Dusk try shedding once the Tsirigoti and her husband Nikos – including an effective physics professor – visited my personal hotel, and we also chat regarding backyard courtyard, around a bougainvillea which is only a shade better than just Tsirigoti’s magenta-coloured hair. From the confronts from one another Tsirigoti and you can Koulianos I’m able to discern outlines of your solid options that come with the maternal grandmother, once the caught inside the a photograph drawn by the Australian singer Cedric Flower, which entered Clift and you will Johnston to your Kalymnos for some weeks during the summer out-of 1955.
Exactly how true is the fact?
Georgia Tsirigoti, an excellent physics teacher toward Kalymnos, states one to now to your island, like with the woman granny Sevasti Taktikou’s big date, “the women would be the company of the house”. Credit: Nadia Wheatley
“You will find so many photos out of her – wry, sardonic, intimate, comfortable, raffish, unfortunate,” Clift composed out-of Taktikou. “However, real time, them, warm and you may breathing and you can live.”
Appropriately, into the Cedric Flower’s photo, Taktikou is actually ready so you can Clift a plate of fruits, as if she was indeed brand new archetypical Earth Mom; it is obvious one toward Australian woman, freshly arrived in a bewildering, alien people, the old Greek woman try the new surrogate mother who educated the lady to search and you may cook and continue maintaining house regarding the local trends.
Georgia Tsirigoti invested simply annually regarding the lady childhood on the Kalymnos; this lady dad’s community as a police triggered him to move their family unit members about, within island from Rhodes, the new Peloponnese, together with town of Thessaloniki. Considering Tsirigoti’s comprehension of other areas of Greece, I am specifically interested to get her undertake the island’s societal organization. I begin: “Regarding guide, Charmian claims one, under the power that Kalymnian guys seem to have . ”
“Yes! Since most of one’s people have been take a trip, by sponges. Right now, a lot of men will work once the sailors – captains or aspects. They traveling much. ”
I recount my personal earlier day’s talk having Hatzismalis with his partner, and that i quote Hatzismalis’ assertion you to definitely “We Kalymnian the male is delighted.”
Again, Tsirigoti spontaneously agrees. “Sure. Because they have nothing to consider. All of the difficult behavior try pulled by the female – the fresh wives – maybe not from the men. The men are absolve to subside to get results, also to come back to Kalymnos and you may live a bit that have people they know, and then leave again. Referring to the way it is, even now.” I pick Tsirigoti’s partner, that is Athenian, silently agreeing.
“The difficult choices are drawn because of the women – new spouses – maybe not by guys … This is why it is, even now.”
So it contract ranging from someone are conveyed perhaps not inside good authored pre-nup but in something that is frequently actually tangible: property. Immediately after explaining new lingering energy of one’s Multiple Goddess, Clift produces in the Mermaid Singing: “The newest apparent truth off male supremacy should be why are scottish girls so cute place from the elderly and significant fact that possessions right here descends from the lady range, away from mom in order to oldest girl.”
“Sure.” Once particular conversation into the Greek which have Nikos, she explains: “Even today – not too strictly today, but even today – it is lifestyle to provide every daughter a property.”
Therefore the ladies are the newest manager of the home
This home is the bride’s prika, the woman dowry. After the relationships, the fresh new groom actions when you look at the. And if the marriage does not work, Clift told me, “this is not her who is ended up of house”.
Nothing question, I think, one to into Kalymnos, anyone speak endlessly out-of houses, however once we manage around australia, since a matter of monetary value. Right here our home is the way to obtain good woman’s fuel, during the actual terminology.