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Show It takes Garrett nearly a year to save the money, but when he goes, he goes directly; flies from Toledo to New York, and without chknging planes from there straight to Athens. His first three days in the Greek capital are a disappointment. Athens is nothing like what he expected. It is noisy and dirty and congested, an architectural wasteland of sooty concrete inhabited by people who seem to have lost their vision. It smells of neglect. Nonetheless, using Ahmed's camera, Garrett takes pictures. Of the Acropolis, overrun by disappointed tourists like himself; of the soiled but still-standing Parthenon; the squalid marketplace; the late-afternoon crush of Greeks in Omonia Square. In one crowd he is sure he sees Trish. He tries to take the photographs the way Ahmed would have, carefully composing each frame, and knowing before he ever consciously makes the decision that he will never develop a single negative. On the fourth day he finds Ahmed's sister, at the Sefaris Travel Agency where she works, the address of which Ahmed had left for him-on the box which was to contain the photo album. Instead he has brought the photo album to give to her in person. He has also brought his questions. But before he can ask them she has talked him into a boat ticket, the Naxos, an island cruise. "You have come the perfect time of year," she says. "Before it is hot and before all the Germans. And the islands are most beautiful in the spring. The rain will not last." He agrees to buy the ticket but only if she will come with him to the port. She agrees since he was her brother's friend. |
