There they were, waiting for me, beautifully stylish, in a seaside taverna in Alimos, southern Athens. Seven Greek classmates and inseparable friends from the seventh grade of the Ioakeimeion Girls’ High School. Hair well combed at the hairdresser’s, they had on elegant cardigans and jackets, scarves around their necks along with a string of pearls. They had never given an interview before and so pride was mixed with a little anxiety, mainly regarding the photo shoot.
But they also had a supporter: Manolis Kostidis, Kathimerini’s correspondent in Turkey, who brought his mother Despina Antoniadou Kostidis. As soon as photographer Nikos Kokkalias arrived and picked up his camera, one of the ladies said something conspiratorially in Turkish to Kostidis. “What?” I whispered to him and he smiled: “They tell me to tell the photographer to make them look beautiful!” But, indeed, they shone – with the signs of time on their faces, along with their genuine smiles, and the nobility in their manners.
The school
They kept their friendship thanks to an oath they took in their schoolyard never to lose touch, and later by creating an association in Greece. Although Istanbul’s historic Greek-Orthodox Rum community went through a myriad of challenges – the Istanbul pogrom (September 6-7, 1955), the 1964 expulsions, the depletion of a glorious community, the relocation to Greece – they kept their promise. Some of them left Istanbul early, others stayed until the early 1980s. However, Istanbul remains the sacred point of reference – it is their childhood, but mainly their school.
