Greek

Thing 57 that I like about living here: the frequency with which simply grocery shopping intersects with sheer unexpectedness.

Often it’s a newly available product. It may be grapes or it might be goat heads. Each is equally unexpected in its own way.  Other times it’s an unexpected event. The local crazy woman gets in a fight with the local crazy man and you duck behind a mound of potatoes to avoid being hit in the head by a flying rock. Some days it’s just the weather. A surprise thunderstorm, freak wildfire or sudden dust storm creeps up without warning. You just never know if your trip to the market is going to a regular ol’ stroll through outdoor aisles of cabbages and tomatoes or something brand new that you walk away from saying, “Well, I have never seen (smelled, tasted, felt, heard etc.) that before.”

A few days ago my meeting with unexpectedness came in the form of a person.

I first noticed him while I was assessing cucumbers at my favorite vegetable stall. He was on the far end of middle aged, short, heavy set and dark haired. I couldn’t see his face but his arms and profile were dark brown – much fairer than most people in the market and much darker than me – “normal colored” as Bryan and I like to say, using a somewhat un-academic term for the complexion of most of the world, as first introduced to us by a Central Asian friend. Someone could have easily convinced me that the man in the market was a citizen of anywhere from Morocco to Mexico and many places inbetween. I had never seen him before and he didn’t seem terribly familiar with the market, though he certainly wasn’t completely out of his element. As I walked away I heard him speaking to the vendor in flawless Arabic.

A few minutes later at the bread stand the stranger passed by again and this time we made eye contact. A Khawajia in a head scarf is of occasional interest to non-locals so I wasn’t terribly surprised when he waved and turned towards me. As he approached I made a quick scroll through my mental rolodex of categories of people in this area, his loud English greeting narrowing my quick search. UN affiliate? Flip-flops and a light button-down shirt that looked well hand-washed: Probably not. Businessman from the North? Gaudy jade crucifix dangling around his neck: Unlikely. Very, very lost tourist? (Insert new category into rolodex) Effortless navigation of language and goats in the road: No. As he shook my hand warmly and started into an overflow of friendly questions well-seasoned in an accent I couldn’t quite place, I was drawing a blank. Who was this guy and what was he doing out here?

After I satisfied his similar questions with a brief introduction, he returned the favor with gusto. “My name is Antonio. I am ethnically Greek,” he said proudly, as the accent I now recognized from a movie about a wedding clicked into place, “but” he continued with equal pride, “I am a national of this country!” My expression must have shown the mix of the confusion and interest I felt because for the next five minutes in the middle of the sandy road, he colorfully narrated a very condensed version of a fascinating story, pieces of which I had already heard from locals but had only chalked up to urban legend, (or in this case, rather rural legend actually).      

The man I met in the market is the son of a Greek merchant who moved to this tiny town in the 1960s, right after the British, Egyptians and Italians had all been politely asked to leave the broader area. Why he chose to move here, I still don’t know, but he opened up a shop, built a house, dug a well, raised a bunch of kids and eventually died and was buried just down the road. His kids grew up, moved a few miles away to the state capital, got married, built homes, opened up shops and are now raising kids and grandkids of their own. And on this particular day, I stood talking to one of those sons who had returned to the town of his birth to visit his father’s grave. Of all the people I might have imagined this man to be, it wasn’t a Greek North African coming back to visit his roots.

This man’s passport, memories, livelihood and family are all inextricably linked to this part of the world. I wonder how often he has been to Greece, if ever. Though he stands out, this country is his home like nowhere else in the world. But as he said goodbye he cradled my hand in both of his, smiled as greasily as his hair and said warmly, “I’ll be in town for a while. We should get together for a beer!” and I realized that, however North African we may turn out to be in the end, the influence of our fathers’ homelands doesn’t go away quickly. (Good naturedly inviting a married woman twenty years your junior to share a drink in an Islamic society just somehow seemed very…Greek at that moment.)   

I have seen this man in town a couple of times since that day though we haven’t spoken again. He is usually sitting with other shopkeepers and seems to be deep in conversation each time. I imagine they are talking about how this town has changed in the last fifty years and I would love to sit down and eavesdrop. But I just keep walking and think of the questions I would love to ask him if we ever do run into each other again. Like: What was it like to live here as a kid? Do you eat mussaka (sp?) or kisra at home, or both? Do your kids speak Greek? What do you think about the politics of this country? Does the well your father dug still have water in it?

What a fascinating world we live in. I love meeting people whose stories and experiences I would never have imagined up myself, people who don’t quite fit any category I’ve come up with yet. I love having to constantly add new entries to that mental rolodex of mine.