Someone I tell you, in another time, will remember us

Someone I tell you 

In another time

will remember us

-Sappho

There are echoes of footprints all across this island as humanity has traipsed back and forth for thousands of years, marking a shifting balance of East and West. The weary traveller touches feet on the dusty shores while clutching equally to dreams of an unknown future and fears of an all too familiar past. Some stay, making a home and building a community, blending recipes, rituals and songs until the origins are indistinguishable. Others stand on this island with raised heads, their eyes lifted and scanning for a far off destination, always just beyond the horizon. And still others will return back the way they came, overtaken by a past that they race against. 

I swim one last time with the kids at Pikpa. There is laughter and splashing as an evening sun paints everything gold and pink. There are crying babies and sea salted cheeks kissed by little girls all too accustomed to saying goodbye. Later, Nadia, Vergelis and I, sit outside an ice cream shop, contemplating round two as passer-bys with familiar faces join our table to chat. Two hours later, my hands are coated in grease, ketchup and mustard and I dust off my last gyro. A patient dog lies next to my chair, as Nadia’s laughter echoes off stone walls lit by the florescent lights of the gyro shop. In the small hours of the night, Kini and I make a trek on quiet hilly streets to her home, carrying the contents of my packed up temporary home; potatoes, cheese, an oregano plant, a bedspread.  

After a frantic morning and a bag haphazardly packed with half opened eyes, I kneel down in Sappho Square where Arash sits vigil. His skin is darkened by a merciless sun and his movements lethargic on the dawn of the third day of a hunger strike. We say goodbye and I head off to freedom while he remains chained, waiting only for a chance to live free with his brother and attend university. Where will he be in a month, a season, a year? 

My footprints are echoes interwining with the familiar ghosts of all those who have come before and will come after. By the time I return to this island, the smiles of many who I have known in Mytilene, will have moved on to new lives and new dreams all across Europe. But I know that this island is not done with me. Her siren song will call to me in the dark of winter when I will find myself seeking her warmth and searching airfares at 2am. There are plans to make and work to do.

(Postlude: Arash held out and abstained from food for an unfathomable 41 days before his brother and friends were released from Moria's jail. Arash continues to fight for the rights of all refugees. In the meantime, I am solidifying plans and will be returning to Lesvos for two months next summer.)

A mingling of all kinds of colors

Robe
colored with saffron

purple robe

cloak

garland crowns

beauty

Phrygian purple

rugs

A mingling of all kinds of colors

-Sappho

Avyalik Turkey lies just a four kilometer ferry ride away from Mytilene. The market offers up every color in the rainbow and the people offer up smiles. As we crossed between, I marveled at how easily I could straddle the line between east and west. I could skip back and forth at will, yet another is in the forest, waiting for a boat on the Turkish coast, willing to risk her life for a future. 

Why can I cross and she cannot? 

Flaming summer charms the earth

Flaming summer 
charms the earth

with it’s own fluting.

-Sappho

Children squeal wildly, their skin flashing through the water, sure as seals. Bright toys and towels lay scattered across the waters edge. “Look me! Look me!” they shout, desperate to show off underwater flips or unsteady dives. One new mother dips her toes hesitantly into the water as another mother has water to her neck and is tightly holding the hands of a volunteer. An older devoted couple float lazily, their feet intertwined, her hijab contrasting brightly with the water and pool noodles holding them to the surface. Splashing is inevitable and one little boy tries at least twenty times to sit on a raft. The water shines so brightly that one must occasionally look away. 

I stand momentarily off to the side with an older Spanish man, his tall posture bending slightly with age. He tells me of his organization based in Spain, Proem Aid, which serves as search and rescue on the water, bringing boats to shore. “Yes, we take them out of the water,” he says. “but then we must help them reconcile with the sea.” Each day, he makes a trip to Pikpa, walking the one hundred meters with all the children to the sea. He crosses the street with care, scans the water and sends them in, purposefully stationing volunteer lifeguards around them. 

And, with admirable patience, he teaches them. He gives them joy and he helps them to find their own power.

And the squealing continues...

I could not hope to touch the sky

I could not hope 

to touch the sky 

with my two arms

-Sappho

We sat in the port under the arm of Mytilene’s Statue of Liberty, two men from Iran, a woman from London, a wayward American and a clumsy little black puppy. The ukulele traded hands and the language of the music changed as often as tiny waves reached the shore near our feet. The puppy toddled between us, alternating her mini naps on each lap as Arash and Hani introduced me to Farsi music. The sun sank below the hills as a baritone voice blended and bent with the sound of the sea. 

Arash’s father was shot and killed in Iran almost twenty years ago. Since then, 32 year old Arash has stood up for the rights of others, such as bricklayers and trafficked sex workers. He has taken part in protests in Iran and he paid a heavy cost for his activism. Convicted of such brilliantly vague crimes as “Insulting the Supreme Leader of Iran,” and “Propaganda against the regime of Iran,” Arash has had his cameras and equipment confiscated, has survived countless beatings and has served multiple jail sentences, the final one lasting nearly three years. 

