SALONICA TERMINUS
Travels into the Balkan Nightmare
Fred A. Reed
Talonbooks
1996
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 3: To the Salonica Station
Chapter 4: A Divorce in Albania
Chapter 6: The Balkan Quagmire
Chapter 7: The Search for Macedonia
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK would not have been possible without the contributions of many. To Sokol Kondi and to David Sherman, who read sections of the manuscript with a critical yet compassionate eye, my heartfelt thanks. I alone, however, assume responsibility for the book’s errors, inevitable when the subject is as complex and multi-faceted as the Balkans.
In Montréal, André Patry and Melhem Moubarak were instrumental in setting me off on my journey, while David Homel led me, with a sure hand, into and through the antinomian precincts of Sabbatai Sevi. Gilles Gougeon, of Radio-Canada, was constant in his support, as was filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond. Jacques Bouchard’s wise counsel and encyclopedic knowledge of Greece helped at several crucial moments. Dragenja Damjanovich’s interest and enthusiasm for the project spurred me on.
A debt is due to Sandy Fainer, who helped me grasp the full complexity of the sad tale of the fall of Salonica’s Jewish community. Thanks, too, to Nafsika Papanikolatou and her colleagues in the Greek human rights movement, to Dimitris Lithoxoou, and to Nikos Ziogas, for their advice and thoughtful comments; and to Dumitru Nastase who provided me with precious insight into the Vlach question.
In Thessaloniki, which was my Balkan pied-à-terre for three eventful months, Viki and Yannis Hassiotis opened many doors, including that of their home, to me. My gratitude as well to Professor Faidon Malingkoudis of the University of Thessaloniki, and to Xenia Kotzageorgi of the Institute of Balkan Studies, to Yanna Kambouridou, Frangiski Abatzopoulou and Lina Eligmitou, to Lela Salem, and to Fani Kazantzi and her family, to authors Elias Koutsoukos, Christos Zafiris, and Yorgos Skabardonis, to Fotis Kilipidis of the Vlach Brotherhood and to Nikos Karatzas, proprietor of lanos Bookstore, all of whom gave generously and gracefully of their time and their knowledge.
Special thanks are due to the staff of the library of the Institute for Balkan Studies, to Traïanos Hatzidimitriou and Yannis Kourtis of The Balkan Review, to Albert Nar of the Salonica Jewish Community, to poet and historian Dinos Christianopoulos, to the ebullient Andonis Sourounis, who led me by the hand through the heart of his home town, and to Julie Blum for her tonic allergy to complacency in all its disguises.
My first, harrowing trip to Albania would not have been possible without the assistance of Dimitris Kokkinos, of the Greek Foundation for National Repatriation, and to the Foundation’s staff in Athens and Ioannina. In Tirana, Sokol Kondi and Frok Cupi not only acted as guides, eyes and ears, but quickly became friends and confidants. The hospitality of Loreta and Ilir Cheftia was unforgettable in its generosity, while Kastriot Robo of the Albanian Foreign Ministry provided timely assistance.
In Macedonia, Ljupco Naumovski, founder of the Macedonia Information and Liaison Service, was of inestimable kindness and supreme utility. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Tzvetan Grozdanov, and to several other individuals who cannot be named. Victoria Peti made my stay in Krushevo a memorable one. And no catalogue of Macedonian benefactors would be complete without Mary Dimitriou, the Macedonian connection in Toronto.
These acknowledgments would be incomplete without mention of Elias Petropoulos, indefatigable chronicler of Salonica and of the foibles of modern Greece. Sections of Salonica Terminus were previously published in a different form in Le Devoir and La Presse. A portion of the research and writing of this book was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Canada Council.
And finally, to Soula and Manolis Roussakis, whose lifelong friendship and encouragement made this book possible, my boundless gratitude. This book is for them.
— Herotodus II, 99
FOREWORD
THIS IS A BOOK of Balkan stories. The kind of stories people tell about themselves and their neighbors. Some have the factual simplicity of tall tales; others, the tortuous and convoluted quality of verisimilitude. We should attend to the Balkans, they whisper to us, not only because the truths, lies and conflicts these stories embody may touch off another European war, but because they uncannily resemble the self-deception and illusion we take as the truth about ourselves.
With the city of Salonica as my point of departure and arrival I traveled through the southern Balkans—northern Greece, Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and Bulgaria—in the fall of 1994, and again in the spring of 1995. There I found a landscape thronged by figures bent beneath the weight of history; a human geography shaped by the claim and counterclaim of ethnic and religious identity, national consciousness, denial of the Other. Into and across this landscape have strode conquerors and tyrants, empires and federations, faiths and heresies. Some stayed; others moved on. All have left traces: sometimes indelible, sometimes as evanescent as mist. All are being swept away; all cling to the soil.
In the Balkans hope and illusion persist side by side with disillusion. Socialism has failed. Free market democracy, the late twentieth century mantra that everywhere flutters like Tibetan prayer flags in a stiff breeze, thrives in a realm ruled by post-communist confidence men, gangsters, foreign investors and international bankers.
THE GREECE I ENCOUNTERED when I stepped ashore in Piraeus in June, 1960, having been lured from my native California by the power of Nikos Kazantzakis, was a benign and peaceable kingdom. The scene could have been straight out of Never on Sunday. Wasn’t that Melina Mercouri, leggy and lissome, swimming in the clear waters of the harbor, and Jules Dassin turning cartwheels in smoke-filled tavernas to the infectious rhythm of bouzouki music? It was a young man’s dream: a place removed from history, fresh in its ancient newness, spontaneous, exuberant.
The scales of this and other amiable delusions slowly fell from my eyes as I learned the living tongue of the Greeks, and with it their culture and their modern history. The long process of voluntary cultural osmosis began. But there exists at the heart of every people an irreducible core which cannot be apprehended except by full surrender; by the dissolution of self, in the manner of the Sufi, in the intoxicating wine of the Beloved. Though I desired to sip deeply, I was unprepared to drain the cup.
Still, when I departed Greece for Canada three years later, I left behind a part of that self, but took with me a lucidity which distance strengthened. Postcard perfect Piraeus of