Mid-May is a liminal time, especially at schools, when endings and beginnings elbow one another for the same space. School is ending, summer starting. This is the month they should have called the Janus month, with one face to the past, one face to the future.
Mid-May is drawing our jobs here to a close, sadly, just as it drew the spring rains to a close, I think, last week. We had a last long burst of rain on Thursday. Now the sun is climbing to its summer latitudes. The kids are leaving campus at every opportunity, taking the bus downtown or uptown for coffee, for walks along the shoreline, or for movies.
Within two weeks, though, things will change again. Within two weeks, every grade, even the youngest twelve-year-olds, will be under obligation to write comprehensive tests in every subject, from English to Ancient Greek, from Biology to Physics. Our schedule at the dormitory will also shift dramatically at that time, when the dorm-kids begin to devote nearly the entire day to study. A three-hour break at noon will serve as their only respite. We must, then, monitor them from morning until evening, taking care that an air of silence fall around the dormitory and stay there. I don't remember ever studying with such intensity in high school.
So young here do the Greek children acquaint themselves with the privations of learning.
By the time the students reach the third lykeion (12th grade), preparing to graduate and enter the universities, they must take the massive "Pan-Hellenic" examination, which will determine whether or not they are "qualified" to enter a university. This is not the sort of test one takes, though; one confronts this beast. If their scores prove mediocre, the students may find themselves consigned to a technical school; if their scores prove poor, they may not have a chance for higher-education at all. In a sense, this exam determines their future education and their place in society. Thus one can sense the stress within these young adults, the strange mixture of stress and determination that locks them within their rooms to study, that locks their eyes within the dull, labyrinthine sentences of textbooks, that allows them to emerge only for food at one o'clock and eight o'clock. One really has no difficulty sensing how deeply the stress has saturated them.
This year our boss has insisted on extra care with the dormitory-students, for in the past, he tells us, their results have been disappointing in these tests. During these final weeks, I feel much sympathy for our kids, especially the young students, whose families, homes, and friends are far from Saloniki. It falls now to us to fill these roles.
But soon even this short span of seclusion, stress, and study will end, summer will come, and the students will empty from the dormitory, and perhaps, sadly, from our lives. When at last the summer has scattered the dormitory-students across Greece, Anatolia will seem a much emptier place. But the kids have earned this; they deserve to reach this terminus. Soon they will be free to enjoy the beaches, the sun, and most importantly their families for the span of the summer months.
Since April, the weather has ripened and softened. The soccer season has ended for the official team, but the dorm-kids still pour out every evening for a pick-up game, and the volleyball season still continues for a few last days; everyone in the dorm enjoys these opportunities to get out and sit in the stands while their friends play below. The smokers also take advantage of the nice weather, sneaking outside to the bushes for a smoke rather than to the ancient basement lavatory.
Apparently, with the approach of summer the kids have found their taste for mischief. Most of the kids' pranks have been harmless; not malice but humor seems to be their impetus. Two kids, for example, both from the island of Skiathos, made a movie of themselves running naked through bushes, throwing fruit at one another, sticking their heads in toilets, and generally cursing the entire time. The result was entirely silly. It is encouraging to see the students waking from their winter stupors.
Everyone has come back refreshed and two shades more tan from the recent Easter break. Laura herself spent the two weeks island-hopping. After the Good Friday services, I went with my friend to his village, two-and-a-half hours from Thessaloniki, to celebrate Easter.
The final week of Lent here, called the "Big Week," is a time for the devout Orthodox believers to consummate and refine their fasting, eating absolutely no meat, dairy, or sometimes even oil. On the evening of Good Friday, the city pours out in proper black attire to the churches, where each has erected its own "epitaphios," or tomb. Some tombs are bedecked in flowers, others in gold, and on top of each sits an image of Christ, which everyone in turn kisses. A long queue of faithful usually forms in front of the epitaphios, waiting to kiss the Christ, while on both sides the cantors sing the traditional liturgy.
At last, at nine o'clock at night, the official holy men emerge and begin to swing the incense about the tomb, singing the haunting melodies traditional to the Good Friday service. The church begins to empty, the crowd giving way for the priests and acolytes. A group of hale men hoists the epitaphios onto their shoulders, walk it out of the church in a large procession, and carry it in a circle around the town and back to the church. The entire congregation follows behind, each holding his own candle. In a small village, the priest will lead the epitaphios to the cemetery, where he will read part of the liturgy, and then take the tomb and the crowd back to the church. In a large city like Thessaloniki, however, this is impossible, and the procession merely makes a loop around the block. Sometimes, one epitaphios will run into another, one congregation meet with another. After this service, the people separate and flee to their various corners of the city, some to sleep, some to continue the night in food, drink, and conversation.
On Saturday, one spends the afternoon with family, eating the traditional fasting foods one last day. The women in most households spend the entire day preparing food for the revelry to follow on Sunday. The men retire to the yard, where they open the belly of the dead lamb (the "katsikaki"), which they have bought from the butcher, and stuff its chest with spices. They sew the belly shut, tie the neck and legs to a skewer, and set it aside until the next day. They also take the liver and other internal organs, mix them with spices in a large bowl, and slowly wrap them in the sheep's innards. This they call "Kokoretsi."
At midnight, then, one goes to the church again, this time to hear the priest read the proclamation, "Christ is risen, truly Christ is risen," a backdrop of quiet incantations giving him a sort of serenade. The light that one spreads from candle to candle has been brought from Jerusalem, called "the holy light," and passed from one village to another in Greece in the early hours of Saturday. After the priest has finished, the whole village exchanges the words, shaking hands, kissing, wishing happiness above the clamor of the bells. After church, the family will return home and gather around the table to share the traditional soup of "Mayiritsa," a lamb-broth soup with small bits of lamb and rice, and other traditional fasting-foods. Then, most often, the family retires in anticipation of Sunday.
There are also traditions unique to each village. In Korfu, for example, each family dumps a large jar of water from their roofs, smashing them on the streets, to symbolize that they have shed the evil from their households. In another village, the churches launch fireworks across the square at one another, as though at war, while in still another they burn an effigy of an Ottoman to symbolize the old years under occupation.
On Easter Sunday, then, the family puts the lamb and the kokoretsi over the coals, slowly stewing them in their own juices. While they wait to feast upon this food, they play music, drink wine, and visit other families and friends in the village, trying homemade wines and exchanging news and stories. In the afternoon, the family sits down to a table nearly buckling under the weight of food. The rest of the day one spends in food, wine, and conversation, the subjects ranging from gossip to politics. So passes the last and final day of the Easter season.
But now the season is past, and, as I said before, the students are preparing for their most challenging weeks of study. Soon they will be preparing to leave for the summer. Just yesterday the young ten-year-olds took the entrance test to see if they will be admitted to Anatolia next year. Soon the seniors will graduate.
The school finds itself now in a morass of comings and goings-Laura and I among the goings. Has it been eight months? The kids, the dormers who have become like siblings to me-they aren't really going to leave us, are they? Laura and I find our time here diminished and we wonder, half-knowing, where all the time has gone.
May should have been the Janus month.
