Since I left Greece, it is said to have become more European and less Greek, and that the use of the kombolói is dying out. That would be a shame as I never watch "Never on Sunday" without my silver-beaded kombolói in my right hand.
Twirling his kombolói used to be as Greek to a Greek as clicking his heels and standing to attention was to a German (well, maybe not to this German but you get the meaning, don't you?) The English call them worry beads but 'worry beads' is an ignorant translation, and says more about the way the English think than it does about the Greek.
The kombolói has nothing to do with worrying, and everything to do with time, with spacing it out, with making it last, with making it your own. And by 'time' I don't mean chrónos which moves steadily from future to present to past, as when one says, "I meet you at three o'clock", but with kairós which has a particular significance for an individual, as in "This is a perfect time to take stock of my life".
As I slow down more in my retirement, I use the kombolói almost as often now as I used to in Greece when I sat for hours in some small kafeneio with a Greek coffee by my side and my kombolói in my right hand, allowing "clock time" to slip into "lived time". There was no internet then and no YouTube clip to show me how to use them. It all seemed to happen by osmosis, by being surrounded in companiable silence by Greeks who were endlessly clicking their 'worry beads'.
Maybe the kombolói won't die out; maybe a new generation of Greeks will still hold the kombolói in one hand and a smartphone in the other.
Time to watch "Never on Sunday" which I never do without my kombolói.
