Filia's Notes

                                      A GUIDED TOUR 

.

“You mean to say that about the time other people are drinking their morning coffee you just decide to take a walk in the First Cemetery?” asked Mirsini, a reporter, trying to understand.
“That’s about it” I replied with a smile.
“How often have you gone, - ten times, twenty?”

…

Well, today I was there yet again. I had dropped over to take some photographs to add to one of our texts and was standing in front of the monument of Louriotis (one of the heroes of 1821) when a young girl approached and asked.

 “Do you know where Halepas’ Sleeping Lady is?”

 I remembered my first few visits to the cemetery. I believed that I would never ever figure out the place. I was lost inside all those small lanes and sections.  Unless I kept all sorts of hand written notes or made some sort of diagram, I couldn’t remember a darn thing the next day.

We went to the central road of the cemetery, passing by other graves and other sculptures. What to offer to a visitor first, the sculpture or the story of the person buried there?

I showed her the grave of OdysseasAndroutsos too. This girl knew her Greek history and all of the contradictions of the Greek War of Independence.

After that, I offered to take her to the grave of Theodoros Kolokotronis. “Ah, you mean the old man of the Morea!”.

As soon as she saw his marble effigy, she greeted it aloud and saluted him with a raised hand, - then laughed a little at her gesture. I have seen others pass by his grave with such respect that you would think he was their own father.

After a few more words together, we parted company and I was about to leave when, at a small turn in the lane, I noticed a lady. In one hand she held red roses and in the other a cane. Our eyes locked and we greeted each other with a nod. She then placed a rose on the marble in front of her: a single red rose for Ioannis Makryiannis.

 She had two more…
“One for Panayiotis  Kanellopoulos and one for my father.”
Panayiotis Kanellopoulos: philosopher, politician, and intellectual… I wracked my brains trying to remember where he was buried, but I didn’t know.
So that is how Kyria Sophia became my guide on that particular day and led me down cemetery lanes towards Section Six.

“I knew Kanellopoulos. When I finished my degree and returned to Greece I learned that he had set aside Fridays in his office at 33 Academias Street as a kind of open house for visitors. Some went to get to know him, others for some favor or other, and some just to hear the man speak. I went and got to know him; he invited me to join in the conversation. From that time onwards, I went every Friday, eager to listen to him. He never spoke of political events – no! And when I left I always felt I was walking on air.”

“Ah, here he is.”

We had arrived at the grave of the Kannelopoulos Kanellopoulos family, an austere monument. But the back of the monument confused me. It read Demitrios P, Gounaris! Underneath his name was a beautifully executed bronze olive branch.

According to Kyria Sophia, Amalia Megapanou, who was Kanellopoulos’s niece, had wished to create the family monument this way. Demitrios Gounaris  was Kanellopoulos’ uncle and had been Prime Minister during the Asia Minor debacle in 1922. He had been blamed by inflamed public opinion, executed, and placed in a lonely grave several rows from this one. Amalia had brought him back into the family. His old grave marker is still there, but his story is a story for another day. 

We walked together towards Section Three, making a stop in front of Kyriakos Vamvakas. “A sculptor”, Kyria Sophia informed me. A little farther on was the grave of Mr and Mrs Efthimou. “She was so in love with her husband that, when he died, she immediately had her name engraved beside his…”

“Somewhere around here is the grave of the poet Stelios Sperantsas”, and then she started to recite from memory the poem that was etched on his tomb.
It will take yet another trip to the cemetery to learn more about him!

28 Οκτωβρίου 2016