She’s alive. He didn’t kill her. He may not have even managed to blind her. The ex-husband attacked her with caustic acid. He was stressed out with the debts she was accruing. After a spate of three femicides in the past month, this was one more act of wanton violence.
In my last post I also wondered if the Pakistani alleged to have killed the 17-year-old would ever be caught. He has been. Police knew from his mobile that he was heading northwards. He managed to cross the border into North Macedonia where he was found by the local authorities and deported back to Greece. During his time in Greece, he had at least four passports. Who is he? What will happen to him? He’ll be released in about eight years, and then what? Deportation? Where to? So far, he has tried to introduce a religious justification for killing her. There are also some posts on social networks including some kind of game on Tik-Tok. https://www.iefimerida.gr/ellada/peristeri-proba-thanatoy-pakistanos-binteo-17hroni
Tomorrow, 15th August, is the feast of the Assumption, probably the biggest holiday in Greece after Easter and Christmas. It also marks the end of the summer season for Greeks. The weather seems to share the same opinion. It has been cold, wet and windy. Nearby, in Sykia, there was a hailstorm with hailstones the size of walnuts. The video clip in this article is worth watching: https://www.voria.gr/article/chalazi-se-megethos-karidiou-sti-sikia-chalkidikis—dite-vinteo
The main story in Greece is a wire-tapping scandal. Security at the EU parliament (where the new PASOK leader, Nikos Androulakis, is an MEP) discovered that Androulakis’s phone had been infected with the Pegasus or Predator virus. This is a scandal that I ignored for a few days. The trouble with ignoring such an issue in Greece is that everyone jumps on the bandwagon, so that within a few days a story becomes very hard to follow amidst the myriad names and abbreviations. In cases like this, in an attempt to find my bearings, I try to find an article in English for background information before returning to Greek sources. This one is good for starters: https://greekreporter.com/2022/08/11/greece-wiretapping-scandal-eu/
One thing is certain; the Prime Minister, Kyriakis Mitsotakis, will not get out of this one very easily. As the attempt to bug Androulakis’ phone was found by EU security, the EU Parliament is demanding an inquiry. At home, Mitsotakis took control of the National Intelligence Service on becoming PM, so the buck should logically stop at the prime ministerial desk. Of the two resignations so far, one of them is his nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis.
We are now moving towards the centenary of the Asia Minor Disaster (Μικρασιατική Καταστροφή). More about that in my next post.
You see, the broader and the close field of our life is since a long time constantly in big turbulence. The bad effect is that this non-stop big turbulence is that it demands from all all individuals to spend non-consciously huge amounts of energy in order to adjust. Result? A sense of being lost, of futility, of constant threat, total loss of elementary relax in a safe space. In nature there are storms but also days of calmness. Our abnormal human species seems to ignore this alteration… So, survival by being grounded on a solid self-sense within such a turbulent field, becomes really a very difficult art….