“The challenge of our role is to be thermostats, not thermometers, which means not taking the environment’s temperature, but trying to change it.”
 
If we think about a conflict, we easily imagine a situation of violence and injustice and we easily expect an environmental “temperature” of rage, a sparkle ready to start a fire and an explosion.
But in Greece – cradle of democracy, philosophy, classical art – where is the conflict? I have found it in the colourful graffiti on the walls of camps monitored by cameras and covered by barbed wire. I have felt it in the alarmed reaction of the camp’s private security, standing before our attempt to help a fragile person carrying a weight through the entrance checkpoint. I have seen it during the meetings around our tiny table, into the circumspect glances, checking who else was listening in the moment they start talking about their mother language, their own story. I have heard it in the voice of a father, telling us he could not take care of his own child inside a hospital wherein they spoke a language he did not know. I have felt it into the tears of frustration kept by a girl who could not bear to be exploited any longer at work.

"To those violins played by the wind
the last kiss, my sweet little girl
gets my face burnt like lemon drops
the heroic courage of a fierce farewell."
From the song “The Last Kiss” by Carmen Consoli

Hussein is gone.
He passed away after he spent months in the hospital where he stayed in intensive care unit so many times.
He suffered from a rare, incurable disease. The diagnosis was a merciless verdict.

Jamil is a friend we met quite a few months ago.
He has some vulnerabilities, that cause him to not always be lucid.
He doesn’t talk much about his past, but the scars on his arms speak for themselves and tell his pain.
We know that he is nearly 30 years old, that he left Aleppo 10 years ago and that, despite seeming often rude and ill-tempered, he exhibits a great need of someone who will stand by him and show him love.

Here in the project in Greece, in these first weeks full of encounters, exchanges of glances and silences, I have thought many times about the words of Pablo Neruda's poem: “Being born is not enough. It is to be born again that we are born”.
These words come back to my mind my mind every time we go to the camps of Ritsona and Malakasa, and I see the walls made of concrete and barbed wire demarcating the space, I smell the smell of the chemical industry wafting through the air, and I see the guards at the entrance of the camp watching attentively every move.
I have always been convinced, and I am even more convinced now that I am carrying a life in my womb, that the gift of life is a great thing, a shout of joy towards a new dimension, where everything gets a new shape, a new sound, a new smell and a new colour. We gradually learn to know this immense world and understand its magical dynamics.