off to see the wizard...

The zipper on my jacket broke last month and instead of trying to find a tailor who can replace the zipper, I found it easier to just walk around with an unzipped jacket for weeks… The other day, I happened to mention the broken zipper to an aunt and the seemingly dull subject led to an interesting conversation.

“A broken zipper, you said?!!” she put down her coffee cup and leaned in closer.

“Yeah…”

“I know of a φερμουαρατζής, a zipper man – probably the last one left in Athens…”

And so the story began… It was just a few days ago in fact, that her friend went to the zipper man and waited in line for two whole hours. He only charged her a few euro to fix the zipper, you see. He has tools and old machines that can magically repair zippers instead of replacing them with new ones, which can be very costly. The place is downtown, she told me - in a narrow street, it’s hard to find, you have to go early as people get there as soon as the zipper man opens and a line forms right away… It’s a first-come, first-serve kind of thing, you can’t just drop off your item and pick it up the next day. You go there, wait in line and he fixes each person’s zipper on-the-spot… τσακ-μπαμ! Likity-split!

Two hours in line didn’t sound “likity-split” to me, but nevertheless, I was intrigued…

My aunt told me she’d ask her friend for the exact address of the zipper man’s place. Last night she called to give me the address but insisted it wasn’t at all straight-forward. It’s in a neighborhood with a maze of little streets and a jumble of family-run stores from days gone by: old spice shops, a hand-made lamp store, one of Athens’ oldest cheese shops… The zipper man’s store is practically hidden, you pass a church and then you’ll see a τυροπιτάδικο, a cheese-pie stand on the corner. She instructed me to ask at the cheese-pie stand and they would direct me to the zipper man. I was tempted to ask her if I needed to whisper a code word, or give them a secret handshake in order to be led to the Wizard of Zippers.

So today, around noon I went to the address to see if in fact this urban legend existed. I didn’t see the cheese-pie stand but I was able to find the zipper place on my own. I saw an open doorway next to a lamp/religious icon shop, with the word φερμουάρ (zipper) spelled vertically with red letters on the door frame.

A long hallway led to a spiral staircase which led to a basement workshop. There were two women standing in line in front of me, one guy sitting on the stairs and from the mirror on the wall above the spiral stairs I could see the reflection of the room below – the line continued down into the workshop and about 5-6 more people were crowded into the tiny space. It was kind of quiet, I stepped forward and looked closer. The zipper wizard sat behind a large worktable covered with tools, tiny boxes, bits and pieces of zippers… His hands worked quickly, snipping and snapping, clipping and clacking and with a flourish he held up the finished product, a zip-front sweater, and said “ορίστε madame,” here you are – to a lady who stood across from him, watching him closely with bifocals perched on the tip of her nose. The guy sitting on the stairs clapped and everyone seemed relieved. The bifocals lady had various items of clothing and had taken up a half hour of the zipper wizard’s time. She was finally done and ascended the spiral staircase triumphantly.

“Άντε, the line will start moving now,” another lady said, complaining that she had already been waiting for 45 minutes. I wondered if I should stay and wait or just give up and go have a coffee somewhere….

The grandmother in front of me, who sat on the only stool in the hallway, held a plastic bag on her lap filled with children’s jackets. The woman next to her looked at the bag and smiled knowingly. “I’ve been coming here for years, he’ll fix those for you and your grandkids can still get some use out of those jackets.”   

“My daughter told me to forget about it, to give the jackets away. I told her ‘if you have money to throw away, then go buy new jackets…’ I said ‘give those jackets here, I’ll have the zippers fixed and it will only cost a few euro’… these young people… they still haven’t learned the value of money,” she shook her head in disapproval.

