If you stand at the north-west corner of Monastiraki Square in Central Athens and direct your gaze towards the south, you will be rewarded with an image worth a thousand words.
Far in the background, stands the holy rock of Acropolis, and over it, one of the most famous buildings in the world, the Parthenon. Visible from many parts of the city, it was dedicated to the temple of the virgin goddess of wisdom Athena in 5th c. BC, at the height of Athenian civilisation.
In the foreground, in the middle of the square is occupied by the Byzantine-style church of the Passing of our Lady (Koimisis tis Theotokou) and in the middle distance between the temple and the church is an Ottoman period mosque, now housing the Museum of Folklore Art.
These three religious influences can be seen all over the culture, the food, the music, and reflected in the tourist souvenirs sold around the area: polymer clay replicas of the Parthenon and gods of the ancient Greek pantheon, Byzantine icons of saints and the Holy Mary, antique silver jewellery and semi-precious stones similar to the ones sold in the Tehran bazaar.
All these under the cyan blue Attic sky, today dotted with fluffy clouds that remind me of Vatican frescoes.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Friday, 5 September 2008
A Hafez Augury
Athena, Yusef and I had pledged to give some money to the poor so that our trip would be sorted. On our last night in Tehran (Friday 22 August), Hossein’s niece and nephew came round to say goodbye, so I grabbed the chance to put the money pledge in an envelope and send it over to my sister-in-law to pass on to a relative and on to the poor.
As I scrubbed the cooker ready for our departure early the following morning, I was going over the adventure we had with this year’s Greek holiday. Then I remembered what happened the previous Thursday (14 August) when Hossein’s brothers and sisters and their families and we four took a picnic in a park in central Tehran by way of a goodbye.
I sat on a bench with two of my sisters-in-law. A beggar came by holding a small box with folded pieces of paper in the one hand and a parakeet on the other. Each paper carries a lyric poem, a ghazal, by Hafez, Iran’s most famous mystical poet, and an augury relating to the poem and presumably giving advice to the reader of the augury. Without warning, the deaf-and-dumb beggar put the parakeet on my hand and proferred the box to it; I was startled, felt some humidity on my hand, motioned to the man to take the bird away. It picked out an augury and the man indicated that I should take it.
I can’t remember the poem, but the augury said: a journey is on the cards, but it will be problematic; however, the problems will be solved by giving money to charity.
As I scrubbed the cooker ready for our departure early the following morning, I was going over the adventure we had with this year’s Greek holiday. Then I remembered what happened the previous Thursday (14 August) when Hossein’s brothers and sisters and their families and we four took a picnic in a park in central Tehran by way of a goodbye.
I sat on a bench with two of my sisters-in-law. A beggar came by holding a small box with folded pieces of paper in the one hand and a parakeet on the other. Each paper carries a lyric poem, a ghazal, by Hafez, Iran’s most famous mystical poet, and an augury relating to the poem and presumably giving advice to the reader of the augury. Without warning, the deaf-and-dumb beggar put the parakeet on my hand and proferred the box to it; I was startled, felt some humidity on my hand, motioned to the man to take the bird away. It picked out an augury and the man indicated that I should take it.
I can’t remember the poem, but the augury said: a journey is on the cards, but it will be problematic; however, the problems will be solved by giving money to charity.
Athens At Last
As I explained in the previous post, we weren’t able to travel on the flight to Istanbul on Monday 18 August as planned. The passport hitch was resolved the following day, but the bigger problem was finding free seats on any flight to Istanbul. This proved impossible, mainly because of huge overbooking on Turkey flights (Iranian nationals don’t require visas to travel to Turkey), so .eventually, we returned the Istanbul tickets and had new ones issued via Vienna, thanks to the unstinting efforts of a travel agent (“the friend of a friend”), who bent over backwards to issue the tickets on Friday 22 August.
We flew to Vienna on Saturday 23 August. We had a five hour stopover there, so we were able to take the CAT train to Vienna and walk until Stefansplatz, teeming with tourists, a festival of Turkish music attracting a fair crowd.
We got to my parents’ house in Athens at 1 am on Sunday morning and have generally been relaxing and doing nothing much since, apart from last Thursday when it was my daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and she was to choose the outing. A sign of the times that the shopping-starved youngster would choose visiting an American-style shopping mall, named rather predictably, The Mall in Athens, near Neratziotissa metro station last.
Athena found all the familiar shops she hadn’t seen since we left London: Zara, Bershka, Funny Fish, Carpisa, Tie Rack, M&S, Nine West, Monsoon, Accessorise. As we sat eating our KFC (the ultimate culinary blasphemy in the land of souvlaki), I looked around at the people and the place. The scene could have been anywhere, from New York to Dubai to Hong Kong. The Mall has been built to cater for Greeks in the same way that ancient Roman emperors provided bread and spectacles to keep the mob quiet. At the same time the traditional areas of Monastiraki and Plaka in the centre of Athens attract tourists in search of a Greece that is fast becoming a museum attraction
We flew to Vienna on Saturday 23 August. We had a five hour stopover there, so we were able to take the CAT train to Vienna and walk until Stefansplatz, teeming with tourists, a festival of Turkish music attracting a fair crowd.
We got to my parents’ house in Athens at 1 am on Sunday morning and have generally been relaxing and doing nothing much since, apart from last Thursday when it was my daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and she was to choose the outing. A sign of the times that the shopping-starved youngster would choose visiting an American-style shopping mall, named rather predictably, The Mall in Athens, near Neratziotissa metro station last.
Athena found all the familiar shops she hadn’t seen since we left London: Zara, Bershka, Funny Fish, Carpisa, Tie Rack, M&S, Nine West, Monsoon, Accessorise. As we sat eating our KFC (the ultimate culinary blasphemy in the land of souvlaki), I looked around at the people and the place. The scene could have been anywhere, from New York to Dubai to Hong Kong. The Mall has been built to cater for Greeks in the same way that ancient Roman emperors provided bread and spectacles to keep the mob quiet. At the same time the traditional areas of Monastiraki and Plaka in the centre of Athens attract tourists in search of a Greece that is fast becoming a museum attraction
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