“Up there you will see a trough. They found her in a trough.” Afternoon at noon, normal traffic on the streets surrounding the Central Municipal Market. Athens, groups of tourists are tasting olives at a food stall, and locals are looking for eggs from Chiliomodi Evia on Socratous Street. African dust settled on shop windows and clouded the atmosphere of the city.

Climbing the steps of a small elevated square opposite the meat market, early in the morning on Tuesday, May 23, a 60-year-old woman did not know how she climbed her future mound. Twenty strokes later, she lay dead among the withered flora in the square, next to the palm tree. Rough monuments of the city, for those who happen to die in his heart. “No one paid attention,” the 82-year-old grocer tells K. Around 11 a.m., a municipal worker discovered the body and called the police.

The case of a 60-year-old woman, allegedly killed by her partner, was reported in the press not as a femicide, but as a fatal outcome of the invisible pared-dos of the city’s outskirts. The abductor and the victim used psychoactive substances and, according to the perpetrator’s admission to the authorities, used and quarreled before the murder. Their involvement in drugs monopolized the characterization of their status and established them in the public narrative only as “users”. “But not all users are killers,” says Thassos Smetopouloswho knows the world around Athens from his position STEPS street action coordinator.

Users are more burdened

STEPS rented a space directly below the square where the woman was killed from the SynAthens program of the Municipality of Athens to carry out actions against the inhabitants of the city, but they were forced to stop. Today, the municipality hands it over to the municipal police, but a casual passer-by on a Saturday afternoon finds it closed. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in this corner of town.

However, T. Smetopoulos separates murder from consumption with special emphasis. “It’s impossible when something like this happens to charge the whole community,” he says, and notes that since 1986, who is well aware of the population of problem users in Athens, “the condition is getting worse and there are more vulnerable people on the way.” “.

“People make drugs worse,” he tells K for his part. Jordanis Percetoglu, scientifically manager of the Special Direct Access Center KETHEA Exelixis. He notes that since the financial crisis, the number of users has increased, while in recent years the statistical picture looks stagnant. “What has changed is the quality characteristics. Bad drugs, more burdened people.” Now the use is increasingly combined with mental or other diseases. “And people’s access to services is more limited. The structures are there, but they need to be expanded,” he concludes.

Caches in the stables

Although Varvakeyos is not, as experts explain, the most famous of the city’s squares, the two parallel markets seem to coexist there forever, until some kind of active police operation slows down Alisverisi. The 82-year-old grocer, seated in front of a salted cod on his stall, looks up at a low palm tree in the square – the only witness to the murder – he arrived in the area in 1963. He points to a recently renovated fruit market. Varvakeyo, where the shops remain boarded up and forms the size of a paddock on its side. “There were stone lairs all around. Then they hid their dos in the rocks and fought when one took on the other,” he says. “They knew us and we knew them and they didn’t bother each other.”

On the corner next door, the owner of an egg shop – a local business with a 70-year history – had an unobstructed view from his stall to the street of suspicious handshakes hiding in handfuls of small bags and bills. It’s been perhaps more than a decade since a cinematic chase by American standards unfolded before his eyes. “The Pakistanis came, they had doses, the Greeks came in suits and took them away. Until the police took a shower, and how long they all got together, climbed into the cage and left … This was also shown on the news! Local shopkeepers spoke of rooftop chases and kicks as iconic moments from the dark side of the market.

However, even the egg grocery store owner “took the killer lightly,” he says. “My friend called to ask me what happened and that’s when I found out about it,” he adds, and allows it to happen a few steps away from his store. “It’s not a common thing. We didn’t have (users) at noon. After Christmas, they started showing up again in the area.” The 82-year-old grocer agrees: they will definitely follow.”

The butchers, fishmongers, and greengrocers of Varwakeyo are busily opening their shops. Thus, the movement begins at a time when darkness still hides illegal transactions. They themselves do not consider late payment a sufficient reason to move their business elsewhere – some of them have been around for more than half a century. They also do not believe that this is also a determining factor in the decline of their traditional clientele. They say it’s mostly Covid.

Tourists were informed about the crime

“After the coronavirus, the long old world came to a standstill. They are afraid of buses. These were big people who went down for a walk, take two or three things, a kilogram of fish, two salads, a pack of eggs and also go for a walk, ”says the egg seller. “We work mainly with tourists and catering,” says the 82-year-old grocer. Tourists are the bulk of buyers on a late spring Saturday afternoon.

In groups or singly, they penetrate into the recesses of the “stomach” of Athens, more from the joy of discovering a cult place than from necessity. But they take “four eggs, a lemon, two potatoes, an onion, make a salad and eat,” says the egg vendor, mostly for short-term rentals.

A German couple returning to their Airbnb after walking through downtown Athens say they find the abandoned Sokratus Street noticeably cleaner than other streets in Athens.

Some tourists wait on the underground stairs of the ancient “Diporta” to get in line, while two Spaniards head to the red tour buses temporarily parked in Aiolo. “Did you know that a man was killed here a few days ago?” we ask. They freeze for a moment, perhaps wondering what this has to do with discovering the city’s secrets, and run to catch a red bus that will take them around the sights.