Amidst the Hell that is Moria, Life Flourishes
Amidst the Hell that is Moria, Life Flourishes Jelena Glusac | Al Jazeera Balkans Correspondent – Serbia
It is called hell on earth. Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos has no infrastructure. It has no walls, floors or running water. It has no containers. Nothing at all that could at least symbolise a home. Except people. It has more than 20,000 people. “We’d better not park here. Cars had been smashed.” The girl taking us to the camp has worked there for three years. She knows what 20,000 refugees per 30,000 locals signify. Tension. A couple of days before our arrival, some locals and members of right wing organisations blocked the streets of Lesbos. They stopped the police from taking new refugees to Moria, humanitarians from bringing them aid and media outlets from reporting on any of it. There was violence. “Hello, thank you!” Had she been born in an idyll of a well-off European economy, the girl repeating this singsong greeting could have been a face in an advertisement and on billboards. She isn’t more than five. She is so beautiful while she laughs that I cannot stop looking at her. Something that I couldn’t define at first is happening in places like Moria. The brain literally needs some time to process what it is seeing. Because something doesn’t add up here, but you do not know what. All the while, the image, just like in
nightmares, is not synchronised with the sound. And movements do not correspond to the situation. And the scene does not fit with the scenography. I’m watching a man cleaning his face and brushing his teeth. A woman is washing laundry in a tub. Guitar sounds drift from a crammed room. A woman from Congo is dancing to the traditional music of her country. Three men wait in a line for the barber. Another two are pulling wooden pallets. People coming from the shop pass each other by. Children are pushing younger ones in prams. A man is chopping wood. There is a group around a pot with boiling water raising the lid. These normal scenes happen in a completely abnormal environment and abnormal conditions. And I, as an outsider who just arrived, someone who woke that morning in a soft bed, showered with warm water, ate a nutritious breakfast, drank coffee, put on clean clothes, got into a car and came here, I do not see scenes. I see conditions. Moria has no streets because Moria is not a town. You may encounter cardboard wrapped in plastic that is someone’s home. You may pass it by only to suddenly come upon another, identical to that one.
270
271
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter