Onlooker

Hotel Xenophilia, (A’ Class), Island of Friki, Greece.

Professor Panayotis Kefalosystolakts, the renowned psychoanalyst, sat at the head of the couch in his consulting room, taking notes as the plump young man who was being analyzed spoke in an agitated manner.

Most Athenians blame the factories around Athens and car engine exhausts for the noxious nefos that often sits on the capital of fair Hellas and plays hell with the Hellenes, sending the elderly to an early grave and inflicting sore throats, headaches and conjunctivitis upon everybody else.

Every now and then I like to test non-Greek readers of The Athenian on their familiarity with the Greek scene. If you are an innocent abroad, try answering the following ten questions.

At an archaeological dig on the outskirts of Baghdad, two ancient manuscripts were found that turned out to contain one of the original tales told by Sheherezade to King Shahryar in the “Thousand and One Nights” that had somehow got lost in the sands of time. At great expense, I was able to obtain a copy of the first manuscript which had been cleaned and restored and my English translation of it appears here for the first time.

The time has come to update “The Athenian” readers once more on the ongoing saga of the Freaks and the Jerks which took a new turn last month on the ski slopes of a Swiss winter resort.

Hotel Xenophilia, (‘A’ Class), Island of Friki, Greece

Almanac

The following books, all published by the Cultural Cooperative of Kato Koukaki, are first editions, bound in gold-embossed, crocodile skin and printed on fine vellum.

The psychiatrist settled back in his chair with his notebook and pencil at the ready and said to the shaggy-haired, paunchy man who lay on his couch.