Greek tragedy
IT WAS long past midnight and all was still on this June morning. Suddenly, a window shattered and five men cloaked in black broke into a small single-family dwelling on a quiet Athens street, home to four African immigrants.
The invaders were in their 20s, carried extendable batons and wore shirts emblazoned with logos of the Greek neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn. The attack lasted just a few minutes, but it was long enough to leave one immigrant severely injured.
One of those attackers was George Gellis, a 24-year-old native of Athens. He felt scared: It was the first time he had joined the group on one of its operations. But his anger over the economic situation in Greece had bubbled to a boiling point, and it channelled itself into rage against immigrants.
“Of course, I voted for Golden Dawn,” he said after the attack, playing on the front porch with his one-year-old daughter. “Immigrants come and take our jobs. Also, Golden Dawn gives me money and food to participate in their operations.”
George lives in a working-class suburb of Athens called Perama. He’s far away from the frequent anti-austerity demonstrations taking place in the city centre. Even so, he feels the crisis in his everyday life.
His home, a shack on a cliff with dozens of others built without a permit, has walls made out of concrete blocks and a roof constructed with asbestos, a material banned by the EU because it causes lung cancer.
Here, the winter is too cold and the summer is too hot. During summer, the Gellis’s house feels like an oven. There’s no insulation, and everything heats up. As the baby grows restless, George turns on the hose in the front yard and they both try to cool down.
There are very few trees in this poor suburb, it’s just a maze of cement and aluminum. The neighbourhood is like a small favela, the shanty towns of Brazil. A pipe was broken for a month and sewage ran through the entire neighbourhood, making the smell unbearable.
George isn’t alone in his anger against immigrants. With one out of every three Greeks falling under the poverty line, it’s no surprise Golden Dawn won 7% of the vote in June elections. Polls show 14% of Greeks support its tactics.
The absence of a welfare state combined with Golden Dawn’s handouts is how the ultra-nationalist group managed to win over so many people. Greece is the gateway to Europe for more than 90% of its illegal immigrants and the number of illegals is thought to range to 2 million in a country of about 9 million.
With the crisis deepening, increasing numbers of desperate people are becoming radicalised. Lacking a stable job or a stable income for these past four years, George, like many 20-somethings in Greece, feels like he’s stuck in a deadlock. From this deadlock, he has reached despair, then rage, expressed through violence. He hits his girlfriend, he fights with his neighbours, he attacks immigrants.
George recalls what happened with his latest job: “I worked as a delivery guy for €24 a night plus the tips and the expenses for gas [petrol/diesel]. Now, I work for €14 and I have to pay for my own gas from whatever tips I might make. The boss told me ‘if you don’t like it, I’ll just hire the immigrants’.”
Economic growth in Greece has been negative for five consecutive years, while the economy has been in deep recession for the last three. Despite the restructuring of the economy, the country’s growth rate has plummeted to -7% and its debt levels are projected to reach 189% in 2013, up from 129% in 2009.
The past three governments have ushered in austerity measures that have resulted in the drastic lowering of living standards for the middle and lower classes. With more than 1,000 Greeks laid off daily, and with predictions that GDP will fall by 25%, hope is gone.
For George, life was much simpler when he was younger. After finishing 6th grade, George dropped out of elementary school to start working in his father’s heavy-machinery business. He still remembers how to read, but he can’t write. As a teenager, George would go out to the bouzoukia, nightclubs, spending hundreds of euro nightly. Even after his father’s death, he continued to work hard, travelling countrywide with his machinery, working on excavation projects, until the crisis crushed the business and he was forced to sell the machinery.
George’s life went from bad to worse. Money was flowing in the 1980s and 1990s in Perama because of the shipyard nearby — now unemployment in the area tops 50%. In his early 20s, he found himself inheriting his father’s house along with an €8,000 debt, and had a baby with his girlfriend, Dina. These days, only four old photos remind him of the good times. It’s George and his friends at the bouzoukia, hugging one of the most popular singers in the scene.
