MARRIED OFF AT THIRTEEN
MARRIED OFF AT THIRTEEN
Description
1983, Kastania Arta: a young girl goes on her first date. The consquences are more serious than she could have ever imagined.
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Katerina Koukou
Interviewee
- Lamprinh Bazoura
Podcast Producer
- Stayros Blaxos
Sound Designer
- Iasonas THeofanou
Sound Editor
- Mixalhs Oikonomidhs
Video Director
- Dafnh Matziarakh
Voiceover
- Μελισσάνθη Μάχουτ
Music
- William Ryan Fritch
I was born and raised in Kastania, Arta, in a mountainside village in 1970. Our parents worked out in the fields, mostly agricultural work, they had animals. We helped out in the house, from a young age. Our parents, both my mother and my father were strict. My mom was a bit stricter, my father was strict too, but closer to us.
I got up to primary school, I didn’t go on past that, they didn’t let me continue since circumstances didn’t allow me to go to high school, because of our financial situation. I would have had to go to a different city, to the city of Arta, which was sixty kilometers away. I was a good student, I liked reading, and I wanted to continue, and I always have this regret, this thing about school.
In my childhood, the school years that I remember, I would anticipate the Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, and the summer holidays, for my cousin to come. We were the same age. And she would come to the village every holiday, every school holiday, to play together. Because other than the children we were together with in school, we had no other contacts, we had no contact with other people, I mean I didn’t, as a child. And society was rather strict back then. Back then it was bad for a girl to have contacts with a boy.
It happened that a cousin of mine in the neighborhood, she asked me if I liked this young man from the village - I had seen him only once. We had a ten-year age difference, he was twenty-three. And I told her: “Yeah, sure, I like him,” without realizing, without having any idea of the consequences this anwer would have. She told him what I’d said, and he told my cousin: “Good, let’s meet, given that she likes me. I like her, too”.
And so, we arranged a date. The date could not be during the day, because someone would see us. And this had to be in secret, so the neighbors didn't find out. So it was at night.
But my parents got wind that I was missing from the house, since it was twelve o’clock at night. And they got worried, they started looking for me. I was scared, because my parents were strict, I was scared I would get a spanking for what I had done, scared that they would yell at me, something like that. I ran away and hid, and they looked for me for two days.
But after they found me and everything was ok, this as an event remained very serious for my particular family. And we had, quote unquote, “to set things right”, - this date had to move on to a more serious situation. Because the fact that a child of thirteen, or rather a girl, would go out on a date like that, she did something immoral, it was immoral for the time. So things had to be set right. And we had to leave the village. We came here to Athens, said that we had become engaged and came here to Athens.
We got married in a religious ceremony. For me, I didn't know what was what in all this. After everything happened, I felt guilty because I had done something bad in the eyes of my parents, I felt that I had offended them, that I had upset them. They blamed me, that it was my fault, and this still lasts. I feel guilty, in everything I do, I feel guilty. I don't know if they ever forgave me.
Here in Athens where we came as a couple, things were difficult. Because when you don’t know a person and suddenly from one day to the next you have to live with him every day, as a couple, as if you are married, so to speak... Back then, I had to function as a wife, a good wife at home. I, all this for me, it was like someone else was living it and I was simply watching.
After that, they pressured us to have a child, because my parents were scared he would leave me, that we would separate and all that, or that maybe I would leave, and then have all the rest of it with a divorce. And a pregnancy happened, without me knowing what a child means, what it doesn’t, all this was unknown to me. But I got pregnant and gave birth when I was sixteen years old.
And I suddenly found myself with a baby. I came out of the maternity hospital, I went home. At first I panicked because I said: “Now how will I manage this?” Everything came by itself, instinctively, and it all came out slowly, on its own. I mean, instinct sometimes, the mother’s instinct, drives you to do things the way they have to be done. And I believe this helped me a lot. I had forgotten that I myself was a child, and I felt everything for this child, I felt that this child was my entire life, that this is what I had.
It’s like it wasn’t me living this, I tell you. Like I simply had stepped out of myself, I was just functioning as they told me: “You will do this”, “Yes, I will”; “You will do that”, “Yes, I will.” Like I had stepped out of myself and I was simply watching myself moving along this path: in this whole business of the marriage and then the business of the child. And it was as if I had just stopped at that age, at the age of thirteen.
