Post 6: Who are these people?

Refugees come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of stories. My job is not to ask a lot of questions about their past, their escape, the war or other traumatic events, but to help with whatever’s needed in the present moment. If someone wishes to share part of their story with me I lend a sympathetic ear but don’t probe. Our volunteer training tells us that it’s not appropriate to encourage people to re-live traumas with us.

So the stories I hear are partial, and many of them are simple.  These are ordinary people, whom you could meet on the street in any country in the world. The one factor, of course, that ties them all together and is always present as a sub-text, is that for one reason or another, each one of them has had to flee their home, taking little or nothing with them. Each one of them, too, is trying to create a new life for themselves, and often for their family as well. They come to the Orange House mostly for language lessons, sometimes to use the Wi-Fi, sometimes to hang out or help out.



Making zaatar, the Middle Eastern spice mix our organization is named for.

Here are some of the stories: I’ve changed names and some details to protect privacy. Any photos I drop into this post will be generic.

 

·         One of the first conversations I had on arriving at the Orange House was with Yaman, a Syrian man in his twenties who was being re-settled in Dublin and would be leaving in a few weeks for his new life. He had been studying architecture in Syria and hopes to continue in Ireland but he’s also a musician: he plays piano and oud (a traditional stringed instrument). He showed me photos of himself teaching a group of students. He hasn’t played for years and doesn’t want to. He said he’d lost family members, two cousins and others, in the war and it didn’t feel right to play music.  I said I hoped he’d play again someday.

 

Yaman speaks quite good English: he wanted to improve his reading and writing skills, so we began to think of and write down words that begin with different letters of the alphabet, starting with A. I asked him to suggest words and we took off from there, as each word prompted a conversation. It’s a useful technique. I used it again later with Sayid, a Palestinian former soccer player. I suggested we pick words to do with sport. He didn’t really stick to the theme: I’m not sure he understood, but it was something for me to come back to if the conversation flagged. Sayid lapsed into silence after the letter “D” for which he picked “dangerous” - “like the boat journey from Turkey” he said.

Volunteers greet visitors.

 

·         I spent some time with Maren, a young Eritrean mother who had lived most of her life in Saudi Arabia. She has two young children, Ali and Sara.  She wanted to study past, present and future so we worked with regular and irregular verbs. Her English is very good. She’s not well, doesn’t sleep and feels sad and ill. She’s seeing the doctor at Medecins sans Frontiers and seems to have some supports in place but is very down. She says she left Saudi Arabia because life is so difficult there (for foreigners, I believe she meant, although as I know from my nephew who spent a couple of years in luxury there, not for all foreigners). Maren told me that she had escaped to Turkey where she was raped (I think that’s what she said) and then to one of the Greek islands.  I sat and listened and sympathized, made tea, and tried to work back into conversation. Then her children who had gone out with a group led by the American teachers Mary and Laura came back and she re-collected herself.

 

·         Abas is surprised himself at how easily he got asylum in Greece; he’s 25, short and small, very soft spoken and engagingly polite – he touches his heart whenever he greets or leaves me (and no doubt others too). He speaks good English, worked in Kabul as an interpreter and was threatened because of his work. He flew to Teheran, got into Turkey somehow – it included running – then took a bus into Greece and was welcomed, although thoroughly searched, by the Greek police who gave him food and water and something to smoke! He made his way to Athens and is living here looking for work, volunteering at Orange House while he does so. Abas is not sure what his next move will be. He left his whole family – he has parents and siblings - in Afghanistan and as his father is old and he’s the oldest son he believes he is sorely missed. He showed me pictures of his family’s feast for Naw Ruz, the Persian new year, with an empty place set for him.  He’s discovered the OH and is very glad of it. Not only can he attend English lessons – he finds Alia’s very useful – but he can teach English to Farsi speakers and he’s become a regular shift volunteer as well. He sat beside me one recent evening and asked if we could talk for a while, as he misses his mother! 

 



Naw Ruz (Persian New Year) feast prepared by Orange House residents.

