Navigate

Stay Connected

The Room of Arts

The Water of Memory, The Water of Return

Traditions from Greece and Middle East used to say
that when a beloved person is going to leave
we should throw water on his back·
in order to move fast and to remember,
like the water, and came back.

   

"Syria has civilizations which are 10,000 thousand years old, Syria is a mix of many nationalisms and ethnics, is like a mosaic. There were peace and respect among all religions and denominations"  "Life before the crises was a normal life. I am a Muslim, my friend is Christian my neighbor is Sunni, my other neighbor is Alawi, and there were no problems"  "We were refugees in our land. How can it be!! 95% of the inhabitants are Kurds and not registered as Kurdish. We did not occupy this area"  "When the army go inside they killed everything they found even the animals, Also the sick people, the old people, the children, the women, everything"  "Suppressing by force and using tear gas, and after the rebels came the regime used tanks and artillery for shelling"  "The life became tragedy and hard, I do not have something made me personally sad but I was feeling sorry about the people all were against us, they were kidnapping us and ask for a ransom, Daesh considered us as blasphemous people"  "My country getting attacked the ground being violated, this is something we will never forget. They made 3rd world war in Syria, they are testing their weapons against us. All violates our ground and we are quiet"  "They are fighting the people, all of those bombs what they get, and they are bombing the innocent civils"  "When we were at the middle of desert the mafia come from nowhere and they had weapons, and they forced all of us to come with them and they kidnap us and they put us in a small apartment in the dessert"  "After that another mafia come and they was make a deal, they sold us to another mafia"  "When I arrived to Italy in the middle of sea the engine was broken, high waves is come we are lucky we found a military ship and ask them for help to call someone to pick us up. They were looking for other survivors, there is two ships that they don’t survive. It was contained about 700 people by the middle of sea"  "The boat last for less than 5 min and sink. All the people around you trying to swim, a lot of people, they don’t have a helping suits. The rescuing boats came to us and they start to collect people. We didn’t see any lights, but we can hear the engine. Then it came and it came empty, without any person in it"  "An empty area where there is no house and no streets, we were then faced with a big group, with black masks, police uniform, they had guns and metal sticks, and they didn’t say a word, they immediately attacked us and started hitting us"  "We went to Gevgelija walking on railroad. At 12:30 am we started 80 person embarking on one trailer, we were sure that we were going to our death"  "They are mafia they do everything. It’s not a problem for them if they kill us or not. You are not a human for them, you are just money"  "At the border they had sticks they start hitting us again that we run to Greece"  "While we are walking in the forest and we climb about 5-6 mountain 3-4 Somalian people, their legs had broken but they couldn’t continue and they die. No one help them, because if you stop the smuggler will go and you will be lost"  "After that in the midnight we start to walk and we walk about also 10 hours. The mountains in Serbia are very difficult to climb them"  "6 hours and we arrived Austria"  "We should push for speeding the process of reunification. Then the problem is the unaccompanied minors"  "They cannot integrate us in this small room where I live now, out of the life"  "We will try to put them in school, we will try to make them better educated"   "We, as refugees, must respect our surroundings After the terrorist attacks in Paris, Norway and Germany...We all are terrorist for them"  "Well, I mean the word immigration crises is not the right word, its bureaucracy crises as I call it"  "When I think about my country, I never imagine that day will come, that my country will be destroyed and all my memories is just gone. It’s hard to go back by memories. But now it’s all destroyed, it’s too hard and I wish that one day it’s going fine again"  "Everything in Damascus is beautiful so as the smell of the Yasmin"


Concept - Interviews: Vasilis Tsartsanis
Photography: Emad Aldein Awawdy - George Georgalidis - Alexandros Oikonomidis
Research on stories: Yannis Nikolaidis
Narration: Anastasis Roilos
Production: Asklepeion