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You bought a guitar to punish your ma,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong> Pink Floyd<\/p>\n ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n It was the summer of \u201992 and I wanted to buy my first guitar.<\/em><\/p>\n There was no reason to ask for money from my father. It was a luxury unaffordable on a policeman\u2019s wage which was the only family income,with three children and a car to maintain. But I was listening to Pink Floyd from dusk till dawn and I should,I should, I SHOULD learn how to play \u201cWish you were here\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A friend of mine, who wanted to oversize his underbone’s piston to 70mm or something like that, I didn\u2019t understand and I couldn\u2019t care less, hit on the solution.<\/em><\/p>\n -Why don\u2019t you come to work in the apricot fields? He told me the wage and it seemed to me derisively low. Till then, I had never worked; I had just finished the second class of senior high school. Whenever I asked my father for money, his answer was invariably: \u201cDo you think that money grows on trees?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Well, it didn\u2019t grow on apricot trees, for sure.<\/em><\/p>\n As much as I wanted to spend my summer days on the nearby beach, there was the Holy Grail with the strings calling me.<\/em><\/p>\n I began making calculations. A month\u2019s work equaled an electric-acoustic Yamaha. Two months and I could buy a Fender Stratocaster (a replica, a Korean model) and a 30 Watt amplifier. It was worth the effort. After all, how laborious could it be picking apricots?<\/em><\/p>\n When I told my father, he chortled.<\/em><\/p>\n -I give you a week, at best.<\/em><\/p>\n Granted, I wasn\u2019t an athletic type, but now I had two reasons to work: The Holy Guitar and knock the props out from under my father.<\/em><\/p>\n I called my friend and he said they would pick me up at half past five.<\/em><\/p>\n -You mean, in the morning? I could hear my father guffawing from the kitchen and my mother saying: \u201coh, poor child, I feel sorry for him\u201d. I couldn\u2019t go back on my words. \u201cWith it or on it\u201d, \u201ccome and take them-molon labe\u201d and Spartan stuff like that. In most primitive societies, young boys should participate in an initiation ceremony to become members of the adult world. They were flogged and left in the jungle alone to hunt lions.<\/em><\/p>\n When the alarm went off, it was pitch-black. I turned it off and turned over \u201cI can do without a guitar\u201d. When I closed my eyes, I saw my father\u2019s face laughing.<\/em><\/p>\n I put on the shabby clothes that my mother had found and a jockey hat with the logo of a repair shop splashed over it. I went to the bus stop.<\/em><\/p>\n Only an old man was there who might have been waiting for the first bus or he could have Alzheimer\u2019s. He looked at me from head to foot and then asked me if I was Albanian.<\/em><\/p>\n My grandmother was Arb\u00ebresh\u00eb and used to call bread \u201cbuke\u201d sometimes. So I was, gene-wise, 1\/8 Albanian.<\/em><\/p>\n -No, I told him, I\u2019m from Pyrgos.<\/em><\/p>\n Had I said that I was from Thessaloniki, he would plunge into a talk about the beautiful Thessaloniki, \u201cthe poor mother where the best of men come from\u201d and trite things like that. Had I told him that I am 1\/8 Albanian and 1\/8 from Asia Minor and perhaps I might have a bit of Venetian blood in my veins, he would have told me to go back to my country.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s why I told him that I\u2019m from Pyrgos. It\u2019s verified. When I tell someone this, they keep me at bay, quite convenient at this precise moment. The old man took two steps aside and left me alone with my criminal descent.<\/em><\/p>\n Before long I heard destiny approaching like a monster. Sotiris, the friend who dropped the idea for this job, arrived on the scene with a pickup truck.<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know the official name of this vehicle, but we called it a pickup truck. It\u2019s a prehistoric three-wheel, something in between a tractor and a lawn mower and on the rear is attached an open cargo area. It\u2019s used strictly for rural work; no one would ever dare to go for a drink in his pickup truck.<\/em><\/p>\n Sotiris, proud as if he was driving an airplane carrier, told me to jump into the back. There sat two more workers. They were Albanians, but I didn\u2019t bother asking them what percentage.<\/em><\/p>\n Although it was summertime, it was freezing cold that dawn and I had waived aside my mother’s advice to put a cardigan on. I gritted my teeth and I was patient. And that\u2019s the way the journey to initiation into adulthood begins. Without a cardigan.