He wasn’t waiting for any bus

A hot Sunday morning, and the elderly man stands at one of the stops at the central bus station in Ipirou Square (by the Solomos statue) in the centre of the capital, while around him a small, mismatched crowd comes and goes — mostly older men like him, and young Asian women, evidently domestic workers on their one day off.

A gentle, smiling old man, the kind you find in old, half-torn black-and-white photographs, standing beside headscarved wives long since forgotten on some shelf, hanging on...