burst out laughing. "As a whole, I'd say that people in Macedonia and Thrace are more relaxed than the rest of Greece; we're
not as restrained. Despite the apparent homogeneity in Greek society we are different in
the way we grew up. In Macedonia and Thrace there is no space for
arguing what is Greek and what is not. There are so many people with
immigrant roots that our culture is a mix and we can't stop enjoying it
whether it's called karsilamas or tsifteteli, whether it's burek or pita, whether it's Turkish or
Greek."
I certainly got a good history lesson that day from Hrisida. "You live too far away in Crete to be able to keep up to date with Greek history," she said to me, "not to mention the fact that you never went to school in Greece. You were learning only about ancient Greek history, the kind of history Western civilisation associates with Greece." I figured that many of the thigns we discussed together were best kept to ourselves; the last thing we'd want the West to know about us was how heterogeneous we really were, and how inhospitable Greeks could be towards their compatriots, especially at this time when Greece's reputation is already in tatters. But the Greek word for hospitality has an inherent "foreignness" to it: φιλοξενία - filoxenia: 'love of strangers'. Our discussion also showed that Greeks have suffered greater hardships in the
past and we still carry inherited memories from those days as we hear stories from the people who had lived them first hand.
Not being able to offer Stacy any direct hospitality, we sent her an email with our combined knowledge, and then headed into our respective kitchens - we were talking via the virtual world and it was time to get back to the real one.
*** *** ***
I later asked Hrisida about her grandmother's recipe for the saragli dessert that she used to eat when she was a little girl. "Oh, I don't know it," she replied. "I'll ask my mother if she can remember exactly how yiayia made it. I haven't even eaten it since I was a young girl."
It is easy to lose trace of what we once used to eat since the supermarket culture overtook our lives. At the same time, some of us are more attached to our past, letting it rule our present, while others among us never look back. But while the first generation leaves and the second returns, the third is often left looking for its roots. In a similar sense, the
first generation brings their food with them and the second generation
eats that food, while the third generation remembers it. Their minds are filled with memories of what they once had; at this point, balance becomes crucial.
The Greek mothers and grandmothers of the past often cooked according to cultural norms, using simple techniques and only a few ingredients. As Hrisida said (above): "All I remember was filo pastry sweetened with syrup. [Gramdma] baked it, maybe
with butter, and then just added syrup to it. It sounds so simple, but
for us children it was heaven."
Hrisida says she is a slack cook, but these are the kinds of pita she makes - that's all home-made filo...
"Despite being a slack cook," Hrisida admitted to me later, "I
feel strongly about women making their own fyllo because it's a big part
of our tradition. If you make pita with ready made filo from
the supermarket it tastes like paper. When you resort to that terrible ready-made 'sfoliata' (buttery puff pastry, whose origins are not Greek) for a bit of texture and taste, you lose all the
point of a home-made pita. With the rate that young Greek women are resorting to
sfoliata, home-made fyllo will be a thing of the past in years to
come. Every time I used to see Vefa Alexiadou or her daughter on TV, I'd cringe. That's how women
are cooking nowdays, cream, canned mushrooms and melting yellow cheeses, struggling
to stretch a ball of dough into fyllo with their thick rolling pin and making it all
look so difficult, I'd be thinking 'for God sake's woman, get a yiayia to show you
how it's done'. That woman was regarded as an experienced cook! Why on earth are we watching cookshows like that, and even the more modern ones that have followed, when none of that food is even part of our traditional cuisine?"
Vefa,
a chemist by profession, was Greece's answer to Delia Smith; in her last TV appearances she used to warn how bad
margarine is and recommended butter where necessary. The joke was that she never managed to get a whole fyllo off the
counter top and onto the baking tray in one piece.
I happened to have a few balls of pastry left over from my most recent filo-making session. Fresh dough keeps happily in the fridge for a few days. I hadn't prepared any filling, so it sounded like the perfect opportunity to recreate Hrisida's grandma's memorable and heavenly 'saragli'. I asked Hrisida for some more directions: could I recreate an Eastern Thrace delicacy, which was last eaten (possibly) 40 years ago, in my home kitchen in Crete - and all via distance learning? Here are the directions that Hrisida gave me:
"You roll out the fyllo,
oil it and then crease it in the baking tray concertina-style, much like we do in
patsavouropita. So you don't roll
the fyllo to put it in the baking tray, but crease it instead. Then you bake it
and when you take it out, you pour syrup over it, like for galaktoboureko or baklava. Of course it is much
simpler than patsavouropita. But I have never made my grandmas'
pita myself."
