Amidst the Hell that is Moria, Life Flourishes
Children from Moria camp do not go to school because the educational system does not recognise them. These non-existent children laugh, play with marbles, run and shout greetings to us. At one time, after who knows how many months of journey, their parents placed them in rubber boats and headed towards the shores of Lesbos not knowing if they would reach them alive. These people left behind certain conditions I know nothing about. Now, they are in Moria. For months. Years. Living.
Although we too practically lived in the mud of the Balkan route during the refugee crisis, apart from a few reporting stills, I don’t have many photos from those places. I remember well three of them, primarily because of the associated feelings: • The Berkasovo-Bapska border crossing between Serbia and Croatia. Hundreds of buses are crammed with refugees. The surrounding cornfields have become a waste dump. On those mountains of trash, a young man squats, looking in a handheld mirror and shaving before he steps onto European Union soil. It is an unreal scene.
• The Idomeni refugee camp in Greece. Horrific. An endless sea of tents. People standing in a single file to get their meal. To capture both the start and the end of the line I need to select ‘panorama’ mode on the phone’s camera menu. But that is not the image. The image is a hyacinth. One of the refugees laid it in my hand while passing by. I will never forget how it smelled amidst all that horror. • The Moria refugee camp on Lesbos. A man dug a hole in the ground and made an oven. He is poking it with a thin iron stick and smiling benevolently. He lets us record him. He places bread, still hot from
the oven, in my hand. I am standing in the mud with a microphone in one hand and warm bread in the other, completely speechless. The images and sounds merge, movements become synchronised, scene overpowers scenography. Amidst the hell that is Moria, life flourishes.
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