Free The Scapegoat by Sophia Nikolaidou Page B

first to see if she needs anything: a loaf of bread, some tsipouro, marinated anchovies. Grandma is a foodie. She drinks her glass of tsipouro every afternoon with the TV on. She goes out for coffee with her endless girlfriends, whom Mom describes as
tough old broads
. They talk about politics, about the city’s lost splendor, about the latest movies. Grandma’s a movie junkie, says Dad, who has a soft spot for her. You couldn’t exactly call her a cinephile, since she loves detective films and thrillers. She and Dad always place bets on the Oscars. Nine times out of ten Grandma wins, and Dad buys her pirated versions of the winning films from the African street vendors.
    —You’re a godless man, she scolds him. How many times have I told you not to buy from them? Their knock-offs are going to ruin my DVD player.
    Grandma considers Dad an unrepentant socialist. Too welcoming of foreigners, an armchair activist with a philanthropic theory handy whenever it’s time to discuss the downtrodden. She has no patience for his kind of tolerance. In her view all black people stink, no matter what Dad says about non-Western diets and spices.
    —They’ve turned the Rotonda into a gypsy camp, you can’t walk anywhere without stepping on their handbags. I can’t understand why nothing’s been done. Is the mayor blind?
    Dad smiles but doesn’t reply. Grandma considers herself his ears in the city,
because if he tried to get any real news from his leftyfriends, he’d be waiting a long time
, she says, shaking her head.
    It’s true, though, Grandma actually is his political barometer. She’ll vote for PASOK to get New Democracy to clean up its act, or for New Democracy to punish PASOK.
    —It’s not that Evthalia can’t make up her mind, Dad established early on. It’s that she’s an actual undecided voter. It’s her kind who determine the final outcome. If we all had her balls, we wouldn’t just vote for the same party year in and year out.
    He made sure to take it back right away, though, so Grandma wouldn’t use it against him.
    Dad is a displaced lefty who used to believe that PASOK would save the country. Even now, no matter how enraged he gets with the socialists, he always comes through at the ballot box. He can’t bear to vote for anyone else. If you think about it, it’s pretty stupid to vote for a single party your whole life long, but Dad considers it political consistency.
    No one at school reads the newspaper, and whatever news they watch is just STAR or sports results. The other day Souk blew up in class. Someone at the back of the room was talking, and he got us all out of our chairs. Souk never yells. His method is to turn the volume down, not up. It’s incredibly effective, I wonder why it never occurred to anyone else.
    —I consider it an insult, he said, staring at each of us in turn, that I have to interrupt our lesson to chastise individuals who are practically adults, and will soon be able to exercise their right to vote. An insult to you, he clarified, so there was no misunderstanding.
    That day we’d been talking about the Occupation. Security battalions, collaborators, the city’s own historical drama. He showed us photographs and film footage. Concentration camps, human experiments, mass exterminations. Greek Jews being humiliated in the middle of the city, in Eleftheria Square. Germansoldiers posing for the camera in a swimming pool built of Jewish gravestones over where the university is now.
    —Sir, one girl asked, is what we’re seeing a movie, or a documentary? I mean, she added, wide-eyed, did all this really happen?
    —History doesn’t happen in outer space, Souk replied without blinking an eye.
    He pushed play. Jewish prisoners smiling at the American troops who had come to free them in a documentary about Auschwitz. Skin and bones, lying on mattresses, too weak even to stand up and walk out.
    —What I mean, Souk continued, is that history doesn’t happen to other people, in a