Grey eyes are good in the dark, yet everything looks so beautiful in the sunlight. Trying to take in the world through the dull filter of dark lenses is something I’ve always hated. ‘I like to see the world in full colour.’ I declared to my Greek friend as I took off my sunglasses. She looked at me with a mixture of amusement and pity through her big brown eyes. ‘But darling, you can’t see.’ ‘I’m fine.’ I reassured her, as I stumbled across Athenian cobbles.
An elephant stood on the road directly in front of the car. The sun was rising in the east behind and for this reason my photographs looked crap. This big, beautiful mammal was swallowed in the shadow. But my eyes could see what my camera lens couldn’t. These creatures were majestic and wondrous to me.With all of their magnitude, magic lies in the slow and certain power of their quiet charisma. They remember everything. They soak up the world around them and hold on to it. I regularly step back from the unfolding world and ask ‘How did I get here? How am I seeing this?’
A year ago I was about to set off to Greece on an indefinable trip. What ever the original purpose, I’m still here and I’ve seen many things I won’t forget. I have little to no photographs as proof but I can still remember each crazy moment as if it was before my eyes.
Recently I’ve returned to Lesvos for work. Today, the horizon from Lesvos’ south shore is flat, but it feels like a piece of the saddest story. A story we intermittently grieve over, for it will not conclude one way or another.
I have a photo in my head in shades of blue and black. It’s a dark image but every so often a spotlight sweeps across and hands rise up from a single point in the black night. The Turkish coastguard seemed like a predator that night. It hunted it’s prey and they surrendered to their fate. Turned back in their race for survival, to try another day.
In the coffee shops around the island I come across the restless veterans of the Lesvos refugee crisis, winter class of 2015/2016.
Some have figured out where the need is and others are clearly lost. They fought a war in the name of human decency, they aren’t sure if they have won or lost and now all they have is vivid memories. These pictures tell tales with victories or at least conclusions. Now they drink coffee and talk about the day they waded waist deep in to the Aegean to lift people to safety.
These people did a great job. I’ll defend against the begrudgers who would argue differently. But like all beautiful and wondrous movements, achieving your initial goal is never the conclusion for those who took part. And it is certainly not victory for those in who’s name we collectively moved to support.
The masses moved from the cool blue of the islands to the steel and barbed wire of the border. My memories here are charred. I didn’t realise the engine was smoking until I’d driven 100 km to the border. We popped the bonnet and the males gathered. Syrian, Iraqi, Greek; they all predicted the impending doom of my car. They predicted this to each other of course, for I am female and therefore know nothing. Needless to say they were wrong but trapped in the middle of nowhere for the few hours it took for repairs felt like hell to me. The sun blazed and my skin burned like only an Irish complexion can. There was no shade and I had no defence. Only someone as white as I can understand the fear of being burned from the outside just because it’s daylight. Then a little hand slotted in to mine. She pulled me through the maze of tents and we ducked down under canvass to our resting place. They offered me coffee and I held their baby who like me was rashed and red from the harsh elements. They too were trapped in this charred mess of humanity.
The UNHCR grey blankets, synthetic fibers damp with the preceeding weeks of rain, did not burn well. It didn’t stop people trying. The smoldering grey husks lay strewn along the road in to Eidomeni. Anger burned brighter though. Men’s tempers were flammable. A riot erupted within 30 seconds of my arrival. The police had arrested a suspected trafficker and now their smashed up land-rover was barricaded in to the fray. I found myself on the wrong side of the tracks, quite literally. I could see the anger up close. It was destructive, understandable, utterly pointless and unchecked. It led to failed attempts to rush the border and the result was more burning. The teargas rained down in April and as the toxic haze seared their children’s eyes, mothers put a stop to the madness and boarded government buses to unknown camps in unspecified destinations. And my story moved south to Athens.
Green cars are thought to be unlucky. People don’t see them. They go unnoticed.
I hitched a lift with a hunter one day. A colleague and I had decided to attend the opening of a library. The bus dropped us in an abandoned Greek village. The hunter was dressed head to toe in camouflage. I sat in the back seat by his rolls of ammunition. He told us of his skill. ‘They don’t see me’ he pointed to his shades of green. We arrived at the camp. Like so many others, it’s a dusty place, hidden, camouflaged by the countryside and forgotten. ‘We don’t see them either.’ I thought.
In winter we sat with a group of teenagers in a forest where the government had placed them. They were not convinced by our presence at first. Most of them were sick in the damp air but mainly they were angry with the number of ways their defeat had been catalogued. Their thoughts were extracted, their misery analysed, all had been done in the name of humanitarian learning. Yet their stories disappeared when these strangers left the forest. Translated in to English. Shared with people far from here. Ultimately forgotten.
These teenagers sat with us in a forest and they didn’t want to talk. It really was a beautiful place to visit. The light refracted through the mossy green branches. ‘Would you like to learn photography?’ we suggested. Some ears pricked up. ‘Selfie ?’ ‘Do you take selfies?’ we asked. I am definitely of the Facebook generation. We were the students in the original networked system. However, cataloging every facial expression seems to be a trend of those born after 1995. I always attributed it to the desire of confused teenagers to be identified by someone. An external judge to shine light on a developing identity. I think this is probably true. But for a group of teenagers fading away in a cold dark forest, there is a strong desire to be noticed. Not camouflaged by circumstance. Most of all, not to be forgotten by the world.
So one year on I’m in Kenya posting photos on safari. The pictures do no justice to the world I can see in full colour. They sit alongside side the memories of other darker sights that equally took my breath away. The exhaustion of the Greek Islands, the anger at the closed Greek border and so many shades of defeat in the isolated camps speckling the countryside; all of these colours of human emotion flutter through my mind. I post the elephant photos on Facebook and new friends, now trapped in their European sanctuaries, click ‘like’ in appreciation of the fruits of my freedom.
I could feel shame but what’s the point in that? In truth the photos are nice to have. Sharing them with friends is probably self indulgent. But to see these sights, is a gift. And back in the real world, not one single day passes where I don’t receive a request to help. People want to do something to help because they see pictures from Aleppo in charcoal grey and violent red. How do they begin to help here? Their imperfect solution is that they might know someone in Greece or Calais and maybe they can be an embassary for their good will. These people don’t insert themselves in to the picture here because they have families and jobs and lives which can’t allow it. But they cast some light this direction through their intention. If some believe it to be ineffective then the answer is to provide leadership to funnel this light in to a spotlight in the right directions. Not 50 helpless people in an inflatable boat on a winters night. Instead a spotlight on those who sell and employ weapons that would paint the sky black and block out the sun.
Survival in the islands, resistance at the border and quiet, angry hope in the camps are all colours I am privileged to have witnessed. The sights and colours of 2016 were a gift in my life.
yourlittlehuman 