Category Archives: refugee stories

Afghan women matter: Art exhibition in Chalkida

ART WORKS made by refugee young women living in the Camp Ritsona, are exhibited in the Town hall of the city of Chalkida.
You can contact Fariba and Fershta Amiri through our Email: lesvos.w2eu[at]yahoo.gr.

. .when it’s about violance i close my eyes and think about injustice to keep a strong painting and sometimes when i’m thinking about past life, my images tell me, to keep alive everything that bother me through paintings.

Fareshta

Art exhibition in Chalkida
Although the young people finally are aloud to join the Greek school in Chalkida, there is no bus or other transport for them to get over the 20 kilometers distance between the camp and the city of Chalkida. So they unfortunately, although they have the right to go to school, are obliged to stay in the camp.

I have different plans and dreams about my future, definitely. One of them is to become the best football player, as I am right a player right now. And beside of that to improve my art and continue my lessons


Fariba

Fariba Amiri and Fereshte Amiri will show their Art in the exhibition. Find Faribas Art-Gallery here and Fereshtas Art-Gallery here.
Painting, drawing, writing poems and other creative ways are their expression of their feelings and the comments of their situation.
We wish all of them to be fast part of the Greek society and live among the Greek people or enjoy their freedom of movement.
They should follow their art, that from now on, is traveling around the world not being stopped by any kind of borders or walls.

…my images tell me, to keep alive….

Fareshta

When it’s about violance i close my eyes …

Fariba Amiri is showing her Painting in the Art-Exhibition in Chalkida “Afghan women matter” in Chalkida this weekend.
You can contact Fariba and Fershta Amiri through our Email: lesvos.w2eu[at]yahoo.gr.
Hi
i am Ferehsta Amiri 16 years old from Afghanistan. It has been 2 years that i am living in Greece inside of the camp. Two months ago after a long time we could arrange this opportunity to go to school – with a high motivation unfortunately the school is in Chalkida that is 20 kilometers far from here – Ritsona Camp.
But I hope to have this way of education again as we didn’t have access to expand our knowledge for a long time.
And it is almost 8 months that i have started drawings beside of my lessons. Through this drawing i could picture my reality perspective through paper.

Not only drawings – through writing the texts or poems – i become calm with having nice feelings that i have had.

When i am drawing my paintings it inspires me to make me calm during of drawings ….

Special when it’s about violance i close my eyes and think about injustice to keep a stonge painting and sometimes when i’m thinking about past life my images tell me to keep alive everything that bother me through paintings.

💚✨

I have different plans and dreams about my future …

Fariba Amiri is showing her Painting in the Art-Exhibition in Chalkida “Afghan women matter” in Chalkida this weekend.
You can contact Fariba and Fershta Amiri through our Email: lesvos.w2eu[at]yahoo.gr.
Hi, I am Fariba Amiri, 15 years old from Afghanistan living in Greece, Ritsona refugee camp. After spending one and a half year in Greece I am able to go to a school, but the situation about the buses are difficult on all the students in my age. There is no bus for transferring us to school. It is 20 kilometers far from here.
That’s why we haven’t gone to school from when it started untill now. I have started painting 10 months ago and I was doing it mandala art

The painting and drawing give me a calm feelings, my stress goes on doing mandala, and i enjoy during painting about different things.


Continue reading I have different plans and dreams about my future …

Letter to the World from Moria (No 12)

Author: A migratory girl

copyright: Hinrich Schultze

I am mother Earth

I have existed for billions of years. Every century I raised new generations, but I have never been at the same time as proud of myself as I am today and as sad and disappointed as I am today.

Today, I stand tip-top on some incredible advances and discoveries achieved in this world. Yet, it looks like my residents are returning back to old false thoughts, thoughts thousands years old. Thoughts of egoism, thoughts of greed, thoughts that make you fight between each other, that made you built borders in order not to share between your kind or other creatures.

I am mother of you all. I am equally belonging to all people. You can all live on me. So what are these borders for that you created? Why don’t you open your doors to each other? Why don’t you get rid of racism and come together sitting on one table?

