September 14, 2003:

As I stepped from the landing of my pension I became swept-up in one of the feeder marches. Students from the national university, snaking through narrow streets banging pots, singing. Proud banners overhead, red and black with white writing in English and Greek. Thousands and thousands strong.

"May I march with you?", I asked, shouting to be heard.

Girl student smiles, black-haired, black-eyed. Lovely. Someone grabs me by the sleeve, pulling me into the crush. "Yes," says a male voice, accented. "You'll be safer with us."

I look at my blue Levi's and grin. I'm like a neon sign reading, "American."

We link arms to keep from falling. I'm too happy to join the singing, walking along with idiot smile, experiencing the smell of the people, deafened by their enormous, endless, boundless noise.

Without warning we emerge from shady side streets into blinding sunlight. Constitution Square. Half the city is here, ten times its population in ancient times. A million people.

This, I think, is what "democracy" means.

College students around a dark wooden table, upstairs in a restaurant called "The Stagecoach." Waiters in chaps. Painting of a reclining nude behind the bar. Howdy pard'ner.

You found it. Around the corner and down a block from the American embassy. A christmas present to your friends, homesick and hungry for hamburgers after three months of cucumber and feta salads. They have real french fries and Heinz ketchup on the tables. Happy, happy, happy.

Not you. Your unsmiling girlfriend owned up that morning. While you were in Sparta she slept with a sleazy bartender who worked a tacky plastic room she inexplicably chose to frequent. "There was an attraction," she said. And, "I hope I don't have a social disease."

Sad, sad, sad. There never were two sadder people in all the history of the world.

For weeks your journals are filled with fantasies of other women.

Girl student smiles. Black-haired, black-eyed, lovely. As the rally winds down you exchange looks, exchange hugs, exchange addresses. Back home in the pension your jealous girlfriend tears it up.