I wrote this story in Fall 2020 for an outlet but it never saw the light of day. The story went out in one my monthly newsletters but I thought it’s time for the internet’s eye and, hopefully, a bigger audience. Though COVID and international relations have put the refugee crisis out of our collective minds, the men, women and children stuck in Greece are still suffering. I hope this piece gives perspective on the refugee plight and the work many do to care for these dear people.
NB: The story is dated and a repost from a newsletter. For updated information on the refugee crisis, I suggest checking out this article from The New Humanitarian or this overview from Carnegie Europe.
WHY A TEENAGE CHRISTIAN REFUGEE IS REACHING OUT TO THE MAFIA
You can easily miss the Greek Evangelical Church of Glyfada, even if you know where to look for it. It is not like the ancient Orthodox churches that dot Greek neighborhoods and draw the eyes in their otherworldly architecture, with icons, bell towers and beauty. Instead, located on the side of a busy seaside highway outside of Athens, this tiny church sits above a tennis store and is only recognizable by a non-ornate white cross and small, white sign on a black background. What beauty it lacks in architecture, though, it makes up for in heart. Sahar, a 17-year-old Christian refugee from Iran, has found comfort within this community. Yet, driven by desperation to reunite with her father in Germany before her 18th birthday, this young woman is contemplating turning to another source for help: the Mafia.
CULTURE NIGHTS FOR A CAUSE
On a warm, summer evening in June, a handful of refugees wait outside the building to be buzzed into the church. After climbing a flight of stairs, they walk through a nondescript wooden door and to the right, into a large white room that’s been converted into a sanctuary. Black, removable chairs stay in rows of 4, supplying seats for about 60 people on a Sunday. Large windows provide a view of the highway and, in the distance, the sea and its mountains and islands. At 5 pm, the sun beats through the windows at a sweltering 85 degrees, a temperature people will soon be longing for as the summer heat bears down on Greece. The only adornment in the room is a large cross that is engraved into the architecture of the wall. From the center, where the two beams meet, the cross peals outward, as if reaching from the center of itself out to the world. Like the unassuming cross, this little church seeks to be an outward-facing extension of grace as this summer evening’s event shows.
Tonight is a unique one for the church. Soon, the sounds of the sitar will pour from the windows and the smell of Middle Eastern foods that Sahar misses most will float through the air. A local passerby would certainly be confused, but not just about the Persian culture emitting from the tiny evangelical church. They would wonder about the church itself.
Planted in 2009 by the First Evangelical Church of Athens, the Glyfada church has been active in the Greek community for 10 years. Glyfada is a wealthy neighborhood that lies on the sea about 20 minutes south of Athens. Though the financial crisis, which has passed it 11th year, clearly impacted the austere and gentrified community’s status, the suburb is still an enigma in Greece: it boasts luxury car dealers like BMW selling SUVs too big for the poorly maintained Greek roads and high end clothing shops with prices so high most Greeks could only dream to pay for. Refugees like Sahar have even less hope.
The Greek Evangelical Church, of which this Glyfada church is apart, puzzles most Greeks who identify as Greek Orthodox. According to GEC church planters in 2020, only 0.3% of Greece’s population claim to be evangelical, or less than 30,000 people to a population of almost 11 million. To most Greeks, evangelicals are considered heretics. To members of the denomination, they’re simply presbyterians.
Though originally planted to serve their fellow Greeks in Glyfada, the church’s vision expanded with the refugees that flooded their community. When the crisis reached its zenith 4 years ago, the government set up a massive makeshift camp at an abandoned airport by the beach in Glyfada. Day after day, ferries would unload thousands of refugees fleeing war in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and persecution in Iran. The refugees poured out of the ships with the clothes on their back and nothing more. Or, like Sahar, walked from Turkey after crossing the Edirne River into Greece.
