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Mind you, the Athens I knew as a child can no longer be glimpsed. A few smells, the narrow streets of Plaka at dawn, the tightly closed shutters of a Kolonaki apartment building are reminders of the once most romantic small capital of Europe. The men who used to sit around the Kolonaki square sipping endless cups of coffee and eyeing the women, dandies, flâneurs, Lotharios are mostly gone, replaced by entrepreneurs talking shop. The old bunch cultivated a certain melancholy, self-pity of sorts, sentimental and nostalgic. They dressed impeccably, and those who couldn’t afford it nevertheless wrapped a silk handkerchief around their necks and played it like Bohemians. It was mostly an act, and a beautiful one. It has been replaced by a harshness which suits cheap Italians but not the Greeks, once upon a time a polite and courteous people. Most of the beautiful 19th-century private houses have been torn down and replaced by commercial centres, although a few wonderful public buildings such as the original University, the Academy and the Public Library remain.
The myth of Athenian perfection, of course, is what attracts one to the city. Was Athens ever perfect? That I do not know for sure, but I like to think that it was. Orators said that it was, so visitors have to put up with the myth versus reality. All I have are my memories of beautiful, cool interiors of grand apartment houses lining the avenues across the royal gardens. Small underground tavernas staying open during the occupation and the Germans turning a blind eye. Beautiful, sexy women walking daily by my house most likely going for an assignation, smiling at me at times but mostly ignoring me. Ah, I wonder now if they were as beautiful as they seemed to me then, in 1945, but I will never know.
Let’s face it, Athens had its day long ago and cannot be expected to rise to such heights again. Had Ancient Athens been a bit less arrogant, she might have survived for longer, but it was 1453 and all that which sealed our fate for ever. Athens was already a nonentity by the time Constantinople fell to the Turks. We were once the beacon of civilisation, now we copy the worst of the modernist plague and manage to transform it to an even uglier plane. I am, of course, talking about the cities, Athens, Salonika, Patras and so on. The young leave beautiful islands and villages to go and live among the ugliness of the cities. They call it progress and consider themselves more sophisticated for doing so. Which brings me to a horrible incident which took place last week in the modern Sodom and Gomorrah, the wind-swept island of Mykonos, known as a gay haven full of drugs, sex and disgusting locals drunk on profits.
I have not visited the place in years beause of the rude locals, the outrageous antics of the gays, and because of the overcrowding. There is no decent anchorage because of local resistance. (They use their own caiques to transport tourists to and fro, and anchorages tend to draw private boats.) The wind blows non-stop, the once beautiful island is now dirty, lined with cheap bars and cheaper boutiques, and the nightclubs resemble those of Beirut during the civil war. Last week four so-called bouncers beat a young Australian to death with an iron bar outside the club Tropicana, and, after an investigation, three of the Greeks walked out on bail, while the main culprit was charged with manslaughter.
The father of the victim, who flew over from Australia, thanked the Greek people for their kindness, donated his son’s organs — and four transplants went ahead successfully, thanks to his donation — and then burst into tears. Killing a defenceless 20-year-old by bashing him over the head with an iron bar, four against one who was not resisting, takes a sub-human kind of perversity, one easily found among the local scum of Mykonian nightclub entrepreneurs. The local scum not only serves drinks fortified with industrial-grade alcohol, they also control the police who turn a blind eye to their excesses. The place is dreadful beyond belief, yet I have friends who own large houses there and love the place as if it were Capri c.1920. The authorities should shut the Tropicana down, throw the book at the four thugs — who are already trying to blacken the victim’s name — and enforce the law by replacing the crooked cops. But it’s the Mykonians themselves who have become the worst people of Greece, managing to replace those from Spetsai, but that’s another story altogether.
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