Bad City-planning

There are times when several worlds meet unexpectedly and create a perfect storm of conflict.  Greece is a place where these "perfect storms" happen so often it almost becomes the norm. 

Our summer holidays take place in the land of my forefathers, village of Eressos on the island of Lesvos, Greece. The birthplace of Sapfo the poetess. The worldwide Mecca of Lesbians and cherished vacation place of LesVians...  ( the actual people of Lesvos, having had their name appropriated, now use a "V" to denote their distinctness )

We lived about 4 kms out of Scala which is the seaside part of Eressos proper. Most island villages are situated in the mountains (presumably to minimize piratic encounters... ) but have a seaside extension invariably called "scala", where the village summer activities of fishing, debating or just meaningful sitting by the seaside, take place...  A kind of Eressos-on-sea... as the English would say.

At around 3:00 after a day of vigorous sitting at we would customarily pile into our miniscule Fiat, all six of us, and head back to our modest bungalow encampment for the mandatory siesta.  The village itself would go into suspended animation because of the heat. Only the occasional stranded just-off-the-boat pink tourist would brave the afternoon heatwave and wander aimlessly around the village.
The road back was, of course, just a euphemism... not really a road. It was a winter river bed (read torrent-bed !)  that would serve as "road" in the summer, shared by sheep caravans, Lesbians, Lesvians, tourists and the occasional donkey-riding grandmother. Narrow enough to allow only one car and with a few wider points to allow passing. This was flanked by medium high stone walls usually with iron-work on top.   It is important to note that once you committed yourself to one of these there was no way back. Forward was the only possible direction.

Half way home we come across what could only be described as a tsunami of... sheep. Bringing up the rear was the shepherd proudly mounted on a gigantic mule.
Through a mixture of blood curdling cries and threatening gestures with his impressive stick he was trying to get the sheep to move. The sheep meanwhile refused to budge.  The reason soon became apparent. Midway between us and the immobile flock, squarely in no-mans land and peering through the ironwork, were two dogs barking hysterically. To the sheep, moving forward seemed an act of suicide.

To me, staying there seemed an act equally suicidal. The temperatures were in the 40s. We had no water and our mood was deteriorating by the second.  Just to spice things up another car was now on our tail driven by Yessika, a friend and her swarthy Greek teacher Michalis  blocking us from going back and honking impatiently. 
The standoff was perfect.  Mounted shepherd & frozen sheep on the one side, our Canadian-laden car with a honking Yessika on the other ( later it was sheepishly revealed that she had to go to the toilet urgently), and rabid dogs barking hysterically in the middle. Both sides were single-minded in purpose. They just wanted to move forward. The dogs, on the other hand just wanted a few juicy bites.

The shepherd by now realized that this was going nowhere and started focusing his unruly cries on me. I got out of the car and tried to guess what he was shouting about.  It was totally incomprehensible. Thinking that he might be a left behind migrant unfamiliar with the Greek language I even tried my two words of Turkish on him.  "Gel Burda  Gel Burda".  To no avail...

 A further complication dawned on me   The caballero shepherd was a) actually deaf and b)  desperately wanted me to help activate the sheep by chasing them past the dogs and their irreconcilable fury.
Now, I had seen cowboys in movies shout "yee-HAW" and it seemed to work... in addition it was actually a long-standing dream of mine to move steers around so... I tried that.  Nothing happened of course. The sheep looked at me as if to say  "really now... you want us to risk our lives just because you said "Yee-haw".  and my beloved wife who was at the wheel of our car, gave me a look that said "really now... you expect the sheep to move just because you said Yee-haw ?? "

They say that in times of crisis our faculties are sharpened.  I suspect that mine are actually dulled.  My darling was furiously pointing to an opening in the wall and a driveway leading into the house with the dogs which. in my Yee-hawing fervor, I had missed entirely.  In a flash a brilliant idea occurred to me. Get the cars out of the way then silence the dogs and the tsunami would roll its merry way. 

I enthusiastically wave her in. Prematurely thinking all our problems are solved. She revs the engine, lets the clutch go... the car lurches forward over the hump and then a sickening crunch is heard.  Right there in the middle of the driveway there is a tree stump which has demolished the front fender and lifted the car up a couple of inches. It now lay helpless like a beached whale.
Who leaves stumps in the middle of driveways ?

