I see myself once more each night time bent over the radio, correcting the bugs on the “BBC” concerning the Cypriot occasions. From the center of June, the battle between Makarios and Ioannidis’s junta grew to become open, undisguised. Within the diplomatic workplaces all over the world there was little doubt: “Kissinger in Washington, Ioannidis in Athens and Etcevit in Ankara, Makarios goes.” A coup in Cyprus equals an invasion of Turkey. Widespread place of every thing. The mechanism of formal and casual collusion was arrange. (…) I do not wish to describe my emotions that day, July 15.
They belonged to the absurd and the sacred. If I had high-powered explosives, I might strap them on to explode the traitorous “unionists” within the Pentagon. Instantly, with out contemplating social gathering commitments and left-wing ideologies, I borrowed cash with a purpose to get right down to Crete with the “Olympic”. Within the warmth, overtly, with none precautions. At Elliniko, after the check-in, on the exit for boarding, I’m approached, in a low voice, by two airport safety officers. I shouted: “Get misplaced, I will enlist.” The folks in line supported me. An outdated man with a beard thundered, “Disgrace on you, traitors!” They misplaced it. They left, supposed to tell their superior. They had been paralyzed.
On the flight a number of fellow passengers had been loudly cursing the traitors. At Heraklion airport they’d been notified, they went to escort me out, the gang had gone wild and so they had been left me with surprise and embarrassment. I went down with imprecise expectations of a preferred rebellion. Repetition of the Venezuelan “Nationwide Protection” Motion. Formation of a Thessaloniki-style authorities and basic mobilization for the protection of the Republic of Cyprus. Now I noticed with my very own eyes the junta collapsing.
(…)On Tuesday (July 23, 1974) within the morning, the colonel Bravakos we all know from Kavala, Ioannidis’s observer first within the workplace of Papadopoulos after which within the workplace of the president, Normal Gizikis, began calling the political leaders to the Presidential Palace. For 3 days he had managed to isolate the overall together with the opposite protopalikaras of Ioannidis. The attention-grabbing factor is that he known as the political leaders via the individuals who had monitored their phone communications with them. After which, Bravakos will participate as secretary(!) within the essential assembly of Gizikis and the leaders of the Armed Forces with the main politicians.
On the night time of Tuesday to Wednesday, July 23 to 24, Athenians poured into the streets. The nice celebration of Freedom. At Syntagma, outdoors “Nice Britain”, I noticed Ilias Ilios and launched myself to him. He was making an attempt to indicate that he enthusiastically participated within the rising nationwide unity. Konstantinos Karamanlis, who shall be sworn in by Archbishop Seraphim – a classmate of Charilaos in Karditsa -, earlier than Gizikis, will exclude the revered and sober Ilias from the federal government and the Left from nationwide unity! We participated wholeheartedly on this nightly celebration of the Republic.
We successively welcomed the imprisoned comrades, the exiles, the self-exiles, Miki, Melina, Nikos Koundouros, Charilaos Florakis, and eventually Andreas Papandreou…
After the inauguration of Karamanlis, I walked again from Syntagma to Kato Patisia, finding out the comfortable faces of the folks, particularly a pleasant younger couple who adopted the identical path to Koliatsou Sq.. They flew as if free of a heavy weight and iron chains. And but once I obtained speaking to them, I spotted that within the junta they spent their greatest years in non-public, they loved their love, they did not even go right down to the “Polytechneio”, however they listened to the “Free Radio Station of the Free Greeks”. I used to be strolling at daybreak and my preliminary pleasure changed into one thing else.
The Worry of Freedom? The Agony of Decisions? The junta had simplified our lives and our wrestle. Eradicate dilemmas. Freeze the large and small unanswered questions. Now they’re coming again like a twister. Which Greece? Which Left? The place is the New Greek Left that I dreamed of once I first set foot in Athens? Which means will I take? Ought to I end my research with the thesis and comply with the engineering career? Ought to I return and work in Crete? To comply with the trail of science, my deepest repulsion? That’s, ought to I lastly exit with a scholarship?
Of “idea” and writing? Of politics by different means? Democracy makes the quick future complicated. Within the junta, quite the opposite, there was a transparent goal: its overthrow. On this lovely summer season morning, the primary of Freedom, a skinny mist unfold over my eyes and I needed to dispel it, to see the form of the brand new section of my life. With these worries I went to mattress at seven within the morning on July 24, 1974, precisely 4 months earlier than I turned 23, however I did not have time to sleep or suppose.
An hour later the bell saved ringing. It was not the milkman, however the Occasion! At ten o’clock within the accounting workplace of Kostas Triantafyllos, not my good friend from the Polytechnic, however a veteran, uncle of Sotis Triantafyllos, there can be a gathering of some non-imprisoned executives for the quick publication of a “widespread” newspaper of the Left. We known as it New Greece. That is the place I’ll commit myself within the first days after the autumn of the dictatorship. The director is outdated Simos. I may also “rent” my “connection” with Miki in Paris, the journalist Giorgos Gato, answerable for his Press Workplace, the New Left, along with Theodoros Pagalos, a former member of the “Lambrakis”, grandson of the general-dictator.
I gave Giorgos the knowledge to put in writing the primary book-chronicle about “Polytechnio ’73”. We successively welcomed the imprisoned comrades, the exiles, the self-exiles, Miki, Melina, Nikos Koundouros, Charilaos Florakis, and eventually Andreas Papandreou… An enormous second wave got here and took us far-off. We aren’t, as we expect, the protagonists of our lives. We felt free to outline our personal path, however in situations, circumstances and relationships that didn’t rely solely on us. Randomness additionally performs its half.
#Postcolonization #Betrayal #Daybreak #Freedom
