Istatembi / Εις Τα Τεμπη, December 2013.

Some roots are way down right in the middle, of nowhere and everywhere. Village and valley of Tempi,run by river Pineios and surrounded by mountains Olympos and Kissavos, have ever been a natural border. Still the football fans of teams from both north and south parts of the country joke with each other about having to present passport when crossing this place because you're entering an alien country. Right there is the village were my father was born, in the middle of two worlds, if you check the history it seems sometimes as alien to each other, and i'm not talking geographically now. Plus, i find it strange that most people don't know the village of Tempi. Even though they past right by it. Well, this post is not about making Tempi famous. It's about a very short visit, just a week ago, to find and photograph an old Turkish scripture written in Arabic. I was sure i had seen it a very long time ago up the front door of an aunt. Now, i had found someone who might translate it. On the occasion of a memorial i met my aunt and took her with her daughter to the house in the village. Aunt Anna, in the first picture, smiles to you and it's like she's surrendering her own being and then she mentions the name of God and makes me feel that different worlds are not only in space but in time too. That the way she speaks about God would be the same that the people who lived in her house before her would speak. Her father, my grandfather was born at a time when Tempi was on the spot of Greek and Turkish border. He came from his mountain village, which was mostly populated by Greeks, down to the village who was then know as Baba from it's Turkish inhabitants and bought his house of a Greek Orthodox bishop. This house is in the middle of the Dervish Teke and the Christian church. A few meters away from this triptych, my Aunt's house, where not only the old scripture but also something in its architecture talks about it been the house of a Turkish family. These photos i present here from it, may seem as ordinary instants of inner spaces and mellow decoration of a peasant house but for me are part of a wondering about all this root thing.I didn't have much time, and that was a very beautiful way to take them. And after the old Krini- the fountain, of the village, i added two photos of a graffiti i saw as beautiful in the city of Larissa the following night...