I was lazily looking outside the metro window at the city I only recognise so much, when I heard the familiar, slow, low, junkie voice. Through his over-dry mouth he was reciting his speech and the only thought I had was that all those years of books have paid off and I do not feel repulsed, only sad. I did not give him any change, neither did the two girls on my right, hair salon frequents. As soon as he left, and loud enough for everyone to hear, they huffed their relief: 'God, they don't even get it, do they! They come so close! Idiot!'.
I returned to my sightseeing. A few minutes later I was queuing at the Smyrna exhibition at the old Benaki Museum. The queue seemed to be a clone of the area itself: affluent, aged. The ticket was 5 euro. I was relieved as it was fine to me, but saddened I realised that now most of my friends there wouldn't be able to afford it. This queue obviously could.
For the next half hour I walked slowly between them looking at the blown up pictures of more clones, this time from the privileged classes of Smyrna pre 1922. Children dressed in immaculate navy clothes, the same costumes they'll be wearing later on, in the photos on the wall opposite, dirty, scared, climbing escape ships. Tragedy, as war always is, as any burnt city front is. The extremists and the dispossessed went amok, and the old city became the new, where my dear friend was later born.
"They are not unforgotten lands, they are unliberated" voiced a woman on late tv and I was nauseous.
What were they seeing?
"She was Mrs Theodoridou's grandmother" explained a lady in-between the shining of her old golden jewellery and her husband.
What do they see?
The curation is safe. A few captions, no commentary. No obvious juxtapositions, and a linear presentation of events apart from a few overlaps. The title of the exhibition is similarly ambiguous in its intentions. No dialectic. But also no hysteria. I was pleased. Is this a step forward for an extremely hurt, bled but also nationalistically indulgent state?
Sobriety.
But there is another Benaki museum in Athens. A few miles away, situated in the working class, deprived part of the city, home now to the new disposessed, those haunted by war, hate, poverty, criminals, killers, mothers, lost souls, workers, prostitutes and musicians in the gutter, from lands we cannot even name. You see them daily, collecting scrap metal from wherever inside stolen supermarket carts, walking them down the highways for miles and miles to sell them for who knows what.
What do they see?
Outside this other Benaki Museum, these people that will never make it inside, seem like clones too. Generalised, impersonal. Disgusting. Pests. Like the junkie in the metro. Like the guy that terrorised and mugged someone I love. Like the child in the navy clothes landing in Athens in 1922. Like them, landing every day in a port to annoy us.
What do they see?
Nothing.
The parasols are frozen in time. The teachers posing in late edwardian photo booths are just photograms. The straw hats keep reflecting the sweet Ionian light, they are never to see the knife on the throat. No. These houses that burn, the promenade in smoke, are there, safely away, frozen, still, in 1922.
"The documentary will start in 5 min" came the announcement. They all rushed not to miss the start.
They saw nothing.
The look of nostalgia in all their eyes and words as they walked out. "Where do you want to go back to!?" I wanted to ask her politely. "You do have enough and more". She would look back, her face old, wrinkled, tired, the face of a class that is dying. "Oh, my dear, back then. When we were all oblivious".
I would nod, and leave her in peace. I know what she means.
Because we all know, that when the pest shows up on our tv, car window, on the streets of the other Benaki,the sound of his scratching, scrap metal cart sings only one tune: your days of plenty could soon be over.
more info:
http://www.benaki.gr/index.asp?id=202010001&sid=1121&cat=0&lang=en
http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/smyrna-the-destruction-of-a-cosmopolitan-city-1900-1922/
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/inourtime/section1.html
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