Photo by Arash Hampay

Arash fled Iran last year with his younger brother Amir, hiding in the forests of Turkey and crossing the sea to get to Greece. “Only forty minutes,” he said of the crossing. He assured me that that was the easy part. Since then he has struggled with the passing of time and the lack of purpose. “I cannot work,” he says as he tells me that his dream is to go to school for photography. Arash carries his camera (and puppy, Googol) everywhere he goes, capturing people’s smiles, triumphs and disappointments in his view finder. His photography tells the story of Lesvos today.

Upon arrival, a refugee applies for asylum and then waits... and waits... and waits some more.  The entire process is a study in inefficiency, inconstancy, and lack of accountability. As fate would have it, while Arash was approved for asylum, his brother Amir, was not. Once rejected, Amir appealed (which is still pending) and was imprisoned at Moria. Amir has now been imprisoned for months while Arash advocates for him from the outside. No one knows why Amir’s application was denied since he and Arash share blood and common danger and a deportation back to Iran could be absolutely disastrous. But there is no way to question the system. As anger mounted and in a bid for much needed attention, a hunger strike has begun at Moria, tasting it’s fifth day. In solidarity, Arash began his hunger strike one day later. (I won’t take it personally that I had just made a giant pot of soup for him..) Taking his devotion up to the next level, Arash is living out his hunger strike, very publicly, in centrally located Sappho Square with temperatures soaring to ten year highs.  He has also been arrested and released once for each day of his hunger strike. Arash is one determined man. But will he be heard?  Will he be safe? And will he ever have a chance to just be? 

Stand by me and be my ally

Stand by me and be my ally

-Sappho

“We hid in the forest for two weeks, no food.” Stepping into a boat at the edge of the sea is not the beginning of a journey, but only one concise stage in a journey of indignities and wild injustices spanning half the world.  Upon reaching the boats furtively dotting Turkey’s coast, a refugee has depleted all stores of strength and is left just with prayers. There is only survival. 

There are three camps on Lesvos; the infamous Moria, the dusty family containers of Kara Tepe and the summer camp feel of Pikpa. All new arrivals to the island are taken first to Moria, a jail disguised as a refugee camp and an overwhelming mass of humanity. Exhausted refugees line up for hours and days waiting to be registered and to file claims for asylum. Countless languages mingle and confusion remains king. In the midst of this last, unusually harsh winter, several refugees died, the possible causes being frostbite, hypothermia and asphyxiation. However, as autopsy reports have never been released, those who succumbed may never have justice. The police are rumored to maintain order by brute force, this rumor bruising the bodies and breaking the will of many. There are also explosive issues between refugees, due to ethnic and religious tensions, which compound in the overcrowded conditions.  However, there are those who work in this camp with integrity and compassion, implementing order and offering dignity. These people, as well as those they serve, are beautiful.

Music lessons in Moria ran on Tuesdays and Fridays. From 9-11am in the family section of Moria, we herded our exhuberent charges into a large circle to learn beats, dynamics and solfeggio. We sang songs and learned simple chords on the ukuleles. And if one child (or four) felt the need to throw herself on the floor, wailing and kicking, no one would flinch.  From 11-1pm we sat outside on wooden pallets in the women’s section and we listened as the women, mostly of African origin, poured their hearts into songs to God. Their pain momentarily dissipated as they lifted their eyes to the sky, their voices wrapping around my heart. From 1-230pm, we sang bad Bollywood songs and had rhythm drill competitions with the boys in the unaccompanied minors section, loud teasing and laughter mingled with earnest smiles and shy concentration. I was not a teacher in Moria, I was taught. 

Generally, once registered, families will go to the singed seaside Kara Tepe. Though there is more space, there is a definite absence of trees and shade which causes each family container to cook in the scorching summer heat.  There are rows upon rows of containers doubling as homes, some painted cheerily and decorated, some purposefully spartan. There are a plethora of NGOs offering services and activities for the Kara Tepe residents, however, oftentimes the NGOs work independent of each other instead of supplementing each other. For example, there are three groups providing music alone, though only one working efficiently would suffice. My particular organization worked with no set schedule or curriculum, despite the fact that multiple studies show the desperate need for routine and continuity in the lives of trauma survivors. Group lessons would commence in the random afternoon and evening hours of random days in a steamy hot container with an unnecessarily closed and locked door. Upon gaining the freedom to teach alone, I left the door wide open during lessons to allow a stingy breeze in, and the students and I went outside to sing and play songs for others. We had lesson plans for each day I taught and worksheets to reinforce our lessons. I was frustrated to discover that while waiting for an appeal for asylum to go through, a child and family will live in Kara Tepe between eight months to well over a year and despite this wealth of time and the incredible untapped potential of the kids, students were stagnating due to lack of structure. 

