Let me start by describing the view
from my mother's narrow balcony: concrete apartment buildings of 5 or 6 floors with
balconies, a very narrow street populated by pigeons, small cars, motorcycles,
and the occasional cat. Pedestrians walk
in the middle of the street because sidewalks are impassable, parked as they
are with the aforementioned motorcycles or simply too narrow to maneuver with a
bag. (Is there a synonym for narrow? I’m going to need it so as not to bore you
with the word.) Balconies across the street are mostly empty of people these
days but there are green plants, a table here, a chair there, some laundry
hanging. People are away, on holiday as they like to say. Holiday from what? The top apartments of the buildings tend to be
recessed and therefore offer larger, more spacious balconies called verandas. They’re
like penthouses and coveted.
There are a handful of stores
visible from my vantage point: a leather bag workshop, a car mechanic, an apartment-management
office, an off-track betting parlor sort of shop but for the lottery and other
sports, and, in the distance (in the corner) the confluence of two streets, a
pharmacy, a frozen fish and seafood store, and a few more buildings. If I look the other way I see an uphill
street losing itself in the near mountain.
On Sundays the accordionist strolls
and plays around 10-11 in the morning, hoping for a few coins thrown from one of
the balconies. On weekdays a small truck with loudspeakers rolls by announcing
his intentions to buy whatever you might want to sell him: old appliances,
rags, furniture, anything old and useless to you but obviously profitable to
him. The sound or roar of motorcycles can drive me batty, especially at nap
time or night time. These days however
the traffic on the street down below from the balcony has noticeably decreased.
Few cars, few people make their way up and down. Are they on holiday?
The entire city seems deserted,
emptier than I've ever seen it. Downtown on weekends you can bowl on the wide
avenues – the few wide streets in the entire city. Taxis are so plentiful I am
awed. And the drivers are so polite compared to the past that it is a pleasure
to hail one as opposed to earlier times when I used to dread the thought of
hailing a cab: if you weren't going their way, they wouldn’t take you; if there
was someone else in it, they’d ask you where you’re going and decide if they
would let you in. Today they beg for fares, lined up in corners one after
another – 6 or 7 or 8.
Let me continue by describing the
farmer’s market where you buy a kilo or two of peaches or eggplants or green
beans or lemons – never one or two – “they’ll laugh at you” my mother
says. And lunch and dinner are so late –
lunch time runs into dinner. And dinner
might as well be breakfast.
D.J.s are plentiful. Every bar and cafe must have one. And open-air cinemas
are ubiquitous, awesome and fragrant with jasmine. You sit under the blue sky
and watch a big screen surrounded by flowers and trees. Sometimes cats’ shrieks can interfere with
the movie but you learn to ignore them. The same way you learn to ignore the
cigarette smoke all around you. Pigeons
are everywhere. People feed them. They fly over your head while you’re sitting
at a cafe in the plaza. They shit all over.
And now I’ll tell you about the walk
to the trolley stop, the cafes on Ymittou Street or the St. Lazarus square:
again narrow sidewalks, so narrow I walk in the middle of the street. With my
mother I walk slowly, holding her, or rather – she holding my right arm. To the
trolley stop I pass the corner where the pharmacist sells mom her medications
and even does some of her errands. Then the small supermarket – “Melissa” –
that knows her well and even carries her groceries home. I cross the street and
there is the stop.
All the streets are a noisy assault
on the senses. Signs of all shapes and sizes crowd the fronts of buildings.
Shops fight for space even though now many are empty, vacant, FOR RENT. There is no respite from sounds and
sights. Trees are few, mostly the bitter
orange trees that German soldiers liked to eat during the Occupation in the
1940s. Athenians laughed at them,
thinking them stupid. Blank walls are covered with graffiti. No place to rest
your eyes or ears. Colors and words
attack you all the time. Clothing stores, shoe stores, cosmetics boutiques,
cafes, bakeries, banks. Only the walk to St. Lazarus square is less chaotic.
But once there, the square surrounds you with cafes: chairs, tables, trees,
pigeons, cigarette smoke. And a tiny fountain.
My image of the city when I close my
eyes : concrete blocks piled on top of each other crowded around with barely an
inch of green space or free air sprinkled with magnificent ruins of ancient
structures popping up when you least expect them, columns, arches, sculptures,
monuments. I would rather have the old
ruins. Such chaos!
The first morning I go to a cafe around
the block from the hotel I’m staying at during the conference. This is what I overhear: “I am not a communist. I’m a Marxist. There
is a big difference.” Then the man
continues expounding on “the state vs. the people.” I sit on the sidewalk sipping my coffee and
emailing friends on my little computer.
When the man walks by me on his way home I smile. Heartwarming, isn't it?
