Alexander Manthoulis stands in front of the blank pages of a 400-page notebook with a thick cover and wonders if he will be able to fill them by recounting "certain episodes" from his life.

However, having found himself in 1918 fighting on the front lines of Gaza as an officer in the Ottoman Army with Mustafa Kemal's 7th Army (Atatürk) against the British Army led by E. Allenby (Lawrence of Arabia), he has much to say. For surely, many events preceded and many others followed.

He knows these from oral narratives from his son Roviros, who encourages him to write them down. During the time when the first cousin of Patriarch Athenagoras fills the pages of the notebook, the country is going through another, still tumultuous, period. It is the time of the dictatorship of the colonels.

This new adventure creates a desire to turn back to the past and reflect. Beyond desire, however, it is also a necessity. Thus, Roviros Manthoulis understands it, and in his own autobiographical work The World According to Me, he writes about his father's work:

“What was the 20th century for the Greeks? Wandering, wars, trenches, barricades, captivities, persecutions, uprootings, dictatorships, exiles, civil wars, refugee crises, famines, suitcases, passports, ships, borders, migrations... My father experienced all of these. At the front line. I managed to get him to write them down. Without these, what kind of world would I have lived in?”