A portrait of democracy...

Athens is the birthplace of democracy.  The first court case is recounted in ancient tragedy, The Oresteia.  Two weeks ago we went to the Acropolis where we saw the theatre that held some of the first democratic voting sessions (a wee bit different from the structure of the democratic system, but nonetheless democracy at its heart).  And while we ventured to the island of Mykonos for a fun weekend, Grecians trekked to the polls to participate in this democracy in another election.

But this post isn’t about the election.  (I haven’t researched enough about it and can’t pretend to know enough to talk intelligently about it; though learning more about the cultural, social, and political climate here is definitely a goal for this year abroad).  Rather, this post has to do with a moment that happened this past week, a little episode of democracy I’d like to attempt to repaint for you here.

On Wednesday, a few of us ventured into Chalandri area for the evening and wound up at a little restaurant located on one side of the square of the main plateia for dinner.  And, oh, did we have an eventful dinner.  Really, more like dinner and a show. 

Earlier that evening, as we picked our way across broken/jagged/arched/missing cement cobblestones, really just a few feet away from the traffic whizzing by, broken up by a pole here, a tree there—and there—and there and there—and frequently joined by a motorbike or even a car, we talked about how the term “sidewalks” was a pretty loose, even generous, term here.  They are, indeed, a bit treacherous—which is why you spend so much time looking at your feet you sometimes forget to look up and enjoy the sights around you.  And they are not pedestrian exclusive, like you might expect a sidewalk to be.  So when you think about Greek “sidewalks”, you just kind of have to laugh at the ways in which they defy the general expectations the name sidewalk implies.

But anyway, as we were sitting eating the bread the waitress brought out, this car drives by on the sidewalk—literally inches from our table.  I’m not kidding you; there was a real street like 50-75 feet away from where we were sitting, but this car decided he’d rather use the sidewalk instead.  Maybe he had a good reason, maybe he made a mistake and by the time he realized he was on the sidewalk figured he was in this deep already and just might as well continue—I don’t know.

But right behind us, there was an old man sitting more directly in the sidewalk/driver’s path at the next café over.  And he didn’t care whether or not the man driving the car had a good reason for driving on the sidewalk.  This man, dressed in a purple shirt, sporting a graying beard and kind of a Santa-Clause-esque bowl-full-of-jelly belly, sitting in a chair outside the café, on the sidewalk in the path of the car, stands up and starts yelling at the old man driving.  Now, whatever he was yelling was all Greek to us, but we didn’t need to know the language to understand the gist of his rant.  His tone and gesticulations spoke volumes. The two conflicting men argued with each other for a while, exchanging words and frustrations and I’m sure even a few curses back and forth.  And then the driver revs his engine and inches closer to the guy in the chair, as if he’s just going to run him over, nudge him out of the way so that he can continue on his self-designated “road”.  Well, Mr. Purple Shirt does not like that one bit, and he stands up, waving his finger at the man in the car, sticking his head in the window, shouting more Greek, very obviously indignant and not pleased and just plain bull mad.  His face is reddening, deepening in hue in conjunction with his deepening anger.  

Meanwhile our eyes, as well as the eyes of all of the other dining patrons at both cafes, are glued to this duo.  Fixed in fascination at the brewing confrontation.  A skateboarding gang of junior/senior high school likewise gathers to gawk.  Then the man in the car gets steps out, rounds the back of ithe car, comes at the man standing in his way, and starts giving him what for.  This man, who was formerly in the car, is dressed in a faded blue shirt with thin-ish white stripes separating the blocks of graying blue and he has his khaki pants pulled up past the point where his belly button would be; he has thinning, balding white hair and is considerably shorter than the other man.  They continue to go at it for a while longer and let me tell you they make quite a pair, almost polar opposites in appearance as well as in opinions of the purpose of that "sidewalk".  And now in the midst of their argument, they come time face to face, and then the man in the purple shirt moves his chair and sits directly in front of the car, making his metaphorical stand even clearer and more effectively blocking the car’s path.

They’re still going at it and we and everyone else keep watching, hardly believing this is happening.  Mr. Purple Shirt stands up, and now this is where it gets interesting.  This is where we begin to see Grecian democracy at its finest.  For the two men, still arguing, now shift slightly, angling their bodies toward the diners in the restaurant.  And they are shouting and gesturing and going back and forth and back and forth. 

It is almost as if they are presenting their cases to a jury of their peers, going back and forth, building their defenses, giving closing arguments and the like, as if the dining jury will hold a vote, hearing out both sides before casting their napkin ballots with a “ne” or “oxi” (yes or no), choosing who is in the right, deciding if the man in the car can go through or must back up and return from whence he came, and you know, find a proper road or something. 

But as the two men, the defendant and the plaintiff (I don’t know enough about the court system or what exactly they were saying to properly designate these men by the proper title, but that’s besides the point)—as these two feuding men finished presenting their cases, this old woman, presumably the owner of the restaurant at which this dispute was taking place, walks out: Athena at the trial of Orestes in the Orestia, if you will.  She talks to them, shouts in her own two cents, and before you know it, Mr. Hiked-up Pants (the driver) is back in his car and the Mr. Purple Shirt is reluctantly and none too quietly stepping aside so the car can pull through.

But he doesn’t let him go so easily, throwing in the last words with a vehement tone as the car drove away.  Perhaps, just as in the Oresteia, our restaurant-owning Athena ultimately chose the path that would bring about the most peace and set a precedent that the city (or that block, anyway) would not give in to the Furies’ emotional vindictiveness and thirst for justice—whether it’s over the spilling of a mother’s blood or the indignation of moving aside for a silly old man in his car, just driving down the sidewalk at dinner hour.  No big deal.  But she did leave Mr. Purple Shirt a bit of honor to appease him.  He was a local celebrity following that little scene.  People kept coming up to him afterward and talking to him about it, praising his efforts and for standing up to the man, or the car, as it were. 

But anyway.  That was our eventful dinner.  That was a little portrait of democracy at work…