Ancestors

(click to enlarge)

Above is a piece that I made in honor of my grandfather and grandmother. I created a sepia background to match the photo's tones, and then I drew an Egyptian landscape from a postcard I got once. The poem, which is on the back of this photo, was written by my grandmother for my grandfather. I attempted to keep the rhyme and rhythm of the original, so it would not be lost in translation. The date on the photo is August 9th, 1921. My father was almost 2 years old.

My grandparents were expatriates of Greek descent living in Egypt. My family on both sides was born and raised in Egypt for three generations. I was the first to be born in Greece. They lived in relative prosperity in Alexandria, Cairo and Port Saïd. The roaring twenties saw much commerce and culture in Egypt that was still mostly under British influence, but had much international traffic. Many Greeks flocked there as Greece was still recovering from centuries of economic and political oppression.

I only know bits and pieces about my ancestors, but I cherish those stories as they connect me to who I am, and where I came from.

I introduce you to my paternal grandparents, and this is their story.

My grandfather was born Timoleon Theophilos in Alexandria in 1879. His surname has the traditional "opoulos" ending but the root of his name is not Greek. It's Spanish. His grandfather, a Spanish nobleman and free-spirit, came to Greece, a Don Quixote of sorts, enthralled by the country's history, and empassioned by it's plight. There he fell in love with a Greek girl and settled for a time in Athens.

This was not the Athens of today, nor the Athens people study in Ancient History. This was an Athens in cultural and physical shambles after 400 years of Ottoman rule, an Athens about to enter a bloody war against its oppressors. My great great grandfather, whose first name I do not know, took his young family, and pursued his connections to Alexandria where they settled and prospered. That is where my great grandfather was born. Third child, and first son.

He fell in love with a girl whose father was also Greek and whose mother was Egyptian. And so the story continues to the birth of my grandfather. Their only son.

He went to the University in Cairo studying Civil Engineering. I have pictures of his graduating class. He married young and had a son named after him. That marriage did not last.

That is when he met my grandmother - Androniki, Penelope. Beautiful, talented, well-educated and only daughter of a well-off Greek family in Alexandria. That is all I know about her past. Except that she was an exceptional woman. A woman who at the turn of the century defied the prescibed mores and married a divorced man, almost twice her age, with a child.

They had only one son - my father Michael, Alkis.

My grandfather died young, and my grandmother Niki, was left to raise my father, on her own. They were left some money, but she needed to supplement it, and she did so by making porcelain dolls. Hand-crafted, hand-painted, with clothes hand-sown and laced. They were all a rage in 30's Egypt which was mostly untouched by the economic depression that plagued many countries.

My grandmother was a poet too. She had published two books. She was a prolific and fiercely independent woman, yet all I have of her is this picture. This poem. So full of her passionate spirit, and loving soul.

I think of them today. Their tale of romance. Their life in a time and country so different from my own, it reads like a fairy tale. Yet they reside in me. And I am very happy, that they are my family.