In light of the horror which took place in India, and another horror which is at this moment taking place in Greece (see photos at the end of this post) and has now spread to Spain and France, I think it’s appropriate to post this excerpt from my memoir and dedicate it to my friends in India and Europe, with hopes that people will come to their senses and understand that there is always a a peaceful way to get one’s point across….

“The Little Saint Nicholas”

(Excerpted from Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece)

At the end of our new road, there was a little white stucco church.It had a clay tile roof and was no bigger in its entirety than my son Nick’s new
bedroom. It was Saint Nicholas Church, for which our street had been
named.  It was open every day. There was no staff in attendance, but you could go in whenever you wished, to light a candle and leave a donation in an unlocked donation box. It was such a tiny space, there was no room for seating. So if you wanted to pray, you’d haveto do so standing. It was a unique kind of place and Nick, at only eight years old, was captivated by it. He’d go inside and stay forever. I’d wait for him outside, in our parked car.

I could see him from there, just standing in that little church. Once in
a while, he’d move his arms as though he were speaking to someone, and I
wondered if he liked being in there because he thought it was the perfect
place to talk to God.

One morning after Nick left for school, Gregori pulled me over to our television. “Look at this,” he said.

The news report was showing our little church. A group of protesters had thrown a Molotov cocktail into it. Everything in the interior was burned to ash and the pretty white exterior blackened with soot.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Nick will be devastated.”

Nick surprised us when we told him what’d happened, however. He didn’t get upset. He just said, “We’ll fix it. Right? Baba works for a paint company. He can give the priest paint.”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Gregori.

Gregori said, “The church needs more than just paint to fix it, Nikolaki. All the icons and candles are gone. Everything inside is destroyed.”

Nick waved his hand dismissively. “Those are for other people to get. We can get the paint. Baba, you’ll ask George Cristos for the paint?”

Gregori didn’t have the seniority to request that his company donate paint to a church. He was probably thinking the same as I, because he was looking at Nick dolefully. But Nick was looking back at Gregori with such hope. I held my breath as they stared silently at each other.

Suddenly Gregori said, “Of course, I’ll get you the paint. Tomorrow after school, you and your mother will go see the priest. Give him my card and tell him to call me at my office.”

The look on Nick’s face was worth whatever this would cost us. “Thank you, Baba,” he said.

After he’d gone to bed, I asked Gregori, “Do you think George will donate the paint?”

Gregori made his favorite Greek hand circling motion. “We’re talking about a lot of paint. Stucco’s very porous. It’ll need many coats to get rid of all that black smoke stain. I hate to ask George such a thing. But it’s important to Nick. Worse comes to worse, George will give us the wholesale price and we’ll just have to pay for it ourselves.”

I was proud of the way he’d handled this. “Okay, Gregori. That’s what we’ll do.”

If I was happy with Gregori, I wanted to give George Cristos a medal the next day. As soon as Gregori told him what the paint was for and that Nick had requested it, he said he’d donate it. Furthermore, Nick was right — other people did contribute everything else. Soon, the little Saint Nicholas Church was prettier than ever. I’d never seen anything get done as fast in Greece.

We later found out that the suspects were ‘The Anarchists’, a anti-establishment group that expressed their sentiments by destroying things.They threw homemade bombs into empty buses that transported pupils to private schools, because they were “against elitism.” Then they threw them into buses that transported pupils to state schools, because they were “against group-brainwashing.” In short, they blew up everything, because everything was what they were against. They offered no replacement alternatives; they just left behind a mess. Every November 17, in “tribute” to the brave students who’d been slaughtered by the junta, the Anarchists broke into the current day Athens Polytechnic University. Faces covered with black cloth, so these ‘fearless rebels’ couldn’t be identified, they’d climb over the university gates, smash the windows of the buildings and tear the school apart, causing millions of drachmas in damage each year. But they weren’t arrested for it, because the Hellenic population had vowed never to forget the slaughter of those students, and the new democracy in Greece declared that all government-owned school buildings would from then on be a political asylum for any protesters.

I wonder if anyone besides me, “the naive little American” as some of the natives like to call me, noted the contradiction that a group who professed ‘anarchy’ was being protected by a government decree. As you can tell, I wasn’t impressed by Anarchists. To me, they were just glorified hooligans.

But, interestingly enough,  Nick never once concerned himself about the people who’d bombed his favorite church, or what their purpose or values were.

He simply said, “Let’s fix it.”

And we all did. The most powerful statement that came from the
bombing of a church was made by an eight-year-old boy.

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Peace on Earth….Please