As wildfire smoke engulfs the area around Thessaloniki, a father realizes that the luxurious home he built for security cannot protect his family from a changing climate. Reflecting on his son’s nomadic lifestyle, he comes to believe that adaptability may be more valuable than permanence in an increasingly uncertain world.
The fires ravaged the forests around Thessaloniki over the weekend. They were put out by the brigade. The news said the firefighters were still out working to contain any new flames from spreading.
And yet instead of seeing the sun rising on this Monday early morning from his kitchen window Father sees a black cloud of soot covering the entirety of the sky.
Father wonders is, should they leave for somewhere else? Should they abandon their extravagant two-story cottage, with Italy-inspired pink stucco, decorated by rows of pillars firmer han the ones in the Acropolis, the main door guarded by kneeling stone lions shaped to resemble the bust in Amphipolis? Father built this cottage in the middle of the forest because it made him feel safe. He was rich now, it reminded him. He was no longer a village boy from a random place in Thrace. He was a doctor from Thessaloniki, he was part of the elite, he was someone who had made it, and the hundreds of millions of drachma he had poured into his house in the 90s was meant to show that.
But in a world in which everything was getting hotter and hotter, in which the trees were randomly catching aflame, did it matter?
If they were to leave, where would they go? They would have to travel by car to reach their village and could Father drive with the air as murky as this? He could easily crash their car and have them stranded. Then they would be in danger, possibly stuck in the forest as it caught on fire.
But then what about the forest around their house? Couldn’t it also suddenly burst into flames?
Despite being many kilometres away from the firea the city centre was no better. Apparently the smell of burning plastic was being reported even there. Oh, it was an awful smell that wouldn’t leave the house no matter how much air freshener Mother sprayed. And no matter how little she mentioned it he could make out how the smoke was affecting her health. He would see the stains of the black phlegm she would spit out in the sink and feel a sadness. He was a lung doctor who had seen so many patients die from excess cigarette smoking, and he never wanted to see his wife suffer like they did. Additionally his wife had fainted from heat exhaustion a month before. They had installed an air conditioner, and it had made things better, but with the air like this, Father was scared that if Mother kept reacting poorly to the air, it would result in a lung infection or sudden health issue that would compound with her weak heart and bring her closer to death.
They should escape. It was almost like a primitive urge ringing inside of him. They had to go, somewhere they could stay alive, keep living in comfort, and be safe.
But it was too late to leave, because as Father had already thought out, any other movement outside of their home would lead to further disaster.
If only Father thought like his son. His son, a proud traveller, some right now in Indonesia, enjoying his life before heading for further studies in Australia. He had been far from the madness before Greece became madness, and at that time Father despised it. He saw his son who was travelling for the sake of travelling, earning money only in the moment, not thinking about a future when his savings would deplete, because he was used to wealth and the safety net it provided thanks to the hard work of his father.
Now Father wondered, if Son lived this way because he saw the world was falling apart, and he wanted to leave for scout for better pastures while he still had that physical flexibility. Such was the intelligence of the nomad after all. A nomad makes out when life is getting hard in a place and abandons it without regard for culture or community, but for what works in the moment. Climate change was changing the regular weather patterns. The political instabilities that were resulting was making every country unpredictable. Perhaps survival in the future required that ability to be detached, to be able to live wherever was feasible, and to be willing to travel to ensure one’s survival.
My son understood something I could not.
This was what Father said, out loud, with no one around to hear it. He said it out loud because he needed to say it. It was how Father kept his thoughts firm in his memories, and it was a lesson of value. Soot was covering the stucco he had worked to keep clean. No one could see the marvel of the statues he had commissioned because smoke was everywhere.
He had put all of his effort into a physical place that he could call his own, that would ensure he would remain stable and secure until the end of the days.
But in reality, the world was frenetic, chaotic, and outside of his control.
He was too old to change, but perhaps there was value in the lifestyle of flexibility his son lived, and in a time like this, he too wished that he had designed his way of thinking a little bit in this way.