<\/em><\/p>\n From Kiato to Moulki, where the factory was, it was a twenty, maximum thirty, kilometers distance. It took us an hour to get there with the pickup truck, and we had to wait for another half an hour before we were assigned where we should go. Of course we were not getting paid for these hours.<\/em><\/p>\n Two more workers jumped up onto the pickup. One compatriot, Albanian, the other Polish. A short ride and we reached the workplace. The rest of the workers jumped off, took their ladders and began climbing the trees. I asked Sotiris what we should do. The foreman heard me and approached coughing.<\/em><\/p>\n -What are you? he asked me. Who is this? asked Sotiris. Sotiris told me. There were two varieties of apricots; bebekou and diamantopoulou. The first ones were fatter, heavier, more resilient. Diamantopoulou apricots were smaller and delicate. And more delicious too, but this was irrelevant at this very moment.<\/em><\/p>\n We should climb up the wooden ladders to the appropriate tree, pick up the ripe apricots and fill our bucket. Then we should go down and drop them in a plastic crate. And up again. When the crate was full, we loaded it onto the cargo area. And so on and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n But I had forgotten to tell Sotiris that I was acrophobic. Once I saw the three-meter ladders, I remembered it. And I told him.<\/em><\/p>\n -What is that supposed to mean? Sotiris was desperate. Mr. Kostas, the foreman, was walking around the land and he was surely unaware of the Montessori method nor did he care about my psychological problems.<\/em><\/p>\n Finally Sotiris teamed me up with a Romanian who had great climbing skills and he could be an acrobat of the first magnitude or a top-notch thief. He picked the ones which were high \u2013 sometimes without using the ladder- and I picked the ones that were growing at a height of less than three meters.<\/em><\/p>\n The hours dragged and when the time for our midday snack came I could hardly walk. The rest of the workers gave me sympathizing looks. Mr. Kostas had figured out that there was something wrong with me but more than likely Sotiris had convinced him to leave me alone.<\/em><\/p>\n Sotiris didn\u2019t do it because he cared. He, as I was soon to realize, didn\u2019t work like the rest. He was something like the foreman\u2019s pet. He brought empty crates, he took the full ones to the factory, he checked the product and \u2013most of the time- he laughed at the foreman\u2019s vulgar jokes.<\/em><\/p>\n He had taken advantage of me but he didn\u2019t want to kick me out. Only three years later, after a good boozing session, he confided me the truth. He had a personal pique against me because I had stolen his girlfriend Katerina. She was a classmate with an Italian diva\u2019s cleavage of Cinecitt\u00e0. At a party, both sloshed, we had snogged. The next day at school nobody had a recollection of what we had done. But Sotiris had seen and it burnt in his mind.<\/em><\/p>\n I had a childish idea \u2013 how did it come to me? -that we would be working for eight hours. At four in the afternoon we had been working for ten solid hours and the June sun was still hanging high in the sky. I kept going up and coming down, picking and filling and humping while thinking of Steinbeck and the grapes of wrath.<\/em><\/p>\n When I was on the verge of giving up and pulling out, I started singing Wish You Were Here, Vera, and imagining myself playing live with my twelve-string acoustic guitar at Wembley, as a session guitarist, at Floyd\u2019s reunion.<\/em><\/p>\n In this way we filled the last truck of the day and Sotiris told us to climb up too. We rode to the package factory crammed between the crates.<\/em><\/p>\n I had eaten nothing but a sandwich all day long since I hadn\u2019t listened to my mother who had advised me to take something else with me. On our way to the factory, after an almost 12-hour stretch of work, I had never felt as hungry in my life.<\/em><\/p>\n I started eating apricots and truth be told I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever eat such luscious fruits in my life, ever. Jerzy, the Polish colleague, was deterring me in broken Greek, like those that Yoda spoke: Don\u2019t eat them. Poison they have.<\/em><\/p>\n The insecticide burned my lips a bit but my hunger was such that it didn\u2019t bother me.There was no harm, except that I got the runs.<\/em><\/p>\n Till we unloaded, got paid and pulled out, it was seven o\u2019clock. The money in my pocket was not enough to rest my heart. But I went back home with my head held high. For the first time in my life I had earned money using elbow grease.