The Mediterranean revisited . . .

Norman Maclean in Kastoria, Greece. Pictures supplied

A return to the Mediterranean brought home how much we take for granted on the East Coast of New Zealand and how much life has changed for the people of Jerusalem and Greece — and not always for the best. Norman Maclean reports . . .

I have always enjoyed the Mediterranean so several weeks spent in Crete, Cyprus, Israel and Greece were no exception.

The sky blazed blue, the heat was intense, the sea crystalline and the ancient places visited, all as fascinating as before.

But encountering crowds where we have none and being continually pestered with questions about New Zealand by people longing to live here, I realised yet again how fortunate we are who live at the butt end of the earth, far from real strife; from poverty that sees entire families camping out in public parks; from over-crowded urban life where traffic jams and polluted air are taken for granted.

Israel was again on my itinerary with recent archaeological excavations the main attraction, so I flew to Tel Aviv, ranked as one of the world’s best cities in which to live but only if you have a particularly good bank balance and you’re not a Palestinian. I didn’t stay long there but got on a bus to Jerusalem and was startled by the changes since I last visited.

Israel is about the size of Hawke’s Bay if you go from Wairoa to Dannevirke: it’s no more than thirty kilometres across at its widest point. Within that space close to ten million people now live, many of the more fortunate in vast housing estates that climb rocky hillsides where olive trees used to grow on terraces and Palestinian peasants once tended their vegetable gardens. It seemed that everywhere I looked from the bus window there were cranes and bulldozers and freeways linking sharp-edged stacks of apartments on every slope, their slabs of rock and concrete like assemblages of buff-coloured biscuits.

New settlers have to be accommodated and as the world knows, great expanses of land that the Palestinians had considered home for many centuries have been appropriated by the Jewish state. This single factor, quite apart from all other aggravating features of the continuing conflict, drives a deeper wedge between the two conflicting sides.

I found myself wondering how much more such a small land can take. This is not just a Zionist state created as a homeland for the world’s Jews but a magnet also for fundamentalist Christians, many of them migrating from America to be in the right place for the apocalypse they keep hoping for that will supposedly bring about those long-awaited Last Days.

The plight of the Palestinians does not concern them in the slightest, since Israel’s ascendency is seen as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and the funds these zealots bring with them when they take up residence here contribute to the turning of the cogs that keeps this runaway machine running.

It has long been clear to me that the only viable future for this country is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish but the chances of that are minimal. Tension is always in the air here though it seems to have been lifted several notches since the days when as a young man I worked on a kibbutz.

Close to Jerusalem’s Old City with its Turkish walls, I stayed as I have previously in a small Palestinian hotel run by gently- spoken Christian Arabs who have despaired of seeing any real recognition of Palestinian rights. An elderly man spoke of his son, trained as a doctor but unable to practise within Israel unless he gains citizenship. All applications have been rejected: his career is on indefinite hold.

It occurs to me again that this region has very rarely known peace. My main focus in Jerusalem was a recent archaeological excavation that most vividly testifies to the aggression that has always characterised the place.

‘Gisborne the envy of the world’Several years ago a two thousand-year-old stepped street was uncovered. It originally led the city’s pedestrians from the Lower City up to the temple, a colossal 35-acre structure raised under Herod the Great. At a certain point on the stairs, a visitor can descend into the ancient sewer beneath that Herod’s engineers cut through the rock on which the city stood.

This drained away effluent from the slaughtering place of the temple and its precincts.

In this dark and claustrophobic space were discovered oil lamps, coins and a Roman sword: evidence to substantiate what was described by Flavius Josephus who left an eye-witness account of Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 C.E. He claimed that refugees poured into subterranean drains in a desperate attempt to flee the besieged city, only to be cut down by Roman troops when they finally emerged. I spent a morning on the covered street and in the narrow tunnel beneath, made vividly aware of this city’s history of suffering and injustice.

It was something of a relief to travel north to the pleasant lake district of Galilee and to stay in a much more placid spot: a cheap hospice in the city of Tiberius, looking over the lake to the brown sweep of the Golan Heights and the conical hill, Susita where the Graeco-Roman city of Hippos once stood. Now an archeological park, only a few decades ago it was the kind of place where ancient coins could be found underfoot.

