Beneath the Fig Leaves: A Greek-Australian Immigrant Tale of Hope, Loss, and the Longing for Home

Olympia Panagiotopoulos

“I often compared being Greek-Australian to the folktales and fantasies described in my mother’s stories,” writes Author Olympia Panagiotopoulos. A mythical existence where nothing was as it seemed, where battles were fought and things rarely, if ever, turned out as one might hope or expect.

In this excerpt from her book “Beneath the Fig Leaves,” Panagiotopoulos paints the picture of an immigrant family’s journey in a new world, and the pull for home that spans generations:

The Journey Home

My Greek and Australian lives meet, overlap and sometimes collide. There are similarities between the two. My life is neither more of one or the other, but somewhere in the middle. I am graced with the wisdom of two worlds, blessed with the opportunity to draw on two cultures that offer balance, harmony and insight. I haven’t always felt this way, mind you. I haven’t always had the wisdom.

At nineteen, I walked into the Parthenon Travel office in Swanston Street, Melbourne. I was there to book my ticket; it was the closest I had come to my dream of going to Greece — I was as good as there. Greece was in my blood. It was no longer the mythological place I’d fantasised about in my childhood, but a land that was alive, that had heard my name spoken by people who wondered about me and who were perhaps — and I prayed this would be true — waiting to meet me. I had been told that grandfather loved me; I was named after his beloved. He was one hundred and three years old and lived with my uncle Georgios and his family. I needed to see them, to know their stories — to feel the heartbeat of my family.

Life in post-war Greece was hard for my parents, Giannoula and Fotios, pictured here in their inmigration photographs. They dreamed of building a new life for their young family. On Aug. 6, 1955, they learned that their application had been approved: Australia awaited them. one hundred and three years old and lived with my uncle Georgios and his family. I needed to see them, to know their stories — to feel the heartbeat of my family.

I was nervous for two reasons: I hadn’t yet saved all the money needed for the fare, and I was certain my parents wouldn’t approve of me travelling alone — indeed of me travelling at all. I was used to this; ventures got started with great enthusiasm, then when permission was refused, abandoned.

As an adult, the concept of believing in myself, valuing my thoughts and ideas was foreign to me.

My parents seldom spoke of going back to Greece or, as I referred to it, “going home.” Father had been angry when he left in 1955, and life in Australia had afforded them no shortage of reasons as to why they couldn’t go back. Melbourne was their home. Their family was here. After all, Australia had been good to them. And so they pretended that they had shut that door forever. But inside, way down deep, their roots were still green with life. All it took was a song, a face, a word or the scent of vasilikó, basil. As the years passed, the distance grew further, the longing grew stronger. The fear was running out of time. In January 1981, I went back to the Parthenon Travel office and made a booking. I was going home and I planned to convince Mother and Father to join me.

I arrived in Greece in summer. I wandered the hot streets of Athens, feeling I had been there before. During my journey there were many unfamiliar faces and paths I hadn’t travelled, but something told me I was home, that I belonged.

I wrote letters to my parents in Melbourne and phoned them constantly, determined to entice them. “Everyone is asking for you,” I pleaded. “And I will be here to meet you!” Another challenge. Another test of courage. Several weeks into my trip, I learned that Mother and Father had booked two tickets to Athens. It was all very last minute. Father made the decision to retire and handed in his notice at work. But before they could travel, there were documents and papers and all sorts of things to organise. Part of me wished I could have been there as they prepared to make the journey.

On that blessed day, a hot August afternoon, I was sitting at the window in the arrival lounge at Athens Airport. Front-row seats. My cousin Georgios, Father’s nephew, sat next to me, lighting up one cigarette after the other. The Qantas jet carrying Fotios and Giannoula may as well have been carrying God and the Elgin Marbles. My parents were met at the door of the plane by two policemen. In true celebrity style, they were escorted to a waiting car and driven to the entrance of the arrivals gate. For a moment I panicked, wondering if they were being deported. What had gone wrong? Unbeknown to me, my cousin Dimitrios was one of the officers. He hurried them through customs and within moments my parents and I were together on Greek soil for the first time.

