There are cities which have the power to awaken all your
senses, emotions, and past times. In exceptional cases like this, referring to a
Mediterranean city as ‘sensual’ becomes forgivable, especially if the author is
not a white old man from Western Europe or North America. Plus, I have sensitive
detectors against orientalism and sexism.
Athens was a very evocative and sensual city. I don’t
necessarily mean sensual in the erotic denotation. The everyday life in the
city, even a short walk around Syntagma, provokes five senses, no, indeed the
walk tires my senses out on top of provocation: Athens is loud and unruly; it
releases lots of pleasant or disagreeable smells and colors (orange and green pouring
out of citrus trees as natural ones, innumerable tones of spray paint) and
switches moods from one instant to another: Sad or grumpy faces of people on
the streets were noticeable but if you walk by the taverns or cafes, you can hear
boisterous laughers enjoying themselves. Feel free to sit and relax in cafes
and restaurants if you can survive through heaps of cigarette smoke. The
personal space becomes non-existent during rush hours at public transport. People
seem okay with public display of affection.
Synesthesia, which is considered a brain disorder by medical
doctors, happens naturally when I think of my neighborhood in Athens. It is the
figure of speech where one sense is described by using words that would
describe a different sense such as “I felt the clove-colored warmth on my skin caused
by the varied scents coming from the patisserie.” Add the roasted sesame seeds
and cinnamon to it! As a side note, I heard political graffities very
informally talking to public trash containers whose mouths hardly shut up, frequently
swearing too.
The day I arrived in the city marked some fatal floods. When I
woke up, however, the sky was blue and people were ready for the farmers’
market. Fruits, cheap clothes, olives in 15 shades of gray, black, and green,
vegetables… Vendors who would begin to barbecue at 10 am in the morning or to press
fresh pomegranate juice on the spot. The interaction between the sellers and
the customers, stallholders among each other, and the neighbors who would run
into each other was lively, their words and gestures are dramatically expressed,
and thus reminding me of Turkey. Like all foreign women, I was exposed to the
limited and heavily accented words of so called ‘compliments’ in English by the
vendors, and all I could do is to smile and pass the money.
How unfair yet inevitable are the comparisons. Considering I
flew to Athens from the cool “Pacific Northwest” made the contrast even
starker. My host in Seattle was an Athenian with adjustment issues to the
‘hipster’ culture and the gray sky. I was in Athens temporarily and for work so
instead of getting frustrated by certain things, especially regarding
appointments, I treated it like an exciting affair with a new city. For long term
and career plans I don’t mind the cooler direction, such as the Pacific
Northwest or the hipster Bay Area. However, building strong friendships,
spontaneous socializing, and experiencing generosity of the locals can indeed
be a different story, considering the extent of individualism in North America.
I couldn’t decide whether my affinity to the people and surroundings in Athens because
of my background was an advantage. Clearly, what made my Californian friend
excited was not exciting for me but simply nostalgic. Not so different
than my U.S.-based Greek landlady who told me to enjoy the real yogurt and
dried figs while in Greece. In Athens, I surprised myself by feeling and acting
more Californian than I have ever imagined, but it was easy to camouflage.
Memorable
Personalities and Life Stories over Coffee and Meals
I had the great fortune of meeting people from very different
backgrounds: a Syrian-Greek anarchist activist who is adored by many and
disliked by others, an Australian-British journalist-academic who just
purchased her first home and is learning Greek while volunteering among
refugees, a Canadian-Afghan academic from Oregon who sat in my class and wrote
a beautiful follow-up e-mail, a 16 year-old Turkish-speaking girl from Baku who
told me how homesick she was, a kick-ass Syrian bisexual woman who was homeless
for six months in Athens, a Greek architect-photographer who is in love with
ghosts of olives groves and is surely a soul-sister from another life, a Greek
feminist activist who loved provoking waiters for years by ordering “Turkish” coffee,
a devout Muslim lawyer from Aleppo who was laughing hard while telling me about
her Portuguese girlfriends’ disclosing their sexual orientation to her, a
Turkoman family from Iraq whose illiterate mother disclosed several paranormal
activities in an Islamic context, a quiet British yoga instructor in a
sad-looking building where the Palestinian flag was hung and all women covered
their hair, a Syrian engineer whose surgeon mother taught him how to take care
of the wounded when the war began, a cynical young Albanian who arrived 20
years ago and still waiting for his Greek passport, a Greek hyper-energetic supreme
court lawyer who dedicated herself to peace among the youth and flamenco, a spiritual
Turkish artist whose love for a Greek academic brought her to the city some 30
years ago, a recent self-exile academic from Turkey with an impressive career
who is busy with decorating his new home on a Greek island, a Greek
photographer [once-engineer] who went ahead to document arresting scenes of Kobani
in Syria, an 8-year-old skinny boy who cried each time he said goodbye to me, a
Turkish PhD student [married to a Greek] who brought my lost voice back during a
workshop with honey and warm water, a big black African woman [a former soldier]
with soulful eyes who offers knitting and sewing courses to refugee women, an
old Iranian man who volunteers in City Plaza [a squat], who apologized for
“torturing me” with strict entry rules, an 80-year-old retired Greek lawyer
whose parents were from a town in the Black Sea (Turkey), an Iranian-born Baha’i
woman artist-peacemaker with a British accent and an Armenian last name whose
adopted Afghan daughter looks just like me, a Greek geological engineer with a
gourmet’s skills of cooking and love of hiking, a British doctor who spends her
annual leave by volunteering in the squats while her husband is preparing for
their Christmas reunion at home, a polyglot Greek Freudian therapist who
insisted on speaking Turkish with me and shared her impressions of the latest
Orhan Pamuk novel…. And of her frequent visits to Istanbul despite her friends’
objections.
And many more…
Where to
begin next?
Musings on the places (Cafes, restaurants, private homes,
office/NGO spaces, squats, and the Royal or National Garden/ Εθνικός Κήπος)
To be continued…
