Trauma & Art

August 15th, 2025

“Actually, the other person. Ιs not relative. Τhe other person is an absolute and unconditional value.”  Theodore Kallifatides

Theodore Kallifatidis was born in the village of Molaoi, in Laconia in 1938. His father was Dimitris Kallifatidis, a teacher originally from the Pontus region, and his mother was Antonia Kyriazakou, from Molaoi. He lived through the occupation and the civil war. In 1946, his family moved to Athens, where he finished high school and attended Karolos Koun’s drama school. After his military service, in 1964, at the age of 25, he left for Sweden, where he lives permanently. In Sweden he studied philosophy, completed his doctoral studies and taught at Stockholm University between 1969 and 1972. Later, between 1972 and 1976, he was the director of the literary magazine Bonniers. Since 1969 he has published many novels, poetry collections, travel essays and plays. He writes in Swedish and Greek. He has published translations, written screenplays for films and directed a film. His books have been published in more than twenty languages and he has received awards both in Sweden and Greece.

I was introduced to Theodore Kallifatidis’ work by my sister probably towards the end of my adolescence, but I have mostly read his books in the last decade. Kallifatidis’ books have many virtues, but personally what makes me return to his work are the themes he elaborates on in almost all his books: immigration, integration into the new space-place, language, identity, the feeling and experience of “belonging.” Much of what he discusses is somewhat familiar to me. I’m familiar with the “immigration experience” first as a child of immigrant parents in a foreign country, which was also my birthplace, then as a child of Greek immigrants in Greece, and then through internal migration.

Today I will refer to two very recent readings: Another Life: On Memory, Language, Love, and the Passage of Time  &  Love and Foreign Land 

Another Life    /   Μια ζωή ακόμα

In this book Kallifatides explores the reasons why for the first time in his life he could no longer write. Writing was his work and for decades, following his daily schedule unwaveringly, he spent a large part of his day in his small studio-office: “In the end it didn’t matter why I was so contented in that room, only the fact that I felt that way. I made my coffee, lit my pipe, switched on the computer, and the world came pouring in. That was how my life had been for forty years, sometimes in other rooms too, in other areas, in other cities, on trains and in hotels, overseas and here at home. I worked all the time. That was my life.”

But now he could not write, a combination of fatigue, forgetfulness / oblivion and  a kind of resistance would not allow him to write. The years were weighing heavily and the number of friends that had passed away was increasing. He writes that until now he had not experienced any interruption in the flow of his writing… “Every book was a bridge to the next.… But now it was 2015, and my strength was dwindling I had lived for seventy-seven years. The time weighed heavier than the water. It wasn’t possible to lift that weight from my shoulders. How was I going to be able to write again?..”

The book is a brief narrative of a critical moment in the author’s life where, by looking within and outside himself, and by looking back, he was able to connect his own personal existential anguish with the common existential anguish of society, and to narrate a crisis that transcends the personal level, revealing the broader dynamics and the becoming of our world. One could say that Kallifatides faced this crisis  holistically, not just as the result of age, existential anguish and fatigue. He moved beyond self-referentiality. He looked out the window. The world as he knew it had changed.

Sweden’s previously tolerant society had become more claustrophobic and hostile to the growing wave of immigration. The welfare state had shrunk. He comments: “I had a problem. Not only with myself but also with society. It was agonizing to see Sweden changing, step by step. Social justice and solidarity were giving way to the visible and invisible power of the market. Education was becoming increasingly privatized, as was health care.. …… The municipalization or decentralization of the education system destroyed our elementary schools, everyone knows that. But it hasn’t been changed, and it probably never will be. A number of private schools of varying degrees of competence and diligence have been set up, but the result of all this is that the children of less-well-off families will attend worse and worse schools. Decentralization was a crime against the democratic contract, and so far no one has apologized. And they never will.”

Moreover, Kallifatides tells us that the pay gap was growing year by year, Stokholm was experiencing the worst housing crisis in modern times, poverty was becoming more and more evident and there were beggars and homeless people on the streets, in the squares, on commuter trains. At the same time, hatred toward foreigners was growing, the most virulently anti-immigration party was rαpidly increasing, and Swedish society was divided about the refugee crisis.