The other woman went on to explain that she is a retired teacher and has seen generations of children pass before her. “Generations of kids who don’t appreciate anything,” she went on…

“No wonder all the Albanians came here to work” the grandmother added, “they're good workers - the men, the women, the young people, they know what it means to struggle to earn money… there’s nothing shameful about hard work…. In my day, I lived in a village, we worked in the fields, we picked olives… nowadays in the village all the young people sit in the café all day while Albanians and foreigners work in the fields…”

The retired teacher agreed. “They are hardworking people, not like the Greeks. We are the worst kind of people on the earth. All we want to do is steal from one another, take the easy way out, cheat, and pretend to be grand and important…. Greeks don’t want to send their kids to work in the fields, or work as waiters, noooo, we don’t want our neighbors whispering behind our backs, saying ‘ohh look at them, they sent their kids to work in a restaurant, they are poor’… Greeks... we all wanna act like big shots…”

I wondered if I should add my two cents, and tell them that I am the daughter of Greek immigrants, that I grew up outside of Greece and spent many of my teenage summers working in restaurant kitchens, or as a salesgirl at various stores – like all of my friends did… not because our parents didn’t have money to give us an allowance but because that’s just what everyone did – get a summer job, learn how to make your own money, learn the value of a dollar, see what it takes to save up your own money to buy something special… But I decided to remain quiet and just keep listening…

The retired teacher continued… “these younger generations… we have handed them everything, maybe because we wanted to give them everything we didn’t have… but we have created a nation of young people who don’t know how to survive…”

“Just look at this neighborhood” the retired teacher continued, “these small businesses are closing their doors, one after another. I’m surprised this zipper shop hasn’t closed. The knife-sharpening shop down the street closed years ago. Who has their knives sharpened anymore? No one, that’s who. The knife gets dull, they just throw it away and buy another one… Your zipper broke, just throw the jacket away and buy another one… no one values anything anymore…”

An hour later I finally made my way back outside into the daylight, my zipper fixed for only €2.50. I paused at the nearby square, along one of Athens’ main avenues, to get a bottle of water from a kiosk. Blue riot police buses lined the sidewalk, the cops stood around talking, their shields stacked up against the side of the bus like dominoes. I stood there drinking my water, looking around. Many of the surrounding buildings were still boarded up, shops either closed or damaged during the riots and fires of Feb 2012… some doorways and window casings were still charred and black…

On my way home, I sat on the bus looking out the window… I noticed that the usual trash pickers were out in force. It is now very common to see immigrants with supermarket carriages poking through the trash for scrap metal, all over Athens, in every neighborhood (another ‘new’ normal). I watch as a guy looks through a huge garbage bin, his carriage filled with all kinds of metal items – from discarded ironing boards, to empty olive oil tins. He pulls out a broken umbrella, the metal parts were bent and twisted. He puts it in his carriage and moves on to the next set of garbage bins as the bus rolls past him and an old man sitting next to me comments to no one in particular, “they have to do something, they might as well live off what we throw away…”

silver linings…

Last week, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) released new data for November 2012. The report states that unemployment has risen to 27% (compare that to November 2008, when the unemployment rate was 7.8%). Today, youth unemployment (age 15-24) is at 61.7% (in November 2008, it was 22.6%).

Our most treasured asset lies in our people. I personally witnessed and experienced what happened when as a nation, we channeled our incredible human resources to create and organize an unforgettable, exceptional, incomparable, triumphant event: the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. I joyfully lived the rise, full of hope for a bright future… and now I sadly live the fall, painfully aware of lost opportunities and life-changing, difficult circumstances.

Two days after the ELSTAT report was released, I had the opportunity to visit some local entrepreneurs in downtown Athens. A group called ATA (Alternative Tours of Athens) and another group called βy local/Athens co-hosted a walking tour which offered a behind-the-scenes look at artisans, craftspeople and designers in their studios and shops.

With the statistics swirling in my head, I made my way to the event… and…  was blown away by the people I met along the way. Talented, driven, passionate, hopeful, creative, unique, inspiring - are words that don’t even begin to describe them. The first stop on the tour was a shop called Tintinnabulum. I felt like I was stepping into a little piece of old Athens. And when I heard the owner, Athena Drakopoulou, talk about how her store came to life, I realized that I had stepped into a tiny slice of the city’s living history. The building itself dates back to the 1930s and since the 1950s the space existed as a woodcarver’s shop. In 2010, the workshop closed its doors and the neighborhood mourned the loss of yet another traditional small business.

