HEAVEN HELLAS
i am from Greece. more specifically, more recently, Ilioupoli, Athens, and before that, Crete. other places, too, but none of them call to me as much. i am a light-skinned immigrant / child of immigrant(s). it was my grandmother, who fell in love with an Amerikkkan soldier in the span of about a week, married him, and followed him where he went, first to where he was stationed, and then back to Amerikkka. i don't know who that man was, my mother doesn't talk about her biological father. it was my mother who had the guests learn Greek dancing at her wedding to my father. it is me who wonders why my grandmother ever left. i want to go back. plenty of people don't believe me. all the educated people are leaving Greece, and it is said only the fascists are staying. maybe that's part of why i want to go back; i know why my grandmother left. i wonder why rhetorically, in the sense that i wouldn't have made the same decision, but i know why, and i want to say, i have come home to challenge this.
my grandmother, she is at the core of this story. her father, my great-grandfather, was captured & tortured by Nazis. italian Nazis. Mussolini's. it was because he was a writer, a journalist. i don't think he was a communist or an anarchist, his politics are not comparable to anything i know, but i know he was there for the people. that is the only thing that matters. that places him at the core of this story, too. i've seen pictures of him, and his wife. they both have kind faces and intense eyes. i don't know if they're both from Crete, or just him, or just her. i don't know. some of this history is incomplete. it doesn't matter, and if it does, i will complete it. or i will feel it. i'd like to think i share more of their...body, personality, history, than just my mother's. my mother, her mother, her father. he is not that far away. he is very close to me. he is what calls to me, i think. i hope i write fear into fascists & colonizers, too. i hope i write care, caringness, into humanity, too.
my grandmother survived multiple wars, i think, both big and small. i know that that is why she left Greece. what i do not understand, cannot understand, is what happened after. she followed a soldier to his stations, to colonies, and didn't see herself in the survivors there. she followed a soldier home, to the largest colony of all, and didn't see herself in the survivors there. she was indigenous to somewhere, and she threw that away as she stepped off the boat and decided to be okay with colonization as soon as it was happening to someone else. her father was dead by then, he had died of something -- trauma, or infection, etc. -- a year or less after he got out of the camp they put him in. his wife stayed with him, and then stayed. but his daughter, my grandmother, she left it behind, she left him behind, she ran, and she ran away with someone i think he would've seen right through.
my mother is my connection to the rest of them, and simultaneously, she is the whitest person i know. this is because -- at least, i believe this -- whiteness is not about what you look like. she looks...short, and vaguely ethnic in a way most other white people can't place, or don't care enough about to place. she has Greek friends. she is Greek when it benefits her. she is many things, when it benefits her. she is a liberal. she is a light-skinned liberal, who takes ownership of people & things she likes, who dislikes other people who seem abnormal to her, who expresses fear as a desire for control, who believes and echoes colonial rhetoric. this all makes her white.
am i white? i don't know. i don't think i care, if i'm honest. other people can care about that for me. a dark-skinned person can call me white, and that is okay. they have a different relationship to me than i do, and i take that as an opportunity to learn about them, or to learn about the world from their perspective. i know i am light-skinned, and i know a decent amount what comes with that. i do not identify as white, on purpose; i don't want to be white, i do not want to allow white thoughts to fester in my head, i do not want to treat humanity the way my mother treats humanity, the way whiteness treats humanity, i do not want to forget my history, i don't want to forget, diminish, or devour others' histories, i want to be as connected to the land and to God as possible, i want to care, i want to love, i want to live in sacred & free ways. i do not want to be Greek, in particular. i do not want to belong to any one country. i do not belong to any one country. i belong to the land, and especially, my god, especially the water.
being Amerikkkan, to me, is a curse. a lot of the people i live with, a lot of the people i see in my daily life, they are disingenous, and cultureless, and not very connected to the land or the water. being a 'good Amerikkkan' is impossible, unless you are living illegally. if you pay taxes, you are paying for colonization. destruction. etc. i have met many otherwise decent people, who happen to live in this horrible, horrible place, and they have no power, and they are in danger themselves, and so are effectively forced to abide by rules like these. i forgive these people. i am one of them. i have also met many, many more people who volunteer to abide by rules like these. i do not forgive these people. sometimes, it very hard to tell the difference. there are many kinds of people here. but kinds of people aside, i genuinely believe i was not meant to be an Amerikkkan. i know that i am not liking being an Amerikkkan. i am stuck here, as things are, because i am a cripple, and that will stick you places, especially if you don't have supports. i am stuck here. but i do not want to be here. if i am going to be here, i am going to be in the water. all water is connected. it is not hatred i am feeling. it is love.
i have been to Greece before, when i was much, much younger. it is not a paradise. not Eden, not Heaven. i do not think living there would be easy, i do not romanticize it. it is not what the tourists see, even though we were acting like tourists, it'd been so long since my mother was last there. it is not what you will see if you look it up. it is something else entirely. to me, it is not worth idolizing. making an idol out of something is not loving it. i've been in the water there. that's how i know i belong there. as i looked out across the sea, i saw the other them. the other islands, so alien and yet so familiar. like another planet, another Earth, i am from that other Earth, welcome back, they said, welcome home. i want to see them again, and stay with them this time, and call out in my great-grandfather's voice, 'i made it. they tried to kill me, they tried to steal me away, but i made it back. i'm here. i'm alive. we're alive.'