<\/em><\/p>\n -Splendid, my father said. Now you can chip in to pay the rent.<\/em><\/p>\n I went weak at the knees and stood there gaping at him. Then he started laughing.\u00a0 Was it one of these jokes that only he understood? I\u2019d rather not think about it. But as I lay on my bed, unable to move, I figured out how difficult, harsh, frightening, unimaginable it is to work like this, like a slave, not to buy a guitar but to pay for your food, the rent and the electricity. And I still had no idea about revenues and levies.<\/em><\/p>\n Oh, the wonderful innocence of adolescence!<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>~~<\/p>\n That night I dreamt of the apricots. Not something nightmarish, that is murderous fruits chasing or attacking me, but more Kafkish, more\u2026ancient Greek.<\/p>\n It was a huge apricot tree. I was climbing up a ladder, many storeys, and I was picking fruit. No matter how many I picked, the bucket didn\u2019t fill. And the fruit was getting less on the branches.<\/p>\n Then, as I pulled an overripe bebekou, I heard a big voice from the sky.<\/p>\n -What are you doing? cried the voice.<\/p>\n I looked at the apricot and I realized that I had grabbed my father\u2019s balls. I fell on my knees and asked for forgiveness.<\/p>\n -Curse you forever and ever. Your son will do the same to you.<\/p>\n Then I started falling from the ladder eternally while apricots around were in abundance.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>~~<\/p>\n I kept going to work in spite of the nightmares. The most tiring was not the physical fatigue but the psychological exhaustion. I became conscious that I was spending my entire day for a pittance, that had I had a family (with three children and a car) it wouldn\u2019t be enough to buy crispbread.<\/p>\n Until then \u2013 granted- I thought money did grow on trees. Hearing the effing and blinding of Mr.Kostas it dawned on me that I should give much more than my time and my body. I should give my whole life, my soul.<\/p>\n There were Albanians and Albanians who killed themselves to put bread in their mouths. There were guys like Sotiris who got by more lazily by kissing the foreman\u2019s ass. There was the foreman whose religion was the extermination of his inferiors. There was the manager who cursed the foreman and then he did not dare to look him in the eyes.<\/p>\n And somewhere there is a factory owner who couldn\u2019t tell the difference between bebekou and diamantopoulou but he had set up the factory with the government\u2019s subsidization (80% European contribution) thanks to his connections with the appropriate party members.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the way of the world and you strive to buy a Fender Stratocaster or trying to touch Katerina\u2019s boobs.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ~~<\/p>\n I tolerated it for ten days, three days longer than my father expected me to. I found a cheapo classical guitar, the cheapest the store had. But it had strings and sound emanated when you hit them.<\/p>\n With the money that was left over, I bought a book with Pink Floyd\u2019s tablatures and I learned how to play Wish You Were Here. I spent the rest of the summer reading, playing the guitar, swimming, drinking beers, kissing girls.<\/p>\n Somewhere left behind, back at home, there were two people who had given their life to bring up three children \u2013 and a car.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if they fared well, but now I’d rather not talk big.<\/p>\n
\n And you didn\u2019t like school, and you know you\u2019re nobody\u2019s fool,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\n So welcome to the machine.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
\n-Does it pay well?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n-Of course, what did you think?
\n-You said half past five?
\n-That\u2019s right.
\n-Half past five in the morning?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n-A friend of mine.
\n-A friend of yours? OK, tell him what they are doing or there\u2019ll be effing and blinding first thing in the morning.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n-It means that I don\u2019t get on well with heights.
\n-You\u2019re afraid of heights?
\n-To be precise I\u2019m not afraid of heights. I\u2019m afraid of being at the edge of a high place. To make it clear, I don\u2019t mind contemplating the view from the seventh floor but I can\u2019t go to the railings and look down.
\n-You\u2019re afraid of heights.
\n-In a few words, yes.
\n-And how are you supposed to pick apricots? What did you think they were, like bushes?
\n-The apricot trees I had seen were shorter.<\/em><\/p>\n