I feel that I have been robbed, somehow, of life.
Lucy Fisher is waiting for me. Afra and Diomande haven’t yet finished. Seeing my face, she goes to the vending machine and returns with a warm cup of tea.
‘How did it go?’ she asks.
I don’t reply. I cannot speak.
‘Please,’ she says, ‘don’t lose hope. That’s the thing.’ There is a tone of resignation in her voice and she is pulling at the strand of hair. ‘This is what I always tell people, you see. Never, never, never lose
was fading, dwindling like the fire in the night. I needed to find a way out. So the next day I ventured out of the park. I asked passers-by for directions to Victoria Square. The square was cluttered with people and litter, those who had nowhere else to go sat on benches beneath the trees and around the statues. I recognised a few faces from the park, some of the drug dealers hanging around by the station or outside the cafés beneath the canopies on the square. There were stray cats everywhere, scavenging in the bins. A dog lay on his side on the concrete with his paws outstretched; it was hard to tell if he was dead or alive. I remembered the wild dogs of Istanbul and standing on Taksim Square with some hope in my heart. Hope existed then in the unknowability of the future. Istanbul felt like a place of waiting, but Athens was a place of stagnant resignation, and Angeliki’s words played on my mind: ‘This is the place where people die slowly, inside. One by one, people die.’
This was the city of recurring dreams, with no way of waking up: a string of nightmares.
A man held up a bunch of worry beads. ‘Twenty euro,’ he was saying, ‘very beautiful stone.’ His voice was full of desperation and grievance, the sentence sounding like a demand, but there was a manic smile on his face.
‘Do I look like I have twenty euros?’ I said, and turned away from him.
I looked up at the buildings that lined the square and the streets running off it. There were balconies with canopies and a feeling that a better life had once existed here; in their shabbiness and fading beauty they told a story of abandonment. There was graffiti on the walls, angry slogans that I couldn’t understand, and coffee shops, and a flower stall and book stall, and people trying to sell tissues or pens or SIM cards. These people were like flies buzzing around the entrance of the Metro, following people as they stepped off the escalators.
The man with the worry beads was still standing beside me, the same infuriating smile on his face.
‘Fifteen euro,’ he tried again. ‘Very beautiful stone.’ The colours caught the light. Marble and amber and wood and coral and mother-of-pearl. I remembered the prayer beads in the souq in Aleppo. The man pushed them closer to my face.
‘Twelve euro,’ he said, ‘very beautiful!’
I pushed them away violently with the back of my hand, and I saw that the man had become frightened. He stepped back, lowering the beads.
I showed him both my palms. ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ The man nodded and turned to leave and I stopped him.
‘Can you tell me where I can find Elpida Street?’
‘Elpida?’
I nodded.
‘Zitas Elpida?’ The man lowered his face and mumbled something in Greek. Then he said, ‘Are you asking for hope? Elpida mean hope. No hope here.’ There was sadness in his eyes now, but then he chuckled to himself, ‘El-pi-dos,’ he said slowly, emphasising my mistake. ‘Elpidos Street.’ He signalled to the right, to a street just off the square, and he continued along his way, worry beads held up like a prize, the smile on his face.
I crossed the square and turned onto a tree-lined street. At the end of this street was a long queue of refugees outside a building with glass doors. There were prams and wheelchairs and children, and locals weaving through the chaos with their dogs. The doors opened and some refugees came out holding bags, while some others went in. On the corner there was a crowd, some standing, others sitting on the steps outside another set of glass doors. People were greeting one another and talking among themselves. As soon as they saw their friends the children ran into the street to play. The sign on the entrance said: The Hope Centre. And there was something about all this that made