WORKING FOR THE GOOD
The Glyfada church witnessed the misery of these refugees and sprang to action. Along with hundreds of other NGOs and thousands of volunteers, they handed out food, water, diapers, sanitary cloths—anything they could to help. In 2015, a million people passed through Greece, looking for security in Germany. This little evangelical church in Glyfada worked to bring basic needs to people in the camps for as long as they were there, often briefly. George Tolias, the Glyfada church’s pastor, stressed they had no choice but to act. “People were literally drowning in front of us. What else were we supposed to do, let them drown?”
As the crisis drew on—and it was clear refugees would be staying in Greece for some time—the church looked for ways to help in the long term. The biggest need? Shelter. Tents weren’t adequate to deal with the winter winds and rain, and squats—abandoned schools, houses and businesses—meant refugees living with multiple families in squalid conditions. The airport camp was shut down and refugees sent to fend for themselves while their asylum applications were processed.
The answer to the church’s question proved to be a dilapidated house in Glyfada owned by the denomination. After getting permission from the synod to renovate and house refugees, the Greek Evangelical Church of Glyfada launched an initiative to care for the refugees they could, and serve them well. They renovated the rooms in what they now call the Voula House, so named because of its location in a suburb next to Glyfada. Slowly, room-by-room, they cleaned the space and began moving families into the house for a 10-month span of time. Right now the Voula House is home to 8 families, with a dozen more on a waiting list. Sahar, her mother and brother count themselves lucky to be among the refugees living in the House and not on the street.
In addition to the the Voula House, the church also launched another initiative for the wider community, a time to celebrate and memorialize the identities of the refugees that now flooded the city: cultural nights.
Tonight was June’s cultural night.
REMEMBERING WHAT WAS LOST
Though slated to start at 5 pm, after some miscommunications, everyone gathered in the converted sanctuary an hour later around circular tables meant for 8. In the front were 3 musicians, ready to begin their Persian music. Tolias gathered the attention of refugees, a group of 16 Americans who had come to serve the church community, and several Greeks who serve the Voula residents, from the front of the room.
With his 10-month-old baby girl in his arms, Tolias spoke to the now seated crowd. “As you know, we are a church. But we’re a church that loves different cultures and people. We want you to know that you are loved and valued and cared for and want to celebrate and enjoy your culture.”
With that, the lead musician on a sitar began explaining the modal music and masterfully dancing his fingers across the scales. A violinist joined in, and finally the hand drum.
As the music started, Sahar sat down at a table next to me, eyes transfixed on the musicians. Tears began filing her eyes as she breathed, “I’ve missed this music so much.”
Sahar, wearing a blue jumpsuit that emphasized dark eyes, sat with her head in her hands, swaying to the music, her hair moving slowly back and forth. She smiled and then closed her eyes, listening to the songs that brought back a home she would most likely never see again.
SAHAR’S PLIGHT
An incredibly smart young woman, Sahar already spoke 3 languages—Farsi, Kurdish, English—and was working on Greek and German. She was a huge help as she acted as translator for American and Greek workers at the Voula House. But the only thing normal about her life now was that every now and then she could act in plays in Athens. She’d been in Athens for almost 2 years, but when asked if the city had started to feel like home, laughed scornfully. “No, no! It never will until I’ve been here for 20 years.”
Sahar and her family are Kurds from Iran who make up a small percentage of the refugee population in Athens. Even more unique, they are Christians. When her father’s house church was discovered in Tehran, the family was forced to flee. After hiring smugglers to get his family to Greece, her father made his way to Germany, intending the rest of the family to join him. On their way to join him, however, Sahar, her mother and brother got stuck in Greece. Her father tries daily to get his papers sorted and have his family join him but has had no luck so far. For Sahar, the timing delay complicated matters enough to make her look at options outside the comforts of her temporary sanctuary.
Though Sahar and her family have been in the asylum process for almost two years, they still don’t have papers. In September, Sahar will turn 18 and will no longer be considered a minor. If her mom and brother are granted reunification with her father in Germany, she wouldn’t be included, but would have to start the process over as an adult, she says. The idea of this soon-to-be 18-year-old girl managing through the bureaucracy of the asylum process and then reunification in Germany seems preposterous and overwhelming.
So, she was looking into her options.
