Letters from Moria
By Parwana Amiri
Moria, the main food line, just before lunch. (Photograph by Yannis Hamilakis, July 20, 2019).
October 2019
I am a minor without a guardian
See what our problems are. . .
In Moria we have no place to stay. We are without shelter, among thousands
of adults and strangers. We sleep on the floor, in tents and anywhere we can find
until we may get a place in an overcrowded container.
We are alone and there is no love. I feel I am the most lonely person in the
world. We have no relative, no family to be with. We have no one to talk to and
to protect us or give us advice. It is the main reason why we think of suicide and
why many of us end up with addictions.
We have nothing useful to do. Oh, I became tired of life. It is boring to just
wait not knowing why. There are no activities for us. There is no variety in our
days but always the same rhythm. Every day is the same in Moria. There is no
difference between yesterday and today. I am a teenager, full of energy. I should
get rid of this energy like a snake empties its poison. I want to learn things, do
things, grow. . .
I am thinking, what should I do? I am desperate because I have no money.
I started smoking today, maybe I will take drugs tomorrow so I do not feel
hungry, so I do not feel that time has stopped, so that I can be far from this bad
world.
[…]
October 2019
From a chat with one mother of many in Moria camp.
A baby with 3 days diarrhea and vomiting. . .
Only a mother can understand me. My baby got sick, and she started vomiting
and having diarrhea for three days. I was seeing her crying, but I could do nothing.
I was seeing her vomiting, but I could do nothing.
This is the third day that I am going to the doctor waiting for four hours behind the
door, but no one cares. In one day, I had to bring her about 14 times to the
toilet and every time I had to wait 10 minutes in the queue.
[…]
I want my daughters’ health back. We are all mothers, and we are all human. We
want to see our kids smiling. We are living on one planet. While you are designing
your daughters’ kids room, I am trying to keep mine warm at a fire.
[…]
November 2019
These eyes bother me!
I am a young girl full of energy, power and self-confidence. Everyday there are
a lot of voices inside me, inviting me to let this energy out. BUT I am in Moria,
between thousands of unclean eyes, that are looking to my body and not to
my soul. These eyes bother me. I cannot play volleyball. I cannot even just walk
straight down one path. My head should be down. When I am crossing the road,
it is as difficult as passing the borders for me.
200 meters to the toilets. 400 meters to the food queue. Again 400 meters back.
During this distance, there are hundreds of eyes looking at me.
[…]
“Don’t follow me! Stop bothering me!”
While washing my clothes I feel ashamed, because boys are looking at me. I cannot
look back at them, because they will misunderstand. So all places for sport
are used only by boys, all playgrounds are used only by boys. And we are locked
inside.
Even men of my father’s age look at my body. I don’t know where I am. This
doesn’t look like Europe here. When I was at school, I learned that Europe is the
mother of freedom, but I am living in the middle of an eye of violence. There
are eyes everywhere. There is freedom nowhere. I am a prisoner here and this is
the jail. I will not be able to forget these memories.
[…]
But it’s enough! Stand up girls! Stand up women! We are not their objects of
lust! We are not the prey of wolves! We should shout out that we want to be
safe! We want our rights! We want to look up!
November 2019
I am a volunteer translator
I am the father of two children. I am the husband of a woman, full of emotions.
And above all, I am a human being. It is only one aspect of my current situation,
that I am also a refugee, one among thousands of others.
Every day, I work for hours to help people access services and solve their problems.
Every day, exhausted, I run 900 meters distance to eat lunch in a hurry, and quickly come back to continue to help more people.
On these days that I am helping, my wife shoulders all the housekeeping responsibilities alone: she looks after the children, waits in endless lines to get some food for us all, washes clothes, makes some order in our abode. She does all these things with pleasure, so that I can help translate the troubles of the people standing in the sun for hours, in need of someone to communicate on their behalf.
[…]
The UNHCR, the European Union and Greece get thousands of Euros every day. Despite that, they do not hire enough translators to help sick people in clinics inside the camp of Moria and in the big hospital. Lack of translators, even in emergencies, is one of people’s most common problems.
To rely on migrant volunteer translators is shameful. Europe should feel shame. When even in its own hospitals, nurses speak no English, how can they expect it from people who come from places where many kids have no access to proper education?
