‘Is this my country?’
There are times to keep silent. When we can only lower our heads and allow words that must be heard to fly unimpeded to the farthest corners of the land, to wherever on earth Greeks dwell. Because, despite the great progress of the past 200 years, we must acknowledge that our country still does not secure the basic needs of its children, of all its inhabitants.
The tragedy at Tempe is a tragedy in the clearest sense of the concept that so engrossed ancient poets: the protagonists rushed headlong towards catastrophe because they did not know where they were going, victims of the hubris which made them believe that they lived in a country where their compatriots and the state would do everything necessary to protect those in need of their protection.
Nearly a year after the night of February 28, which shook the country and shattered our last illusions, the tragedy has found its voice. A voice that goes beyond analyses, excuses and promises, which describes the black hole, the burned bones, at the heart of our state.
“What degradation, what a disgrace. Is this my country?” Maria Karystianou asked in a trembling but strong voice, addressing members of the parliamentary committee ostensibly investigating the train crash, a crash inconceivable for our age. “Have you read how the railway functioned?” Karystianou asked. “When I learned how it operated, I wouldn’t even load vegetables on it,” she added. If we all knew, neither her 20-year-old daughter, Marthi, nor any of the other 56 dead and 180 injured, nor anyone else would have boarded that train or any Greek train.
Our knowledge was attained in the most painful way, provoking pity for the victims and terror in the revelation that only good fortune, and nothing else, protected others from the same fate.
This knowledge gives rise to rage and the demand for justice. It imposes silence on the guilty and on those who are ashamed of the tolerance we have shown for systemic recklessness and sloppiness, for the venality (in matters great and small) which crushes, corrupts, alienates and kills what is most precious to us, our children.