“It seems weird to say that I’ve been talking with the Mafia because they are bad people, but I don’t know what else to do,” she had confessed earlier. “I would never be in contact with them in Iran, but now I don’t have a choice.”
This rule-abiding, meek girl didn’t seem capable of having such bad connections. She’s been out of school for two years and is waiting to finish her high school degree in Germany when she gets her asylum papers. Before deciding to pursue acting, Sahar thought of journalism. She liked writing and one of her aunts had been a broadcast journalist in Iran before fleeing to Sweden. Sahar had even enjoyed writing articles in Iran, but had been warned by a teacher to stop. Her teacher feared for her physical wellbeing and future because Sahar wrote about topics unpopular to the reigning authorities: of Iranian officials targeting, beating and even murdering Kurds. “Writing these things won’t take you anywhere. It will just be a problem for you,” the teacher told her.
But the pressures of her difficult life decisions faded, ever-so-briefly, as she sat next to me and listened to the sitar sing out this June night. After two songs, the music stopped and a handful of refugees left for a back room where the church holds coffee hour on Sunday and where tonight’s feast, prepared by the refugees, waited.
THE BEST HOSTS
Slowly the women and men of the Voula House served food to all of the guests—some 50 people. For the Americans, it was hard to accept. “I feel like we should be serving them,” one said. But tonight was the night for Middle Eastern hospitality. Tonight, the church was the refugees’ domain and they considered everyone in the rooms guests in their home. They humbly served, faces beaming.
Foods from Syria and Iran filled the room, including a mushroom, chicken and rice soup, spicy grilled chicken, vegetables and other specialties. The women had prepared the food at the Voula House as best they could, but complained they could only do so much without the regular spices they had in their home countries. Nevertheless, people wiped their plates, some from enjoyment and others from respect.
After everyone’s bellies were full, the musicians went back to the front of the room. This time, a tall woman with long black hair joined them. She was new to the refugee home, having just escaped Iran three months before with her two middle school aged sons. The sitar began strumming and soon her voice filled the room with vibrancy.
“This is my favorite song!” Sahar squealed as the band announced their second song. “It’s an Iranian song about running from tyranny and escaping to freedom.”
It was also the room’s favorite. As the band began, voices filled the room and the atmosphere transformed. This was more than a song, it was a fire that propelled them forward. They’d experienced the fear of the unknown, the tyranny of oppression and the rising to hope of a new life in a way no Greek or American in the room could begin to understand. And here they were, survivors, waiting on bureaucracy in a country with few job prospects, stuck in the mire, but survivors nonetheless. A flame of hope burst forth in that song and smiles lit up the room.
“I’m so happy now I can’t stop smiling!” Sahar said as the song finished. A few moments later, despite the rapid beat of the next song, she was in tears—tears that no hug could console. Tears of feeling the pride of cultural identity in a foreign place with other companions longing for the same locale. On this June night, a taste of Persia permeated the air and for Sahar the flavor overwhelmed her. She missed her home, her family, that what once was but could never be again. When the music finished, she sighed and then turned to clean up with a sad smile upon her face—back to waiting and the hard decisions that lay in front of her.
SEEING THE BIG PICTURE
The people of the Glyfada Evangelical Church know they cannot take away Sahar’s pain and sorrow; they know they also cannot provide her the promise of a bright future. With limited resources and workers, they can only love her where she is and help her where they can. They sit with her and weep as she weeps, rejoice as she rejoices. And, in the process, help her with English, get job skills, participate in Bible studies and, with help of the House’s social worker, also progress in the asylum process. And, on a monthly basis, run cultural nights. These Greek Christians dream big and think hard about how to help the these foreigners in their plight.
Despite the rise of the far right and anti-refugee sentiment throughout Greece, not everyone is swayed by the hate and fear-mongering. The Greek Evangelical Church of Glyfada, small but mighty, stands firm in loving these unseen souls and helping them establish their lives. For now, the Voula House remains a way to help in the long term, and the cultural nights as a way to celebrate the cultural identities of those whose hopes for returning home have, for most, been destroyed.