November 2019
For a bread—for life
[…]
When my husbands’ heart suffered, I desired my death as I could not
help with not even a cent in my pocket. . . . Days passed. I decided to build a tandoor (traditional oven) to bake break and sell it. I thought, I could purchase the necessary ingredients by borrowing some
money from one of our relatives, who had a cash card. Just fifty cents, that’s all I needed! I touched the fifty cents and my old hands were shaking. Not just because of my old age. Not just because of my worry for my sick husband. They shook at the thought of the thousand year old olive tree that would burn
in my tandoor. I trembled at the idea of the axe reaching the old tree. I could
feel it crying out. Yet, I need fire to bake my bread. . .
But it is the rule of nature: eat or be eaten.
How many troubles have I faced in hope of today’s bread to cure my husband? And I need a cure too. My heart burns at the thought of the felled burning trees.
But I must ignore my heart, I must take care of my old husband. I must bake
the bread!
[…]
November 2019
I am mother
[…]
The line starts at 6:30 am but I want to be up front, the first one among a thousand women. All this waiting for just 5 cakes and a litter of milk, which I suspect is mixed with water.
[…]
I am barely finished when, once again, I must run to the food line to take lunch.
The queue starts at 11:30 am although they distribute the food at 13:00 pm. So
the whole waiting process, in unbearable conditions, starts for me again. In the
line for hours, I do not know what happens to my children: Are they well? Are
they safe? Has my son’s pain started? We have been here for 200 days. And every week, we eat the same food—repetitive, tasteless, with no spices, little salt and oil. Three times a week beans, once
meatballs, once chicken and once rice with sausage—we don’t know for sure if
it is halal. But I force my children to eat so they won’t stay hungry.
[…]
December 2019
Life of a Transgender person
I am in Moria Camp.
Being transgendered means not to be of female or male sex, neither man nor
woman—but of transgender sex. In a society like Afghanistan, being a transgender
person is like being an extra-terrestrial, landing on earth from outer space. In
Afghanistan people think of sex as binary: only female and male are considered
as “normal” genders.
In Afghanistan I used false names. I am Mina. This name gives the understanding
that I am a girl. Yet, every day, my whole being, my soul screams: “I am not a
girl! Don’t cover yourself with these clothes.”
[…]
The UNHCR helped me a lot in every respect. When they learned that I wanted
to change my gender, they tried to collect money for the operation. Unfortunately,
there was no doctor to perform such an operation. They suggested that,
I should go to Europe. I spent two and half years in Turkey. After six months, I got a money card, and every month, I took 7 hundred and fifty Lire from PTT. But as I had to pay for rent, water, gas and electricity that money wasn’t enough for me. So I was peddling everyday at the corners of the streets. I do the same here too, just to earn 5 €.
[…]
I passed the borders not to be hidden!
I risked my life not to be hidden!
I lost everything not to be hidden!
[…]
January 2020
I am the mother of two sick babies.
[…]
I love my children. But society humiliated us for them being different. I will
never forget that everybody expected my husband to get married again, because
I gave birth to mentally disabled babies.
[…]
For four months now every day we go to the doctors in Mytilene. It seems that
our babies are pictures, that can be diagnosed by a quick look. Without having
carried out any test, they tell us that our babies don’t have any problems. It is as
if you go to the doctor and tell him that you have a headache and the doctor
tells you, “where is your pain, I cannot see it.”
[…]
We didn’t come here for money or luxuries but for the doctors. For us just
having a nest to protect us from the cold and to live with our healthy children
would be enough.
In search of a nest only. . .
Epilogue
Wouldn’t you shout, to the world, your total disbelief?
And what would you say, if you picked up a fistful of soil from Moria’s ground
and see it became weaker than ash, because every night more than 20,000
homeless people shout their disbelief to the world? Only a heart can warm
another heart, the only source of heating for hearts is another heart. What will
your action be? What will your words be?
Wouldn’t you too, shout, to the world, your total disbelief?
Parwana Amiri, an activist, poet and author, lived in the camp of Moria in Lesvos from September 2019 until January 2020. She now lives in the camp of Ritsona, north of Athens. She has become the most vocal spokesperson of the Afghani migrant community, and of women in particular, in Greece and in Europe more broadly. The passages above are from her book My Pen Won’t Break but Borders Will: Letters to the World from Moria, published by w2eu-Alarm Phone in English. The book also came out in Greek, recently. In this work, she adopts different personae to convey the experience of living in Moria.