We are a family. Didn’t you realise? Is it possible for one child to ask another child to give him back his mother? Is she mother to just one child? Which mother can be happy to see one of her kids happy and wealthy and another poor and miserable? Which family can draw borders between its members? You are all earths people, how can one be more and another less?

You want to conquer other people, other countries, other planets. Have you pleased me, to now think that you will please other planets? Did you look after me so now you think that you can look after other planets?

Today, more than any times in the past, I need protection from you people and people need protection from each other. Instead of looking after me, you want to conquer me, you think that I belong to some few of you. You don’t want to care and to share…

Don’t you need me all in order to survive? I am soil and water for you, and if the goal is to live and not to turn others into slaves, get a piece of land for yourself and give a glas of water to others.

Every day, with your growing greed I fall into more trouble and you loose yourselves. Your attempt to conquer me burns forests into ashes, forests that have grown over thousands of years nurturing us with oxygen. Seas turn red with human blood, and more lands with their thousand years old history, turn into dry sand.

Your pressure on me is ever growing. With every century of your “progress”, I get closer to the end of my life. You want to exploit me, but don’t you realize that you deplete me every day, that you end my days and yours.

Why don’t you content with what you already have? Why don’t you protect the treasures in your hands? Your life would be terribly short if I belonged to one man only, if you were alone. If you continue the same way, you won’t be able to have me for more than 100 years more. I will die. You will die.

So let the people see the grasses also in future, let them touch the lawns, let them smell fresh air, let them climb the mountains and swim in the seas. Don’t force the future generations to spend all their days and lives with masks! My ozone layer is being destroyed. I cannot escape harmful radiations anymore, all because of you! Every day by making more nuclear power, by building more factories, I come closer to the end of my life.

This is only an Abstract of the letter.Read the whole letter on infomobile.w2eu.net

One can wander to the East or the West, to the North or the South, but where home is, it is the best.

Parwana

Letter to the World from Moria (Nr. 11)

Author: A migratory girl

Life of a Transgender

I am in Moria Camp.

Being a transgender 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 binary: only female and male are considered as “normal” genders.

In Afghanistan I used false names. I am Mina. This name gives an understanding that I am a girl. Yet, every day, during my whole being, my soul screams: “I am not a girl! Don’t cover your self with these clothes.”

I was born, in 1992, in Mazaresharef, the western province of Afghanistan. Being a girl in such a society carries guilt. Being a transgender born as a girl carries double guilt. So when I realised that I was not really a girl, my life became a nightmare. I felt myself separate from everyone, not belonging to any of the dominant sexes. Although I had a female body, I wanted to be with boys, behave like a boy. Playing with them, learning with them, speaking with them was pleasant for me.

While I was little, my family allowed me to do more or less what I wanted. But as soon as my female body developed, they didn’t allow me to be what I wanted to be, as I wanted to be. They were always thinking about their reputation and honour and not about what I wanted. When I became 18, I felt like a prisoner in the jail of my female body and I couldn’t tolerate anymore wearing girl’s clothes. So, I decided to take off my hijab and be what I wanted to be.

I loved one of my classmates and I was all the time with her. She didn’t know everything about me. She just knew my deep feelings for her and she thought that I was like all girls. Sometimes, she felt uncertain and would ask if I was ok. Soon, I decided to speak with her and with my family.

First I told her all my feelings, that I really loved her and wanted to be with her all my life. She was shocked, but she accepted me and wanted me to be what I wanted to be, not what others wanted me to be.

When I then spoke with my family, they told me that they would kill me if I did not do what they wanted. They also told me that there was a suitor asking for me and that he and his family were coming the next day to visit to ask for my hand. I should just dress like a lady and that was it!

I thought ok, I will do what they ask me to do. I will get married, but I won’t have any relation with him. Relations need feelings and I had no such feelings for him or any men. I thought, I will divorce him after two months, I promise!

I did the opposite. I went to a barber and cut off my hair like a boy. Then I wore a t-shirt with a pair of jeans and went home.  

I did all of that in order to live in freedom, and I will continue my struggle until I achieve my freedom. Freedom for ever.

This is only an Abstract of the letter.Read the whole letter on infomobile.w2eu.net

I hope that here I will be free!

Parwana