THE PHOTOGRAPH

by Aris Georgiou
First published in the literary review "Dendro" # 17-18, January 1986

For days now — well no, it must be a month and a half — I’ve been carrying a photograph around with me, black-and-white, eighteen by twenty-four. I’ve been taking it here and there, in my bag. It shows a middle-aged man in glasses, jacket and tie, resting his elbows on a glass showcase, and gazing solemnly at me, as he poses a little self-consciously in front of a wall covered with silver-coped icons, some of them good, some bad, some hand-painted, some ready-made. There he is, in his shop in Egnatia Street, in 1973.