20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

834 Eleftheria Mantahave sufficient funds and indeed in many there were no desks and studentsattended classes on the floor. The teachers were tired by the conditions andthe misery of life there and the best of them preferred schools in southernGreece. The supervisors of the elementary schools proposed a series ofmeasures which could contribute in the desired direction: amongst thesewas the compulsory school attendance of girls, at least up to age of 10, theeconomic and moral enforcement of the personnel, the building of properschool buildings even to villages which never had a school. 12 According todata referring to subsequent years, though, it turns out that these proposalsas well as many others made in the past remained only on paper.It was a fact though that the efforts assumed by the Venizelos government,and the liberal policies applied to Muslims of Epirus did not manage tobring on fundamental change neither in reference to their economic northeir social situation: the majority of that population was incapable of beingorganically incorporated into Greek society, living practically isolated inthe communities of Epirus, aloof to the economic and social progress therest of the country was experiencing. A report of November 1933 describesthe social situation in a vivid manner, albeit often not avoiding the generalprejudice of the Christian stance against them: “Of the 79 communitiesof the Province 23 are purely Muslim and 9 are mixed. …This minorityholds fast to its Muslim customs and traditions and no innovations canbe observed. The Muslim woman continues to remain confined to haremsbehind wooden curtains and rarely exits her house; when she comes outshe is totally concealed under veils. She never works outside her housebut even within her house she knows of no profitable work. Rarely can shespeak Greek for she does not communicate with Christians. The Muslimman, known for his laziness rarely works profitably. Proud of his title ofagha, he considers it degrading for him to work for a living. He also liveswith ancestral fatalism regarding today’s progress with suspicion, for heviews them as aiming towards his destruction. The result of the man’smentality and the total abstention from work of the woman, who elsewhereis a valuable help to the farmer, is that most Muslims have been reduced tothe direst of straits.” 13In conclusion, if someone would try to consider in their totality theterms by which the Muslim Albanians were incorporated into the Greekstate, their living conditions, the problems that emerged during the inter-warperiod and, of course, the dramatic escalation of the issue which took place12AYE, 1935, A/4/9, confidential no. 26, ibidem.13AYE, 1935, A/21/I, no. 12195, General Administration of Epirus to Ministry ofForeign Affairs, Ioannina 19-12-1933, Attached report of the Sub-prefect of Thyamis.