He also discusses freedom of expression and notes that all freedoms have a natural limit, the other person: “Boundless freedom of expression was also about both resources and power. If you were outside the mass media system, you had virtually no opportunity to express yourself. It is one thing to comment on general matters and quite another to comment on your neighbors…. Whatever you do, whatever you say must take into account the other person’s existence. You can ignore this, of course, but there are consequences. Bitterness, hatred, and terrorism arise, even out-and-out war.» And elsewhere he comments: “Certain democratic freedoms resemble scorpions in that they can destroy themselves. It is possible to introduce tyranny or a dictatorship by democratic means. In a democratic election it is possible to vote in a party whose aim is to bring down democracy. It is possible to strangle freedom of expression with the help of freedom of expression. We have the freedom to put forward opinions aimed at totally or partly strangling the opinions of others.”

He gives examples from the Second World War where, for example, the Nazis in Athens distributed leaflets depicting Greeks as monkeys. He comments that he couldn’t regard it as art or as an example of the Gestapo’s freedom of expression neither then, nor now. He concludes that everything that is not forbidden is not necessarily ethical and permissible, and that the most important standard / value for both the state and the individual is the equal value of all human beings. Every other principle should stem from this.

But it was not only the changes in Sweden that worried him. Greece was in the throes of an economic crisis and all of Europe was turning against it, using undignified and racist descriptions of its people. He writes that times were different now, I could see it when I traveled to Athens two months later: “Greece and the Greeks were once more struggling to avoid defeat, as so many times in the past. The German Occupation during the Second World War, the civil war that followed, the mass emigration—these were the experiences that had shaped my generation. Virtually all of us had deaths to mourn, injustices that embittered us, abandoned dreams rotting in our souls. But none of this could be compared with the spiritual impoverishment we had experienced recently.”

Within he felt that something had been lost and that he wanted to find it again. He writes: “Emigration is a kind of partial suicide. You don’t die, but a great deal dies within you. Not least, the language. That’s why I am more proud of not having forgotten my Greek than of having learned Swedish. The latter was a matter of necessity, the former an act of love, a victory over indifference and forgetfulness. I had thrown a black stone behind me, as they say in my village when a person has decided to leave everything. And yet I couldn’t forget. I missed Greece and Greek more and more.” He wondered if it was time to go back to his roots, and if what remained now was not the future, but the past. He says: “When I was twenty-five years old, I asked myself how I should live my life, and the answer was: Leave. That was exactly what I did. Now, at over seventy-five years old, I was faced with the same question: How should I live the years that remained of my life? More and more frequently, the answer was: Go back.

He was brought out of the impasse by a short trip to Greece and to the village he was born, Molaos, where he was being honored by his compatriots. Initially, he was somewhat detached with a sense of resignation. Much had changed in Greece and this saddened him. Somewhere he comments that Greece had become a holiday resort. He writes: “I wanted everything to be just the same as it used to be. That is the emigrant’s drama. The reality he left behind is gone, yet that is what calls to him.”

In his village he attended a performance of a play by Aeschylus by the local students. He writes: “Aeschylus’s words fell like cool rain on parched earth. This language was my language.” The need arose to process the memories of his first language and he decided to follow his impulse to write again, after several decades, directly in Greek, the language of his childhood, the language he had left behind and which still resided within him. He writes: “I was caught between my two languages like Buridan’s famous donkey, which died of both hunger and thirst because it couldn’t decide whether to eat or drink.” Elsewhere, he describes the experience of writing in Greek: “I wasn’t writing. I was speaking. One word joined the next like small siblings. I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes, even though I knew I would. This was my language. It didn’t impose itself upon me, it wasn’t necessary to change my tone of voice.”

 Αγάπη και ξενιτιά   [Love and foreign lands] 

In this book, Kallifatides touches on familiar themes, such as, immigration and foreign lands, loneliness, identity, language, poverty, social justice, freedom and social responsibility, the weight of our decisions, gender relations, memory and the past, love and friendship, and not giving up.

The book takes us back to the 1960s, when Greece was once again sending its children away, either through immigration or through exile. The central character, 25-year-old Christos, now called Christo, a Philosophy student in Sweden, has been forced to leave Greece and his family due to political vews and exclusion from the university, among other things. In Stockholm, while busy with his doctoral thesis, and while trying with great difficulty to survive financially and find his place in the new reality without losing himself, flooded with feelings of loneliness and nostalgia, he falls in love with a married woman.

He chooses Aristotle and catharsis as the subject of his thesis and throughout the narrative he elaborates on questions about love, affection, morality and catharsis, and whether catharsis can be achieved in reality and if so through what means. He writes: “What else could he write about but catharsis? His homeland was a tragedy. Political life was corrupt and often violent… unemployment was approaching fifty percent for young people. It was not only the general situation but also his own… He was slowly sinking into a swamp of unfulfilled desires, vain dreams and plans, hopeless loves and socks with holes… his homeland did not want him even though his grades were excellent, but without a “certification of political beliefs” he could not even enter a chicken coop.” Ultimately, he had no choice but to emigrate like his father and grandfather had done before him.

