That Tuesday morning I must have had little sleep. I can hardly remember even once jumping out of bed so easily when the alarm clock rings. I imagine my body had entered "flight mode". Not exactly "off", that is, but not in full operation.
I got dressed unimaginably fast and immediately took the road to the power station. I did not even sit down to make the usual first cigarette of the day. I left the house and looked in every direction very carefully. With an exploratory look. As if I was sure that someone was watching me. I can still remember the faces of those I met. When I made sure everything was fine, I started.
I got on the train and got inside. I realized that no one else in that wagon had my own (on the verge of psychotic) behavior.
Everything was normal. As normal as it can be in conditions lockdown.
Then; It is a given that the mind plays various games. Some of them so dangerous that they can distract you from reality.
Along the way, I checked that I had with me the identity card and the paper that confirmed that as a journalist I can and should move freely in the center Of Athens to cover the facts.
Free! What a strange word. How much charge it carries with it and how easily - like a stone that someone bent down and picked up from the road - it can tear down the window in front of you. Along with her idol.
This was the 20th course of his revolt Polytechnic, which I would cover as a reporter. No previous one, however, was like this. I knew this from the first moment it crossed my mind that it would be a forbidden course. And the truth is that I thought about it a long time ago. When the cases started to increase again.
The idea was simple: When the "no" (of the state) becomes "yes" (I want) because "I have to" (to inform the public. This is my job. I own it).
In a conversation a friend put it as a possible scenario. "What will we do in case the course for the Polytechnic "?
At that moment I happened to look at another friend who had just pulled out a big puff of his cigarette. "It will be the first banned course of the Polytechnic, after the one in 1980 when he was killed Koumi and Kanellopoulou ", he said and took the smoke out of him. As a black and white image, taken from a book by Stergios Katsaros.
So in that wagon, and in something that looked like self-psychoanalysis, I was able to find the reason why I had that behavior. It was the "forbidden" that created all this. Even to me who had with me the paper that allowed me to move "freely".
I remembered the pictures from that course in November of '80. The crippled face of Koumi. Her crumpled body Kanellopoulou. The stories and testimonies of the ancients about the endless wood, about its merciless chase police to those who dared to defy the ban and took to the streets.
"Will it be the same today?" I wondered as I climbed the escalator to get to University. The first thing I saw popping up were the hats of two police officers. "Welcome to the Forbidden Center" I thought.
When I recall those early moments I am almost certain that it was very cold. I do not remember if it was really so cold. That was the feeling, though…
As I turn to Patision I fall on the first check. "We started well".
Not even 100 meters later, second check. The third check at the height of Kaningos was done by a security guard. I reacted, he reacted, the necessary clarifications were made for the nerves on both sides and I continued my lonely path to the Polytechnic. Things were clear now. This would be a very difficult day.
At the corner of Patision with Stournari, they stop me for the fourth time. Maybe they were caused by the black clothes I wore and the long beard. I can not explain it otherwise.
The last policeman is very polite, I can not say. Army officer. Later, and as the night together with the protective masks made the figures more indistinguishable, he checked me two more times. Until the last time that even he laughed.
It was already dark. In the center everything had returned to the morning frost and so I took the opportunity to have a conversation with him and ask him if everything that happened was normal and if he considers it necessary. "What does normal mean and how do we define what is necessary", was his rather diplomatic response. I tried to see his limits and asked him if he ever thought that what breeds violence is violence. "Unfortunately violence is often necessary and inevitable".
In this cat and mouse game (not yet sure who was who in that conversation) it occurred to me to ask him how inevitable an aura attack was, checkmate and "DRASI" motorcyclists to people who obviously had no disposition for battle as it was clear that they had not prepared for such a thing. I did not do it. It didn't make sense, after all.
Before the tear gas filled our eyes with "razors" and the chemicals took our breath away, I had time to see a rather female head popping up behind some blinds in a first floor office in an apartment building in University. I watched her for a long time. I guess the fear was the one that did not allow that woman to lift the blinds so that she could see in her comfort but she just preferred to put them aside for a while.
Fear that Mrs. Maria certainly did not have. The woman who went to leave a flower at the door of the Polytechnic and almost cost her 300 euros.
When I saw her walking alone and with a steady and confident step towards the gate I was almost sure that he would hardly save her. Other people had passed by (individually and with masks) and had left a flower and then others had passed. No one had caught the eyes of the police like that. No one was mobilized by anyone to surround him. No one came to her patrol Immediate Action with a high-ranking officer inside.
The good thing about being a reporter without the "bunch" of TV and the big and scary camera lenses, is that your people open up more easily. When she left the flower I approached her and asked her if she could justify her leaving because… "Trouble is coming". He told me that he has the necessary papers. I saw her looking at the policemen who were getting closer and closer to her. I told her that she has nothing to fear and that we are here too. She stunned me saying: "I'm not afraid of anyone. I'm here where I needed to be. I could not do otherwise".
This was the only moment of ascension that day. Lies! There was one more.
The moment when the Association of Greek Actors from the balcony of the apartment building on Stournari Street opened the microphone he had set up and broke that icy silence that had covered everything. They read excerpts from the "Human Guardians" of the unforgettable Pericles Korovesi and put on the percussion the songs from the legendary "Our Big Circus" where Xylouris and the shocking Jenny Karezi they warned the people that "the struggles you have fought will not save, the blood will not be shed if they do not pay".
When the next day my son asked me how he was at the Polytechnic, I wanted to tell him everything so that he would know. Almost at the same time I thought that with nadir psychology after school closed and he can no longer see his friends, such a conversation would be wrong.
"It was good. But it would be even better if you and your sister were there. Instead of having a little patience, to end the coronavirus and the bans and the time to go all together again " I told him. He smiled at me, closed his eyes and went to make another bass attempt and managed to get on Webex to take a lesson.