As if all that was not enough surrealism to fuel the day, suddenly we are surrounded by colorful dancing people, some with party hats amidst loud disco music enthusiastically trying to help us dislodge the car from its pedestal. Inadvertently we have crashed a party of some new Lesbian welcome centre.  They beckon us to come drink and dance with them,        blissfully unaware of the sheep vs dog drama unfolding outside. Half of them are barking contradictory advice to dear wife who is still trying to pry the car loose from the deadly grip of the stump. "Do THIS.... do THAT..turn left... NO, turn RIGHT !... do you want a Mojito ?"  amidst a deafening barrage of elevator disco music and yessika bemoaning the lack of public toilets.   The particular mix of dogs, sheep, shepherds, Lesbians, Lesvians and Yessika  was starting to take a toll on the love of my life. 

Meanwhile outside I had achieved my crowning accomplishment of the day. The sheep had started to move and so proud was I that I came back to the car work-in-progress to report it. Big mistake.. I could see that my absence had been noted and been categorized as AWOL.. a deserter.  How dare I go Yee-hawing sheep leaving my damsel in the hands of the rabble.

Archaeologists maintain that Vesuvius blew up suddenly with no warning. My sweetheart, on the other hand, gives plenty of warning signs.. provided one is looking for them.  Intent on coordinating the crowd rocking the car, I had missed them all.  Too late. The fire and brimstone in her eyes was setting the grass on fire. She turns off the engine, theatrically throws the keys on the dashboard, stands up and announces to all.  "I'm outa here".  The non-verbal language clearly indicating  "and I will kill anyone that tries to stop me".  She had had enough...! Vesuvius had blown.  

All this was not lost on the mixed crowd of Lesvians and Lesbians... It parted respectfully.  The sheep outside parted respectfully. The dogs fell silent. Even the ice-cubes in the Mojitos stopped jingling.  In ancient Greek dramas this is the point where the Deus ex Machina appears and brings a resolution to the conflict. She strode purposefully off in the direction of home like a biblical Moses through the seaweed of the recently parted Red sea.

The shepherd seemed to regain his hearing...

Later on... watching the sun set over the burgundy Aegean, I reflected on the moral of the story.  Bad city planning, especially the kind that doesn't respect the difference between roads and river-beds can cause the normally separate worlds of sheep, dogs, shepherds, Canadians, Lesbians and Lesvians, to collide with a bang.

River beds or roadways, you can't have both. There will be consequences.

WRITER's MEETING JULY 2019 N. Hatley

A Suitcase of Presents

A SUITCASE OF PRESENTS

Dimitri Vouliouris

In 1987 I decided to change my look from dishevelled revolutionary to mature intellectual.  This mainly involved remodelling my facial hair... in effect leaving only a goatee.  an arrangement intended to convey intellectual finesse, a certain sense of nobility, and all-round  reliability..  A trusted look... a look that says "hey.. observe the oozing of greatness ?"  This change, I must admit was neither random or arbitrary.  I was going to China on a mission, a mission that I felt had the potential to be life-changing. It was only fitting that my looks were adjusted appropriately.

You see, a year ago the love of my life (no doubt aided by my cavalier attitude towards spousal obligations ) had left me and gone to find her roots in China.  She ended up teaching English in Handan city. The God-forsaken centre of Mining Universities in the province of Handan. Two weeks by camelback SouthWest of Beijing.

At the time, the arrangement was not entirely unpalatable. Now... aided by one of the worst winters in the Eastern Townships, plus the unappetizing prospect of dying alone, I had come to my senses. I had to convince her to come back to me or die in the attempt. My cunning plan was to give two lectures at her Bauxite-dust covered University and gain her favours by a blitz of self-advertisement.

"Business or pleasure, sir ?"  asked the border-guard. I've never really figured out which one pleases them most.  "Er.. regaining the love of my life" I answered in the hope of gaining some sympathy. She looked at me with a mixture of sadness and "are-you-joking-ness" making sure that I understood she didn't believe one bit of my tall tale and reluctantly stamped my passport.
She seriously doubted that a Chinese woman would ever go back to one of those "white devil" types but, anyway, she would not stand in the way of true love. Knock yourself out.. !