Athena had the vision to turn the place into something unique. It took a lot of hard work to clean decades of sawdust and grime from the floor; but it paid off as the original tile was revealed underneath - a stunning, black and white art deco block design. Even the walls practically talk in this place – they are riddled with small holes, a lifetime of the woodcarvers using many, many nails to tack up anything from tools, pieces of wood, calendars, to keys and photos…. For nine months, Athena removed nails from the walls, did all of the cleaning, painting, restoring and even some of the plumbing herself. The one-of-a-kind light fixture hanging from the ceiling is also her creation.

The woodcarver’s old work table serves as a counter, holding vintage suitcases filled with new treasures – handmade earrings, bracelets and necklaces. Old-fashioned frames, furniture and mirrors are used to display hand-crafted items and a piled-up collection of antique bedside tables adorn the entire back wall, from floor to ceiling. In the center of the small space you can sit on the retro sofa and enjoy a cup of tea and cookies. In fact, Tintinnabulum often hosts tea parties for friends and visitors.

Athena explained that when she came to the neighborhood, people were happy that a young person had rented the shop and was working so hard to retain its original character. When the “Tintinnabulum” sign went up and the vintage items, including a white lace dress, were placed in the shop window, curious neighbors popped their heads inside, asking “what exactly is it that you sell?” With the initial confusion long gone, Tintinnabulum is a welcome addition to the community.

The next stop on the tour brought us to the “home” of Maria Velizioti and Giorgos Andritsakis. She’s actually a chemical engineer and he’s a professional diver. But it was their combined passion (hers, interior design - his, furniture re-design) that created Sous Sol. The semi-basement apartment is located in a pink neo-classical building, the top floors of which accommodate a music school. As I descended the few steps into Sous Sol, I felt like I was walking into someone’s house. The original layout has been left intact, and the couple spent months restoring the space, which was formerly used as a religious icons workshop. Maria and Giorgos also spent many months on their own, renovating each room, keeping original flooring and fittings where possible. The end result is 1940s Athens with a modern twist - an eclectic mix of refurbished vintage furniture, new items for the home, restyled lighting and newly-designed artsy fixtures.

Walk through the apartment’s four rooms (living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom) and everything you see is for sale. The walls are a gallery where original artwork is displayed, currently featuring work by artist Michalis Andritsakis. Pieces of old tables (coffee tables, end tables) are re-designed into a shelving unit on the wall, filled with interesting books. In the bedroom, an old jewelry box filled with colorful baubles lies open on an antique dresser, a string of pearls is carefully laid out… I half expected Rita Hayworth to walk in, wearing a long silk dressing gown…

I discovered many amazing new shops during that afternoon tour. I met skilled artisans and craftspeople and saw their original designs, one-of-a-kind items that you can’t find anywhere else. Clothing, accessories, jewelry, home goods… From re-styled vintage items to modern, cutting-edge industrial design items.

But what stands out the most for me, is the innovative people behind these projects who have invested their time and resources, making a serious effort to overcome the obstacles of the current situation. If we can somehow find a silver lining in this crisis-cloud that hangs over us, perhaps it is this – we are forced to think outside the box, be resourceful, and have the courage to pursue something that, in better times, we might have overlooked. Despite the grim statistics and unfavorable conditions, new ideas are being created, new communities are coming together. And that’s the other side of our new reality, another face of (new) Athens.
 
Find out more:

www.bylocalathens.com

www.atathens.org

it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…

Some of you may remember watching ‘Mister Roger’s Neighborhood’ on TV as a kid. I watched it too. A kindly, soft-spoken man dressed in nerdy clothes showed us around his fictional neighborhood, filled with polite characters like the friendly mailman. Well, I’m not Mr Rogers but this is what I saw and heard around my neighborhood on one recent day…

…I found myself at the supermarket around noon, the worst possible time to be there. It was packed, lines at the registers were long, and I gradually made my way to the toilet paper aisle, weaving in and out of the crowd… worn-out mothers pushing strollers, weary grandmothers leaning on canes slowly inching their way forward, oblivious shoppers blocking the aisles with their overflowing supermarket carts…

So there I stood in front of the enormous wall of toilet paper when I hear a woman speaking loudly into her cell phone and see her coming full force, barreling through the aisle unmindful of the rest of us who were courteously trying to maneuver ourselves around each other. We all overheard the woman’s very loud cell phone conversation:

“…I tell you, I prefer to just leave my apartment unrented. My son told me he wants to move into the apartment himself but it’s on the ground floor and I’m worried he might get robbed. These Albanians are unreal. They’ll rob and beat you so fast you don’t know what happened. My own mother got robbed on the street, they took her purse and dragged her to the ground!! Golden Dawn, and once again, I say Golden Dawn is the answer!!” She pushed her way past us and disappeared down the aisle filled with cleaning products. I stood staring at the wall of toilet paper, stunned.