The baby came by accident and the pair decided to raise her without getting married. Without jobs or any support, the couple found themselves under extreme pressure.
In the beginning, Dina’s father would help them buy clothes and medicine for the baby. This past summer, Dina’s father also died and with him went their only source of revenue, his pension.
After the business closed, George tried to find work elsewhere.
“It’s like a lottery to find a job these days,” he says and he’s right, with unemployment in Greece climbing over 26%, more than 50% for the young. “But even when you land one, the conditions are really bad. They’re paying less than €500 a month. That’s insane. They’re taking advantage of the crisis to lower the wages.”
Now George wanders the streets looking for wood and metal scrap. It might be dark already, but George looks around to see if there’s anyone watching. He then climbs over a gate and enters an empty construction site. After a few minutes, he shows up carrying pieces of wood. It’ll be enough for the woodstove tonight to warm up his family and his two-room shack.
The three governments that have ruled during this crisis have all chosen the road of austerity, slashing social welfare budgets and not taking into account the human toll. With unemployment rising, many like the Gellis’s are unable to pay their bills, while the number of homes with power cut off is heading towards half a million.
One out of three Greeks also lacks health insurance. When George’s baby girl got ill on a Sunday morning, they had to wait until Tuesday to take her to the doctor — that’s when the offices of the local branch of Medecins Du Monde opened. If it hadn’t been for the NGO, the baby wouldn’t have been examined by a doctor or received the medication she needed for her respiratory problems, since the Gellis’s can’t afford health insurance and private doctors are expensive. The doctors said the respiratory problems are partially caused by the smoke from the heating stove. “What can we do?” George asked the doctor. “We can’t afford a better one and we can’t stay in the cold. So we’ve got to live with that smoke inside our home.”
The economic problems have created tension between George and his girlfriend. On a winter’s night, Dina, a blonde, fragile and skinny but tough girl, one with her hardships etched on her face, lights a cigarette, with her badly polished nails visible. It might be the many cigarettes and coffees she has consumed with George that she looks much older than her 19 years. It might be the drastic change from the safety she felt at her father’s house to life with George in their shack.
“When I was growing up I never used to worry about electricity,” Dina said, her eyes outlined with black liner a usual. “The light was on day and night and, as we were three sisters, the hairdryer was running all day. But then, I got involved with you,” she says, looking at George, a degrading tone in her voice.
Smoking, he answers: “Dina, get up and heat the water for the shower.”
“Why don’t you get up yourself?” she replies as she gets up and pushes the smoke out of her lungs. Dina might be following George’s orders for now, but it is obvious she’s been through a lot and can easily take off. She takes an old pot, fills it up with water and puts it on the gas stove.
From the moment he gets up until the moment he goes to sleep, everything for George has become about proving to Dina that he’s worthy.
“I need just €5 every day for us to survive,” said George with a feeling of abandonment. “If I have €5, I’d be happy. It’s enough to at least feed my child. But, there are days that I can’t even find those fucking €5.”
When money is scarce, any kind of junk can be useful and in this neighbourhood nothing goes to waste. A relative brought George and Dina a 3-inch TV, powered by a used car battery. After a few days, George had the idea to use another car battery for a lightbulb in the living room, giving him much better light than the gas lamp.
Glad to not being in the dark anymore, he switched through the channels, stopping on a news show, which made him angry again: “Thieves. They’re all thieves,” he says of the politicians. “They’ve taken everything from us.”
On a quiet Sunday morning, George took his dog, Zeus, to a small vacant lot between the old petrol tanks left from the golden age of Perama in the 1990s, when the shipyards were still in operation.
“Go get him, boy. Bring home some money,” George shouted, as Zeus leaped towards another dog.
Zeus attacked the other dog first on the neck and blood gushed out. Zeus hadn’t been fed or given water for days and the Caucasian sheppard had been locked in a friend’s basement.
When George went to pick him up, Zeus was already tense. He’s training his dog to take part in dog fights in order to make €200. That is why Zeus attacked the neighbour’s dog.
