« vacation | Main | civility in time of war »
March 31, 2003
following the war from Greece
We're back from a week in Greece. This is a civic/political blog, not a personal diary, so I will refrain from describing our many adventures. I can, however, file a report on how the current war looks from Greece. A few vignettes:- We're staying in the medieval walled village of Kastro, on the island of Siphnos—at the opposite side of the island from the port. It would seem to be a remote and isolated spot (especially during the off-season, with all ferries cancelled because of gale-force winds), far from the world and its troubles. But when we go upstairs to answer the phone in our landlords' apartment one morning, the whole family is weeping (quite literally) at al-Jazeera's coverage of the first marketplace bombing in Baghdad. The father clutches his chest and says, "My heart is black, black. Bush—this all for money."
- A repeated scene, replayed in every taverna, coffee shop, ferryboat lounge, and hotel lobby we enter. A TV is on in the corner showing the al-Jazeera feed from Baghdad with Greek commentary that we can't read, while Greeks, wreathed in cigarette smoke, sit watching and forming their opinions. These TV's are often our only source of news, so we peer at the Greek text for clues about what is happening one time zone to the east, conscious all the time that everyone knows we are Americans.
- Eating ice cream at the elegant cafe atop Lykavittos Hill, overlooking the Parthenon and hundreds of thousands of Greeks who are marching from Parliament toward the U.S. Embassy. We've picked this spot, in part, because we're responsible for two kids whom we want to keep away from any rioting, and we don't think that the marchers will possibly try to ascend Lykavittos. Chants, unintelligible to us, float up from the Athens streets.
And now we're back. Time always seems to slow while you travel, or expand like a fan with all the details of each day still clear in your mind. It seems forever since you left your usual life. And then you return to your routine, and the fan snaps closed. You feel that you were gone for just a dimly remembered day or two.
Posted by peterlevine at March 31, 2003 12:00 PM