A few minutes later, still stunned, I stood in line at the register. It was noisy, people were cranky and bored… and then I heard the voice again, coming from a few rows down. Over the racket I heard bits and pieces: “the first time, I voted for Syriza…. then I voted for Golden Dawn and I will only vote for them now…”

I went home, rolling my cart past a few empty storefronts, some beggars, the neighborhood pawn shop… I turned on the TV as I put the groceries away.

The news was reporting on the death of the last surviving member of the 1967-74 military dictatorship in Greece, Nikos Dertilis at age 92. The ex-colonel had spent the last 37 years in prison. He was serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of Michalis Myroyiannis, a student during the Athens Polytechnic uprising. The funeral was attended, among others, by Golden Dawn parliament members and their supporters. In an article on its website dated January 29, Golden Dawn stated “…Greece mourns the loss of a Man, whose life and work was mighty proof of the racial continuity, in its most heroic form, of Greek Military History, which is paved with blood…”

The funeral service was conducted by Bishop Amvrosios of Kalavryta who hailed Dertilis as “a hero, like Kolokotronis and Socrates.”

A eulogy was given by Grigoris Michalopoulos, (editor of the newspaper Eleutheri Ora) who said “a hero has gone, a hero like the president of the Hellenic Republic Georgios Papadopoulos [president during the military dictatorship]. In your last letter you told me that only the two of us have remained. However, I say to you now that we number in the thousands.”

I listened to these words as I put the giant package of toilet paper away in the cabinet. Then I switched the TV off, thinking “it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood” and wishing that I was merely experiencing the sights and sounds of a (warped) but fictitious Mr Roger’s neighborhood.

Exarheia wanderings

Recently I had the opportunity to explore the Athenian neighborhood of Exarheia with a group of architects, artists and creatives. Exarheia is like that group of rebellious teenagers you remember from high school. The ones with the ripped jeans and studded leather jackets. The tough kids who smoked in the bathroom without getting caught. The ones who sat at the back of the class, looking cool and uninterested. Whenever something was vandalized or stolen, everyone assumed that those kids did it. 

Exarheia has a rough-and-tough exterior, it always gets a bad rap, and most people don’t bother to look beneath the surface to discover its many interesting layers. Every neighborhood of Athens has a unique color; together, like each brushstroke on a canvas, they create an overall image of Athens that is hauntingly beautiful.

Exarheia is one of the modern city's oldest neighborhoods. During the late 1800’s both the Polytechnic University and the Archeological Museum of Athens were built in the area – these buildings still remain, along with additional university buildings which were contructed in later years (University of Athens, the School of Law, and the School of Fine Arts). The neighborhood reveals many architectural styles: neo-classical, art nouveau, art deco, 1930’s modernism, etc. It is not surprising that Exarheia was always the epicenter of all forms of intellectual and artistic expression. The clubs, cafes, bookshops, bars and taverns were and still are frequented by students, artists, writers, actors and musicians.

In the early 1970s, when Greece was ruled by a military junta, it was a student uprising that began in Exarheia and at the Polytechnic which eventually toppled the dictatorship. On November 17, 1973 the regime ordered the military to crush the student uprising which resulted in a tank plowing through the gates of the Polytechnic and tragic loss of life. By 1982, laws were passed to ensure that would never happen again; in an effort to protect freedom of thought and expression, all university buildings in Greece were granted “university asylum” –  police were not able to enter university property without the dean’s permission. Therefore, students inside university property could not be arrested or suffer unjustified state violence.

