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Out of the Balkans

Part 1: Out of the Balkans

Chapter 2, continued:
Dimitraki: Out of Macedonia

In his book Pictures from the Balkans, John Fraser wrote:(31)

The town of Monastir [. . .] lies just about half way between Bulgarian and Greek territory. North, the majority of MACEDONIANS are BULGAR, south the majority are HELLENES.

[. . .] Monastir is an ordinary Turkish European town, even to the attempt at a garden where the richer Turks and Bulgars and Greeks come and sit at little tables and drink beer and listen to a string band composed of girls from Vienna. [. . .] Everybody is jolly. Murder is so commonplace that it arouses no shudder. In the night the little bark of a pistol, a shriek, a clatter of feet. "Hello! Somebody killed!" That's all. . . .

In Kazantzakis' book Zorba the Greek, Zorba who was a Greek Macedonian, tells his young "boss":(32)

Then I picked up my rifle and off I went! I went to the mountains as a comitadji. One day, at dusk, I came to a Bulgarian village and hid in a stable. It was the very house of a priest, a ferocious, pitiless Bulgarian comatidji. At night he'd take off his cassock, put on shepherd's clothes, pick up his rifle and go over into the neighboring Greek villages. He came back before dawn, trickling with mud and blood, and hurried to church to conduct mass for the faithful. A few days before this, he had killed a Greek schoolmaster asleep in his bed. So I went to the priest's stable and waited. Towards nightfall the priest came into the stable to feed the animals. I threw myself on him and cut his throat like a sheep. I lopped off his ears and stuck them in my pocket. I was making a collection of Bulgar ears, you see [. . .]

Leading and coordinating the Greek guerilla groups known as andartes was the young Metropolitan Bishop of Kastoria, Germanos Karavangelis (photo / 33). The Ottoman Kaimakam who governed the Sanjak of Kastoria was awed by and willing to accept policy direction from Karavangelis.(34) The politically shrewd Metropolitan influenced the Kaimakam to take actions that were helpful to the success of Greek andartes over their enemies, the Bulgarian and Serbian comitadjides.(35)



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