Was up at 9:30, and went downstairs for breakfast. I then returned to my room and worked on the notebook, making notes among other things. At around 12:00 I asked from the access to Spithas and the carton box, in the basement. In about one hour Spithas was neatly placed in his carton box. Fortunately, I was able to unscrew the pedals w/ no incident. As I don’t carry the right tools w/ me this gives me the most trouble. I also crammed in the space that was left all my other stuff (not a lot, as you may imagine.) I only kept the necessities that could fit in my knapsack and fanny pack. Back to my room, rested for a while and around 14:00 I headed out to grab a bite. A very slow day, so far.
I went out and followed the by now usual way to the souvlaki store. It was closed, the one further down was also closed, the dry nuts place was also closed. Everything was closed. I started wondering why and my assumption was that it might be a local holiday that I was not aware of. But still some of these stores are always open, especially on holidays. I decided to walk to last night’s publinet. It was closed. And then it became clear why. A little further down I saw lots of soldiers and in the opposite direction riot police. Everybody was bracing for trouble. Store owners know that they are the usual victims, so the close their stores “to celebrate” the occasion.
Take the good and the bad together. This would be a good opportunity for some good shots. Soon as I took my camera out a man that was just a notch above a derelict walked up to me and w/ a lot of authority told me “put the camera away, no pictures.” Such authoritative bums must be readily obeyed, so I put it away and walked. I thought that if I walked to the far away internet place of before yesterday I would be out the trouble range and it might be open. Wrong again. Actually, as I approached that place the crowd of youths was getting thicker. Unwittingly I was heading for the heart of the trouble. Still those things are exiting and since I saw other people filming w/ their cell phones, I took a few good shots myself of youths throwing stones, running away and the fumes of tear gas. Doing the wise thing, like everybody else, I started walking away, all the time looking for a place to buy food. You see hunger may cause riots, but riots do tame hunger. Did not see anything open and started tracing my path back to the hotel. Unwittingly I was holding the camera in my hand and also tried, or rather did take a couple of pictures of soldiers at the place where I was told off the first time. The only people around looked very common and harmless. One of these very common looking people walked up to me an almost grabbed the camera from my hand. He said he was police and soon all the other common people joined him. He demanded to see the pictures I had taken. I tried to delay him as much as possible but in reality I had no choice and reluctantly I turned the camera on and started showing him the pictures. The good thing in situations like this one I try to be discreet and I do not aim the camera in a visible way, I just hold it down and secretly aim at the object and take several pictures. As you may imagine, most of the photos taken in this fashion ar of things that I did not have in mind. If I take a sufficient number of pictures, digital technology makes that possible, some of them are of the object I want. So the first couple of pictures I showed him were pictures of trees. “Show me the other pictures” the man said, “not these.” A younger man approached and told me that I would have “suprimer” (delete) the pictures. I told him I did not understand what suprimer but in the end, it goes w/o saying, in his presence I erased all the pictures on the card. Too bad, I was doing all for you so that you could see a developing riot. The younger man asked for my passport. In those cases, experience teaches, not to be a wise guy. The police has all the power and can exercise it in an arbitrary way.
Despite having told them in French and in Arabic that I was Greek, they thought I was French. I had to show them my passport for them to believe me and still the young man referred to me as French. He leafed through the passport and said in a loud voice, I see stamps from Syria, and from Egypt, and from Jordan, and from England. What are you doing here. I told him I was biking around those countries and that I had just finished biking around Tunisia, but he did not seem to believe me. He asked me “what is your profession?” “Instititeur” I told him, which means teacher in French. This is what I always say when asked about my profession. It is not a lie but it is not the whole truth either. When I say that, people assume that I am a high school teacher in Greece, which is not true, but at the same time I never said so. Passports do not report the owner’s profession, so he asked for a police ID. I told him that I have one but it is in Greece, besides even he wouldn’t be able to read it because everything is in Greek. At this point he had mellowed down and told me to just go and stay at my hotel for the rest of the day. I did as he said, that is, I left but did not go to the hotel. For a moment I had gotten really scared that I would be detained, which meant that I would miss tomorrow’s flight. Fortunately the only casualty were the pictures.
All that adventure had really whetted my appetite and I was really hungry now. I walked in the opposite direction trying to find a place to buy food. The police was everywhere though and everything was shutdown. But I guess the saying that fate favors the bold or rather the persistent is true. Finally, I found a souvlaki place and bought two pieces, one for immediate consumption and the other for later. Also, on the way back to the hotel I saw that one of the most central cafés was open, or rather in the process of closing so I sat there and had a hot chocolate along w/ a couple of cigarettes, doing what I do best, watching people go by.
I then went back to the hotel and did not exit again. A curfew was on till next morning.
CARTAGO DELENDA EST
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