What Types Have You Met in Athens?

“Borders are business” is the provocative tagline for the Greek drama film “Amerika Square.” Greece submitted the film for Oscar consideration last year. The film uses its setting in a busy and diverse Athenian neighborhood to show how the economic and refugee crises bring together an enigmatic mix of personalities. There’s Tarek, a Syrian doctor who visits smugglers in the backroom of a discount clothing store and then loses his daughter at the airport. There’s Tereza, an African Greek-speaking nightclub worker on the run from her boss. Nakos lives with his pensioner parents and rides his moped, jobless and helmetless, plotting retribution against immigrants. Finally, Billy draws tattoos while he chain smokes. His face is scarred, he wears a jacket and he is seemingly wise. Everyone’s story passes through him, the Athenian.

All of these characters are types. Many people in Athens remind me of them. Tarek reminds me of a Syrian I met who tried and failed 11 times to smuggle himself to Holland to reunite with his teenage son. He made it the 12th time. Tereza reminds me of a dancer I met who fought as a freedom fighter in Zimbabwe before taking refuge in Greece. Her life story was turned into a movie. Nakos reminded me of a Greek-South African old widow I met at the outdoor market. She asked if I was Greek and proclaimed that the problem with the United States is too much diversity. Billy reminds me of a Greek teacher who dresses like a punk mermaid swimming around a volcano of tobacco smoke. She’s the one who told me to see the movie.

To these familiar faces I might add many more. There’s the leisure class wearing sunglasses and fashions from Milan, who enviably pass entire days at pristine cafés around the center. There are the black-clad anarchists who paste leaflets for protests, draw spectacular graffiti on the walls of abandoned neoclassical buildings, and party until dawn. There are the small fruit and flower vendors who cross themselves as they pass churches and don’t take a day off ever. There are the pensioners who know every face in the neighborhood from their daily walk to the village-style café to play dominoes and debate the end of times. Then there are the educated Greeks who leave their lives to move abroad to work and the educated foreigners who leave their work to move to Greece to live.

From up close, each one of these people is an individual. The relationship only starts when you get beyond the type. But sometimes, each person resembles another person. You can collect them as you walk through neighborhood squares, up narrow streets under garden balconies, past smoky bars, elegant cafés and busy souvlaki shops. Their essences come together like sensual perfume of every kind.

What types have you met in Athens?

Dove