Travelogue – Issue 6 | August 2009
An American in Athens, or In Ambelokipi, I Pretend I’m Greek
by Rebecca Newton
Oriste? Can she help me?
I smile. I speak. In that brief instant, I’m Greek. Dhen milao elinika. Milate anglika?The words I speak betray my ignorance: I don’t speak Greek. Do you speak English?
Ohi, she says, tipping back her head in a gesture that seems almost non-committal. It must have something to do with the warm climate. She motions for me to follow her.
We exit the shop and go next door to the snack bar. I can’t tell what the woman is doing, but I know she’s telling the shopkeeper about me, the American. Soon we’re joined by a friendly middle-aged man with frizzy hair and thick-lensed glasses. You are from America? he asks.
Nai, nai, I reply, tucking in my chin. It sounds negative, but it means yes. I’m an American, no denying it, but let me make my confession in Greek. Then I will proceed to explain my mission. In English. Very slowly, as if I am speaking my mother tongue as a second language. I tell him that I want to see the piece of fabric in the window.
We step back into the sunlight and then into the dark of the fabric store. The three of us. Do I want to see the black fabric or the brown? I motion toward the brown. The woman firing her questions at me in Greek. The man, interpreting. She wants to know, he says, she wants to know why are you are in Athens? The woman is undraping the mannequin in the front left window display. Do you like it? The question refers, I think, to Greece, but I’m being handed the fabric now.
Nai, nai. Para poli.Yes, yes. Very much. And I mean both the fabric and the place.
She says you should come back to Greece. Greece is good!
Poli kala, smiling. Very good.
You want it? waving at the fabric.
Parakalo, smiling. Please.
About the author
Rebecca Newton has been a writer from a very young age. Her earliest attempts with the pen appeared in her grandparents’ mailbox in the form of illegible scrawl on scrap paper. In recent times, her writing has endured the scrutiny of a more critical audience among the faculty at College of the Ozarks where she is finishing her B.A. in English.
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