After two rounds of approximately 25 minutes, the two owners separated the dogs and took them home. George cared for his wounds and rewarded him with water and food. He was hoping to prepare his dog for a fight next month, but Zeus doesn’t look ready. Another thing to upset his plans.
Desperation has struck this neighbourhood in such a way it leads people like George to set up clandestine operations. One spring afternoon, while George was sitting on his front porch, his neighbour Lefteris shows up.
Lefteris is in a similar position to George, unemployed and hopeless. “We have to organise a robbery, man,” Lefteris says to George, who replies sarcastically: “Wow! People keep dreaming. Yesterday, another guy told me we should organise an armed robbery and someone else proposed a kidnapping. It’s amazing to see where people’s minds go to when they’re in need.”
With survival being the main issue, criminality has risen three-fold since the crisis started.
“Man, I’m not going to steal from an old lady for €10,” said George. “There have been no pending trials against me for a year now. I was in jail when my wife was eight months pregnant.”
Lefteris replied: “Cut the bullshit man. There’s no money left. We need to survive.”
On a sunny day, George took a shower, put on his best clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, and got ready to travel for an hour to the centre of Athens. He had an important appointment, one that made him nervous. Even though he’s not used to handouts or asking for help, his friends finally convinced him to visit Praxis, an NGO that cares for the needy. He was just going to ask for a job anyway.
The austerity measures implemented over the past two years have led to the decimation of the welfare system. In the past, the destitute could at least receive free healthcare. But, when George’s baby got sick, he had to pay €5 for the hospital visit and he now owes more than €2,000 for the month-long hospitalisation.
Today, the system has many loopholes and George’s case doesn’t quite fit the prerequisites, even though he has no income, no electricity, and a one-year-old daughter.
So his last hope is the NGOs. George walked into the NGO’s waiting-room to find it full. He knows he might be turned down, but he said he’d give it a shot. The meeting was really short. “I’d like some kind of help,” George told the caseworker. “I’m unemployed and I have a one-year-old.”
The caseworker looked at him and said in a calm voice: “Unfortunately, we’re only helping families with two children.”
George looked back at her and felt humiliated again. As he walked down the steps to return home, disappointment turned to rage.
THE GIRAUDS
“Where are we supposed to fit all these books?” said Achilleas to his wife, who had already packed 40 boxes. After more than 22 years of living the middle-class dream in the upscale area of Kifissia with Greece’s rich and famous, it was time to go.
The family home will soon be owned by the banks since the Girauds have been late paying their mortgage loan. Last year, they were allowed to stay in their home since foreclosures were halted for unemployed homeowners, but no one really knows if this is going to remain the same in 2013.
The Girauds do know, though, that it’s too late to save their home, so, to lessen their debt, they are renting it to a foreign diplomat, who has agreed to pay €1,200 for rent, but wouldn’t give more to meet the mortgage payment.
“Better than nothing,” the Girauds thought, heartbroken, as they decided to move out.
Alkistis, 16, and Guy, 20, are giving up the neighbourhood they grew up in. Their parents, Achilleas, 54, and Roula, 56, have to deal with the more than €500,000 they owe on the mortgage and credit cards.
The serenity on Achilleas’s face is unusual for an unemployed man that owes half a million euro. There’s always a smile on the soft-looking giant’s face, even if it’s bittersweet. Roula’s worries, though, are obvious from the lines around her mouth and eyes. She’s the one that pushed the family to move to a better neighbourhood. Just four years ago, everything seemed to be planned out perfectly. They had an annual income of €120,000 with rental income from an apartment and a store. Achilleas was a high-level executive in a food-packaging company and Roula was a secretary. Nothing had presaged what would happen next.
IT’S MOVING day and there’s unusual tension in the air. What to leave behind? What to throw away? What’s going to happen with Portokalakis, the stray cat they took in eight years ago? The day has come for the Girauds to take their belongings from their 350 square-metre home and squeeze them into a 120 square-metre office they own, now renovated into an apartment.
