A Century of Silence (1913 – 2013) By Stoian Kochov (Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) A Century of Silence (1913 – 2013) Published by: Risto Stefov Publications [email protected] Toronto, Canada All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief and documented quotations in a review. Copyright 2014 by Stoian Kochov & Risto Stefov e-Book Format October 14, 2014 2 INDEX Chapter one – Returning to my roots .................................................4 Chapter two - Kostur and its magnificent panoramas......................30 Chapter three – Cries from unbearable pain after being stabbed by the dagger of the “Andarts”..............................................................60 Chapter four – Painful memories - black chronicles........................73 Chapter five – The secret flame of our ancestors...........................200 Chapter six - One of the sickest stories..........................................215 Chapter seven – Secret way to the “fratricidal Cemetery” in Strashilovo .....................................................................................253 Chapter eight – Cries of a trumpet before the “fratricidal cemetery” ........................................................................................................262 Chapter nine – Instead of tears…...................................................273 Chapter ten – Taste of salt water....................................................282 Chapter eleven – “Chair” a Shelter for the Aegeans......................292 NOTES:..........................................................................................299 3 Chapter one – Returning to my roots “Born in me is the need to tell: why I love the world, why I admire it, why I am grateful...” (Nikiforos Vretakos) The beauty and the human spirit, with which Nikiforos created his works are for higher justice and a world for all the people. Returning to my roots and facing the person whose seed had been destroyed. 1. One morning I walked into the courtyard of the old “Kosturki merak” café, such named by Husni Hussein - Pasha, a great friend of Ali - Pasha from Ianina. This is where the Kostur nobles and property owners got together for their morning coffee. I sat under the weeping willow and on the opposite side of me, in the corner, sat an old man dressed in a traditional walnut coloured Kostur folk dress, which attracted my attention. But what I especially liked was that he adhered to our great tradition and wore a silver chain tied to a pocket watch resting in a tiny pocket in his vest. The old man couldn’t have been more than seventy years old, but his white hair, beard and moustache made him look older. He was a tall, bony man with a rosy face, hollow cheeks and a big forehead with locks of white hair covering both sides of his head. Under them rested his white eyebrows and below them his two peaceful and gentle blue eyes. He was playing a weird looking miniature clay instrument. I later found out from him what instrument this was and what it was called. He said the instrument was called “Okarina” and that he had excavated it many years ago in the ruins of his grandfather’s house. The instrument was many centuries old. Used even before Christ... The melody was particularly attractive when he played the songs “Leno mori ...”, “Zaidi - zaidi, iasno sontse...” But I was even more impressed when he played “Kalesh bre Angio”, “Aide slushai, slushai, kleto bre Turche…”, Anama ne biduvam…”, but the best 4 song of all was “Tsrna se chuma zadala, tam dolu Kostursko…” The instrument squealed like the cry of a beaten down mother crying for her lost child... The songs were tearing my heart out and bringing tears to my eyes. All the customers in the café were frozen in their seats and listened intently in silence. More people started coming in! When the first tear dripped down my cheek, I said to myself: “This music comes from the depths of a flaming Macedonian heart...” As I watched him play we exchanged glances a few times. I was anxious to find out: “Who was this man? What was his name?” Maybe he belonged to the old Ilinden revolutionary guard? I always get excited when I hear about someone who was a revolutionary; who fought for Macedonia. Then I know that this man or woman has a big heart and that he or she sincerely loves their native Kostur and Macedonia and strives to drive out the plague (the occupiers; the Ottoman Empire until 1912 and Greece after that). The old Ilinden revolutionaries used to say: “Do something worthy of being happy...” This was a message for the young. The old man looked at me with sincere concern on his face and stepped towards me. When I looked at his face from closeup, I started to mumble to myself. His face was rigid and I could read the pain that his torturers had carved in the wrinkles of his cheeks. How many years had this man served in the dry Greek island prisons for being who he is? I could see that I had something in common with this man. As much as I was sad, I felt joy in his presence. I used to think that I was the only one who had had such experiences. A moment before the old man hugged me, he reached out his hand, looked at me with a sad look in his eyes and said: “Are you one of ours (Macedonian); one of those people… from General Markos’s last cleanse, when Markos’s men collected you by force? What was 5 it you called them during the (Greek) Civil War… ‘bright faced colonists from Pont (Asia Minor)’ and later they chased you out and sent you up north?” I first asked him to “please sit” and pointed at the chair next to me. I then, in reply to his questions, said: “Yes! I am one of them! You know, no matter how poor you are, it is not easy to leave your home... memories of home are painful, but after so many years I came back to my roots and want to collect the bones of my father and my brother. They were revolutionaries but at that time I was only 13 years old. And yes, in 1947 I was taken by force by Marko’s partisans and was made to fight for communism. But to this day I don’t know if anyone survived the experience. After the war I roamed the world… Your music… you know… reached my soul. I especially love those old songs you played. These were songs that my grandmother Dora and my mother Vana sang for me, the two special women in my life who gave us life and kept our family going. For me, when I found myself among thousands of our people, far away from Kostur, my birthplace, these memories were my spiritual sustenance. It has been more than half a century that I have been looking for my fate but there is no child, no sound, no laughter and no joy. Everyone has been exiled, everything has been uprooted and our footprints remain as scars on the world. The people of Kostur have forgotten how to laugh from the heart.” He looked at me but his glance passed right through me. He must have remembered something, I thought. I sat down at my table. That which did not kill a person, made him stronger, I thought to myself. I then asked: “And who are you?” There was a ringing sound in his voice and he spoke well. He had a smile on his face which changed depending on what he was saying. He said: “It is good that you came. Otherwise, how would you get to know yourself? Who you were? Who we are? Half a century of living abroad has eroded your consciousness, something from which you cannot recover on your own. But here in your native Kostur it will be your duty to discover yourself and, as a son of this country, to find out how much you’re valued. Here you will find out why you 6 left your father’s home and why our ancestors sacrificed so much for this country! My grandfather used to say: “Insanity takes only a moment in life, but regret is a lifetime!” Calmly and soberly he recounted his unfinished story of his life in Kostur and the wider region and then said: “So, you ask me who I am?” He then began to talk again while I listened: “Mine is a strange story,” he said, “It is so strange it is difficult for people to understand; for those who have not been in this kind of prison camp, of course. A person who is not familiar with the depths of this underworld cannot possibly understand the realm of hatred. This kind of camp exists at the bottom of life. The underworld is the bottom of the largest bottoms. The camp where we were at, where they kept the Kostur revolutionaries fell beyond the realm of human existance. Every revolutionary in that camp had something lasting, something significant that helped him stay alive; something that helped him survive. He had to hang on stubbornly: in the summer under the infernal sun, in the winter under the ice while enduring daily hunger and endless humiliations inflicted on him by the soulless people who ran the camps. It was dangerous to be in the right, where the powerful were in the wrong. We, the revolutionaries, experienced that in those barren islands where no humans existed…” It was a strange look with which this old rebel stared at me. It was a look full of immense sadness and anger, and at the same time full of historical truth, wisdom and an endless desire to tell me all about our suffering.