It's been a while since I have written in my blog and I'm so happy to finally be able to log in. I forgot my password to my original blog called EvasArt and my friend was able to transfer the saved information into this one.
I'd like to write about my Syrian memories. The ten years I spent living in a country and culture that I eventually embraced.
GREECE
1984- November
A handsome dark haired man approached my mother and I on Pandrossou Street in Athens. We were looking in the window of a jewellery store and a voice behind me asked something in a foreign language. I turned around and was so surprised to see a well dressed, smooth talking, handsome man. He was actually talking to me in Russian. When I answered him in English, he replied in English, with an invitation to visit his store. He offered me gold and furs at a discount price. I felt altogether, shy, flattered and distrustful, if that is emotionally possible. I told him I didn't wear gold and I wouldn't wear the fur of an animal.
I wasn't interested in his store and I was tired. My mother and I had been backpacking around Europe and visiting as many theatre companies as we could afford to see.
He was selling furs and jewels to wealthy tourists and I couldn't understand why he was interested in a slightly chubby, jeans clad foreigner carrying a packpack. I refused his offer to go for a coffee, but little did I know that a Judas was in my midst, called Mother and she accepted.
She never let me forget that I wouldn't go to the top of the Eiffel Tower when we visited Paris,(I suffered from a fear of heights) and that I also refused to go to the Folies Bergere. I actually had no other choice as I was suffering with a terrible flu and my only interest for 5 days in Paris was my bed. She wouldn't venture anywhere on her own except to walk around the block that our hotel was situated on.
A warm shower was very welcomed before our coffee date, as we had just travelled by ship from Brindisi in Italy to Patras in Greece and then by train to Athens. My story begins on the night I had coffee with my Arabic Elvis ( he looked like a smaller, darker version of Elvis Presley.)

page 1