The kids have been brought up in the small bubble of this wealthy neighbourhood, where teenagers get a good allowance and their parents drive expensive cars.
However, the gap among the rich and what used to be the middle-class has widened since one austerity measure after another over the past three years squeezed the lower and middle classes. Those include tax hikes of 37%, while 75% of all taxes are still paid by pensioners and employees. There is much talk about tax evasion, but it’s still high among doctors, lawyers, and business owners.
Just 200 households in Greece declared annual earnings of more than half a million euro. But the Girauds pay every cent of their income tax as well as the new property tax and the little money that’s left goes to the banks. They’re following the new laws and they still can’t get by.
According to the Greek Statistical Service, Greek households lost €5.4bn in income because of taxes and unemployment in the first trimester of 2012.
There’s widespread anger at the growing injustice. Alkistis, a typical teenager with her long blonde hair and her sneakers, has been taking part in protests regularly. She’s now in the 11th grade, but even though it has been three months since school started, not all of her classes have begun. At the arts high school she attends, they lack books, teachers and even a school bus. Every Tuesday, along with her classmates and teachers, she protests outside the Ministry of Economics, the heart of all demonstrations, since that’s where all the decisions on the budget cuts are being made. The ministry considers that special schools, like arts and sports schools, are too expensive to sustain.
The Girauds felt the crisis early on. In 2007, Roula had to choose between early retirement and getting fired. That year, Achilleas lost his high-paying job because the company started cutting back. Back then, he managed to get a new job quite easily and he became a real-estate agent dealing in luxury homes.
However, the crisis hit the market hard and in 2009, he was unemployed again. His eight-month contract with the municipality of Kifissia has just ended. He had been the caretaker in the local park, earning just €800 a month. He knows it’ll be hard for him to get a new job. Now, they live off Roula’s pension and Guy’s part-time job at a souvlaki restaurant paying less than €600 after taxes. Meanwhile, the mortgage of the home they were forced to leave is still more than €1,700.
The new home is on a busy street, though, so they keep the windows closed all summer long. The air-conditioning works continuously all day, since the noise from the cars outside is too much to bear. It was 6am one morning when Achilleas woke up from the smell of cigarette smoke. His downstairs neighbour was having his morning coffee in the backyard and the smoke from the cigarette he was enjoying filtered through Achilleas’s window. From a house with a garden to an apartment building with neighbours, everyday life has become one adjustment after another.
Trying to earn some extra money, Achilleas tried to sell his 1,000-LP record collection. He consoled himself that he’s doing it because there isn’t enough space in the new apartment, as he laid out the collection in Alkistis’s school bazaar. While carrying the boxes from the car to the schoolyard he said: “It’s such a shame we’re putting these LPs on sale. Some of them are collector’s items. I should take photos of them and put them on Ebay.”
After eight hours, and having sold only 15 records, the Girauds counted the day’s profit. “It wasn’t worth carrying them all the way here for just €50,” Achilleas said.
“You still owe me €200,” Guy said laughingly to his parents, who borrowed the money to pay for this week’s groceries.
Guy was accepted at a college two hours from Athens, but he doesn’t drive and he can’t afford the €16 round ticket every day. Meanwhile, he’s a waiter, hoping to start working as a professional musician. “I want to get another tattoo, so I’ll need the money back in a few weeks,” says Guy. Despite his mother’s disapproval, Guy raised the €290 he needed to have a fairy drawn on his calf. It’s obvious that transitioning from a comfortable lifestyle to a frugal one will take time. Too much stress though has been devastating for the Girauds.
After he got laid off for the first time, Achilleas started having heart problems. Then his arteries became clogged and he had to have open heart surgery. Now that he’s recovered, he hasn’t lost his sense of humour, but sometimes it turns into sarcasm. The day his contract as a park caretaker ended, he said with a laugh: “Look where a high-level executive has ended up — picking garbage in the local park. Imagine that when I went to fill out my resumé for the cleaning job, I hid that I had a degree in economics. I ticked the box that read elementary education. Otherwise, I would have been considered overqualified to get the job.”
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