We walk across the road in a crowd, silent to each other. Two
people who will never meet. So close, a pulse sensed for a second. The glance of a nervous curious eye. Then, nothing. Footsteps away, thinking we are
only ourselves.
A million people in Thessaloniki point to the sky for a
message that never comes to anyone. Just like everywhere else. The city's apartment horizon still has TV ariels, spindly shapes of skeleton trees twisted in disbelief.
Sun pierces the evening, daggered through my armour of cotton
and factor 50 cream. I squint to hold my
sight on the sea ahead. Breeze hits me
with memories of cut grass, bales of Welsh hay, splinters in the thumb. The day
John sliced his finger off at the joint and hid in a tree. I smile to the man looking at me, who wants to
offer things I don’t need. I feel his
pain in the tattered edge of a stained shirt, his cigarette always at the
butt, everything thinning. I think of him at his birth. The moment.
How much he might have been loved in that first innocent breath, for
this lost being.
I am watched by sale signs, mannequins, reflections of
wealth. In the middle of an economic meltdown,
chocolate sculptures are kept perfectly chilled under glass behind shopfronts. People purchase objects
with bits of paper, plastic cards, things of value drawn from pockets and
purses like water from a well. The sound
of possession fills the evening like every city in the world, never reaching its
bottom, perpetually falling.
We head into the twilight zone of Dendroporamos. 'A second Africa,' it has been called. Broken buildings, suspicious glances, a
simmering sense of fear. At the project
for young people, we are welcomed inside with a Priest’s affection. His radiant smile is a lighthouse. There are generous
hugs, open hearts, so much crammed in so little space, chaotic, everything
beautifully real. Volunteers keep arriving with bags of food, spotlights for the garden. Inside the house, a group of young people click through pictures on Facebook, fascinated by its imagery. I am kissed like a
returning son, for doing nothing but being here. The kids offer me a seat on
the bench to share their meal. They tell stories, translated from Roma into Greek
into English, until we all laugh at the same mystery.
Then we return, driving past the ugly graffetti that says 'gypsy’,
back to the bars and neons that imprison and free our souls in equal measures. This place, that displaces
us from who we are.
I sleep under the heartbeat of aircon and dream of
stars twinkling from the window. In a city whose history has connected so many religions under the same sky for thousands of years, the one thing that remains is our faith for tomorrow. How strong it feels when we touch eachother.