“Our voice has a memory; it carries our wounds,” she said, as she calmly looked back on her life. “The kind of life I’ve had reflects the vast majority of Greeks. The way I grew up, the fact that I was born in the countryside, my mother’s Asia Minor heritage, my father’s Arvanitic roots. I know who I am. I was never a city kid, I know what it means to work in the fields even though I lived in Thebes until the age of 8. I know what it’s like having a mother who got up at four in the morning to work as a cleaning woman and who later on ran a grocery store in Athens and did absolutely everything and anything to raise her children. I know what it means to do well, to have your own money, to fight and not change neighborhood because the rent is 10 drachmas higher. No matter how far I go, no matter how much money I make, I have seen it all.”
The kind of hardships she endured as a child and a teenager taught Alexiou how to cope. “I remember my mother had moved to a small house she had built in Palaio Faliro in 1964. It was of the illegal kind, the kind of place erected overnight, before the elections. There were no windows, just a stove. Talk to me about a homeless man living in the cold and I have the scene in front of my eyes -- I know. I remember my cheeks freezing if I didn’t wear a cap, socks and gloves to go to sleep. But I also know that true happiness comes from very little,” she said.
Back in those days, when the neighborhood was her microcosm and comfort zone, Alexiou shared everyone’s problems and joys. “You shared your life. As the buildings grew taller, people split up. We forgot about our own lives and kept talking about the lives of others,” she said.
Meanwhile, crises, they say, reduce distances. “The crisis has caused an unbelievable amount of justifiable panic. There is anger toward those governing our lives; no one trusts our politicians anymore,” she said before swiftly pointing out that the lower middle classes have managed to maintain some sort of safety net. “They are used to getting help from their parents, but when that money disappears, no one knows what will come next. Let’s hope something will happen. No one has the right to send an entire nation to the firing squad overnight.”
The kind of hardships she endured as a child and a teenager taught Alexiou how to cope. “I remember my mother had moved to a small house she had built in Palaio Faliro in 1964. It was of the illegal kind, the kind of place erected overnight, before the elections. There were no windows, just a stove. Talk to me about a homeless man living in the cold and I have the scene in front of my eyes -- I know. I remember my cheeks freezing if I didn’t wear a cap, socks and gloves to go to sleep. But I also know that true happiness comes from very little,” she said.
Back in those days, when the neighborhood was her microcosm and comfort zone, Alexiou shared everyone’s problems and joys. “You shared your life. As the buildings grew taller, people split up. We forgot about our own lives and kept talking about the lives of others,” she said.
Meanwhile, crises, they say, reduce distances. “The crisis has caused an unbelievable amount of justifiable panic. There is anger toward those governing our lives; no one trusts our politicians anymore,” she said before swiftly pointing out that the lower middle classes have managed to maintain some sort of safety net. “They are used to getting help from their parents, but when that money disappears, no one knows what will come next. Let’s hope something will happen. No one has the right to send an entire nation to the firing squad overnight.”
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