by Panagiota G. Kalkani
Published in The Faris Newsletter, 2026 July no. 84, pages 12-13  

There are many houses in our villages, but also in the cities, that “have to be emptied” after the loss of their last inhabitants as well (…). It is a painful process, especially when it is done by their children and grandchildren. And it is even more painful when the houses are left empty, fall into ruin and collapse…

We had, years ago, such an experience as a family, when over successive visits we emptied “our” house in Goranoi. It was our “pro-paternal” (or “ancestral”) house, that of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. It was a house built in 1875 (according to the carved lintel) on top of older buildings. It was there that, a few years before the fall of the City [Constantinople], a part of our family, who lived on the Bosphorus and later settled in our area, had taken refuge.

This house was stripped bare year after year, after the death on the Albanian front of our grandfather’s last brother. It fell into ruin, choked with weeds, its foundations undermined (also) by a tragic community failure (in the early 1960s).

I hope, and I will try, that this note in our newspaper will not end up as a tearful description, nor as a simple factual report of a case. This process can be draining but also relieving. It is perhaps a duty to our people who once lived there, but also an opportunity for us who live. It is an opportunity to remember or to look back fondly on moments and events of the family. These are moments and events of everyday life then, difficulties and troubles with sorrows and deaths, but also moments of joy with celebrations, songs and dances.

During the last visit to our ancestral house, our first thoughts and intense memories of the older ones came to us on the ground floor. There was the manger of the mule, used for the visits of my great-grandfather, the doctor, to the patients of the surrounding villages. There were the clay jars for the year’s oil, the barrel for the wine, and the remains of the loom, where the girls’ dowries were woven, along with the woven clothes, bedspread and household ornaments.

In the ruins of the house, a coffee pot was found forgotten in the hearth, pitch-black from the fire that was lit with dry twigs that the boys of the house gathered. Also found, thrown among charcoal and ashes, was a coffee spoon, its lip worn away by the stirring of so many coffees, of so many people, over so many years.

From these objects and tools of the past we also have the possibility to remember reliving the occupations and the living conditions of the elders. I also remember the enthusiasm that was caused by a wooden cane that was found hanging from a nail on the wall of a room. The enthusiasm that it caused resembled the enthusiasm of a researcher-archaeologist authenticating the user of the staff, which, because of its height, could not have belonged to anyone but my great-grandfather, who was very tall…

Out of the ruins we also set aside a few notebooks with the names of the children (now our grandfathers) who wrote (or also drew) in them, and with the signatures and names of their local teachers, who once corrected or graded them. We also found a half-destroyed, improvised Karagiozis figure (without discovering which generation of children it came from…). Finally, in the courtyard of the house, with its high enclosure wall, the masonry oven (which was always burning) and a view as far as the sea, the older members of the family remembered the afternoon gatherings of our whole patriarchal family, with its many branches, around the great-grandfather.

The objects that were found and rescued are perhaps few and without material value, but they remind us “experientially” of the way of life of our loved ones many decades earlier. Just as they remind us of unpleasant moments and events, they also remind us of moments and events of joy that still move us deeply. They have incalculable sentimental value for us, for some (!)

We consciously omitted from this note another—perhaps equally interesting—perspective (or characterization) that views such a process as “museum-like” and the findings as “museum” exhibits. Except for exceptional finds that require safekeeping or display in museums, our approach and recommendation is to preserve, safeguard, and display—in our own homes, whatever keepsakes belong to our own (and only our own) loved ones. In a small museum of our own (…)

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I (Carol Kostakos Petranek) am honored to receive permission from the Katsoulakos family to translate and share articles from The Faris. Translation verification and corrections have been made by GreekAncestry.net. This is the twenty-sixth article of the ongoing series. Previous articles can be viewed here.