Belief in Tuesday as an inauspicious day

Belief in Tuesday as an inauspicious day links an ordinary choice of date to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The novel presents it not as a universal rule but as a living historical memory: some people avoid important plans on Tuesdays, while others regard the custom as superstition. Its most consequential illustration comes when the Papazoglou family opens two hotels on the anniversary of the city’s fall, provoking local disapproval and, after later disaster and bankruptcy, renewed conviction that the date should have been respected.

Historical Memory and the Tuesday Taboo

For some Greeks, Tuesday is a day on which to avoid arranging anything important. The reason given is the fall of Constantinople, described as the most significant place in Christendom, to the Ottoman forces. More than five centuries later, the catastrophe still casts a shadow over the calendar: the date is remembered, and the weekday gives that memory a recurring point of emphasis. The belief makes history part of everyday decision-making rather than a distant event confined to the past.

The account traces that memory to the siege of Constantinople, which lasted forty days. As the Greeks tried to repel the attackers outside the city walls, people witnessed a lunar eclipse, an icon of the Virgin slipping from its platform during a procession, and a violent thunderstorm. The city fell on Tuesday, 29 May 1453. The narrative recounts the deaths of men, women, and children and emphasizes the desecration of the basilica of Agia Sofia and the killing of the priests and congregation gathered there. These events give the taboo a religious and communal dimension: the remembered date is associated not only with military defeat but also with an assault on a sacred place.

The memory also persists in language. Many Greeks, the narrator observes, cannot bring themselves to use the name Istanbul, and airport departure and arrival boards still use the old name, Constantinople. That continued naming sets the city’s remembered identity against the name given under Turkish rule. In the episode, the weekday taboo and the retained place-name are related expressions of a history that remains present in ordinary public life.

The Papazoglou Family’s Defiance

The novel distinguishes believers in the taboo from people who treat Tuesday like any other day. The Papazoglou family belongs to the latter group. On 29 May 1979, the family opened two hotels under its ownership. The choice was striking because it fell both on a Tuesday and on the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople. Older men in the city’s coffeehouses and older women in its pastry shops voiced the same objection: the family could have waited a day, and a family from Constantinople, of all people, should have known better.

The criticism carries added force in light of Apostolos Papazoglou’s history. He had fled Istanbul in 1955 during the 1955 Istanbul anti-Greek pogrom, leaving his home and a popular guesthouse behind. He and his young wife, Melina Papazoglou, arrived in Greece with their two small sons and only a handful of keepsakes. The family’s choice to open the hotels on the anniversary therefore placed its own history of displacement beside the date that local people associated with an earlier catastrophe. The account does not say that Apostolos accepted the taboo; it shows instead why others found the coincidence particularly troubling.

Later Ruin and the Meaning of Coincidence

The hotel openings acquire their darker significance retrospectively. After the hotels’ collapse, the people of Patras had not forgotten the date on which they had opened. Seven months after the trials began, on 29 May, verdicts of manslaughter were given in both cases. Compensation owed to injured guests and bereaved families exceeded what could be covered by selling the entire hotel empire, and Apostolos Papazoglou was obliged to declare himself bankrupt.

The narrative connects those consequences to the taboo through public interpretation, not by establishing that Tuesday caused the disaster. For years, the crumbling remains of the two hotels stood as reminders of the sack of Constantinople. Older residents continued to shake their heads and say that the date must not be forgotten. In this telling, the ruins become a material focus for a belief that might otherwise seem abstract: an anniversary, a family’s decision, a public catastrophe, and the subsequent collapse of a business are gathered into one cautionary story.

Narrative Context and Significance

The account of the hotels is framed as a story told to the narrator by an elderly couple at an adjacent table in a Patras taverna. Nearby stands an empty hotel, described as an eyesore. The tale thus begins with a present-day ruin and supplies it with an explanation rooted in local memory and superstition. The ruined buildings do not speak for themselves; the couple’s account gives them a history, while the residents’ repeated comments show how that history continues to shape their judgment.

The novel also preserves a counterpoint to the taboo. The narrator later recalls that the day he first met the person addressed in his account was a Tuesday. That passing recollection does not present Tuesday as universally avoided or predict a consequence. Instead, alongside the family’s skepticism and the townspeople’s conviction, it shows that the weekday can remain an ordinary marker in one context and carry historical weight in another. The concept’s significance lies in this coexistence: the past survives not only in formal accounts of the fall of Constantinople, but in choices of date, inherited cautions, place-names, and the stories people tell about buildings left in ruins.