No one realized at my birth that something was wrong. Neither the young doctor who smiled satisfied with the successful outcome of the delivery, nor the experienced, elderly midwife who cut the umbilical cord and cleaned me from the blood. And by no means did my father, Michalis, who watched everything awkwardly and detached, notice anything, and certainly not my mother, Anthi, exhausted from the eight-hour labor. To them, I was a baby like all the others. Chubby and rosy, a little more wrinkled and pressed from my violent entry into this world than they might have wanted and certainly more than was necessary to secure a good first family photo, a memory that could decorate the living room fireplace in the years to come. And the truth is that at that time there really was nothing to observe, nothing that foreshadowed how badly things would go from a certain point on.

After all, it wasn’t that I had any obvious defect from birth. It was destined to be acquired. Soon. But not yet. Despite my worn appearance, my father eventually took the photo. More to do something at that moment, to appear useful in some way and to fulfill his role honorably in front of the eyes of the world, and not because he truly wanted to. Swaddled in my mother’s arms, who looked at me with adoration despite my distorted features, I too looked, somewhat cautiously, at the person behind the camera. Intuition perhaps? Baby instinct warning me already then to stay away? No one knows.