The hero’s narrative captures the socio-economic and political situation of Greece at the time, which is on the verge of dictatorship, but also of the freer socialdemocratic Swedish society in which he is trying to integrate. Christos wants to succeed, to build a life there. He wants to get to know and love the new country, and he believes that the only way to keep his Greek identity is to be able to support it within the new society and the new language. He’s also aware that his departure from Greece is not over yet because he writes: “it was not enough to learn the foreign language. You have to change your insides too…. His country and his language lived in his mind and his psyche, in his gestures and his jokes, in his desire and in all his choices. How much did he have to change in order to survive?”

Kallifatides writes about his book:

[https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/politismos/agapi-kai-xenitia-grafei-o-thodoris-kallifatidis/]

A few years ago, on a windy afternoon, I was sitting in a café in a provincial town in Sweden with a friend who had once been my teacher at Stockholm University. He had just retired, and I asked him how he was spending his days.

“It’s time to settle my accounts,” he said simply. I don’t know if he did. He died.

I had the same feeling when I started writing my recent book  Αγάπη και ξενιτιά  / Love and Foreign Lands. I left Greece at the age of 25. I’ve been living in Sweden ever since. I was consumed by the ifs and buts. What would my life have been like if I hadn’t left. What kind of person would I have been? Would I have written or not? I knew that. I would have written. It was all I knew. Because I had always written. As a child, as a teenager, as a young man. And then I left…………

Would I write in Sweden too? I didn’t know, but the need was greater than the difficulties. And I began to write in Swedish. What did this mean, not only for writing but also for me as a person. What did it mean when I met and fell in love with my wife. What did it mean when I spoke Swedish with my children? I didn’t understand these questions at the time. I didn’t even ask them. Years had to pass, I had to emerge from the struggle for establishment and survival in order to “settle my accounts” with the events and ideas that had defined me as a person. Love, immigration, social justice, catharsis, freedom, loneliness, mercy and fear……

The Day I am Free

“Every country must take their responsibility for their own romani inhabitants; nobody should have to flee to another country to ensure their human dignity….” Hans Caldaras (musician, Taikon’s cousin)

Today’s post is about a book titled, The Day I Am Free, which tells the story of Swedish-Roma Katarina Taikon in three parts.The first section contains her biography written by journalist Lawen Mohtadi in 2012. Mohtadi also examines the historical contexts, and sociopolitical and ideological background of the events of Taikon’s life and activism. For instance, she writes that “during the same period that the Swedish welfare society begins to take shape, another political current emerges: eugenics.” The second part includes the first volume of Taikon’s autobiographically based children’s book series, Katitzi, in which she writes about a girl’s struggle as part of an ethnic minority in Sweden. The third section includes an essay about the cultural impact of Katitzi by curator Maria Lind. The book also includes photos, book illustrations and book covers.

Most of us know that Sweden is a welfare state, a society that prioritizes environmental issues and recycling, civic engagement, free access to good quality education, child care and health services. Its people also boast one of the longest life expectancies in the world. The Swedes have also managed to balance work and free time better than other countries, and have pursued a policy of peace since World War I, and I think, have not engaged in direct military conflict since the early 19^th century. Many of us are familiar with furniture or some other home product from IKEA. Sweden is also a beautiful country, and years ago I managed to visit Sweden and a bordering Finland town over the Christmas holidays.

Swedish films, artists and writers have exerted an influence on me since adolescence. I am also aware of Sweden through the lens and writings of Theodor Kallifatides, a Greek who has lived and written in Sweden since 1964, and explores themes of memory, identity, alienation, of belonging and of being an outsider, immigration and displacement, the complex process of integration and navigating cultural differences, the experience of writing in Greek and writing in Swedish.  On leaving one’s homeland and on immigration he writes: “Emigration is a kind of partial suicide. You don’t die, but a great deal dies within you. Not least, the language,” and “Your home country makes you more of a foreigner than you feel yourself.”

However, there is no place on earth exempt from social ills, and Sweden too, has its stories and history of racism and discrimination against minorities and immigrants. I knew nothing about the history of the Roma people in Sweden and their struggles during a great part of the 20^th century or Katarina Taikon until I came across the book: The Day I Am Free. There is nothing exceptional about Sweden’s treatment of Roma. According to Amnesty International these minorities have suffered systematic and widespread discrimination across Europe for centuries. In 2016, the European Commission coined the term antigypsyism to designate anti-Roma institutional and individual hostility, aggression, and exclusion. Katarina Taikon’s older sister, Rosa Taikon, states: “I am worried. Are we going back to the 1930 – and 40’s? We see Roma in the Balkans, where they may live with their children on toxic slag heaps…..”

