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Five days after the evacuation ..., five kilometers
away from Idomeni
May 31, 2016
Text-images : Gelly Doumbi
«My name is Ela . Ela Osman. It means "come" in Greek, doesn't it?
Ela from Aleppo is living for three months now at the EKO gas station -a breath away
from the border. Just five kilometers away from the much debated Idomeni camp who
was "successfully evacuated without deplorable incidents."
She lives in a favela that took roots beside the road and is extending untouched so
far by the various announcements, relocation plans and inefficient "immigration
policies". In front of it, for months, trucks and cars are passing by throwing up mud
and exhaust gas, as summer is nearby and road tourism from the Balkan inland will
start soon. A sad "theme park" on their way will be the favela, short before they
reach the refreshing seas to launder its image.
The camp at the gas station is resisting and perhaps the emotional interpretation of
Ela is a (naive) explanation for this: "This is better than the camps because we feel
free, we communicate with people, we are moving. The camps are like prisons –
everyone who is there is telling us. They want to leave because they feel trapped. "
The truth is far more complex but probably Ela will never know.
"I would go anywhere! I just don't want to stay here. »
She is saying this making a circular gesture with her hand which virtually defines the
misery that surrounds her. With admirable calm, unstressed voice and with the
maturity of a pragmatic person who knows the limits of dreams and expectations. "I
would like to stay in Greece also if we could have a house and if I could study."
"Now I don't have dreams any more. I wanted to be a doctor, but it's over now.
Ela is 18 years old. She is the second-born daughter of a Kurdish family with six
children. This year she would begin her studies in medicine. It was her dream. "If we
can settle somewhere, have a house, I want to be a translator. I speak Arabic,
Kurdish, Turkish, English and some French. During my time here ... I have been
valuable to everyone because I can translate and help people. I thought this and so
I've decided it. "
"My father was a driver in commercial vehicles. He made a lot of money and we
lived in a big house. "
She says this emphatically and with a glow of pride in her eyes. She wants me to
believe her. "We were rich," she says, while she is guiding me to their neat
accommodation boiling from the humid heat. Tarpaulins, blankets and pallets are the
building materials of the house. And underneath three tents for rooms.
"The hearts are for our parents."
Love that knows how to resist and wink to the difficulties marks the bedroom of her
parents. With a drawing that Ela made at the entrance of their tents.
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"This is my bed"
Everyone is showing me his corner to perch and quiet down. Altogether they are
pulling me in laughter to reveal their secret treasure at the backyard ...: a vegetable
garden where they planted tomatoes few days ago. In less than one square meter
they root and bear fruit , some pebbles of normal life.
"We had vegetable gardens and flowers in our house. Many flowers with beautiful
colors, "says Ela and her eyes are burning. "And these bottles we leave them in the
sun to heat up the water. We use this to wash ourselves" she explains with
embarrassment.
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What do you miss the most?
"Myself as I was before."
And how do you spend your day?
"I am sitting down. I am just sitting. And I think. And while I am thinking I am painting.
See my hand? Isn't it beautiful? In Arabic it means: Life, Love, Freedom and War –
like the one in Syria. I think about such things. We left a war but we fled to came to
another. The war of misery. We live like animals. This is also a daily war. I think it is
better to go back to Syria and die there rather than die slowly here day by day.
Slowly, in the mud and the dirt. One day here feels like a hundred. Time is passing
in hardship.
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Do you cry, Ela;
"I can't cry"
Wouldn't this be relieving?
"I cried a lot. When we had to leave our house, when we left the grandparents
behind, uncles, cousins and friends, when we were in the boat feeling so scared ...
Now I have great pain. But It will not go away if I cry. "
She is looking me in the eyes, with a deep and clean look. Dry.
"I've lost all my friends. I do not know where they are or where they live. "
I met of course, some girls here and we hang out. We are all from Syria in this camp.
Families with children. Quiet people. Come, I will show you my new friends. Come, I
will show you the school, the Women's house where we make our nails and our hair,
the kitchens, the tent where children are playing, the bathrooms ... "
She took my hand and guided me everywhere. She introduced me to people, we
visited her friends' home and showed me the baby which was born a month ago in
Kilkis and is now growing up in the camp.
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Her mood was ambivalent . "You know what I am thinking?" We were staring, with a
mixture of surprise and grief, a woman struggling to cook on a makeshift barbecue
from scrap metal and a barrel. "I am thinking that we lived well in Syria. With all that
is happening it is as if we went back to the Stone Age. "
"We are kissing three times"
We exchanged phone numbers, we gave promises and said goodbye. I cross kissed
her and she pulled me slightly towards her. "Three times kissing," she said and
laughed with her heart.
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You listen to the stories. You let them unfold like a yarn and their pulse tunes
up with your pulse. And, in the end, the sieve of the truth keeps what is worth
keeping. So, listened to Ela for three hours, as she was talking to me with her
broken but full of confidence English.
