These are snippets of stories of some very small few of the humans who seek refuge in this world, whose paths I briefly walked alongside and whose lives I, alongside and within the incredible community of humans volunteering, did my best to care for while on Lesvos, and whose wellbeing is bound to my own, and to that of us all.
I began writing the moment I got onto the plane away from Greece, and have slowly been writing ever since, in the two weeks I have been back in the United States, as the stories have come to me in bursts, sudden flashes of memory, slow replays of all that I was witness to on Lesvos. There are hundreds more I could, and hope, to tell.
Mary Oliver wisely instructs: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Here are my feeble attempts to do just that.
As this new year begins, may it be one in which we have courage to pay attention to all that is unjust, all that is beautiful, all that is real in this world, in which we are tender to open ourselves to astonishment, and in which we have the strength to tell about it.
These are snippets of stories of some small few of the humans who seek refuge in this world. May we open our arms to them.
There is the Syrian man in his late twenties, who has, after changing into dry clothing, drinking a cup of tea, and sitting by the fire, been on European shores for twenty minutes when he and his friend come over to me, asking if I can help them. The man’s friend acts as translator, asking me in wobbly English how the young man can return to Turkey.
The man had paid a smuggler for ‘spaces’ in a rubber boat for himself, his wife, and his children. But as the boat was preparing to set off from Turkey before sunrise that morning, the smuggler filled, and then overfilled, the boat; he then told the man, still waiting to get into the boat with his family, that there would be no space for his wife and children, and that the man alone must enter and drive the boat Lesvos. When the man protested, refusing to separate from his family, the smuggler put a gun to the man’s head, pushing him into the steering position of the dinghy and forcing him to speed away from his wife and children left on shore. The man, already having paid the smuggler for the boat crossing, which costs between 1000 and 3000 euros per person, was carrying all of the family’s remaining money, their legal documents, and their one cell phone, such that his wife and children had no way of making the crossing on their own and he no way of contacting them.
Through his friend, the man learns he will have to continue on to Moria, the UNHCR camp in the south of the island, where he will have to register as a refugee and be granted his six months temporary asylum in Greece before he could go the port and get a ferry to Turkey. On average, the process of traveling through the island, getting registered, and on to the port takes around five days. If he is then able to return to Turkey, he will have to be very careful not to be caught by the Turkish police and will not receive any formal help finding his family. If he does manage to return to Turkey and to find his family, there is still yet another journey across the ocean in a rubber boat to survive.
He has been on European soil for twenty minutes, and here he is, desperate to go back.
—
There is the elderly woman from Afghanistan who, after being helped out of the boat and onto the shore, wrapped her arms tight around me, clinging to me for two or three minutes, simply asking to hold and be held.
—
There is the man who says: “please can I have some food for my friend? He is Christian so they haven’t let him eat in five days.”
—
There is the family from Syria who arrives in the middle of the night; they are seven: mama, baba, and five sons between the ages of seven and seventeen. The eldest son is deaf; the second to oldest son is blind and deaf.
The baba tells me he had been working for the US Army in Iraq as an interpreter, as he speaks Arabic, Russian, and English fluently, until they had to flee when rumors spread that he was conspiring with the army and assisting foreign invasion of the country.
The mama asks me for a new pair of shoes for her youngest son, the pair he wore on the boat soaked through with salt water and ripping at the seams. She wraps her arm tightly around my waist and I put mine around her shoulders and we walk this way, linked, to find something to cover her child’s feet.
When they are preparing to journey on to the registration camp, the baba asks: but why is it so hard for us to go to your country? Over and over again, it’s security check, security check, security check. They are afraid for a terrorist threat, but it’s not me who is a terrorist, it is me who has been terrorized.
—
There is the woman, not more than twenty-five years, who is traveling alone with her toddler and young baby. She motions the medic to come with her to a secluded area of the camp, where she mimes and uses broken English to try to describe what she needs, before, after much confusion, slowly pulling out an emptied packet of birth control pills.
This. I need this, she pleas.
—
There are the young Syrian men, the eldest no more than sixteen years old, who were all traveling alone and became friends as they fled. Waiting for the buses that will transport them to the registration camp and having already received dry clothing, food, and care, they stand together on the beach, upon which their rubber boat landed not even an hour before. Some take selfies by the water to notify the social media world of their safe arrival, others skype elderly grandmothers still in Aleppo, others warmly tease each other about the not-quite-perfect fit and not-quite-stylish combination of donated and recycled clothing they now wear, all gather and gravitate toward their newly-formed group. Just as the families arriving onto these shores, these teenagers are now, through each of their individual actions, in a constant process of huddling together.
When I walk onto the beach to scan the horizon for boats, the young men gather around me, pointing into the depth of crashing blue at the small, black fleck of a dinghy bobbing in the distant water. As I look through the binoculars, seeing a mass of orange, hi-vis life vests, piled into and atop the wobbling, flat-against-the-ocean inflated rubber, glinting against the sun as the boat floats – flees – up and over the Aegean Sea, they ask me: what is it? what do you see? is it a boat?
I tell them that it is, passing the binoculars around to each so that they may also have a closer look. Some hold the equipment up to their eyes only briefly, nodding solemnly once they have registered the approaching vessel before allowing another to see, continuing to quietly gaze at the ocean, Turkey’s mountainous coast visible in the distance. But many grow agitated, anxiously asking: are they okay? will they come here? is the motor still working? will they be okay? can we help them? how will they be okay?
—
There is the father of seven, who learned French at home in Syria, a once colony of France.
Upon learning I can speak with him, he grabs my hand, gripping it as tears form along the rims of his eyes: En Syrie, tout est bombes. Tout est mort. Il ne reste rien. Donc, nous sommes venus, nous avons eu rien d’autre. Tout est parti, tout est parti.
—
There is the family from Iraq, the mama and baba and three young children: Malek, eight, Ama, six, and Ahmed, one.
As their boat landed and they gathered on the rocky beach, I went to freezing, shivering Ama and began to help her out of her life vest; she stopped me, asking me instead to help her mama, who was sitting on a rock looking very weary and unwell. The whole family, suffering from shock and hypothermia, was taken to the warming tent where they were able to slowly change into dry clothing as they drank warm tea and sat by the heater.
The mama, weakened by low blood pressure in addition to the unimaginable stress of fleeing with a family of five, takes long breaths as she nurses Ahmed and wears an expression of deep exhaustion. I sit down beside Malek and Ama, who continue to shiver and whose tired eyes barely register contact with mine before they slide again to gaze blankly at their hands clasped loosely in their laps; it’s as if the flame inside them has been driven so deep inside by fear and cold and overwhelm that its light is nearly impossible to see. I place a notebook across their laps, drawing a few spirals and squiggles on the page before handing each a crayon. Slowly, they begin to make faint marks on the page, still with a great, closed heaviness surrounding their spirits.
I am called away from the tent for a few minutes, and return to find them excitedly filling the page with Arabic etchings, the numbers one through ten, flowers and swirls. They motion me over, giggling and thrilled to show me what they have created; I sit beside them, giggling myself, delighted to witness the life and light returning to them, the smiles I so hoped they still held brimming across their precious faces.
The baba, who had been hurrying around the camp to ensure his wife and children had dry clothing, medical assistance, and food before he would finally allow us to provide him with his own change of clothes and care, returns to the warming tent; he has called his sister, still in Iraq, who has asked after the children. Upon seeing Malek and Ama laughing and chattering as they fill the pages with color, he immediately begins to sob.
Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, he says, letting the tears roll down his face.
callie daniels-howell 