When the first “landings” of refugees arrived in the area in 2015, there were still no NGO’s set up on the island. I learned that back then it was up to the local fishermen to fish out the men, woman and children from the waters. Meanwhile it was Tula and her staff at the Goji’s Café that came in aid as the first waves of refugees began to wash up at the steps of her little oceanfront café.

As the media made progressive use of the label “refugee crisis”, the little-known fishing village received increasingly more coverage; locals recounted how the region witnessed an incoming tide of humanitarian workers… all the while flooding with writers, journalists, photographers and documentarists. Villagers grew more and more accustomed to the presence of foreigners, against the backdrop of prices silently rising and new rooms opening-up for rent.

A few days into my volunteering I sat down for a coffee at Goji’s Café and befriended a Syrian guy named Ramy. Ramy had apparently crossed about a year ago, and after some time in the camps, managed to establish himself in Skala where he volunteered as a translator for the newly arrived refugees. He was still waiting on the answer for his asylum status.

I could trace a kind and cartoon-like smile through his heavy beard, and he had a bulky laugh that made his whole body shake as he chuckled. I liked that about him. But it also contrasted greatly with the shades of darkness in his eyes

When Ramy and I weren’t playing chess or smoking cigarettes together, we would talk about his life back in Syria. About his job and his latest 3D animations, about silly memes we’d seen on the internet and about our families and ex-girlfriends. And sometimes, we would talk about how he got to Europe.

That’s when he avoided eye contact the most, as the story that he lived was a grim one; of his boat capsizing in the middle of the night and having to swim for eight hours until he reached the beach with a torn life jacket in one arm and the body of a lifeless child in another… But if Ramy’s eyes were evasive, it wasn’t because of the content nor the nature of his story. I felt him avoiding my eyes because it wasn’t the first nor the second time that he shared his story and that he faced the questions that ensued.

When hearing these stories of survival, I realised many had already received coverage. Film festivals, newspapers, magazines, documentaries, photography competitions and even blog posts had all tried to wake the world up to what was happening.

However, in the meantime, newspapers got sold, photographers won pictures of the year awards, and influencers received more likes than ever before. It was hard to reconcile with the idea that when the journalists travelled to the refugee camps, they came to study it; they came wanting to live something that was worth writing about. Refugees were not people, but concepts; and once the interview was over, they came back with a story, but the refugees never got much in return.

In this sense, Ramy was a story before he was a person and it sold like a tabloid.

But when the journalists left, the volunteers stayed.

On my last night there, one of the walkie talkies that was vigilantly placed on one of the café’s tables started to blare voices : “Korakas to Camp — Korakas to Camp –Refugee dinghy spotted — 42 people coming your way in 10 minutes — Over”. A dingy with forty-two people in it had been intercepted while floating around with a broken engine. It was 2am, and the rescue boats from Proactiva Open Arms were towing it to land. Automatically we all took positions and waited for the boat to appear out of the darkness. In a matter of minutes, we were handing out water and emergency blankets to the recently arrived, while some journalists who were present were already snapping pictures. The flashes reflected off of the aluminized emergency blankets — and the discomfort reflected in their eyes. Quickly the group was moved to the Stage 2, where we were told to wait with them until the police came to transfer them to Moria Camp, the ‘official’ camp for refugees. We arrived, handed out food, and offered first aid care to a grandmother whose feet were tapped together in an effort to protect them from the water that had already consumed them, and we waited, and waited…

By then it was 4am already, and while some dozed off exhausted from the journey, others were playing football with the volunteers, a sport that everyone knew how to play, despite the language differences and that needed no words. The only sounds that broke the silence of the night, were those of laughter, voices and lighters lighting cigarette after cigarette until dawn. And it felt as if the real work happened here, where refugees felt a little less like refugees, and people were just being people.
​

First reading in Madrid, at El dinosaurio Open Mic

By Lauren Klarfeld
April 2016.
Published April 2016 : The Huffington Post
(The following text uses the pronoun "she" but invites all male readers to indentify with the description as well)

​She will never sign off her letters with a “your truly” — but always with a “see you when I see you”.

See, a girl who really travels – doesn’t travel to collect stamps or stories or memories. She travels to learn how to dance barefoot. How to place her toes into sand and dance through rhythm and not through rehearsed footwork.

She has learned to follow what she likes, not what she needs to like. She won’t go for what is conventional, because really what she is looking for is something unconventionally functional.

The relationships she looks for aren’t about security. They are about sincerity.

They are about trying to find a person to share a rhythm with. Someone who knows how not to step on each other’s toes – because it will always take two to tango.
 
She will always be alone in their mind. And so will you. But somewhere along the line, you will understand that you can share each other’s loneliness too. She won’t need a saviour; but an accompanier. And she’ll need someone who lives that way too.

She will not always want to hear about the successes you had. But she’ll want to know about the failures you lived and of which you grew from.

She will not want to hear about the number of countries you’ve been in, because she’ll want to hear about the countries you’ll want to be in and why…
 
Because when she travels she knows that deep down she is escaping reality. So, she’ll want to feel what reality is through you. She is looking for someone to give her hope and land back to the idea that reality and routine isn’t as bad as it seems in the end. 

She is not trying to be something she’s not. Because she is finding herself – questioning herself – and she’s expecting you to be the same. She is not looking for all the answers, but just for better questions.

And when she’s talking to you – she’ll want to know that her eyes are meeting yours - and that they don’t wander away to the screen of your phone or to the other people around - Because when she’s striking up a conversation with you, her full attention is given solemnly. So, use it wisely.
. . .
But sometimes we are so lonely that we are readier to fall in love with the concept of a person than of the person itself. We find there to be people thirsty for life, while others to be hungry for love.

And so we end up attracting people that are either drenched in their own puddles of narcissism, or drowning in their own lakes of fascination.

Few people will understand that to love - is like being able to select and read a good book. Some people will pick up a book in a store, look at the cover and fall in love with the title while making an idea about the content.

But other people - other people know the true value of a book. They don’t just stop at the title or the cover. They stop because…they want to read the content. The wanted to read each word, each sentence, each line, but most of all, all that is also in between the lines…

So that we don’t just love the person for the image, idea or concept of them that we want to keep of them, but so that we can love them for every fantastically weird and twisted detail that makes them them. Because relationships are about choices and not necessities. So why chose to love an illusion if you can love reality?
 
A man or woman who travels in the end will never be kept. But if you understand them well enough, they’ll always be by your side. They will have forgotten where their home is in this world — but you might just make them feel like the closest thing to feeling at home. 


(First published April 2016 at The Huffington Post)
(Inspired by the article “don’t date a girl who travels” by Adi Zarsadias)

By Lauren Klarfeld
Feb. 2016