It doesn't matter how scrappily you roll out filo pastry - it's going to break up once you start eating it anyway. I creased the pastry on the table before placing it in the baking tin because home-made filo is softer than store-bought filo, making it stickier to work with. The saragli design traditionally involves rounds of pastry all neatly fitted into a (preferably round) baking tin (to allow for even browning and avoid burnt or over-cooked corners). You may wonder why there's a hole in the middle of the baked pie - I ran out of filo! When the filo had turned golden, as soon as it came out of the oven, I poured a freshly made (but cooled)
boiled sugar-water syrup over it (perfumed with a wedge of lemon and some fir-tree honey from Karpenisi that Hrisida had given me as a gift). I also
sprinkled some chopped walnuts over it just to make it look more
'interesting'; this saragli reminded me of xerotigana, a very popular Cretan
fried pastry made on festive occassions, which is also doused in syrup and topped with grated walnuts.
I showed Hrisida the photos of my pita: "Oh, it looks great!! So similar to what we used to eat as children. The simple tastes are so heart-warming sometimes. Thank you for
reminding me of my grandma. I thought about telling you to sprinkle
chopped nuts over the top, but no need, as I see." I am very much a
novice at filo/pie making, and I am learning by mistakes - but at least I'm trying not to repeat my mistakes, unlike the Greek
politicians, who have created a global quagmire!
We were also both in for a surprise that night: when we checked our email, sure enough, there was one for each of us from Stacy:
"It
is so nice to hear from you. I think of you often as you were one of
the first people I reached out to when I started this quest. At
the time, I thought to myself, "Greeks are such congenial people! So
kind and helpful!" You helped and inspired me so much last year to keep
searching, even though it often felt like I was chasing my tail. Your
friend is right about the brick wall when it comes to the Sevricos
name. I've been looking into various spellings: Safricas,
Savaricas, and even Tsivrikos. I've taken to looking into my
great grandmother's name, Paraskevas, as I feel there's more chance in making a connection. From genealogy.com, I found out there was a Paraskevas family in Saranta
Ekklisies (now called Kirklareli in Turkey), near Edirne (formerly Adrianoupoli). A Helen
Paraskevas was a teacher there, about 1920. A photographer was called K. Zafiriadis. A Paraskevas went to school in 1916 in Saranta Ekklisies. He later migrated to Grenoble in France where he married a French woman there.
It
does sound hopeful, but my biggest problem is the language barrier. I can't
thank you enough for keeping me in mind and passing my information on to
someone that might be able to help. I will keep searching
and hoping for some answers. My Greek heritage means so much to me.
Thank you again for your time and consideration!"
It also meant a lot to me and Hrisida that we could offer our own form of filoxenia - hospitality - to a fellow Greek like Stacy so many thousands of miles away from Greece, by providing as much help as possible in her search for her roots. As I ate a piece of the saragli later in the evening, I wondered if Stacy's grandmother had also cooked a tasty treat just like this one, just like Hrisida's grandma did, creating memories of her that lived on well after she had left the mortal world.
If you think you know how to help Stacy find her roots, send me an email.
*This distinction no longer exists, as often happens in immigrant groups that successfully establish themselves in Western cultures. ** για τα πανηγύρια = for the paniyiria, ie crazy, feast-loving people
It is very rare for the children to choose what they are going to eat when we go out for a meal (Dad's tastes are more refined than junk food). On this night, I let them choose where they wanted to go. Hamburger meals (the Greek version of McDonalds is Goody's) have never really caught on in Crete, except in urban areas, so I could guess what the children were going to choose among: souvlaki, pasta or pizza; they chose the latter.
There was brisk trade in the establishment when we arrived, but we were still able to choose where we wanted to sit. The weather was still quite warm, as autumn usually is in Crete; all the tables were outdoors, under the shade of a grapevine. The children decided on a rather large table (there were only 3 of us) that was situated in front of a huge LCD screen. There were three menu cards on the table. I let the children read through the whole menu (they like doing that); we were alone, it was a warm Friday night in mid-September and we did not have to return home early, so nothing was rushing us.
After we had decided what to order (ham cheese and tomato pizza, lettuce salad, and something written as 'baked feta cheese' on the menu card), our attention was turned to the basketball match being broadcast on the state television channel.
"Ellada and... who's the team in the red and white, Mum?"
"Turkey."
"Why are they wearing red and white?"
"For the same reason that Greece is wearing blue and white."
"It's their flag colours?"
"Good, that's right. So, who's winning?"
My son looked at the little box on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen showing the initials of the countries in English. "Turkey. 58-56. It's almost the same."