 

 

·         Adnan is a 15-year-old Syrian boy.  He seems to be a bit intellectually delayed. Some of the other volunteers – Arabic speaking males -  say he steals and they don’t like him. He’s had some conflict with one of the boys who lives in the OH.   I established a rapport with Adnan from the outset. He kept asking every day for something, I thought it was trousers. I passed on the request but no one seemed to take any notice. At last, after about two weeks, I happened to be on shift at distribution time on a very quiet day and it turned out that he was asking for diapers for his baby brothers – also socks. I gave him what I could and he doesn’t seem to have asked again since.  He attended “school” with the two American teachers even though he was much older than the others, but he won’t go to any of the adult lessons. Rana, a newly minted volunteer, a young Syrian refugee, is going to offer an English alphabet class and I think I’ll try to direct him to that.  I’ve been told that Adnan is illiterate in Arabic and is from a family of shepherds in a rural area. He apparently first came to OH with his family, about the time I arrived in early February, but has come alone ever since.



Adnan

·         Sadia is from Afghanistan. She’s here with her daughter Vida (18), and her son, Hafez (15) (ages approximate).  Her husband and older son (21) are in Sweden and she hopes they can all go there soon to be reunited. Her husband worked as a car mechanic in Afghanistan and lost a foot in a bomb blast. She worked at a government project on women’s rights. It might be because of that that they had to leave, I don’t know. She and the children spent a year in Elleniki camp, south of Athens, before finding a place to live in a refugee project in the city.



·         Usman is a Pakistani who told me he had escaped to Turkey where he was attacked by other Pakistanis who were trying to kill him. He was badly injured, has had several operations and I think his condition helped him get into Greece. But he left his 19-year-old brother behind in Turkey. The brother was in the same fight but not injured. The brother had managed to get to Kos and was trying to get to Athens, Usman had to take some papers in the next day. I really felt helpless as I know nothing about the system but I looked at them and told him what the English bits said. Two weeks later he had managed to get his brother safely to Athens with him -  although Athens is not very safe for Pakistanis; many of them apparently sleep rough.

 

(Some volunteers go out to help the rough sleepers. Working at Orange House I see only one aspect of the international effort in Athens. There are many organizations and hundreds of volunteers working  to address the different needs of refugees.)

 

 Athens

·         Joram is an adult from Syria, late twenties in age. He was a carpenter back in Aleppo, a skill which he learned from his father.   When Joram speaks of Aleppo now he just makes a dismissive gesture – it’s gone.  He’s obtained permission to settle in Ireland and will be moving to Dublin soon. His father and mother also fled Aleppo but remain in Syria, in a village near the Turkish border.  He’d like eventually to bring them to live with him in Ireland. He doesn’t like to go to Alia’s English lessons because her accent is American. He likes to talk with me because mine is English (almost).  He sometimes helps me with the washing up in the basement kitchen and we “do” English conversation that way. He has some attention deficit I think, always wants to finish my sentences for me even though he has no idea what I’m going to say. He’s made me think that “Listen” would be a really good theme for a dance camp.



·         Karim is a young North African man whose sexual orientation and atheism led to persecution in his home country. Eventually he fled to Turkey. He took a boat across to Samos and because he had no money had to pay by giving his cellphone. It seems the smuggler’s girlfriend particularly wanted his phone.  He said that the Greek police treated the arriving refugees "kindly". Karim has been volunteering at OH but has just secured a job as an interpreter with an ngo (non-governmental organization) working with refugees here in Athens. He speaks French, Arabic and English: valuable skills in the ngo job market!

·         Lili became distressed when we drove out of Athens towards the national park for an outing. That was because we passed a hotel where she’d lived for a month before moving to a refugee residence in the city. It was a nice hotel, she said, but she was there because she was negotiating with people smugglers to obtain a passport that would get her to London and they swindled her out of 10,000 Euros.

 

 So, those are some of the people I’ve met. They’re just ordinary people into whose lives a huge and dangerous disruption intruded. Their lives will never be the same again.

 

The organization that runs Orange House can be reached at zaatarngo.org