Once registered in Moria, those who are seen as more vulnerable are sent to the much smaller Pikpa camp; children with special needs, mothers who have just given birth, those who could be seen as targets. Pikpa, with a capacity of just 120, is run independent of the other camps by Lesvos Solidarity and though the camp has its own issues, the kindergarten of Pikpa is colorful and inviting and rather than containers, residents live in little wooden summer cottages. In my three days at Pipka, I was educated in the pop music of Iraq and Syria by little girls, I had my nails painted, my hair braided, I had a swimming lesson from one child (I am not such a good swimmer..) I shared in snacks under a tree and I would like to think that I also taught at least a little! 

There is so much ugliness on this island, in these camps with power trips, cruelty, broken pasts and hidden agendas, but there is also so much beauty and potential...Like when you sing a song and a woman stops you. She begins to quietly sing the same song in a different language. Eventually her hesitation gives way and her voice grows while her shoulders straighten. She sways with her own tempo and in her words, you begin to understand the true meaning of the song. Or, when a four year old with untamable ringlets stares at you with eyes as deep and as wise as the universe. She does not look away as you sing, this child who is studying you and if you wink, her dimpled smile gives away the meaning of life. 

Love shook my heart like wind

Love shook my heart like wind
on a mountain punishing oak trees
-Sappho

Joy is small. When the whole world is raging and out of control, joy sneaks quietly in on the back of a kitten climbing the window screen at 4am or in the fragrance of an unexpected rosemary bush on the way home. The other day, joy found it's way into my hand in the form of a tiny orange scrap of construction paper, a worthless item by all accounts, but a gift that held the worth and generosity of a laughing little girl. Will I now be carrying around a small piece of orange paper? Perhaps for a while.

Joy is in the quick flash of a dimpled smile from a little boy so newly safe. Joy is a child fast asleep on the floor as the others sing and dance like banshees all around. Joy is a child's pride at coloring in the lines or singing all the words to a Shakira song. Joy is in the hands of a pudgy toddler attempting to play my ukulele while holding a hard boiled egg.

Joy is in a small man with grey dreadlocks who quickly and competently dives in to stop a fight, yet later brushes all aside with a quiet smile. Joy is the process of trying to untangle the tiny yet surprisingly unyielding row of braids that a pair of giggling girls wove throughout my hair. Joy is in a bag of dried chickpeas, even if they are an admission that the sweet man who gifted them, really just doesn't know how to cook dried chickpeas. 

Joy is in the embrace of a thin woman with a short afro and graceful hands. Joy is in her inward soft smile as she sings with me and the others. Joy crinkles at the corners of her eyes. In my many years of being a musician, I have never met anyone who found such joy at simply singing a song.   Her gift of joy to me is greater than anything I have to give her.

The world rages, but.. well..  there is joy.

In Time of Storm

Brightness

and with good luck

we will reach the harbor 

and black earth

We sailors have no will 

in big blasts of wind,

hoping for dry land

and to sail 

our cargo 

floating about

many

labors

until dry land

-Sappho

A woman's fragmented words echo across two and half millennia, words which remain unanswered and yet answered in countless incarnations shouted and whispered back to her through time.  She is a gift to us, this Sappho, the first voice of a strong woman elbowing her words between those of Plato and Aristotle. And despite a separation of over 2500 years, her words still accurately paint Lesvos and the world today. 

Rumored home of Orpheus' lyre (and his head...) The island of Lesvos has served as a stepping stone between eastern and western culture as far back as the Iron Age. From the shores of it's capital, Mytilene, the not so distant purple mountains of Turkey reflect the light of a setting sun. Tucked into the crook of Turkey's arm, this small island of sturdy people with golden skin and weathered lines, has been alternately Priam, Roman, Macedonian, Byzantine, Genoese, Ottoman and finally in 1912, Greek. (though many would argue that Lesvos has ALWAYS been Greek...) 

In 1922, at the height of the brutal Greco-Turkish war, the city of Smyrna (present day Izmir) was taken by the Turks. Ethnic Greeks and Armenians fled with only their lives, piling into boats, crossing the four mile Mytilene strait and pouring themselves onto the shores of Lesvos. Nearly a hundred years later, over half of the islands 86,000 inhabitants are said to be the the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those desperate refugees. The Asia Minor Mother, a statue of a mother sheltering three children, stands guard on the shores of Mytilene, her back to the sea and her seeking eyes looking to her new uncertain future.



Despite the Greek debt crisis and a crippling depression, the residents of Lesvos stand on the front line of a nearly unprecedented humanitarian crisis. As large swathes of Africa and the Middle East erupt into turmoil, hundreds of thousands of refugees have paid traffickers and stumbled into over crowded questionable boats. For the many citizens and new arrivals, this tiny island of olive trees and ouzo has come to conversely represent safety, shelter, purgatory, prison, familiar and foreign. But despite all, there are still open arms on the beaches, arms that pull the troubled out of the water and into their hearts.