Snapshots of Hellenism: positioning the self within the diasporic space that informs the frame

In the European summer of 1989 I found myself in Greece in the village that my parents hailed from. I had been to Greece several times before with my family but this was the first time that I had travelled there on my own. Almiropotamos, as this small village on the island of Evia is actually called, is made up of two distinct parts: there is the main part of the village, literally perched on the side of a mountain, and housing the school, the church, the medical centre and most of the homes; and then there is the seaside section that houses the dwellings and taverns of the fishermen and their families. A steeply descending road leads from the ‘upper village’ to the ‘lower village’ as the two sections are called by the locals, and a thirty-minute brisk walk conjoins the two.