Greece welcomed her children with open arms. As we travelled from Athens to the Peloponnese, the air was alive with excitement and anticipation. I had the feeling that everything surrounding us — the trees, the landscape, the birds and the Mediterranean — all knew that Fotios and Giannoula were coming home after twenty-six years.

But as we neared the village, the mood changed. I sensed their anguish. The road ahead was digging up the past, thoughts and images of 1955. Mother wept for her father and brother, distraught that neither would be there to welcome her. Father was concerned: would anyone remember them? I felt it, too. For a moment I wondered whether it would have been wiser to turn back and leave it all where it had been in the past.

Picking plump, ripe figs from my mother’s garden was the highlight of the summer season. The most awaited of all her garden produce, these crimson-centred gems encouraged a healthy competition between my mother, the birds and me.

The bus pulled up in the village square outside Agios Dimitrios on Aug. 6 and, within minutes, just like that day on Aug. 6, 1955, the plateía was buzzing with news about Fotios and Giannoula: the ones who left for Australia had returned. People came from everywhere, threading through the gathering crowd to shake my parents’ hands.

My imagination and my reality had, at last, converged. Here I was, in the stories, the places, the people, the church, the world that I had known only through my parents’ memories. Do they feel the same? I wondered. I knew they did. This was their dream, too, one they had held in secret for far too long. I watched Mother and Father wipe the tears from their faces. The moment would remain sacred, a bond among the three of us.

My parents were all anyone talked about and we left the square a little overwhelmed. Behind us stood a trail of people, curious, watching and wondering after us. Moments later we were standing by the gate of my grandfather’s house, the same one my mother had hurried out of on her way to Dorio. I knew she was thinking about them — her father and brother and how it had been that morning long ago. The village had told her that she wouldn’t return — and now she had.

We sat on the veranda where Mother’s sister-in-law served cheese and warm bread, olives picked from my grandmother’s trees, cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, draped in a veil of oil that looked like gold silk. My cousin filled the glasses with wine. They hadn’t known we were coming so the meal was something prócheiro, on hand — something quick.

Giannoula reacquainted herself with her childhood home. The stairs, the ypógeio, cellar, where they kept the wine. The fireplace, the outdoor oven and the smells of bread baking, the wooden door she had stepped through or ran out of so many times, the windows and the balcony and the singing and music playing in the square. She imagined the kouféta, sugared almonds, still covering the ground around the mulberry tree in the front yard, her father calling her and her mother brushing her hair for school. Her mother would be leaving for the fields soon and Giannoula needed to be ready.

My parents worked tirelessly to establish a home for our family in Australia. They found a sense of belonging among Melbourne´s thriving Greek community and maintained their beloved Greek traditions with great pride. In this picture, they are dancing at a “name-day” celebration in 1960 at the home of dear friends Chrysoula and Vasilis.

Early one morning, Mother and I took a few hours to explore. She wanted help picking something to wear from the suitcase full of new dresses she had sewn for her travels. Not unlike years ago, Mother wanted to make a good impression. I watched her dress, a dreamy young girl sorting through her fashionable wardrobe. She could hardly wait to meet her friends in the square.

Father was happy to sit in one of the kafeneía in the square shouting krasáki and mezedákia to the friends and family who were left, and to everyone else as well. “Whoever is able to must share and I must help if I can,” he always said. Most days he bought sides of lamb and pork for his choriátides. He couldn’t do it back then, no matter how much he had wanted to. Most nights we would hear the men singing and dancing in the square. God put music and song into His people, I thought. Maybe He knew they would need it.

At times, I sensed that Father felt he owed them — payment for the years he and my mother hadn’t worked the fields or looked after family, payment for having left, for the years they had done it all without him. It was all fitting in — the back then, the after that and the now. I thought about all the people my father had helped in Australia and the strangers he had brought home. The tireless giving that never seemed enough. The back then and the after that had shaped him. Whatever reasons and beliefs father still held, I was proud. These were stoic people whose roots were steadfast. They were guideposts, solid in the earth.

Mother and I set off on our adventure arm in arm, two young girls in search of the past. Would we find a secret to unlock or a mystery to be solved? I hoped so. I wanted to be a village girl, to feel as though I had always been there. Perhaps, in some way, I always had.

Available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble; $35.99 US and Booktopia in Australia, $26.25 AUS