Since that time, Exarheia slowly began to acquire its bad-boy persona. Although the asylum law had admirable intentions, fast forward 30 years and the law has been abused by some who use university grounds as a convenient hiding place for illegal activity.

Many movements have been born and thrive in Exarheia – political, artistic, civic, cultural, etc…. Protests, marches, occupations and sit-ins are frequent in this area (as they are in other parts of Athens too). Riot police are often seen in Exarheia (as they are in other parts of Athens too…). But an event which occurred in Exarheia in 2008 caused civil unrest which had not been seen since the student uprisings of the 1970s.

On December 6, 2008, a 15-year old student, Alexis Grigoropoulos, was shot and killed by riot police in Exarheia, which triggered an enormous reaction across Greece – protests and demonstrations took place from Athens to Thessaloniki to Patras and even spread to other cities around the world. Rioters used sticks, stones, and Molotov cocktails – causing unprecedented destruction and damage to both public and private property. The riots seemed to gain strength as each day passed and the civil unrest lasted for weeks.

So in recent years, that is what Exarheia has been known for. Take a walk around the neighborhood today and some might see nothing but graffiti and urban decay. But I see a colorful, pulsating, urban rawness that is gritty and real, and is an essential part of Athens’ social fabric. Residents have a progressive mindset and the area is a hub for new movements and concepts. An underground culture that speaks volumes. What caught my eye the most was the amazing street art on walls, sidewalks, the sides of buildings, everywhere.

Beautiful artwork by artists with names like bleeps.gr, Sonkè, Wild Drawings WD and Sidron. Some come with a biting political message, some are quirky, some are poignant – all of them evoke some kind of feeling to those who come across them. You can’t help but stop and look, and ponder. A message high up on the side of a building reads 'wake up, rise up'... while another image shows a man with the bust of Aristotle as a head, holding a Molotov cocktail in his hand, and the words read: "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."

The 4th century quote echoed in my head as I walked around the city on that sunny afternoon. I saw and felt a lot of things. Sadness; drug addicts dropping their pants to piss on university steps. Exasperation; a mentally disturbed man shouting at us to go away. Anger; another group of homeless drug addicts fist fighting amongst themselves. Street art and graffiti; expressions of indignation that are hard to ignore. And most importantly: a reminder - neighborhoods like Exarcheia, in the darkest moments of modern Greek history, have given birth to ideals that created light, hope, and change.

smoke signals

 

Anyone living or passing through Athens these days will certainly have noticed another new reality that has emerged from the crisis. When night falls and temperatures drop, the smell of smoke wafts through the air, rising from every neighborhood, every district, every suburb. In fact, the smoke can actually be seen; it hovers over the city like a hazy gauze enveloping a gaping wound. If you are out and about at night, the smell seeps into your clothes, your hair, your skin and your lungs.

The reason for all this smoke is because most Athenians can no longer afford to buy heating fuel, which is now taxed at 48%. Fireplaces and wood-burning stoves are being used to heat hundreds of thousands of apartments across Athens. However, people are not just burning firewood – they are burning anything they can get their hands on – old furniture, bits of wood found in the trash and other unsuitable items. The smog levels have risen dangerously; on Dec 28 the Environment Ministry issued a press release stating that “extraordinarily high levels of suspended particles” have been detected by stations which monitor air pollution. The press release also urges citizens to use proper caution and not burn inappropriate materials – plastic, painted wood, wood treated with chemicals, etc.

Reports by the Environment Institute of the Athens Observatory state that the smog is made up of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other carcinogens. A study by Aristotle University in Thessaloniki reports that these new high levels of air pollution pose a threat to public health. Scientists caution that particles from air pollution “penetrate the lungs and affect blood circulation.”

When the night air started to get chilly in December, and the faint smell of burning wood could be detected in the air, at first I unsuspectingly thought it was rather nice – combined with the Christmas lights strung across the busy square, it sort of created a cozy holiday feeling. Every winter, when it starts to get cold, you can detect a very faint smell of burning fireplaces in many neighborhoods so at first I thought nothing of it. I imagined people were getting into the holiday spirit; families gathered around the fireplace, decorating their Christmas trees.

