The Reno Café, Newtown

Kiama, NSW

Not long after his arrival in Australia in 1948, my Father realized his dream. Working three jobs and “saving the pennies” as he would say, in 1952 together with one off his compatriots he bought into the milk-bar business. After some ill-fated partnerships George became the sole owner and for almost half a century -day-in and day-out- this would be his life’s work. Only once after a double-hernia he took a few days off to be put back together again. It was not a prison as many had tried to convince him. He loved what he did and with a passion. My dad, like so many other dads of that generation, was a Superman. His cape was his white apron stained with the lifeblood of bulls which he would brush to one side and leap from the back of the kitchen to the front of the counter. Afterwards dad would share his secret powers with Mother and she too would learn to defy nature and fly about from one table to the next. The milk-bar (in truth more of a restaurant) which was to rule our lives and to later become a permanent fixture in our shared memories was the Reno Café on 341 King Street, Newtown.[1] The shop or ‘shoppe’ as we would call it underwent a number of face-lifts during those five decades, but it was always George and Helen’s. The Reno became a legendary ‘refectory’ patronised by the widest spectrum of the community: actors, writers, politicians, gigolos, sports people, gamblers, prostitutes, musicians, preachers, addicts, con artists, lawyers, corrupt cops, and others in weird and wonderful clothing who would sit and stare and talk to themselves. It was as well the meeting place for the deaf-mute, for my Father could also speak with his fingers by curling them into different shapes. This beautiful language which would dance in the air and make the telling of lies a terrible waste of time, George would later teach his little boy. And the regulars who smoked like old English chimneys possessed their own swag of marvellous stories which they would carry on their backs like homeless Father Christmases.

Before moving in the mid-60’s when the dreams would first begin, we lived on top this big heap of seething humanity. It was a ‘theme-park’ of magical proportions where I would not only play and chase soap bubbles the size of small balloons from giant sinks but also learn to study faces and pick up on the secret of how to read people. In other ways, too, I would grow up too soon and often frustrate my parents and my teachers with the kinds of questions they would prefer to leave well enough alone: “Is Lionel an alcoholic?” Or “Why does Peter’s daddy smack his mummy?” Or “Why did Fatty Franco hang himself?” Or “How do angels slip and fall?” Much later I would grow to understand that to some things there will be no answers.

[1] http://www.sydneyarchives.info/about-newtown

My parents, George and Helen

Kiama, NSW

The second eldest of Michael and Aspasia’s six children, my Father was born 1924 in the Paphos District of Cyprus. The island third largest in the Mediterranean (after Sicily and Sardinia) has been occupied by a number of major powers throughout history given its strategic location in the Middle East. At the time of George’s birth the island was under British administration and had been since 1878. The independence which came in 1960 with Cyprus’ admission into the British Commonwealth and the tragic events of 1974 (when the island was effectively partitioned into Greek south and Turkish north), were still very much in the future. My Father’s family background was humble. It was typical of the supportive and largely self-sufficient communities which lived in villages and toiled daily on their inherited parcels of agricultural land. My Grandfather after losing most of the family’s estate during the depression of the 1930’s, when large loans where defaulted on him, would eventually become the owner of the town coffee-shop, the kafeneion in Peyia. The old man never recovered from the loss of his “fields” and fell into a long depression from which he suffered for the remainder of his life. When I reflect on my Grandfather and on his turbulent history, I see Richard Harris in that superb Jim Sheridan film The Field (1990): the memorable story of “Bull” McCabe an old man of indomitable spirit fighting for his land. I have often wondered given my own battle with the “black dog” whether ‘Pappous’ descent into melancholia was triggered by his personal circumstances or whether the bad germ was there, already in the blood. Something else of interest to me that on both sides of my dad’s lineage were ancestors who had undertaken pilgrimages to Jerusalem. These intrepid pilgrims the hadjis as they came to be known in the Christian orthodox world (originally an Arabic term of respect for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca), were a source of great pride to their families.

After completing his secondary education at the Greek Gymnasium of Paphos in 1942, a notable achievement for those times, and then taking stints working on building sites and in bauxite mines, the hard-working George would afterwards volunteer with the BMA (British Military Administration) during WWII serving in the Dodecanese and in the Middle East. Afterwards at the conclusion of the war, he made submissions to enter the British police force. He was rejected on account of the indiscriminately applied height restrictions. Dad would half-joke that he was “tall enough to be killed in the service of the Commonwealth but too short to be given a job.” He would in due course arrive in Darwin, Australia, on board an old twin-engine cargo plane on the 28th of October in 1948. The dashing captain of that rickety plane, we were often told, was the fantastically named Captain Spearmint.

