Protest

I'm not one of the PIGS of Europe, that's for sure. Pigs can't shop in European markets, can't keep accounts with European banks, can’t go to Europe for studies and don’t know anything about traveling abroad for business or pleasure.

What's more, I never thought of myself as a blissful dolmadaki or tzatziki-maker, oblivious to everyday-life or deeper issues, scheming and plotting to get along. I never thought of myself as grandmother to all Europeans, looking down on them as if they were eternally indebted to me, let alone wish them pay my bills.

I can pay my bills. Only, it's not my bills I'm asked to pay now. I'm asked to pay what heads of organisations, people in powerful positions and politicians have looted from my state in the past few decades. I'm asked to pay for what somebody else has stolen from me in much the same degree as from my European fellow citizens.

Now, I'm just a translator. I can't say much about rates and ratios, indicators and signs, poverty lines and the pace of unemployment or inflation. I'm used to communicate with words rather than numbers.

To put it in words, then, the blood-dripping measures you want us to take translate into a dire situation for no less than ten million people here. We already were paid much below the European average; now we'll have to make do with even less than little. I wonder: is it really us, simple people, you want to discipline? Just look us in the eyes: it's not us you should be after.