23b - The Old Neighborhood: The Microcosm of our Apartment Block (The Mezzanine Floor)

The right side of the staircase led upstairs to a mezzanine of a single, small one-bedroom apartment with a proportionally small balcony by the main entrance, at a tall man’s height above street level. This belonged to an old man called Iatrides, who crumped in there for a while with a wife and a daughter. Mother frequently referred to the ‘nasal mucus’ of old-Iatrides, I presume metaphorically, to point out his low hygiene standards. Perhaps, such a derogatory remark had more to do with the conspicuous poverty of the family and a rather unwarranted insolence stemming from covert class prejudices of Mother and other residents from the more privileged top floors. A micro-apartheid had already been established between the poor Iatrides family on the mezzanine floor and the rest of the building residents, a regime still evident in the communities of apartment blocks in the city's petty-bourgeois neighborhoods. Yet, every single resident had to pass by their front-door of when entering or exiting our building, therefore, encounters and interchanges were inevitable.

The Iatrides’ did not stay long enough to get better acquainted with their ways, the family members themselves, and ultimately find out a bit more about their cleanliness standards. They could not bear their relative poverty, whilst the attraction of decent employment and prospects of wealth that Northern Europe offered must have enticed their daughter and her fiancé. They left their small apartment in the early 1970’s, amid the years of dictatorship in Greece, and emigrated en masse to Sweden. We have not heard from them ever since, and the small apartment of the mezzanine floor remained uninhabited and haunted for the rest of our stay in that address. The labels bearing the family name on the front-door, at the top of the first short flight of stairs, and at the very bottom of the intercom residents’ list by the entrance remained for years after their departure, testament that someone named Iatrides owned and once upon a time lived in that mezzanine apartment.