Katarina Taikon, an actress and prolific writer, is considered a prominent Swedish human rights activist of the 20^th century, often compared to Martin Luther King Jr. Her writing defined the Roma struggle for equal rights, and also, produced realistic and anti-racist narratives for children. She lived in Sweden in an era when the Roma minority was heavily discriminated against, excluded from education, housing and the rights of citizenship that the Swedish welfare state provided for its citizens. Taikon’s activities were aimed at securing the civil rights of Roma in Sweden. Through political activism, media campaigning and writing, she raised the issue of the living conditions of the Roma.

Taikon was born in 1932 in a camp in Sweden, the youngest of four children of Johan Taikon, a Kalderash Roma musician and silversmith, whose parents were Hungarian subjects and had come to Sweden from Russia at the turn of the 20^th century, and ho had remained stateless all his life, and a non Roma Swedish woman, Agda Karlsson, whom Johan met while she was employed as a waitress and he as a violinist in the same restaurant. Agda became his second wife, and formed an almost ‘daughter-mother relationship’ with his first wife, known as mami Masha, who was at the time in her fifties. Masha had been a dancer at the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia and was not Roma either. Agda died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis leaving four young children behind. KatarinaTaikon and her siblings were close to mami Masha and when their mother passed away she supported them.

In the mid 30s Johan Taikon met Siv, a non Roma woman, who would become the children’s step mother, and mother to three new siblings. Masha was sent to live in another camp and Katarina was given to the Kreuters, a childless couple, who wanted to adopt her. Katarina’s life changed dramatically, she now lived in a warm house, had her own decorated bedroom, which looked like a toy store, dresses and any food she wanted. She lived with them for two years and then was turned over to child welfare services because they wanted to adopt her and her father had refused. She was seven when she was taken to an orphanage, and when a few weeks later her father came to retrieve her she refused to go with him, but eventually, she did return to her family, where despite her father’s warmth and understanding, she suffered beatings and emotional abuse from her step-mother.

Even though Johan Taikon had tried to enroll his children in school, he was always prevented from doing so, either by local authorities or other parents, who did not want Roma children in their schools. Katarina was denied education, and she attended school for a little while at the age of 10. It was only in her late twenties that she went back to school. At the age of fourteen Katarina was, like her older sister, Rosa, a few years earlier, forced to marry. Both sisters left these child-marriages. After a few months of being married Katarina ran away. She found shelter in a home for girls run by a humanitarian organization, where she was supported in finding work, saving a little money, and gaining financial independence.

In 1947 she was offerd a role by Arne Sucksdorff, a documentary filmmaker and Sweden’s first Oscar winner. He offered her the lead role in his short film, Departure, which portrays Roma life. Even though the film depicted their life in a romanticized way, the dialogues were spoken in the Romani language and the Roma were not portrayed in a negative context. It also opened the door to further artistic and public activity for her. During the next decade Taikon had various jobs for survival, but she increasingly performed in films and plays, often with her sister, Rosa, and began to move in artistic circles. In 1952, actor Per Oscarsson offered Katarina and Rosa accommodation in his large house, where they became acquainted with the Declaration of Human Rights for all people and the advocacy of the right to housing, employment and education, which would prove crucial for the Taikon sisters’ turning to activism and working to improve Roma life circumstances.

In the book, Mohtadi refers to friends and relatives that belonged to Taikon’s circle. She notes that “Katarina’s daily existence did not distinguish between work and pleasure, the personal and the political: the different spheres largely overlapped.” One person very close to Katarina was her eldest sister. Rosa Taikon was born in 1926 and was a mother figure for Katarina. Like her father she chose to become a silversmith, and since her first exhibition in 1966, her art has been shown in prestigious galleries throughout Sweden. Her work is a part of permanent exhibitions in various museums in Sweden and abroad. Along with her sister, she participated in political and social activities related to Roma rights and was awarded numerous prizes and merits, both for her artwork and her work in human rights. She died in 2017.

Hans Caldaras, a younger cousin of Roma ethnic background, was one of the many people who stayed in Taikon’s guest room for a while, when he was young and wanted to embark on a musical career. In his bio it is mentioned that he has done almost everything as an artist, concerts, musicals, theatre plays, festivals, many records and a variety of radio and television appearances. His repertoire is roma music with influences from improvised jazz, latin and gypsy swing. Caldaras mentions that Katarina and Bjorn introduced him to French films, and together they went to restaurants and bars, and he took care of the children when they were busy. He writes: “Political discussions, the roma question, Sweden geopolitics, were a constant in their living room.”