Though my Mother (nee Fotineas) was also brought up in a village, born in the Peloponnese, Greece, 1934, her lineage carries a little more intrigue, particularly on her paternal side. The Greek Orthodox priesthood is a dominant factor in her family. Great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all priest-confessors. Another priest, this time a maternal uncle a holder of doctorates in both Theology and Law, would for many years serve as one of the legal counsels to the former Archbishop of Athens and Greece, Seraphim. Much later, too, her only son would be ordained into the priesthood. I mentioned some ‘intrigue’ from Mother's paternal side. This has to do with the possibility that my grandfather’s forefathers belonged to the court of the last crowned Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI of the Palaiologos dynasty. Whatever the truth behind this long-held family tittle-tattle, it does make for some interesting tribe trivia. The young and by all accounts very beautiful girl, Eleni, who learnt to sew and to play the mandolin, was the third of nine children of Father Andreas and Presvytera Stavroula Fotineas. She would arrive upon the shores of her adopted country ten years after her future husband, on board the famous Toscana ocean liner on the 18th of January in 1958. The first port of entry on reaching Australia was Fremantle, Perth. I asked Mother to describe those initial impressions. "A great numbness," she said. "And then the realization that it was all about to begin." Her first job was as an ironing lady with Lawrence Dry Cleaners in Forest Lodge.

George and Helen were married on the 19th of July in 1959 in the church of the Dormition on Abercrombie Street, Redfern. It was also the church of my baptism.

­From each of my parents I inherited some evident traits, for instance my Father’s ‘never say die’ attitude, and my Mother’s strong inclination towards compassion. Other traits or characteristics were evidently learnt behaviours by way of observation. Much discussion has centred about this question: what part of us is inherited and what learnt? What is the composite of our psychological make-up? Philosophers, as well as geneticists, are fascinated by this question. Perhaps the two, that which is inherited and that which is learnt cannot be separated, like the two strands of DNA which are wound around each other into a double helix.

I was born and not long afterwards ‘misplaced’

Gerringong, NSW

I was born and not long afterwards ‘misplaced’

I was born on a Sunday afternoon at the Bethesda Hospital in Enmore, an inner suburb of Sydney, on the thirteenth day of August in 1961. Immediately opposite the hospital (named for the Pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John) was the famous swimming pool where ‘wogs’ would go in search of ‘sheilas’ and where nine years later I would almost drown having miscalculated the deep end.

My Mother’s labour was both long and painful, beginning in the morning hours of the previous day. She hardly spoke English which made it very difficult to communicate her distressing condition to midwives. When my Father, who was fluent in the language of his adopted country but absent during my birth (he was “busy” at the shoppe), arrived to take us home he was in for a shock. The blond-haired blue-eyed baby boy bawling before him was evidently, not his son. On his first visit George had embraced a dark little fellow with the characteristic swarthy features of a Mediterranean newborn, but what was presented to him that morning was a fair-headed “Germanaras” as he would later say, a “German.” And in her broken English my Mother would cry out with hands swinging in the air, “This no my baby! No my baby!”

The nurses who at first were understandably hesitant to admit to such a serious blunder, hurried back to the neonatal ward to make the necessary swap. This incident which I have often reflected upon highlights two aftermaths which were to shadow me from that time onwards. First, the number of ‘lucky escapes’ that I would afterwards have from death; and second, my work as a privacy advocate has often meant that I have had to consider the terrible question on the microchipping of not only adults, but increasingly of newborns as well.  

The old man ‘Pappous’

I was to be the only child and named after my paternal grandfather, the old man ‘Pappous’. He was known as much for his homespun wisdom as he was for his big-hearted generosity. Afterwards when the disease would also come upon him, he would sit alone under his Carob trees and muse on the passing of the world. Similarly to me, he often found it difficult to distinguish between his gut feelings and the cold facts. I have a photo of the old man in my study hanging on the wall together with the Saints. He has the eyes of an owl. Like those in our tribe before us, we were both named in honour of the great warrior archangel Michael: “And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon…” (Book of Revelation, 12:7).

Every infant it is believed is born with two fears, one is falling, and the other of loud noises. I added a third: The fear of being misplaced.

Saint Peter’s Basilica 1987

Gerringong, NSW

There are moments in our lives which leave us with such strong impressions that the picture fades little with the passing of time. One of those moments I experienced in Rome, in December of 1987. I was twenty-six years old and only recently ordained into the holy diaconate of the Eastern Orthodox Church, yet here I was about to witness one of the most important historical events in the relations between the two great churches since the “official” schism of 1054.[1] A few days earlier I had been travelling through Switzerland and was camped out in Zermatt by the foot of the Matterhorn but was able to arrange some fast changes to my travel itinerary, get on a train, and make it to Rome. It would be just in time for the highly controversial concelebration in Saint Peter’s Basilica between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Demetrios of Constantinople. Some days earlier the two religious leaders issued a joint-declaration from the Vatican stressing “the fraternal spirit between the churches.” In a uniquely solemn ceremony the Patriarchs of East and West together recited in Greek the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as originally expressed without the filioque.[2]

