Those Greeks who grew up in the Civil War knew there was an enemy - but didn't know who the enemy was or where he would come from. The memory, from my own childhood in Salonica, of my father's shop being taken over by a Communist group is crosscut with memories of hush-hush accounts of police tortures suffered by my uncle for supporting the Communists. For a long time after the Civil War ended, our street games re-created it in all its tactics - prisoners, hostages, raids: but if one of us said, 'I'll tell my father the officer,' the fear was real. As tangible as the preposterous iron bar guarding the door of a modern Salonica flat well into the Sixties, and as preposterous as the convoy of tanks in the peaceful streets of the city in the dawn of 21 April 1967.

LRB 19 January 1984 | PDF Download