THEODORIS KALLIFATIDIS
Siege of Troy
ed.. Pataki, page 185

During the bombing, the caregiver gathers the children in the cave for protection. And there he will begin to tell them the Iliad.

Almost the end of the war, almost the end of the German occupation of Greece, April 1944 and a young teacher appears in the village, a candle dressed in black. She preaches with her slender neck, her fingers, her airy figure, and the mystery she holds, another war in her teenage student’s mind and heart: the war of love. And she tells her class about the war for love, about the Trojan War. The Germans have been in the village for three years already, since the age of 41, and somehow they ceased to be enemies, conquerors. They go out to cafes and sit with the locals, raise their planes to protect themselves and the village from British attacks, leave room for a peaceful life. Only they apply retribution. And here this whole image of coexistence collapses. When one of their officers is ambushed, three will be executed until the perpetrator surrenders. She was a woman, and by the time she was captured only to die, the six natives would have already been taken apart. Our teen storyteller is also a candidate. Absolute fear and courage, clenched teeth, pride that could not be excluded in the essence of a fifteen-year-old child, relief, guilt and tears of joy, the hood did not show him.

During the bombing, the caregiver gathers the children in the cave for protection. And there he will start telling them the Iliad, so that they almost don’t want the bombs to stop falling. This makes it a fascinating story, full of passion and rivalry, selfishness and rivalry, humanity and inhumanity combined.

Kallifatidis in the role of a hero, a teenager deprived of his father-teacher, caught by the Germans, illustrates the whole life of the occupied village. Fear and deprivation, orphans and death, threat and hope. Local authorities, a mayor who is trying to weigh the need to protect and serve the people of the village, with the obligation to talk to the conquerors, to obey, to mediate, to the limit. You can’t call him a traitor. The pain of a mother deprived of her husband, not knowing whether he is already alive, whether he is free, imprisoned, lost. Dimitra, the hero’s company at school, on walks, in confidential conversations, a mismatch and yet an inevitable couple, they both know it. Their teenage life will change again with the opening of the school, when a girl arrives, a young new teacher, Marina. Before our hero makes an indifferent union with his classmate, he has time to feel in his adolescent mind what he considers love. To think of her, to be jealous of her, to dream of her, to yearn for her presence, to wait for that which is always the source of life, her answer. He won’t do it.

The Greeks conquered the German occupied country, the Trojans are besieged by the Greeks in a war of honor, strength, survival. The Iliad, reread through the eyes of Callifatides, revives that precious thing that sustains our life. For the Trojans, love for the country and its defense, a sacrifice for the sake of preserving the unharmed life of those they love, those who give meaning to every sword, old parents, children, beloved spouses, the graves of their ancestors. But also the battle to preserve the painful and destructive love that fills Elena with shame for all the suffering she causes, which gives rise to the generosity of the struggling Trojans towards her. For the Greeks, a war for prestige, a wounded pride, a defense of a love that no longer exists. Eleni chose, she left.

The author reminds us of important things in life. What is the meaning of the place that gave birth to us, our people, the everyday life that makes up our whole life, solidarity and respect, small joys, but also the true values ​​​​of life that we want to keep and, finally, love. However, it also gives us forgotten images, images of war and cruelty, destruction and cruelty, struggle to the end that requires the death of parents and friends, the extermination of families and the maintenance of hatred. This novel comparing wars would only make us think about the power of literature if there were no real war anymore. If the humiliating images of our culture had not come to life again, and what we hoped for eighty years ago would not have turned out to be reversible in such an easy, quick, unpredictable and painful way.