But each night the smell got stronger and stronger and one night when I stepped out onto the balcony to get something, I looked up at the curious sight before me: a white foggy mass hung just above the rooftops of all the buildings; my eyes got itchy; when I closed the balcony door, the strong smell of smoke was trapped in my living room. My naïve vision of people hanging their stockings above the chimney with care went up in flames. It dawned on me that people were primarily using fireplaces and/or wood-burning stoves as their main source of heat.

And then suddenly, “it” was in the news, everyone was talking about “it”…

“Did you see it last night?” – “Athens is covered in it” - “Because of it I can’t put my laundry out to dry, my clothes smell like sooty smoke” – “We are breathing it in” – “Eventually it will kill us”…

And then suddenly everyone stopped talking about it and, like every other new aspect of new Athens, we accepted it as the new normal. Drying racks are brought indoors, clothes and blankets are no longer aired outside on balconies; more and more cyclists and motorcyclists can be seen wearing those little white masks…

And life goes on in new Athens… each evening smoke signals continue to rise up into the night air but somehow I get the feeling that no one is receiving the message…

 

[photo by Yiannis Larios]

 

Yes they can, but can we?

Last night I stayed up as late as I could, waiting for early exit polls. I fell asleep to the sound of political pundits theorizing and making predictions…. I woke up to the news of Obama’s victory and I felt relief, hope, and when I heard Obama’s victory speech, I felt inspired:

I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

Fifty years ago, Americans began the fight for civil rights; the women’s movement began to gain momentum; early gay rights pioneers began to take action. In the decades that followed, society changed for the better. And today, we have a government, a president who respects and includes all people. Obama unifies. Obama inspires.

Today, here in Athens, we are still collapsing. Parliament has been in session all day. Tonight a key austerity vote is to take place. The measures must be passed before Greece can receive the next tranche of bailout money from the troika (EU, IMF, ECB). Lawmakers have been fiercely debating all day; strikes have affected the city and the nation all week – from air traffic controllers to garbage collection to public transport and banks… At one point tonight, outside of the parliament building protestors hurled Molotov cocktails while riot police sprayed a giant fire hose to keep people back; while inside the parliament building another kind of circus was taking place – lawmakers shouted at each other, stood up gesturing in disgust, walked in and out of the chamber, the sessions stopped, the sessions resumed... Proposals were made, proposals were retracted…

Here in Greece, we seem to have lost our way. We don’t know what we are fighting for anymore. Today I watched Obama speak words of real hope, words that aim to unite. And then I watched the debate in the Greek Parliament – extreme-right Golden Dawn MPs spoke. Socialists spoke. Pro-European MPs spoke. Communist MPs spoke. Anti-austerity supporters spoke. They spoke words that only inspire division and hopelessness.

Tonight, as I type this, I watch the parliament members voting… ναι; όχι; The protesters outside have gone home. And so I am up late again, waiting for the results of another vote. However, whatever the outcome of this vote will be, it will not inspire hope and change. The coming years in Greece will be filled with hardship, suffering, disparity, disunion. And I wonder if in my lifetime I will ever witness a Greek political leader express sentiments which echo Obama’s message of inclusion, acceptance, cooperation, promise and inspiration.

sins of the past

A few days ago I attended a book presentation at one of Athens’ largest bookstores. I took the bus downtown, getting off on Panepistimiou Ave, in front of the three architectural gems which make up the ‘Athens Trilogy’  - the Academy of Athens, the National Library, and the University of Athens. All three buildings were constructed in the late 1800s by Danish-born architects Theophilus Hansen (Academy and Library) and his brother Christian Hansen (University). I was late for the presentation and I rushed past these spectacular examples of neoclassical architecture. However, I paused in front of the Academy because something caught my eye. I slowed my pace to take in the spray-painted graffiti on the white marble edifice of the magnificent building. A marble statue of Socrates cast its stony gaze upon a mix of anti-capitalist sentiments, anti-austerity messages, and ominous warnings of what is to come…