Outside in Saint Peter’s Square among the throng of thousands happy enough to witness the momentous event on the giant monitors, another smaller act was about to unfold. Entry into the famous Basilica on that day was by a special ticket, though it was plain enough to see that it was still hugely overcrowded. I was thinking how memorable it would be to witness it all from the inside, to be part of this historic occasion as it actually happened. It was then that I was approached by a nun who appeared to have been the superior of a small group of religious in her company. I could not rightly guess her age on account of her habit, but her face though angular and pale, was a handsome one. She smiled with the expected reserve of someone in her position and with a light tap to my wrist introduced herself, “Good morning Father, I am Sister Benedicta.” During this short exchange she kept her hands clasped neatly in front of her. I noticed an unusual silver rosary with a pearl crucifix intertwined between her fingers. She asked whether I would accept the biglietto of one of her group who at the last moment could not be there. “Thank you very much, yes, of course.” It would still prove quite a challenge to make my way to the entrance secured by the Swiss Guard. I would have liked to talk to this softly-spoken woman, whose accent betrayed a French background, to have asked something of her life, but before I could rightly thank her she disappeared into the growing mass of people. Many years later in Bucharest when I had similarly lost the “old man” in the maddening rush of afternoon traffic, I would once more remember losing her in the crowd.

I pushed and shoved through this vast sea of animated bodies to get through to my destination. At last once there, and after showing my ticket to the officials, I was treated with new found respect and escorted to the near front. My seat was only a few rows behind the impressive congregation of VIPs. Sister Benedicta’s friend, I thought, must have been somebody quite important to have been reserved a spot this close to the historic proceedings. Whose place did I take? There in the company of cardinals and bishops, and of politicians and celebrities, sitting inside an architectural wonder of Renaissance ingenuity (the breath-taking art of the great masters alone was enough to strike you dumb), I felt my chest puff up and my head begin to spin. The pomp and ceremony elevated to an undreamed-of degree intoxicated my senses. Not far, there immediately before us, the Papal Altar where the ancient tomb of Saint Peter lies directly below. One moment I wanted it all and knew that I could make it happen. A few minutes later I was sickened by these thoughts and realized that such high-places would never be for me. The truth? I was possessed with too much ‘bad’ pride and I would need to fight against it for the remainder of my life. At first chance when such opportunities might again present themselves, I would have to uproot. And flee quickly into the darkness in search of the ‘compensation’. “Oh, dear Jesus and Mother of God, what will become of me?”

[1] Meyendorff, J. The Orthodox Church, (Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York 1981), ch. 3, 39-60.

[2] Siecienski, A.E. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010).

What they did not understand

Gerringong, NSW

The philosophy of the ‘enlightened elite’

What they did not understand was how I would find their respective ideologies abhorrent, and that I would reject this philosophy even during the desolate hours. This would anger them more than their growing antipathy towards me. I had heard this philosophy of the ‘enlightened elite’ with its roots deep in Gnosticism a number of times, but never more persuasively argued than by these two charismatic figures in their attempts to draw me into their respective worlds: we are the enlightened ones and to us has been given the great responsibility to fix the course of the world. One of these was my Confessor. He entered my life when I was twenty-three, brimming with hope and preparing for the priesthood. The other was a mysterious entrepreneur. He would cross my path twenty-seven years later in a hotel on the outskirts of Bucharest after I had missed my flight to Sydney on account of a dream.

There is such a thing as dead water, and dead light. There is also dead spirit. And it was this which terrified me. For they were very fast to swoop down on their prey these two… my Confessor and the entrepreneur. Sometimes they would remind me of the peregrine falcon with its high-speed morphing of wings.

It was not until I had read John Banville’s exquisite novel Doctor Copernicus that I was able to find the exact paraphrase for the words which I had heard on those two occasions when these powerful individuals sought to convert me. The first of these conversations took place when I had informed the Confessor of my intention to leave the priesthood, and the second when I was presented with an employment opportunity which sounded too improbable to be true.

Later I will speak more on these temptations and of the big empty frames. And of beautiful porcelain, brittle like frozen petals, falling through my fingers.

"And yes, I know, Katina. There will be some price to pay for this. But you said, did you not, that I could write whatever I wanted?"

The makers of supreme fictions

“Ah. The common people. But they have suffered always, and always will. It is in a way what they are for. You flinch. Herr Doctor, I am disappointed in you. The common people?-pah. What are they to us? You and I, mein Freund, we are lords of the earth, the great ones, the major men, the makers of supreme fictions. Look here at these poor dull brutes… [t]hey do not even understand what we are talking about. But you understand, yes, yes. The people will suffer as they have always suffered, meanly, mewling for pity and mercy, but only you and I know what true suffering is, the lofty suffering of the hero. Do not speak to me of the people! ... [t]he people -peasants, soldiers, generals- they are my tool, as mathematics is yours, by which I come directly at the true, the eternal, the real. Ah yes, Doctor Copernicus, you and I –you and I! The generations may execrate us for what we do to their world, but we and those rare ones like us shall have made them what they are…!”[1]

[1] John Banville, Doctor Copernicus, (Picador, London, 1999), 136.