by Sean Mallen
As the voting started after midnight, I stood on a balcony overlooking Syntagma Square, with the Parliament buildings off to the side. In the distance, the gloriously illuminated Parthenon sat shimmering and golden in the clear night sky. In front of me, behind the live camera, was a hotel room jammed with other reporters, watching the results on Greek TV, waiting for their turn to go live to Japan, Germany, or wherever.
The counting was still underway as I spoke live to Toronto at half-past midnight, looking past the camera at the TV, trying to discern what was happening as the commentary played out in a language I did not speak.
The result did not come until about 1:00 a.m., with Papandreou barely surviving, although he had suggested in his final speech to Parliament before the vote that he might step aside in favour of a new coalition government. It seemed he was likely finished, but Greece would not go bankrupt that night. Another live hit to Toronto with the news and then it was off to bed.
With the acute crisis having passed, the challenge for Saturday was to find an astute Greek analyst to explain what had happened and what was next. But most seemed to have the day off. We tried to reach an English-speaking journalist who I had been following on Twitter, but he was not available. We were bailed out by a fellow Canadian, Globe and Mail reporter Graeme Smith, who recommended a former finance minister, Stefanos Manos, and kindly passed along his cell number.
Manos answered his phone and readily invited us to his house to speak. It was a long taxi ride to the northern part of Athens, past the Olympic stadium from the 2004 games, up and up winding streets with the houses growing ever larger. The northern hills, where the air is cooler and cleaner, is where the Athenian elites call home.
Through the gates to Manos’s house we spotted tennis courts and impeccably groomed landscapes. A tall, elegant man with a navy pullover sweater, Manos looked like a university president or a retired captain of industry who would have been at home at Harvard or a posh men’s club in London.
By the time we met Manos, Papandreou’s call for a new coalition government to implement the bailout package had already been rebuffed by the major opposition party. Manos, in near perfect English, told us that the prime minister was finished.
“He has to be replaced, number one. Number two, we need a good — whatever that means — prime minister who will lead us over the next year. That’s what we need.”
He suggested that it would have to be someone from outside politics — perhaps economist Lucas Papademos (who, in fact, got the job a few days later).
Whatever happened, had to happen quickly.
“Time is running out. The bomb is ticking,” said Manos.
On the way back to central Athens, we had the taxi driver take us by the Olympic park. In 2004, there was a grand thoroughfare of white arches, beneath which thousands strolled between the venues. The arches were still there, but the place was almost deserted; the pavement was cracked, with weeds jutting through. A couple of guys were racing remote-controlled toy cars — their buzzing so loud you could scarcely hear yourself think. Some of the athletic venues, including the main stadium, were still being used, but a weightlifting facility and a softball stadium had been abandoned. Athens did get a new airport, subway line, and improved roads out of the games, but somehow the promise of it all seemed to have been squandered.
Our Greek adventure was at an end. On Sunday, Stu flew back to Prague and I headed for London, wondering what kind of reception I could expect.
Chapter Fourteen
To my relief, Isabella greeted me with great warmth and love, the anger of a few days earlier miraculously dissipated. I had no idea what had changed and did not ask. But I was fairly certain I was not in the clear.
She had taken the advice of another Canadian mom from the school and sought out the Hampstead Women’s Club. One of the many community organizations that brings together some of the thousands of women yanked away from their homes and careers to follow a husband’s ambitions, it’s a place to make friends, support each other, and find new outlets for their talents. It was a lifeline. Isabella joined a singing group led by an Australian opera singer named Bernadette, a particularly gifted trailing spouse who came to London because of her husband’s job in banking. Music had always been part of Isabella’s life and lifting her voice in song was a boost to her spirit. And there was the lovely sewing school called Little Hands, where she started taking sewing lessons, a skill she’d always wanted to nurture. So enthusiastic was she that she encouraged other expatriate moms and daughters to join. She was rising to the challenge of living in London and searching for ways to make the best of things, while also building a social support network for us.
Meanwhile, my work kept opening new doors.
London has the world market cornered on grand and ornate halls, vestiges of past imperial glories. I had spent a career covering countless speeches in characterless hotels, but it seemed every time I attended a talk in the British capital I was rewarded with a room where the scenery far exceeded the quality of the speechifying.
The Drapers Hall oozes British grandeur: dark wood, lush drapery, giant paintings of past luminaries. We went to cover a speech by the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, later to take over the Bank of England. The building was more interesting than his talk and we did not file a story.
But our day was not done. We were reassigned to report on an international pissing match among prominent leaders. It seemed that the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, had been overheard telling Barack Obama that he detested the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. “Such a liar!” Sarkozy had reportedly carped.
In cases such as this, where there is a paucity of video, we would do a “look live” — a taped stand-up in which we would feign speaking live to the anchor and give our learned take on the unseemly name-calling among the world’s elite, based on our extensive research of agency wire copy.
Having been away for several days the previous week, I was feeling the pressure to get home in time to have supper with Isabella and Julia. So once my contribution was taped, I rushed out to catch a bus back to the flat — a bit early for a change.
