I got to Athens on a Thursday afternoon and declared that I had no idea what was here for me. That night, I had dinner at the top of a hill that featured a panoramic view of the city. I like to move my way through a new place by observing the dress among locals, or tasting the food — perceiving the dynamics between the two.
If you come to Athens looking for an endemic souvenir you can wear, you should probably look to the jewelry. One of the first things I noticed about the women and their look is that there is a lot of emphasis on what goes around the clothes. Wrists full of beads, layers of necklaces, and almost always a pinky ring. The wearable tell of its presence? At dinner on Friday night I sat with a group of stunning Athenian women who reminded me of my Turkish grandmothers with their subtle gesticulations and in the ways they told stories from the soft underbelly of their voices — like messages direct from this familiar, though infrequently-visited broadcasting center.
One such woman pulled a necklace off her person when I complimented it. You take it. They all seemed to hold their eyelids heavy over their eyes and somehow this quality felt so all-knowing to me in this tragic and gorgeous and deeply feminine way as if they had seen it all and could not be bothered to fling them so wide open anymore. These women are gentle matriarchs: on their toes but at ease.
The treacherous history of war and on the flip side, perseverance through it. The inequities one faces, the inflated sometimes undue pride to which one must bear witness, the respect she must erect from within and for herself if she is ever going to feel, going to have it. This is the thing they teach us about true depth: it cannot be cultivated without the presence of profound contraction and expansion on the same turf.
I wrote on Friday, after walking to a coffee shop about ten minutes away from my hotel that the people in Greece seem friendly. Somehow the condition of being in a foreign place feels more natural to me than belonging — to a landscape, to a neighborhood, to a social group, or category. I imagine this is true, to a degree, for everyone. By the afternoon on Friday, I had completely lost my voice, which, given the context, I began to think about philosophically: what is gained from this loss?
