The Nollas of the immigrants

By Mikela Chartoulari, Vivliodromio, 7 April 2012«Instead of herding all these people into concentration camps, it would be worth spending man-hours to see how... Dimitris Nollas strongly disagrees, as he told me, with the government’s plan for migrant detention centres. He is one of the first modern Greek writers to have given a leading role in his short stories and novels to these ‘others’ who, for twenty years now, have been flooding into our country to save themselves and their loved ones who have remained beyond the Murgana or in the depths of Asia and Africa. His perspective bears the mark of Christian love, yet his approach is neither romantic nor naive. For Nollas knows how complex the issue of relations between modern Greeks and foreigners is, but he also knows how the issue was dealt with in previous phases of Greek history (‘we have always assimilated the hordes from the East’). And he has seen how multi-ethnic societies can function in the West. That is why he never uses the term ‘illegal immigrants’. They can assimilate them. The only solution to the immigration issue is to grant them citizenship. ‘Foreigners have a better chance of becoming true Greeks than various political opportunists who speak Greek.’ His new book, therefore, is particularly timely: it comprises ten short stories from the last eight years and is titled ‘In the Land’ (published by Ikaros), in which four stories depict the difficult coexistence of locals and foreigners, who struggle whilst the prevailing atmosphere poisons them. The harshest, ‘The Price of Dreams’, transports us to the courtyard of a temporary refugee camp, set up in a dilapidated building next to the rubbish tip, where we witness something akin to a rehearsal for the lynching of a pedlar. A gentle but broken figure, he was laying out his wares outside, cheap perfumes and cosmetics which he sold by the bottle, and only little Asmat, who could not afford to buy anything, spoke to him – a gesture which her mother, however, misinterpreted. So, when he stroked her head and gave her a small gift, her family flew into a rage and beat him to a pulp. Until two bored policemen arrived and rushed to close the case by shifting the blame onto the street vendor’s licence... Things aren’t black and white, Nollas tells us here, and he invites us to reflect on how poverty and shattered hopes affect human relationships.In his other stories, Rolando or Roules teaches a lesson in solidarity to the Greek man who gave him a synthesiser so he could play music and share the pennies he earns. The second-generation Turkish immigrant in Germany throws his German wife out of the window, feeling humiliated because she has cheated on him. And the dark-skinned foreign worker on the island feels unable to accept the proposal of the scorned young widow to stay together. Why all this? Because for a modern society to function, it must assimilate foreign value systems as well; yet these are not matters that can be settled wholesale and impersonally, through laws... ‘Politicians, however, are wasting time while eyeing the funds. But local communities will overturn their plans.” Ultimately, this book contains ideological and philosophical views that reflect the image presented by Greek society in the wake of the Olympic Games. In the recent short story ‘Inevitable Encounters’, for example, Nollas tells us of three friends who meet again after years apart, prompted by an old deception, and notes: ‘When you have lived a life without ever lending or borrowing, a life without give and take with others, a life without love; when you have never learnt this, how can you now take on the burden of another?’ In the equally new ‘A Loaf of Bread in Two’, where a long-unmarried, beloved couple living in poverty discuss a lost inheritance, he writes: “Setbacks, something that can turn into a disaster, bear witness to a life that is vibrant and ever fresh; they can be the catalyst, an opportunity for change.”Thus, by focusing on our relationship with the other or their ghost, this collection of short stories captures the resignation but also the will to live of today’s Greeks, the greed but also the solidarity, and above all the confusion that pervades a society emerging from a period of lawlessness where people had become wolves. The only lifeline for this situation, his stories suggest, is love for one’s neighbour (…‘and not for the idea of the neighbour’). ‘‘I belong to the party of those mad with freedom,’ comments Nollas. ‘Because I have learnt the “Grand Inquisitor” from “The Brothers Karamazov” by heart, and I know that if you accept compromises and make concessions, you open the door to totalitarianism. That is what happened in the 1980s when this society traded its vote and its tolerance for material goods…". A writer who has delved into the story of the Polytechnic generation or terrorism, the Nollas of today has turned his back on parties and politicians. And whilst he admits to having voted for ‘everything except the Far Right and PASOK’, he now prefers to declare himself ready to fight not for revolutionary utopias but for constants (language, nation), as the title of his book also suggests. And as an example of grassroots social policy, he acknowledges the Church’s work with soup kitchens, solidarity and its comforting activities. ‘Of course we must be in Europe and change many things, but if the Greek people are to be wiped out, well, no! Dimitris Nollas’s book *In the Land* will be published by Ikaros after the Easter holidays.