Sure enough my doorbell rings, and there is a spluttering woman standing there. “Did you hear my radio, did it disturb you?” she shrieks at me.
“Not at all,” I say, which seems to calm her.
“It is those Albanians below, they always cause trouble and blame it on me. They are not used to life among civilized people. But you will say you did not hear a radio if anyone asks.”
Albanians at the moment have the reputation of being the Joads of Greece, ignorant dustbowl characters who are perceived as threateningly, desperately, criminally poor. Albanians pour across the border to work illegally in Greece and Albanian gangs supposedly rob, rape, murder and carry on their internecine quarrels into Greece.
The Greeks also accuse them of mistreating the Greek minority in Albania, a region which the Greeks say was unjustly incorporated into Albania and which is called here “northern Epirus” to emphasize that it is part of the Greek region of Epirus. When I was looking for apartments to rent in the newspapers I came across a number of ads with the prescription “No Albanians”.
Patricia Storace, “dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece”, 1996
Photo: R. Kennedy Stephen
