This lively and revealing book counts as my first foray into the world of the Greek debt crisis. I vaguely remember newspaper headlines from some of its more volatile moments, which gave me a limited sense of its magnitude and import. But headlines alone, of course, and very often even their accompanying articles, can end up saying quite little. This book by James Angelos, a Greek-American journalist, gave me a helpful look at the state of Greece and the mindset and character of its people: both those of the upper-echelons and those hovering near the bottom. To tell the complicated and nuanced story of the crisis, Angelos blends engaging stories of interviewees along with pertinent background about Greece’s history. The book is broken into seven chapters, each of which more or less examines a specific problem that plagues Greece. All are eye-opening.
The first chapter, “The Island of the Blind,” is paradigmatic of the next few in that it highlights the many, and mingled, problems of Greece’s bureaucracy, rampant deception, and deflection of responsibility. Angelos also introduces fakelaki and rouspheti, two “mundane facts of Greek life” but conventions which nonetheless play a significant role in the interactions of some of its people. In this chapter, Angelos goes to the idyllic island of Zakynthos to look into the disproportionately high rates of blindness being reported—something like “nine times the rate estimated for many European countries.” Getting to the truth is no easy matter, and reading about Angelos’ stay on the island and his attempts to discover what’s really going on is a maze-like journey into a world where partial truths seem to be the norm.
“Europe’s Hopefuls,” one of the gloomiest chapters, looks at the experience of immigrants coming into Greece: sometimes to stay, sometimes to seek (temporary) asylum, and sometimes as a stop on a journey farther west. A number of these people are coming from destitute and violent lands, like Syria; and though their prospects in Greece are far from promising, they offer a level of hope above the bleak future at home. For most of these people, however, the experience of coming into Greece (or at any rate attempting to) is exceedingly dismal, and their situation never gets much better, if at all. One might question the rationale of such decisions, but Angelos’ journalistic skills are on fine display here. His curiosity and interaction with the people whom he as talked to translates into absorbing and empathetic reading. These are people desperately trying to create better lives for themselves.
That Greece has such serious a serious immigration problem is not surprising. Granting the fact that Greece’s location makes immigration a more pressing problem than faced by many other European countries, this by itself doesn’t account for the mess. As Angelos discusses, one of the reasons people try to enter Greece is because of the country’s (attractive) policies on asylum. Take the case of Mohammed, one of the many people Angelos interviewed. Angelos writes of Mohammed’s situation: “It was very unlikely he’d ever qualify for asylum, but pending the final decision on a request for it, he could legally remain in the country. Since the asylum process was often mired in bureaucracy for years, an applicant ended up with a kind of de facto residency permit.” Given the dire situation of people like Mohammed, it’s hard to blame them for utilizing this loophole. And Greece, for its part, doesn’t seem to know how to ameliorate the problem, even when given funds.
But this does not by any means amount to a passive acceptance of the problem. And neither does it mean a lack of solutions for dealing with immigrants. In the same chapter, Angelos discusses some of the many human rights violations that have been reported as various Greek agencies have sought to manage the problem. Sadly enough, more than a few cases have involved the Hellenic Coast Guard. A man named Mohamad Hussein, someone with whom Angelos spoke, reported hostile actions, claiming that the coast guard came toward an inflatable boat that he and others were on, took their engine, and left them stranded. Stories like this appear not to be uncommon.
The issue of immigrants is not limited to the coast guard and other agencies; it is an issue that concerns Greece’s citizens in a very practical, everyday way. Not surprisingly, there are real political gains to be had if the immigration narrative can be spun the “right” way. In the chapter “The New Spartans,” for example, Angelos shows how competing parties try to take control of a situation involving a neighborhood square. It demonstrates a particularly hostile breed of political character. Complaints about the behavior of immigrants in Agios Panteleimonas Square and the area’s ostensible decline into disgusting conditions forms the center of it. The Committee of Residents originated to voice these complaints—a reasonably honest endeavor, it seems, at least first. But things of course are never so straightforward, and when the Golden Dawn party—an extreme right, neo-Nazi group—mixes themselves into the scene the situation transforms into a thoroughly venomous game of politics. Other parties, though not as disgusting as Golden Dawn, are also keen to exploit the situation in order to further political ends. It is a depressing mess.
The Full Catastrophe is an excellent book is so many ways, not least because of Angelos’ ability to help explain the complicated past which underlies some of the Greek nationalism and xenophobia which sometimes spews out. Angelos also shows great willingness to let a variety of voices come through — from violent-minded party leaders to immigrants to regular citizens. But Angelos is also not afraid to step in at times and adjudicate the differing positions and opinions. It’s a fine act of tackling difficult issues and conveying them to reader in a way that is informative yet also pleasurable to read.
In fact, it’s kind of a paradox of reading this book that so much of it can be entertaining. Violent episodes aside, many of the stories exhibit such unbelievable behavior that it sometimes feels like fiction. The selfish mentality and actions — and the wild justifications put forward to defend those actions — is astounding. This isn’t to discount or overlook the many genuine people that live in Greece amidst these difficult times. Indeed Angelos writes about many hardworking individuals that merit our admiration and respect. But it is to say that more often than not the situation in Greece can feel like a colossal brew of dishonesty and corruption. The future is of course untold, and Greece can still fight its way out of this situation and into a better world for its ailing people.
Spectatio 