In 1958, Katarina met photographer, Bjorn Langhammer, who became her husband and partner in many artistic and political projects for over twenty years. That same year she, along with her sister Rosa and Björn, began a two-year course at a public college. With a basic education Katarina was able to continue her studies and she attended a business finance course. After her studies she took on the running of the Vips American Ice Cream Bar in Stockholm, which became a hub for many of her friends and acquaintances and her customers included many actors and artists. Katarina Taikon had her third child, Niki, in 1961, fathered by Björn Langhammar.

The following year her brother Paul was murdered, and a year later in1963 her first autobiographical book for adults, Gypsy Woman, was published, a great achievement if one considers that it was first book by a Romani author dealing with the living conditions of the Roma in Sweden. Mohtadi comments: “The book landed like a bomb in Swedish society….. Sweden took a leading role as a proponent of global equality and justice. The nation’s self-perception hinged on an idea of Sweden as a place free of racism, or, as it was sometimes termed, minority problems.” The book generated a public debate about the discrepancy between the Swedish welfare state and the segregation of the Roma population, and the need to do something about this.

A year later Taikon met Martin Luther King Jr., who had come to Scandinavia to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and with her sister Rosa, launched, among other things, a literacy course for adult Roma. Because the Swedish educational authorities were not willing to fund further education for the Roma, the Roma Union organized a series of protests culminating on May 1, 1965. The protests were successful and a delegation led by Katarina Taikon was invited to talk to Prime Minister Tage Erlander. As a result, ten adult schools were opened in Sweden within a year, and the program was included in the national education system. The Union went on to publish its own magazine called We Live from 1965 to 1973, and Taikon published her second book titled We Are Gypsies. In 1964 Katarina was appointed as an honorary member of the Swedish Youth Peace Alliance. 

In 1967, the Swedish authorities turned to Taikon for help concerning the status of Roma refugees from Poland and Italy. After an initial failure to allow the refugees to stay, a protest was organized that led to a new meeting with the minister at which it was decided that they would be allowed to stay; however, two years later, the Social Democratic government decided that a group of 47 French Roma would not be granted asylum. Although this decision would be reversed two years later, the deportation both disappointed and had an impact on Taikon’s stance on how to effect change in society.She decided to focus on working with the young, believing that they were the engine of change in Swedish society.

So, in the 1970s she started writing a semi-autobiographical series for children and adolescents centered on a young Roma girl called Katitzi.The series was hugely successful and became the most read children’s books in Sweden, after Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstockin’s series. She drew on her own experiences and touched upon themes of injustice, ignorance, and exclusion, concerning the Roma community in Sweden. Maria Lind writes: “Katitzi manages, despite quite dreadful circumstances, to find her way to an acceptable existence and, in time, to self-actualization.”

Taikon’s work to bring about social changes brought her into contact both with the most marginalized, and many artists, activists and politicians, all the way up to the Prime Minister. Her life long struggle for human rights for the Roma, and her focus on access to education and decent housing was successful; however, she also became the target of attacks, and eventually, the cumulative effect of personal history and trauma, lack of rest and overwork led to exhaustion, depression, physical ailments and pain. She was also hospitalized for double pneumonia. Mohtad writes: “Demands had increased from all directions. Some were of her own making: she believed that she had an obligation to transform society and that people should not have to suffer and struggle to survive. Other denmands were external from people who asked for help, and whom she could not refuse…”

In 1981, a year after Taikon and Langhammer published the last book of the Katitzi series, they divorced. The following year, she suffered a heart attack whilst undergoing tests at a hospital and fell into a coma from which she never awoke. Langhammer cared for her in their home until his own death in 1986. Then her three children and her sister, Rosa, took care of her until she passed away in 1995 with her beloved sister, Rosa, at her side.

From 1975 the Katitzi stories had already begun to be adapted into other media with the publication of comics, the creation of a television series, followed by theatrical performances. In 2012 her biography, The Day I Am Free, was published by Mohtadi, and based on the book, Mohtadi and journalist Gellert Tamas made a 2015 documentary film: The Untold Story of a Roma Freedom Fighter. In 2019, the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Stockholm organized an exhibition dedicated to Katitzi and her influence on Swedish society. Seven short documentary films dedicated to the book and its author were also produced, and Katitzi’s stories were republished.