As I lifted the first forkload of spaghetti to my lips, my iPhone buzzed. It was Vancouver. It seemed that the Western world’s most colourful leader, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, was about to resign … brought down not by scandal, not by “bunga bunga” parties, not by calling Obama “tanned” (bronzato), and not by calling his political opponents dickheads (coglioni). His demise was relatively prosaic, precipitated by Italy’s teetering economy, which was only slightly better than Greece’s.
I inhaled an extra mouthful of pasta, then put on a suit and tie, and headed back into the bureau to pound out a story, Sarkozy’s insult of Netanyahu relegated to the sidelines by the comic opera in Rome.
Outside the presidential palace, Italians honked their car horns in celebration, sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah, and shouted that Berlusconi was a “buffoon.” It was the end of an era. I knew Isabella’s cousins in Treviso were celebrating, too. They had even cancelled their cable TV, not wanting to patronize any of the prime minister’s many media holdings.
Leaving Dan to finish off the editing of my third story of the day, it was off in a taxi to a studio overlooking the Thames to speak live to Vancouver. Once again, my daughter would be asleep by the time I finally returned to the flat.
The pressure was growing to get more involved in Julia’s life at school. The next day there was to be a skating party and fireworks show, and Isabella said it was my duty to attend.
I was filing another euro economic crisis story, a mixed bag of ever-changing news centring on events in Greece and Italy. As the hour approached when I needed to run to the school, Vancouver asked for a rare script change — they wanted to insert an inflammatory clip from Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, where she warned of the dangers of a “lost decade.”
I hammered out a quick rewrite, even as an email arrived from I
sabella: “Tell me you are coming.” She was desperate for me to relieve her with Julia. I recorded my voice track and left the elements with Dan to edit and send to Vancouver.
Naturally there were no taxis, so I began to power walk north on Chalk Farm Road. A couple of blocks along, sweat now pouring down my forehead, a cab appeared. Minutes later I ran into the schoolyard at the Royal. The fireworks were over, but the event was still unfolding, with the girls skating on a makeshift rink.
Isabella spotted me with weary relief. She appeared drained.
“Can I go?” she pleaded, as an enthusiastic Julia ran over and jumped up for a hug.
“Sure, sure. I’m on it now,” I said. Isabella disappeared to head home.
“Come skating, Daddy,” demanded Julia.
An outdoor rink in London requires ingenuity and technology. Even in the depths of winter it rarely gets below freezing, and this was a mild November evening. What was unfolding at the Royal was a bizarrely artificial variant of skating. The surface resembled linoleum, the skates were dull and awkward. At the best of times I am a mediocre skater, never having properly learned as a kid, but I gamely gave it a try.
Within seconds, my knees were screaming, ready to explode. The skates had no edge and the ersatz surface of the “rink” did not seem to encourage gliding. Disaster loomed. After a few minutes of struggle, I begged off and encouraged Julia to continue while I watched.
As I stumbled over to the skate return spot, the phone buzzed. Vancouver was desperately trying to reach me. A producer had spotted a wire copy story indicating that the interim Greek government was about to collapse — a major development that would require me to redo my report. Teetering on the skates, I frantically searched for clarification on the phone.
Julia called over: “Daddy, you have to come back!”
Dan emailed: “So, what are we doing? Do I have to re-edit?”
“DADDY!” shouted my insistent daughter.
Here was a new level of stress.
Isabella was nowhere in sight, Julia was anxious to stay and play on one of the first nights when she had a real chance to socialize with schoolmates and I was faced with the prospect of another rush back to the office to rewrite a script with a pressing deadline. For good measure, my knees were aching as I struggled to stay upright on the nutty British skates.
After a few breathless moments, another email arrived from Dan with copy updating our story. Nothing had actually changed. No rewrite required. Whew.
With Julia still demanding attention, I wrote an email to Vancouver and then called to speak to the producer who had urgently been trying to reach me. He was now in a meeting and everyone had moved on, unaware of how the previous few minutes had caused me to shorten my life. Later in the evening, an email arrived: “Please advise when you leave the office in case we have questions.”
Blood rushed to my head as I recalled how I had worked late through the previous weekend, away from my family, and how I merely wished to attend an event at my daughter’s new school in a different country. Several wordings of responses came to mind, all containing the word “fuck.” Wisely, I wrote none of them and just called it a night.
Another in the growing number of collisions between work and family in London.
While my beat was dominated by world politics, disasters, and Royals, every now and then I was able to do something about Canada. Not that we were any kind of major player in London. While the Brits are fascinated by Americans, Canadian culture is a blip on the British map, barely recognized and usually only mentioned in the context of bad jokes about how boring we are or in mocking stories about Justin Bieber. So it was a rare pleasure for us to make the long trip to south London and the gorgeous Dulwich Picture Gallery where Canadian masters were on display.