The entire trip was a series of misfortunes, misunderstandings and misalignments, but all was not in vain.  I came back with a suitcase and a story to go with it.

So, it came to pass that the dust-laden Mining University always held a lavish New Year's party for it's faculty.  Given that it had more professors than my University had students, there was no one big hall in which to hold this in, so the festivities were done in shifts... morning shift, afternoon and night shift.  We, of course were invited to the night shift as guests of honor.

This was 1987 and the directive was "Open the gates to foreigners", however, in the entire province of Handan we were the only foreigners. This was awkward since his Amplitude, the General Secretary of the Provincial Communist Party was to attend the party and they wanted to show him diligence in collecting foreigners. We didn't even count as two since my beloved was of Taiwanese origin. A grand sum of one and a half foreigners.. max !

They did however pull all the stops, sending the University limo to get us ( an old but sparkling, chrome and  black DeSoto lookalike from the thirties... complete with curtains on the back windows ) and having us sit at the University President's table across from the Secretary's table... !

Things were progressing in a satisfactory manner. The Chinese fondue at our huge revolving table was exemplary, the sweet wine with deadly-high alcohol content was flowing, the 852 professors were all excited to meet us and the speeches were getting slurred. We had been introduced to the Secretary, a likeable round man seemingly more into good food than furthering the communist ideal and it seemed that the new year had been ushered in impeccably.
Suddenly there was a hush, everybody stood up and all eyes turned to his rotund Amplitude,  the  Secretary.  To my horror, he turned towards me, raised his glass and launched on a fervent speech with the hapless interpreter barely keeping up. The upshot was that he was delivering greetings to the people of Lennoxville, all 4000 of them, on behalf of the peace-loving  democratic people of Handan ( all 9 million of them ). That makes a ratio of 2000 Handanians for every Lennoxvillian.  Upon finishing his speech he raised his glass once again and toasted me... and now I realized that the 852 pairs of eyes plus the special secretarial pair were now firmly focused on me. Oh my God...  they expected me to respond in kind.  The fate of the known world or at least of  Sino-Lennoxvillian relations hung in the balance.

The wine must have helped because I was stunned at the words coming out of my mouth seemingly on auto-pilot. I calmly assured him that the peace-loving people of Lennoxville were also pleased to send their greetings, were eager to partake of cultural exchanges, salute Handan's newly-built statue of a Napa Cabbage and, here is where I think I went too far, would never attack China unprovoked. I honestly don't know from which remnant of cold-war movie I got all this from. When I finished, the audience broke into scattered non-commital applause not knowing what to make of it all.  However, I could see the hearts in my beloved's eyes

But it is often during the dying hours of a banquet that the important events happen... those that have lasting impact on world affairs.  After about an hour  when people had fully digested my message of friendship, an attachè asks me if I would join the Secretary in a last drink. I drag myself to his table and am cordially introduced to the Mayor of the city and some officials. After some small-talk about the lifelikeness of the cabbage statue they finally let the cat out of the bag... and I am stunned !   The secretary, upon my repatriation, wants me to negotiate Lennoxville becoming the "sister city" of Handan.
My mind boggled... and I appraised him of the fact that there are about 2500  Handanians to every Lennoxvillian.... " Ah.. no problem"  he said   "You much richer..."
"It's like a mosquito marries a Hippopotamus.."  I said, mentally congratulating myself on the power of the example
"Ah.. no problem.. mosquito can ride on Hippopotamus"  he deftly countered

It went on like this until, worn down, I finally agreed to carry the request to my local authorities.

One of his entourage leaves briefly and returns carrying a suitcase.

"Ah.. token of esteem to Lenoxvillian comrades... er.. CITIZENS " he quickly corrects.
"two thousand leaflets of Handan's beauty... encourage tourism"

After all was said and done, I lean towards the secretary and ask him.. "Why me ? Why not you go through the official channels ? "

He smiled leaned closer ( by now we were buddies..! ) and said
"Simple... I trust you more than the other foreign devils"

"but why ?" I asked
To this he smiled, a bit more more mischievously and said " Ah.. goatee... yes.. goatee !  Big sign of good character