A letter to Greece from a child rejected, yet again

Dear Greece,

You are the land of my birth. Of my mother’s birth, and of all the mothers that came before her.

She was unmarried when she became pregnant with me. She was from a small village in the Peloponnese and was therefore unable to keep me. She left, never to return.

I was born in December 1962 in Athens, and adopted from Mitera sometime in 1963/64. My adoptive mother was Greek but had lost her citizenship with her marriage to my adoptive father, a British citizen.

They adopted my brother Alex at the same time.

Both of us have applied to have our citizenship reinstated through our birth mothers who were Greek nationals when they gave birth to us.

My journey away from you was quick. My journey home has taken four years already and I’ve yet to clear the first hurdle. I submitted my application to the Greek Consulate in London in 2020. I am still waiting for an acknowledgment, for a case number. 

Greece. These are my earliest memories of you.

Our house in London, full of exiles. Theodorakis, his musicians, Mercouri and countless others made stateless during the turbulent years of the junta.

I remember also all the long hot summers spent at our beach house near Halkida, where my mother, her sister and two brothers built small houses to accommodate our large extended family. All us children running between them, playing, watching wide-eyed when my uncle brought large blocks of ice wrapped in hessian sacks from the village, then chopped it into chunks and placed in the four iceboxes.

I remember too our small hands carefully carrying the empty “stamnes” to be filled from the well – pumped only after 5 p.m., when our sleepy community resurfaced after a seemingly never-ending “mesimeri.”

We had no electricity back then.

At night we would sing and dance or play cards by the orange light of the oil lamps. Then to sleep in our own beds or top-to-toe if the houses were full of visiting relatives (more often than not); to be woken the following morning by a donkey braying in a far-off field, to sit drinking our milk in the cool shade of the trees, watching as Yiayia started cooking dinner, scooping out the flesh of vegetables into a large bowl, then grating onion, adding herbs, rice and mixing together with the oil harvested from the trees under which we sat.

It is there I learned what family means. What you, Greece means.

It was the summers spent diving for shells and competing to see who could go deepest, burned nut-brown by the sun that sustained, scorched and bonded us forever.

My adopted mother died when I was 14. My adopted father signed over the house to me and my brother and chose a different path, a new wife, a new life. But for us, there was only this life, this family, OUR family and it remains so to this day.

Growing up with two cultures has its challenges. Nowadays they call children like us “third culture kids.” But then there was no word for it.

In England, we never completely fitted in. We were branded “Greek” at the pleasure of whoever, whenever they wanted.

“Don’t let her write about Turkey.” I overheard the editor say to no one in particular in my first newsroom job at the beginning of my journalism career. “She’s Greek!”

Meant to defame I suppose, but in truth it made me love you more.

For it was as a journalist that I really got to know you outside of Athens and the community of my summer home.

Over my career I’ve sat with Greek officials in Phuket City Hall in Thailand, as they tirelessly waited for the handful of Greeks then unaccounted for in the days following the Boxing Day Tsunami.

I have spent weeks outside your parliament, talking to those who’d made their home in Syntagma Square, as successive governments held emergency talks late into the night on the economic crisis and what should be done.

More recently I watched as my fellow countrymen offered water, food, blankets, with an extended hand of friendship on the beach at Skala Sikamias in Lesvos, where 800,000 fleeing war arrived in rubber dinghies.

I have walked with refugees as they made their way through Idomeni, the Balkans, Hungary, Austria and Germany all the way up to northern Finland. I always asked about their journey to reach safety, how it had been, the welcome they received, or lack thereof.

“Yunan, Greece good,” each would say with a smile and give me a thumbs-up. It filled me with pride.

Greece. Each year as spring turns towards summer my heart is pulled towards you, my homeland. Flights are booked. Friendships dusted off. “When will you get there?” we ask each other from across the globe, for we are part of the diaspora that each year comes home to recharge, to take stock and by doing so, live our best lives.

Dear Greece. I have always been told I’m Greek. So do you know what it’s like not to be accepted by you? 

It’s like standing outside of a room, the door locked. I can hear voices inside. They’re the voices of my country, talking in my mother tongue. I bang on the door to be let in. Inside they can hear me, but they don’t open. I get angry, frustrated and bang louder.

Still nothing, just silence, as if I’m being punished for an unintended sin. So I stop banging and slump to the ground overwhelmed with grief, weeping, deflated, rejected yet again.

For yes, for those of us who are adopted, it’s another rejection.

Rejected by our birth mothers, now rejected by the country which gave birth to us.

Dear Greece, agapimeni mou Ellada, I ask that you please, please recognize me as one of your own.

Zoe Harris is a broadcast journalist with 30 years experience covering international news. 

To sign the Nostos for Greek Born Adoptees petition, go to https://chng.it/zYBQD4K8jf