This kind of opportunity is a good one to make children more observant. We live in a visual world full of signs and symbols; most people in Greece don't catch the meaning of these symbols quickly enough mainly because they haven't been taught to (it's not just a language barrier), and this, in turn, slows down productivity and the country as a whole, by not allowing progress to take place at the pace demanded by global trends. But this is slowly being corrected: the Ministry of Education has uploaded school lessons (to be used in the case where swine flu closes down classes/schools if there is a serious outbreak in one area) and this year, first-year junior high school students were all issued with a 450-euro voucher which can be used in the purchase of a laptop for the child.
A waitress came to take our order. The children continued to watch the game. Basketball always seems so exciting, because it is so fast-paced. It seemed to them that the game was changing every minute; it doesn't take long to get the ball from the middle of the court into the basket. Whenever someone scored, they would check the score card on the TV screen. They also realised that not all shoots were equal: some got more points than others. Every time the Greek side scored, the children would get excited: they would cheer, laugh, clap, and say 'YES' quite loudly.
"Why are you so happy?" I asked them.
"Because we just scored!"
"Do you think Greece will win?"
"Ahh.. yes.. maybe?"
"Do you want Greece to win?"
"Yes, of course!"
"Why?"
They were wondering how seriously they should take my question. "Because we're Greek. It's our team!"
First came the drinks, then the salad, then the baked feta cheese.
"Be careful," warned the waitress,"it's very hot." She was talking about the boukovo (chili pepper flakes), not the dish.
Bouyiourdi served in Hania; we had this with a lettuce salad, a medium-sized pizza and two sodas - 25 euro for three people.
"But what if Turkey wins?"
"Oh... that's OK, too."
"Why?"
"The Turks will be happy."
"So it doesn't matter who wins?"
"No... yes!... maybe not... who cares, let's watch the match! Don't interrupt us!"
The waitress was holding our pizza as she standing in the kitchen area looking up at a screen. The teams were taking some time out. She bought the pizza over to our table, and the children tucked into it, in a way that they do not tuck into their food at home. They get very bulimic when they eat any kind of junk food, even if it's at a sit-down knife-and-fork taverna instead of a fast food restaurant.
The game was continuing: 2 points to the Greeks, 1 point to the Turks, 1 to the Greeks, 3 to the Turks, 2 to the Greeks. At one point, the Greeks were scoring consecutively.
"We're winning!" the children shouted, in between eating their pizza.
"But the score could easily change," I said in an attempt to give them a more objective perspective on the game. "Look! The Turks have just scored!"
"But our score is still higher than theirs!"
"I think they're going to win!"
"Hmm... maybe." They were beginning to see my point of view "It doesn't matter anyway, does it, Mum? It's just a game."
Of course, I agreed with them on that issue. "And anyway," I said, "they're our neighbours, aren't they, so it doesn't matter who wins, does it?"
And they agreed with me on that one, too.
*** *** ***
When we were travelling round Northern Greece, we often came across the appetiser bouyiourdi (μπουγιουρντί) listed on the menu, feta cheese baked with tomato and peppers, sprinkled with hot spices (boukovo: hot red chili flakes) and olive oil. It is the kind of dish that can replace the all-time favorite tzatziki in the wintertime: the cheese melts so that it becomes a kind of dip, and it served hot.
Bouyiourdi served in Pieria and Thessaloniki; my own version is pictured below.
This Northern Greek dish is now also being served in other parts of the country, appearing on menu cards under different names. This is in line with the appearance of many Greek regional specialties which are now popular all over the country, even though they used to be known only in their local origins; bouyiourdi is now found on most taverna menus in Greece (it may simply be called "baked feta cheese"), as is dakos (which is often simply called "Cretan salad"). Many other kinds of meals with origins in Northern Greece are also being served in Cretan diners, especially in tourist areas.
I could say that the bouyiourdi we had at the taverna wasn't as good as other versions that I've tried, pointing to the quality of the feta and the fact that it did not contain any peppers (tut, tut). This dish can easily be made at home: the ingredients are easy to get in most places, and the preparation and cooking procedure is straightforward. My own version is based on Laurie's and Peter's recipes.
The taverna probably didn't call their baked feta dish ' bouyiourdi' because the dish is quite new to the taverna menus of Hania, and it would sound decidedly 'foreign', despite being used all over Northern Greece. It is derived from the Turkish language, which gives it an intriguing ring, hinting at the Ottoman influence in Greek cuisine. Life is a game in many respects: we choose what we want to remember, as well as what we want to forget, which may be one of the reasons why we refer to bouyiourdi in Hania in more simple Greek terms. Despite the vast differences between the Turkish and Greek languages, when it comes to cuisines, the Turkish and Greek are usually grouped together.
