I read somewhere, a while ago, that a
Greek woman and her daughter sued the Greek government at the
european court, for the genocide of its own people. I don't know if
it's true, but whenever I mention it to somebody, it brings tears to
my eyes.
It's like we're blinded by the debris
of out collapsing society and the smoke coming out of our mistakenly
sacrificed moral values, and simply can't see that people are dying.
Driving to work, on a sunny day,
listening to the radio, a man had just shot himself in Syntagma
Square. My blood chilled. Everything felt wrong. You go to work, earn
some money, talk a few nonsense with your colleagues, dip into some
office intrigues, and then you remember, a man ended his life a few
hours ago. Where am I in all this? Why does this feel so big and yet
life seems to go on as if nothing happened?
A week later, someone I knew hanged
himself. Debts, says the official report. I got so drunk that night.
Because he was the father of a little boy I dearly love. And because
the mother, who is my oldest friend in the world, would have to tell
him. I tried to memorize the funeral, in case he wants to know when
he's older. We could tell him, your father was one of the victims of
the Big Crisis. Like it was yellow fever, famine, or a war.
About a month after that, a man pushed
his elderly, senile, mother off the roof and then jumped, too. He had
property he couldn't sell and had no cash left to support himself and
his mother.
There are hundreds of such examples,
from all over the country.
Add to that the cancer patients, whose
medicines the Greek National Health System has stopped providing for
free. How long will the poorer ones last? Add to that the patients
with terminal diseases in the understaffed institutes that are
running out of food and medicines. Add to that the victims of
violence.
Doesn't it now begin to sound a little
bit like a genocide?
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