Snobby Brits might be inclined to say a show titled Painting Canada was an invitation to somnolence. But Dan and I had to elbow our way through the crowds filling the gallery to see works by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. I love my home country, but we lack the English passion for the arts. The Dulwich was jammed with what appeared to be mainly retired people, all of whom knew their art.
As we made our way into the showrooms with our bulky camera, a stern-faced Brit standing in front of Thomson’s The West Wind gave me the evil eye, until I told him we were Canadian TV. The magic word: “Canadian.” His face brightened into a smile without actually fracturing and he happily offered a comment for the camera: “It’s lovely. Never even aware of Canadian painting previously! I’d love to hang one of these in my living room.”
No wonder: there had not been a major show of the Group in London since the 1920s.
The curator of the show, Ian Dejardin, told us that he learned about Thomson and the Group when he stumbled across a book as an art student. “I was smitten instantly — the colour, the dynamism,” he said.
It is a Canadian thing: getting approval somewhere other than Canada not only makes the country, its people, and its achievements more credible to Canadians, it is newsworthy.
It is also a Canadian thing to go more to art galleries abroad than at home. This tendency started to win Isabella over to London, as did the joys of simple pleasures.
After Sunday Mass at St. Mary’s, we searched for a brunch place in the quirky and charming side streets around the Hampstead Tube stop. Down a pathway called Perrin’s Court, we came across a hole-in-the-wall called Ginger & White and she fell in love with it. We sat elbow to elbow with other families around a large wooden table and ordered “soldiers” and eggs. Soldiers, we learned, were strips of toast, mated with artisanal peanut butter, preserves, and exquisite cappuccino.
London life was looking up. But the afternoon was without a plan, until my wife made my heart leap.
“Maybe we should go to the Royal Academy to see the exhibition of Degas dancers,” she offered out of the blue.
“Great idea!”
“Don’t get happy.”
But I was and grabbed onto this tiny shred of progress. En route to the Tube, we bumped into Julia’s Canadian school friend Zoë and her father, Dave. On the spur of the moment, we asked them if they wanted to come.
Thus was born a terrific and impromptu afternoon that we never could have had at home.
The Royal Academy of Arts is just another one of those venerable London institutions that you find pretty much on every block. Crazy King George III was responsible for starting it, in a no-so-crazy act in 1768. The sane and praiseworthy concept was to promote and teach art, and is traditionally led by artists, “academicians” they’re called, with Joshua Reynolds as the first president.
The girls scarcely noticed the statue of Reynolds dominating the courtyard of the Academy, just off Piccadilly, around the corner from Fortnum and Mason. But I did. He was staring, open-mouthed, off into the distance, taking the measure, I supposed, of one of the many peers of the realm whose image he captured for posterity.
There was a lineup for tickets but miraculously it melted away and we were able to get in, revealing another miracle: the two six-year-old girls from Canada lapping up the show, Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement. Both Julia and Zoë loved dancing and there was something in the backstage scenes that Degas captured in 1870s Paris that seemed to strike a chord.
We got them the audio tours, and to our amazement they dutifully sat cross-legged in front of each picture, listening with interest to the commentary, ignoring the hordes of adults stepping over them.
Chapter Fifteen
Another foreign trip loomed. The Egyptian revolution was turning sour. Only nine months earlier, in the central moment of the Arab Spring, the popular uprising symbolized by the crowds in Tahrir Square brought down Hosni Mubarak.
The euphoria at the fall of the despot quickly dissipated. The army took over, promising elections, but the throngs in Tahrir were restless, suspicious that the generals had no intention of giving up power. Truth is, the army was always pretty much in charge. Mubarak was a general himself.
/> The protests in Tahrir were growing in intensity, as were the police crackdowns. People were dying in the streets. There were stories of poison tear gas.
It started to look very much like Dan and I would be getting on a plane to Cairo.
I initially said nothing to Isabella. But just before bedtime, an email arrived from Vancouver: Make preparations to go to Egypt.
I had only been back in London for two weeks since the Athens trip. Sleep was elusive as I pondered how to tell my wife and daughter that I was likely to be headed to a city where the authorities used poison tear gas on demonstrators.
The following morning, exhausted and stressed, I was glued to the TV, watching coverage of the events in Cairo as we started to pack up our gear, find an Egyptian fixer, and check out flights and hotels for our departure the next day. It was not only Isabella’s potential reaction that was eating at my guts, there was an element of fear as well. We would be flying into a city on edge, where innocent people were already dying just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
At noon I could not delay any longer and called my wife to advise her of the possibility I would be going. She did not answer, but sent an email within minutes, asking if I was the one calling.
“Yes. There’s talk of me going to Egypt,” I wrote back.
“But, it’s bad there,” she responded. A calmer reaction than I expected.
I let on nothing to Vancouver and carried on with preparing an Egyptian story that we would file from London.
That evening the de facto ruler, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, went on national television claiming that the military had no intention of clinging to power and promised to move up presidential elections to June 2012 — they had been expected in the fall.
I wrote a note to Vancouver: “Looks like the generals may have blinked. I’m cooling on the idea of going in the morning.”