I cross Sina St and the next block is occupied by a dark blue police bus parked at the curb. The riot police men are milling about on the sidewalk; their helmets are off, some are having a cigarette break, others are sitting on the steps of a building, their huge plastic shields on the ground propped up against their legs. They have become an ordinary part of new Athens’ urban landscape and no one seems to notice them anymore. The people walking past on the busy sidewalk hardly acknowledged their presence. Nevertheless, I can’t help but look at them every time I come across a group of them – they look like a cross between Robocop and a catcher on a baseball team – their huge black knee and shin guards strapped to their legs, big heavy boots on their feet, hard black vests strapped onto their chests. But what is most striking to me is their age – some of them look so young and I wonder if they are merely cadets or recent graduates from the police academy…

I get to the bookstore – a recent renovation of the space has created a funky modern atmosphere, with giant floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the busy downtown street. Passers-by can look right into the store, and a few armchairs near the windows give it a hip, urban-library feel. I take my place by the window, at the back of a small audience of about 12 people. At the front, an elderly man with white hair and beard (like Freud) was seated and speaking about his experiences growing up in Athens during WWII, when Greece was occupied by the Germans. I was the only ‘younger’ person in the audience, the others were mostly around the same age as the speaker and when I heard their comments I realized that a few of them must be the author’s childhood friends.

My parents also lived through the German and Italian occupation and then the civil war in their rural village in the Peloponnese. However, their memories were so painful that they never spoke to us about the atrocities they must have witnessed and experienced. My grandparents never spoke about ‘those years’ either. As a child, the only narration I remember hearing was from my father. I don’t recall how the subject came up, but he began to tell us about a group of people who were executed on the outskirts of his village. I don’t know the details of the event because my father couldn’t tell the entire story.  What I remember was his face suddenly distorting into an expression of grief before his eyes filled with tears and he began to sob and my mother quickly changed the subject and shooed us away, telling us to go outside and play. We never spoke about ‘those years’ again.

And so I found myself in the middle of this book presentation in Athens, which was more like an informal conversation in someone’s living room rather than a stark, formal lecture. An elderly woman wearing a flowered dress and holding onto a wooden cane with a shaky hand stood up to tell a story about how as children, she and her brother were made to stand at attention like little soldiers, and salute the Nazi flag. At one point during his talk, the soft-spoken author paused. He tried to compose himself but tears gathered in his eyes and his voice became hoarse. I sat there among my father’s generation, listening to their personal stories, tears falling from my eyes, as people outside on the sidewalk stopped to look through the huge plate glass window at this curious gathering – they would come a bit closer to look at the book display in the window, and perhaps once they realized what the subject was, they continued on, their interest fading.

Afterwards, I briefly spoke to the author and asked if he could sign a copy of his book for me. I asked him his opinion of the rise in extremist groups in Greece, the violence against immigrants, the ultra-nationalist sentiments… He commented that things will only get worse. There were others waiting to speak to him so I thanked him and slipped the book into its bag and left.

I walked through Syndagma Square and got on the tram. It was crowded but I managed to get a seat by the window. The tram rambled along and I mostly ignored the noisy din, lost in my own thoughts. Eventually the crowd thinned out and I was able to clearly overhear some of the conversations around me.  My ears pricked up when I heard a young voice say:

“Υeah, you guys lived well. You ate well (φάγατε καλά)” – making reference to the people enjoying ‘bloated’ state salaries, social benefits, corruption for the past 30 years.  “Yeah, you guys mostly ate everything, and there’s nothing left for us,” he added.

A young 20-something guy stood near the door holding onto the pole. A man with white hair sat near the door, his little grandson seated next to him. I didn’t catch the beginning of their conversation but the grandfather replied, “It’s not like that, not all of us were like that.” 

The young guy retorted, “all that matters is there is nothing for my generation and I am trying to find a job abroad, I have to leave this country in order to live...”

I figured the young guy would continue with a monologic tirade, so I turned my attention elsewhere. I took the book out of the bag to read the author’s inscription. I looked down at his thin, scrawled handwriting:

I hope you learn what your parents suffered.

I looked up as the grandfather exhaled. The little boy looked at the 20-something guy, who said “Yep, nothing left for my generation, but maybe his generation will fare better, otherwise he’ll have to leave too.”

The little boy looked at his grandfather, who asked him “Would you leave Greece, my boy?”

“No,” he replied softly.