On the day the junta fell, 24 July 1974, the professor at the “academic” evening class dismissed us unexpectedly early so that we could celebrate our newfound freedom. At home that afternoon, my father, who was not involved with the school, dragooned me into going with him to water the field. A boiling hot summer in Agrinio. There I asked him why he was not joining in, why he didn’t seem pleased by the fact that the junta had fallen, and that democracy had returned. Wasn’t that what we had been fighting for, what we had longed for all this time? My father, was a former officer of ELAS, who had spent years in exile, and had then become an engaged citizen. I was a teenager, notorious for being the son of the lefty, and a novice “resistor” during the last two years of the dictatorship, and I was about to inadvertedly receive my first lesson with regard to the current democracy.
“Keep your wits about you, my son, and your eyes wide open! From now on it will become very hard to separate the good from the bad, your friends from your enemies. Be careful!”
He had stopped briefly in order to answer me and then continued, bent over, to lay pipes and hoses in the ruts. The diesel engine of the irrigation pump sounded like a boat in the sea of tobacco of the plain and drew up a river of water from the deep well. I didn’t understand at the time. The goals seemed clearly established. I was in a hurry to continue the fight at the universities. By the second or third year at Law School I began to suspect the unerring accuracy of his words and their truth pains me to this day.
