Athens | Story no4Walking together

I live half the time in City Plaza and the other half in the camp of Skaramagga. I am from Afghanistan but grew up in Iran. More specifically my parents are from Afghanistan and two months after I was born we went to Iran. So I spent all my life in Teheran, in Iran. My heart belongs to Iran; I was brought up and spend all my childhood there. But when I grew up, I realised that the state does not accept me, that if you are the child of immigrants they will throw you in the bin, that you don’t exist, you understand. I felt it at school, I felt it at college I felt it all around. I have no passport and no ID because the state of Iran gave us none. When you are a child you don’t understand these things because you play with other children. But as I started to grow up I felt more and more that I was treated as a stranger. I saw it in my father who worked in Iran all his life and had nothing. I started thinking of my future and seriously contemplated that if I was to get married and have children I did not want them to feel like I did. Obviously we couldn’t go back to Afghanistan because they didn’t accept us either, so the only solution was to leave for the West. Before I cross to Turkey, I tried three times to go to Afghanistan, three times they arrested me and sent me back. One of those they sent me to Pakistan but with a smuggler I came back to Iran. Meanwhile my father had sold everything we had for the smugglers to take me to Afghanistan. Finally, he decided to quit his job and with whatever money left to make the journey. But his boss wouldn’t leave him and kept telling him that he shouldn’t go because there was nothing for him to do in Afghanistan, stay where you have a job. Of course, he needed him because he was giving him half a salary, he was exploiting him. Finally we sold everything we had and together with my sisters and my father we passed to Turkey. In Turkey we stayed only for four days and then we crossed to Mytilene by boat, it was the 1st of February 2016. We stayed a day in Lesbos and then we took the boat to Piraeus. But the borders for Afghanis were now closed, only some Syrians were allowed until they closed for everyone. So we didn’t go to Idomeni, but instead stayed in the port of Piraeus.

I‘d say that my port days were the best of my life. I met and made many friends there. I lived with my family in a tent outside the central warehouse. But I was going around other peoples’ tents to help them with things, so I knew all the tents and the people in the end, it was like a big house like we were all one tent. We all got to know each other help each other talked with each other. This started when some solidarity people offering medical assistance to whoever needed realised when they came to our tent that I also spoke English so they took me with them to help them with the translation. That was how I started. Then I helped the people that offered the food. I stayed in the port for three months and I saw many things. I saw the people being rushed into busses, only to be taken to camps that they did not like. They could see that they were being taken into some horrible isolated places far away from everything. So people left the camp and kept coming back to the port.

My family and I did go to Skaramaga camp but the manager there told us that there is no space for us. Finally we bought a container for 500 euros because that is the business of the camp now. If a family is in need of staying in a container then it can buy one. So my family and I bought one, cleaned it and repaired it to stay there. But the next three months I kept fighting with the director of the camp because he could not have us. Finally I found a smuggler and paid him to transfer my father and one of my sisters to Germany. So I am here with my other sister for about a year and a half.

Some time ago through a friend of mine I found City Plaza. Seeing the situation with the refugees and the solidarity people and how they work together in City Plaza reminded me of my time in Piraeus port 3 years ago. As I said, life at the port was the best time of my life so when I found it again I was very happy. Due to a number of reasons I don’t want to live in the camp anymore. I have a younger sister of 12 years old, I registered her at the school there and so she has to go with the school bus, she really likes to play music and take music lessons there. This is the major reason that we continue to live in the camp. If eventually she goes to my father in Germany then I wouldn’t spend a minute more in the camp and instead go straight to City Plaza. Of course we could stay in the City Plaza but she wouldn’t like that as she has many friends in the camp. At the moment during the weekends we are in City Plaza because she takes some German and music lessons here. But Sunday night we have to go back to the camp because she has school first thing Monday morning. We are currently having an Iranian family in our container in Skaramaga. Since the container has two rooms, we don’t need the second one and seeing this Iranian family seeking some shelter I told them that they can stay with us. Obviously I am not asking them for rent, and I am only saying that because it is common these days. Skaramaga camp is a big market, everything can be bought and sold, it is quite tragic. The only thing I told them was to follow the camp rules, be clean and water the plants. During the week we live all together and on the weekends I stay in City Plaza with my sister. I want to repeat again that I am not asking them for money. Because I lived through this myself, and I know how it is to be exploited by people I didn’t want to do the same to other people. I have suffered a lot from exploitation and it is inhumane to ask money from people that you know very well that they don’t have any. Also I felt in awe from the support that I was given freely by so many people when I arrived in Greece. It is here that for the first time I realised what solidarity is and what to make of it, what to learn. This solidarity, this lively solidarity I rediscovered in City Plaza.