North of Tiberius there is a fascinating excavation: the remains of Tarichaea (“processed fish” in Greek) better known now as Migdal, the supposed hometown of Mary Magdalene. Uncovered on the edge of the lake with a grid pattern of paved streets, a central market place, cisterns and a first century synagogue — the earliest yet found in this region — Migdal or Magdala Nunayya (‘of the fishes”) makes very real the Hellenisation that characterised the entire eastern Mediterranean which began here, 300 years before Christ. Forget Hollywood fantasies of peasants in rustic hovels. The synagogue’s ruins complete with a mosaic floor pattern and the remnants of a fresco at the plastered entrance, testify to the sophistication of life, even in this rural district.

The most intriguing find is a limestone block situated in the centre of the synagogue’s floor. Heavily incised with images such as the seven-branched lampstand from Jerusalem’s temple, it was evidently a significant feature of the building. Theories abound: it is suggested that it may have served as a one man dais on which the leader of the congregation once stood. If so, it is fascinating to visualise the best-known preacher of all time standing there to address a Sabbath congregation.

I flew from Tel Aviv to Thessaloniki in the north of Greece to visit friends in the northern town of Kastoria, reached by bus that climbs into the mountainous region where the air is refreshingly cool, even in the heat of summer. Here I enjoyed the hospitality of a family I have known since working there as a teacher of English, many years ago.

Think we have problems in New Zealand? They are nothing compared with the fiscal and social woes that now afflict Greece. With the economy in ruins, unemployment is rife which is why Kastoria that used to have a population of about 27,000 and was the prosperous centre of Europe’s fur trade, is a shadow of its former self with many empty shops and abandoned houses. The population today is down by two thirds: the young and the desperate have fled overseas to seek employment and the 9000 who remain, brace themselves for the next tax hike or slashing of pensions.

Athina, my friend who used to run the language school, tells me that in the last three years, an estimated 30,000 suicides have occurred in Greece. Official statistics are no longer being kept as it is a political embarrassment to add to many others. Her husband’s grave that she walks to every morning in order to light an oil lamp and pray for the repose of his soul, is an elaborate marble structure that cost a great sum.

Imagine her shock on learning that she now must pay an annual rent of 150 euros for the privilege of owning it. Her daughter, Xenia has taken over the school but can scarcely afford to keep it open since the stream of pupils is down to a trickle and there is no prospect of being able to sell the business. Who would buy such a once-thriving enterprise in a country where thousands of building sites stand incomplete, weeds growing through the brickwork and half constructed concrete block walls?

“And what of my daughter?” Xenia asks. “What future is there for her? I love my country but the only sensible thing to do is to emigrate. Could we get work in New Zealand?”

It’s a question I hear repeatedly. Our country is seen as the most desirable place on the planet which is why we have Silicone Valley billionaires already knocking on the door with their substantial wallets, many of them attracted merely by the fact that we don’t have a posturing buffoon as a president who has made their country the laughing stock of the world. Xenia and her kind, talented and energetic, would come here in a heartbeat if we actually made it easy for skilled tradespeople to become immigrants.

I would suggest they should head the queue, well before those who simply wish to acquire vast rural retreats in the South Island and sip their Jim Beams while admiring the view, far removed from the troubles of the world.

I spent a couple of hours in a shady corner of a park at Piraeus, waiting for the ferry to Crete. Filthy children begged for coins while their parents went off with supermarket trolleys to collect water in large plastic bottles. Their camp sites were a litter of matted blankets and discarded papers. In the summer heat, the despair of people reduced to this most basic existence was palpable.

Dignified elderly people are also reduced to begging on city streets. There is still plenty of affluence in Greece but with youth unemployment at an all-time high and so many people unable to find anything that resembles a quality of life, the long-term prospects for the country are grim indeed. On Crete and many of the tourist islands conditions are very much better: cafes and bars do a roaring trade and the casual visitor could easily assume that all is well with the economy, but mention the European Union to a local and be prepared for a tirade against Germany in particular. For the Greeks, their troubles are assumed to have arisen from the time they threw away the drachma and took up the euro.

Coming back to New Zealand always induces a quiet sense of well-being. As the plane comes down over the Hauraki Gulf I find myself acknowledging that to have been born in this country and being entitled as a citizen to live here, is an enormous advantage. And quiet old Gisborne, facing the sea with its protective ring of hills may not be the hub of the universe but life here is a damned sight better than in most places, even those that boast glittering tower blocks or ruins that go back for millennia.

We need to stop complaining and wake up to the fact that being in this place is a complete privilege. Our near-deserted beaches and vast open spaces alone are the envy of the world; our largely harmonious race relations, despite endless niggling about trivia, set us apart from so many places. We live in a community where people greet strangers; where climate and soil allow us if so inclined to never go hungry and where freedom is totally taken for granted.