three wild alley cats

For three whole years I have been walking late and alone through the streets of el Raval in Barcelona. I 've wandered in the alleys of the rumorous Condesa district in Mexico City. Once I got lost in the Bronx past midnight and on two occasions I had to go through some of the rough parts of South East London on my way home. But it was fate that I was to get mugged in downtown Athens, just a few blocks away from the place my father grew up.

It was probably fate because it was one of those nights when nothing works out as planned. First we failed to locate the place of the party we had initially set out for. Then, after ending up in Gazi, we chose a relatively dark alley to park far from the busy, noisy streets. And finally, we made for the bar the wrong direction, that is through the end of the alley instead of choosing a wider, busier street with better lighting. There at the end of the alley, three kids were waiting for us.

I 've witnessed similar situations before, not exactly the same, but cases where one needs to come in the defense of his own self. In cases like those there is one thing that always happens no matter how experienced one is, and that is you always do the wrong thing. Yesterday, I simply tried to run away from those three wild alley cats. Naturally I soon found myself lying on my stomach, while two of the kids were kicking my arm while pulling the stripe of my handbag. I came to my senses, calmed down and was allowed back on my feet only to see my friend Giorgos handing all his money to the senior of our attackers who was at the moment holding a knife gently pressed against my friend's abdomen.

I stood there, trying to grasp what was going on while the three kids (because they were just that, three kids with one -or at least one- knives) turned their backs at us, leaving us in the middle of a desert street. I felt less scared than angry, much more furious than afraid and was more eager of getting even than getting away. I started thinking of all the things I had done wrong. Wrong choice of street, wrong choice of attitude, I thought that I should have taken a different street or turned back the moment I saw them. As I looked around for a witness, some aid or consolation I caught a glimpse of a guy at the other end of the street, a guy who as soon as he caught sight of me watching him turned around and fled. Then I realized that there was no way we would have got away with it.

What had been done was done. We checked ourselves for wounds and scratches. As I found my thigh a bit less bruised than my pride and Giorgos felt his heart much lighter than his pocket, we saw that our casualties were not substantial enough to rob us of our first night out together since New Year's. I reached for a fifty Euro note at the bottom of my pocket and we decided to convert it to drinks as soon as possible. Thus we headed for the closest bar and had what must have been our most deserved drinks ever. At the end of the night each of us would go home with one more adventure to talk about.