Greece hung on for a 76-74 overtime win against Turkey, eventually taking the bronze medal in this year's European basketball championships in Poland.
My parents often told me that when they left Greece for New Zealand, they were each carrying half a suitcase worth of baggage. This was their way of reminding their children that they should be grateful for what they had, because it was much more than what they themselves had at our age.
But when they left their homeland, they didn’t realize just how much emotional baggage they were carrying with them. It is overwhelming to think how much weight this excess luggage would have amounted to, if it were calculated in real terms: it would have included the Greek language, religion, everyday customs, habits, dress sense, and a host of other non-tangible assets, including, of course, their food traditions. These are some of the things that are transported free-of-charge, and possibly some of the things that early immigration officials in the New World did not take into account when they were assessing the fitness of the newcomers into a country.
Abraham Yiakarmakaki was a local jeweller in Hania, lived in Crete, the island of his birth, until 1923, when he was forced to leave in accordance with the rules that governed the population exchange scheme between Greece and Turkey. He was a Moslem citizen of the Ottoman Empire and his family had been living in Crete since the time of the Ottoman conquest of the island. Before departing Crete, he took his family (half of his children were born in Crete, the other half in Turkey) to the remains of a fortress in Halepa and told them to try to keep the view they saw before them stamped in their mind "lest you forget". He knew that there was little hope that he would ever see his hometown again.
Although he never returned to see his birthplace, those Turkish offspring, along with their children, did manage to visit it, and Abraham's story still survives, being retold by his grand-daughter, Saba Altinsay, in her historical novel Kritimu, which fictionalised the events leading to the departure of her grandparents from the island of Crete. One of the recurrent themes of the story was who had the right to call themselves a true Cretan. We find out that Abraham's name was changed when he arrived in Turkey, in an attempt to wipe out his Hellenic links: 'Yiakarmakaki' was too Greek, so the family name was changed to 'Altinsay', meaning 'gold-measurer', a name related to his work as a jeweller, and he was never again called Abraham (the Turkish equivalent is 'Ibrahim'). When his family arrived in Turkey, they only spoke the Cretan dialect of Greek.
One of the saddest moments in the story was when Abraham realised that there would be no one to visit the graves of his ancestors and his first wife who had died while giving birth to their first child: "Abraham often came [to the cemetery]. He had seen it growing over time and was saddened by this event. But now there would be no more new burials. He was upset to think that the graves would be left alone. They had gotten used to his visits, they would be waiting for him to go and see them. If he could dig them up and take them with him, he would have done so. The living ... would find some way to look after themselves, but the dea - who would be looking after their desolate souls now?" (translated from Turkish to Greek to English)
Kanevaro Street, Hania.
Saba describes the many sights and sounds of Kanevaro St, a road (still in existence) running parallel to the water's edge in the Venetian harbour of Hania, where the old market area of the town was located in the late 1800s, occupying buildings from the Venetian period (pre-1650):
"Το σφυρί του μπακιρτζή, το καζάνι όπου έβραζε η ζάχαρη του λουκουμιτζή, το σούρσιμο του χαρτιού στου παλαιοβιβλιοπώλη και στου καπνέμπορου, που είχε τις δέσμες με τα τσιγαρόχαρτα, ο ήχος που έκανε το σιτάρι καθώς το άδειαζε ο σιταράς από το ένα τσουβάλι στο άλλο, οι ζυγαριές του λαδά που ζύγιζε το λάδι, το ψαλίδι του τσοχατζή, η λαμαρίνα του φουρνάρη, όλοι αυτοί οι θόρυβοι ενωμένοι κάνανε τον ήχο της Κανεβάρο." (translated from Turkish)
Some of the sights in modern-day Kanevaro St, where the history of the town over a period of 4000 years can still be traced: from the Minoan civilisation (approx. 2000BC) to the Venetian conquest (1300 AD) to the Ottoman period (1700) to modern day Greece (since 1900).
