ATHENSPLUS • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2009
OPINION
Milestones
Footnotes +
BY NIKOS KONSTANDARAS
Lemony Snicket’s overblown 13-book
saga of sorrow (from which we bor-
row today’s title) begins with a fire,
in which the parents of the Baudelaire
siblings are burned to death, aban-
doning the children to the vagaries of
outrageous fortune. It is perhaps no
coincidence that the series of unfor-
tunate events that befell this gov-
ernment – and Greece – began with
the flames that burned across the
country’s forests in the summer of
2007. The trail of destruction has
now reached the very heart of our cap-
ital city and our politics.
The fires of 2007 were partly the re-
sult of ill fortune and circumstance,
as no one can blame the govern-
ment or the state machinery for the
very hot summer and powerful winds.
But the lack of organization at every
level that contributed to the death and
destruction can be blamed on the
slackness of civil defense services,
which were overwhelmed by a situ-
ation they should have anticipated.
Interestingly, the New Democracy
government held early elections just
a month after the fires and still man-
aged to retain power, albeit with a ma-
jority of just two seats in Parliament.
This would have appeared to prove
that the people approved of a policy
centered on a determination to let
sleeping dogs lie – in other words, to
do nothing to tackle the country’s
problems, lest that raise an angry re-
BY SOULTANA KALLIGAS
A weekday in February. Location: Rid-
ing the Kifissia-Piraeus train, on the
way to work. The scene: Two men are
sitting across from me, speaking low
in Arabic, waving their hands as if ar-
guing. One has a tattoo of three dots
in the shape of a triangle between his
index finger and thumb, something I
know as an indication of some kind of
underground, anti-authoritarian ac-
tivity. He doesn’t care to hide the fact
that he’s staring at me and, conse-
quently, I try to avoid eye contact. De-
spite the safety generally felt on the
metro, the Kifissia-Piraeus green line
is a whole different story.
I turn my attention to the people
around us; a young man in a suit is sit-
ting by the other window. We briefly
look at each other and I begin to day-
dream about a conversation between
us. The men across from me pause and
begin talking again. I realize they are
not arguing; it’s merely their style of
A series of unfortunate events
Oblivious
The government did nothing to
prepare for the storm, until our
problems became so great that
its only policy was to say that
things were so bad there was
nothing much to be done
Rough sketches of Athens
conversing. When we stop at Omonia,
many board the train and soon there
are no vacant seats for an elderly
woman who got on too late. No one
gets up. Seeing this, I start to stand so
she can have my seat. Mr Tattoo, re-
alizing what is happening, motions to
me to stay put, says in broken English,
“Please, sit, sit,” and quickly vacates
his seat for the lady. Mr Suit is con-
veniently looking out the window.
Soon, we arrive at Monastiraki and the
chivalrous marked stranger and his
friend get off the train. Mr Tattoo does-
n’t turn back and I am left to con-
template what just happened.
A hot summer day. Location: Under a
bridge between two big office build-
ings. The scene: I’m on my way to work
and, as usual, I must walk under a dark
bridge and through the dirt parking
lot next to it. The office, a haven of co-
workers and office supplies and pre-
dictable sounds, is just a few meters
away. Alert, I lower my head and pick
action from any interest groups. This
policy was aided by the fact that the
main opposition party, PASOK, was
incapable of capitalizing on the gov-
ernment’s inadequacies. Instead, wor-
ried about a resurgent left wing, es-
pecially the neo-populist Coalition of
the Radical Left (SYRIZA) under Alex-
is Tsipras, PASOK veered (vainly) to the
left. No real left-wingers, however,
would succumb to a PASOK charm of-
fensive; at the same time, this policy
FREEZE FRAME
up the pace.
The imagined sense of danger is
abruptly shattered by the sound of mu-
sic. Parked in the lot by the bridge, tak-
ing a break from whatever they were
doing all morning, a group of Roma,
BY ILIAS MAKRIS
alienated voters of the center, leaving
them in New Democracy’s embrace.
So, the government was governing
not because it had a policy but by de-
fault – and by reacting belatedly to
whatever circumstances arose. In
that way, as the ill winds of a global
recession began to reach us from
across the Atlantic, the government
seemed oblivious to the storm, doing
nothing to prepare for it, until our
problems became so great that its on-
the children clothed only from the
waist up, dance to the beat of reg-
gaeton playing on the cassette deck in
one of their cars. Jealousy pinches me.
A weekday in September. Location: A
ly policy was to say that things were
so bad there was nothing much to be
done.
As the economy slowed, in De-
cember we witnessed a social melt-
down as Greece’s youth took to the
streets in angry protest at a police of-
ficer’s fatal shooting of a 15-year-old
boy. Such unfortunate incidents can
happen anywhere, but here the same
fecklessness was to blame: The an-
archy that had been allowed to grip
the Exarchia district over the years had
seduced everyone into thinking that
the routine clashes between youths
and police could remain bloodless for-
ever. The other great fault of the gov-
ernment was that, after the shooting,
it declared that the police would be “on
the defensive.” And so the center of
Athens was burned as the police
watched. The genuine outrage at the
schoolboy’s death and the obvious
weakness of the state prompted a
resurgence of the nearly dormant ur-
ban guerrilla myth, prompting ever-
increasing attacks. This will have
dire consequences if it cannot be
stopped soon.
Against this dramatic backdrop, the
reprise of the escape of Vassilis Palaio-
costas and Alket Rizai by helicopter
from Korydallos Prison last Sunday –
exactly as they had done in 2006 – was
welcome relief, giving everyone an op-
portunity to enjoy a good laugh at the
expense of a hapless government so
used to doing nothing that it cannot
even learn from its mistakes. Laugh-
ter is good, even when the ship is adrift
on dangerous waters and the story is
not over. But the mirth will pass and
the danger will remain.
back neighborhood of Patissia. The
scene: As I get ready for work, and
through the usual shrieks of the chil-
dren at a day-care center next door, the
sound of an accordion rises from the
street and reaches my ears.
Looking from my balcony, I see an old
man walking slowly down the street,
no rush at all, playing this instrument
superbly, as if serenading a lover
nearby. He isn’t playing the preferred
tunes of most street musicians; rather,
he’s going on with pieces that he
seems to enjoy himself. Workers on
the job in the apartment across the
way come out to hear him too, though
timidly, pretending to take care of
some paint on the railing. The man
soon announces his sad story and asks
for money. The magic is gone and the
children’s yelling returns to the fore-
ground.
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