A Greek
summer resort that closed over five years ago as a result of the
financial crisis has been turned into a haven for more than 300
refugees.
In a
two-storey, white-painted apartment beside a picturesque beach, Tarek
Al-Felou and his wife, Kinda, are making a shish barak, a Middle
Eastern dish of meat dumplings.
Their
neighbours are some 320 refugees, most from Syria. Since late March,
they have breathed new life into LM Village, a summer resort that
closed more than five years ago as a result of Greece’s financial
crisis.
Now, each of
the 38 neatly painted bungalows houses two families. Their laundry
flutters in the breeze. Mothers chat on porches framed by palm trees.
Teenagers play basketball on an abandoned court as toddlers chase
each other up and down a faded, blue-and-yellow water slide nearby.
“Yallah, get down from there!” shouts an older boy. Five
times a day, a grandfather’s Islamic call to prayer echoes through
the square.
The
resort-turned-refugee-shelter is a village in nearly every sense, a
far cry from the fighting, shelling and sieges its residents escaped
just months ago. For most, it is the closest approximation to their
former, pre-war lives that they have experienced in years.
“In
this place we try to forget we are refugees,” says Tarek, 42,
who once owned a restaurant outside Damascus and fled to Greece with
Kinda and their two children. “We can pretend we’re on
holiday.”
The
reopening of the resort as a refugee reception centre is the
initiative of the local mayor, Nabil-Iosif Morad, a Syrian doctor
from Homs who has lived in Greece for 25 years. A Greek citizen
through marriage, Nabil-Iosif is also the first naturalized Greek of
Syrian origin elected to office in the country.
He offered
the resort after the Greek Government asked local mayors for help in
taking in the 57,460 refugees still in Greece, following border
closures along what is known as the 'Balkan route' to northern
Europe. More than 1 million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe
last year by sea, according to UNHCR figures.
Nabil-Iosif
says at first he started gathering donations of clothing to send to
Idomeni, the unofficial camp at the Greek border with the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where 10,000 refugees lived in
squalor for several months this spring. “But that wasn’t
enough. So I asked whether we could use this space.”
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