Postscriptum: Ela and her family left Aleppo in 2013, fleeing from the war. They
lived almost three very difficult years in Mersin, in southern Turkey. The Kurdish
origin was the biggest problem. Motivated by the hope of fleeing to Europe, they
started their way to the coast of Turkey. They went through Smyrna (Izmir) to Chios
island with a small boat loaded with 90 people. Her father paid 8,000 euros to the
smuggler – one thousand for each family member. They spent ten days on the
island. They sailed to Piraeus and from there, went to Larissa by bus. They stayed at
the Mandra refugee camp but, ten days later, as agreed with another 50 people, they
found a bus, and went to Larissa, and from there by train, they arrived in
Thessaloniki. Three taxis moved her family to New Kavala. She says that they were
not accepted there because the camp was full so they ended up in the informal
settlement at the gas station of EKO, a few kilometres away from Idomeni.
The interview of Gely Doumbi has been published in the online magazine Parallaxi
http://parallaximag.gr/thessaloniki/reportaz/pente-imeres-meta-tin-ekkenosi-pentechiliometra-prin-tin-idomeni
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Ovshin
Ovshin in Kurdish dialect means crystal clear blue water -like the color
of her eyes.
Labour pains caught her eighteen year old mother Estera - her name means
star - two months ago in the muddy area of Idomeni. She gave birth to baby
girl in Polykastro hospital and returned immediately in the slow-moving,
muddy and humiliating life path next to the border fence.
The costly promise of some Afghan traffickers rekindled the expectations of
the couple. Following, with her baby girl in her arms, uncertain paths, their
hopeless trek lasted five whole days and ended almost there where it had
started. In the informal camp of EKO.
Today Ovshin is counting the hot days of her life in the Kordogiannis
Granaries of Vassilika. Around two thousand refugees from Syria have been
transferred there after the evacuation of the gas station. She enjoys being
held and pampered in the hands of her parents. The tin roof is hot burning,
the cauldron of the military tent is boiling and Ovshin, naked and all sweaty, is
staring with her blue eyes at a world that the human mind cannot conceive.
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Time passes in this "prison" without meaning, without purpose and regularity
is maintained tooth and nail, by a scrap of a daily routine which is definitively
lost. Only little weak attempts to preserve even fragments of the memory of a
previous life is driving the clock which has lost the sense of time.
Ten large barns are housing three sets of ten military tents each, rugged soil
and a tall fence. This is the world of Ovshin, of her family, of her fellow
compatriots.
"What are they gonna do with us? So forgotten will they leave us here? Dying
among mice and snakes ...? Will anyone come and tell us? "
I have no answer. Wherever I go I cannot find an answer.
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Ovshin needs a baby relax chair. If any of you have one, it will be of great
help for her and her young mother.
Send me an inbox message please.
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The snake
This is how they "greeted" me today at the camp of Vassilika . Holding a
snake of almost two meters. They had just hit it on the head and, screaming
with horror they were running to get rid of it. The snake was crawling around
them, around the shadows sitting there killing their endless time of inactivity,
on the ground where their children are playing with wood sticks, stones and
broken wheelchairs ...
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This was not the first snake and it will not be the last one.
Our generation has not lived the war – our parents did.
Our generation has not lived uprooting – our grandparents did.
Our generation has been hit by the financial crisis which overturned our lives
and darkened the horizon. Our horizon and that of our children.
It fell to our generation to handle a heavy problem -the refugee issue. In this
our parents' and grandparents' life experience is interconnected in a dramatic
way. The stories with which we grew up, are coming back to our minds
through what thousands of people with no country are living for months now,
next to us. The memories passed on from our ancestors, which marked our
thinking and our heartbeat.
There is no choice. We need to be effective despite the difficulties.
For them. For us. For a peaceful life.
Today most young people from Vassilika had come to Thessaloniki stimulated
and motivated by the irresponsible and foolish "solidarity guys" Those who
have no borders but neither morals. They are talking about "riots", about
"demonstrations" their veins are swollen, their eyes are blurred. The have
nothing more to lose. "We left war only to live in another one. Dying in the dirt
among rats and snakes, forgotten and desperate. "
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Days are passing and as dignity is vanishing, anger and despair are taking its
place. Life detests the void. Puts even lies in it - as long as it maintains a
spark of hope. As long as incompetence and inefficiency keep them stuck in
the horror, hostages of their painful daily routine, the promises of those who
trigger their indignation, sound "pleasant in their ears,". "Their lies sound like
the truth and listening to them calms their soul."
The snake –still wriggling – was thrown ayaw in a dry, grassy property nearby.
The screaming ceased. Everyone returned to the burning hot tin houses that
scorch the mind and put a loop in the soul.
PS: Today I wanted so much to thank my friends who filled the car up with
many things ... electric hobs for cooking, cookware, fresh vegetables, rice,
fruit, olive oil ... I wanted to tell them happy stories ... The snake brought me
back to reality.
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