"The hammer of the copperman, the cauldron where the loukoum maker's sugar was boiling, the sweeping sound of the paper at the second-hand bookshop and the tobacconist's, with his bales of cigarette paper, the sound the wheat made as the miller emptied it from one sack into another, the scales of the oil merchant as he weighed the oil, the textile merchant's scissors, the baker's trays, all these sounds together made up the orchestra that played on Kanevaro Street. "(translated from the Greek)
Saba also makes many mentions of the food that her grandfather's family was eating in Crete while they were living here, all of which are still known today:
ασουρές: asoures - a sweet made with wheat and dried fruits, commonly made by the Moslems during Ramadan, but also known in Greece
χαλβά: halva - semolina pudding with almonds, made by Moslems for funerals and mourning periods, while Greeks eat this during fasting periods
μοσχομύριστη κολοτσύθα: ζύμη με λιόλαδο, ανακατεμένη με τυρί και κολοκύθα (deeply aromatic kolotsita: pastry with olive oil, mixed together with cheese and zucchini or pumpkin)
The word 'kolotsita' is the dialectal Cretan Greek word for 'zucchini (courgette)'. In modern Hania, zucchini, cheese, oil and pastry (as well as potato) are combined and made into 'boureki', a word deriving from the Turkish 'boreg', meaning 'pie' or 'bread'. When 'kolotsita' is mentioned in the book, it is clear that this food can be carried and eaten like a pie; it was shared out by a shop owner whose wife had made it, to both Muslims and Christians when a politically oriented fight broke out between them in an attempt to appease them, and it was also packed for the soldiers to take away with them when they left Crete on a boat. It probably wasn't eaten on a plate with a fork as boureki is these days; the two different religious groups would have murdered each other by the time the shop owner set the table, and soldiers of the time did not have the luxury of conveniences like tupperware and disposable cutlery.
Although it is never called kolotsitha, this kind of courgette-cheese-pastry pie, known in the region as boureki, is made regularly in Hania throughout the summer using the same ingredients mentioned in Kritimu, with the addition of potato; some peoeple make it without pastry, while others cover only the top of the pie with pastry. The bottom of the pie is never lined with pastry. This boureki is not well known outside the region, but it always features on a taverna menu card in Hania. Non-locals often confuse it with other meanings of boureki in Greece, meaning 'cheese pie', which it is in any case, with the addition of the vegetables. At MAICh, the cook often makes individual boureki pies, which look a lot like a tiropita (cheese pie), with the addition of courgettes.
The first boureki for the summer season is always looked forward to with great anticipation.
Saba herself solves the mystery of kolotsitha in a recent email to me. Here are her directions:
"You make a base like pizza base. It should be a bit thick (I put one egg while I am preparing it), made with flour, salt, egg and drops of vinegar. Blend them into a dough and lay it onto the tray. Then you slice the kolochitas (courgettes), not rounded, but perpendicular. Put the kolochitas on the base: one layer kolochita and one layer mizithra. It should be better if you do it with a thick goat cheese; make sure the mizithra is not too soft. Don't make more than two layers, otherwise it will be too thick, stay too juicy and won't cook. After you finish your ingredients (mizithra and kolochitas) put some olive oil on top and put it into the oven, with maybe a pinch of black pepper (no other herb), but try to keep it as simple as possible. The top of the kolochita should be open. Do not close like we do in boreki; it should be like a pizza."
My uncle is a better cook than I am - here's his perfect version of boureki covered in pastry.
Kolotsita was a kind of 'Cretan pizza' made during Ottoman rule on the island, with its foundations based firmly in the culinary traditions of the previous conquerors of Crete, the Venetians. Kolotsitha was the forbearer of the modern boureki. It was made with simple basic ingredients, without too much decor; the key to successful recipes using a simple approach is quality, which is found in the freshness of the ingredients.
*** *** ***
When Abraham's family left Hania in 1923, they took their language, food and local customs with them. They were referred to as 'Cretan Turks' in Crete (Τουρκοκρητικοί - Tourkokritikoi), and the descendants of these people are still proud to call themselves Giritli ('Cretan Turks' in Turkish). Turkish cuisine admits that the Giritli have their own culinary traditions, with a heavy basis on the natural environment, featuring wild greens and olive oil, which is what the well-known Cretan (ie Mediterranean diet) is based on.
The political situation which forced the Giritli's emigration from Crete has purged their Greek language skills; very few of their descendants have managed to keep their knowledge of Cretan Greek, for obvious politically motivated reasons (aside from the natural decline of an immigrant community's native language) but there are pockets of Moslem Cretans spread througout the Middle East, notably Syria, who still speak Cretan Greek amongst themselves, although this will be the case generally only in the older generation.
But the culinary preferences of the Cretan Turks who settled in Turkey on the Mediterranean coast have been maintained to this day. They have also been passed on to other generations, and have spread into the general population. Nihal in the US and Betul in the UK, both from Turkey, cook in a similar way to how I cook in my own home here in Hania. Ibrahim recently sent me photos from Constantinople, showing how his mother's mother and father's father (from Hania and Iraklio, respectively) passed on their culinary traditions to their children (ie his parents), which continue to be maintained even today.
And now you know where the common Turkish surname Giritlioglou comes from, so you know what you are in for when you go to Turkey and decide to eat at a restaurant called Giritli...
