There Is No Place That Does Not See You

TWould not, from all the borders of itself, / burst like a star: for here there is no place / that does not see you. You must change your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”

o begin, let me tell you about Ciné Paris, the outdoor theater; if we arrive early enough, we’ll get the good seats with the best view of the Acropolis. Or maybe about the Hill of the Muses and that bar in Petralona. Or maybe I should tell you about the handsome young guy in Exarcheia who looks like another backpacking college student, save for leaving a life behind in Damascus. The square is an urban limbo, but in the old taverna at the base of Strefi Hill, time has simply stopped. I might begin with the street artist I meet in a café across from the crumbling foundations of two once-beloved prime ministers, wondering why we want our politicians to be either gods or thieves, heroes or traitors, and why we think there is a difference. Or perhaps with my passing the closed-up bar where my father’s best friend played rembetiko, just around the corner from where I now live, and feeling hit by a sadness that comes from something far beyond this boarded-up space. Or moments after, when a well-dressed man asks me for money, or with the Afghan boy running through Omonia before getting thrown onto the sidewalk for being brown. We could stroll past those “houses of tolerance” in Metaxourgio, watch the incessant traffic in and out. Fathers and sons? The city’s most expensive, exquisite restaurants have sprung up in this neighborhood, and I imagine some disturbing connections I cannot shake. Nearby, at the detention center for unaccompanied minors, refugee children arrive and disappear within days. Or perhaps we’d meet in the square at Agia Eirinis, where the light and the life is softer, where beautiful people sip coffee and Aperol cocktails at the cafés, but where I climb the stairs to a rooftop party full of other journalists like me. We compare our stories, our broken hearts. Come with me to Skopje tomorrow, one says. The protests. I decline, but later wish I hadn’t. I forget I am now single. I like the talented, witty Spanish photographer, her large eyes, but am unsure about the