Meander
We are in the immigration office after our second post-Brexit interview, hoping to secure residency rights in Greece. As we attempt to enter the building that also houses the police force of Kavala, we get shouted out by an agitated guard. Explaining to him that we are here for our biometric permits, he waves us in. Tentatively, we climb up the grim, dimly lit marble staircase. The place looks like it is still stuck in the seventies, the light fittings, the signs, the architecture, a sense of impenetrable bureaucracy from another era. We have no idea where we are supposed to go, all the signs are in Greek and we have not yet graduated to immigration level vocabulary.
It feels alien to us having to prove ourselves in a European country. We have always taken for granted the ease with which we could cross borders and roam around between countries. Having both grown up in countries other than our Motherland, we are children of Europe. With Brexit thrust upon us, the erosion of our rights to move, I would argue, our birth right, came much stress, grief and frustration. The choice was laid out before us: Europe or the UK. We couldn’t have both, at least not in the way that we would want it. Either we remained in the UK and only had the right to go to our new home in Greece for 3 months at a time (leaving a 3 month gap in between visits), passports stamped in and out and hefty fines if the dates are not adhered to. Or, we became residents of Greece with a minimum stay of 6 months a year (to be documented and proven after a 5 year period). If we tick all the boxes, we might be able to apply for citizenship in 7 years. We have heard this route is arduous and requires many exams, showing a proficiency in Greek language, a knowledge of the countries’ politics, mythology and history. The entry requirements recently made harder to deter desperate asylum seekers fleeing war, persecution and drought.
Having to find this level of commitment to one particular place had not been expected. We are both from nomadic families that move around frequently, scattered across Europe and beyond. We didn’t believe it could truly be possible to take this step back in time, though people asked us throughout our move what we would do about Brexit, we couldn’t give clear answers, since it had taken the UK parliament and Europe four years to discuss the plans, then suddenly at the last minute the change had been imposed upon us and the Administrations of European countries had been left floundering trying to pick up the pieces.
The Greek authorities approve our application for residency under the Withdrawal Agreement which we are only eligible for since we arrived here before Brexit. We get given a brand new biometric card, a technological “advance” for Greece, until then, everything was paper documents. We are sent out of the office to wait in the cold strip-lit stairwell for our official papers. Two young men are sat on the inadequate amount of chairs on the landing. One of them gets up straight away to offer us his seat. Where are you from he asks? The UK, we reply, we are applying for residency. They seem surprised that we would need to do such a thing. They are young refugees from Somalia, applying for asylum, perhaps 19 years old. They have been in the country for a year, couch surfing, unable to work without asylum papers. Today, they have an appointment with the passport office.
On our first visit we had to get our passport checked and our finger prints taken by this department. The office had three desks. The first was adorned by sunny and exotic travel posters, the second had a tight row of shelves displaying police helmets and badges from around the world. The third, belonged to a stern, religious and officious woman. Behind her, was a vast collection of Orthodox icons hanging frame to frame. It seemed we were out of luck, she was the only one on duty that day. I tried to imagine what the other two missing bureaucrats would have been like. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me about my relationship to Abby, assuming that she may be less sympathetic to a gay couple making their home in Greece. I tried to make a joke but it fell flat. She did, however, laugh at my fingerprints, for some reason she found them hilarious, which I still can’t comprehend. Abby had an equally unnerving experience. The lady had commented on a red patch on her cheek which was accentuated by the terrible lighting in the ID photo.
‘What is that on your cheek?’ She demanded, pointing at the photograph. ‘You will have to get a medical check.’
Abby looked at her in disbelief and thankfully managed to persuade her that it was just her skin, as this would have put her application back many weeks.
I wanted to ask the young Somalians so many questions. Where are your families? What will you do? What happened? What perilous journey did you have to undertake to get here? Before I got the chance, the door flung open and a severe looking man signalled the boys to get up. I wondered if he owned the travel desk or the helmet desk. As they stood up we wished them the best on their life journey and hoped everything would work out for them. The official’s face softened after seeing our interaction. We never saw them again but I often think of what happened to them.
The same year Brexit came into force, movement was made more difficult still by the enforcement of state of emergency laws to mitigate the spread of the Corona virus. This visit to the immigration office was the first time we had been allowed to leave the island in nearly a year. One wonders how far we are willing to go as a species from our original nomadic nature. As we build bureaucratic walls between countries, we separate, parcel out and segregate humans from one another. With each new border, each new health pass, we are one step further from our innate freedom to roam the land that we are born into and out of. I can’t help but wonder what is happening to the few remaining nomadic peoples of the world and whether the virus measures are squeezing their way of life still further.
As M.I.A. sings:
‘Borders, what’s up with that?’
Making our way back to Greece over land and sea from Italy after the first lockdown.
One of my favourite documentary films ‘Juliette of the Herbs’ follows an astounding woman called Juliette de Baïracli Levy. A trained vet, disenchanted by pharmaceutical treatments, she began her travels with the nomads of England in the 1930’s in search of alternative ways to heal animals. Later, she travelled Europe with the Romani people, then with the Berber of North Africa and later the indigenous populations of North America and Mexico. Along the way, she learned, gathered and shared herbal medicine remedies to treat animals (and humans). She has written an incredible number of books sharing her knowledge. Sadly, her writings are out of print and hard to come by. Watching that film makes my heart sing. She describes how she would always find a cave, an abandoned house or shelter to sleep in at night, she knew that nature would provide if she listened. Deep down in my core, I know that this is how I am meant to live, on the move, outside, immersed and in tune with plants and animals, moving in community across the land, tending to the wild garden along the way. It is a tragedy to think that for the most part, the Romani have been persecuted, pushed out of Europe or forced into sedentarism on fringe land. These communities hold so much precious knowledge that runs deep in our ancestral connections to land. Knowledge it seems, that is being deliberately erased by a civilisation hungry for technological fixes, data and extraction.
We forget that most of our history was that of the wanderer. ‘Civilisation’ defined by the adoption of agriculture and written records, only began around 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and much later in Europe according to the general consensus, though some controversially argue of the existence of civilisations to be much earlier. Nevertheless, we forget that pre-civilisation or pre-history as it is labelled spanned 300,000 years of Homo sapiens hunting and gathering across the continents. Furthermore, the Homo genus started 2.5 to 3 million years ago. I would argue that roaming the land is deep, deep within our bones. And yet, we have created the complete opposite in just 12,000 years and a huge amount of effort has been invested into eradicating nomadic shepherding and hunter gatherer societies.
After a day of wandering and sleeping beneath the stars, we wake up to a magnificient view in the mountains.
I think of human movement like a flowing river, meandering just like a river does when left in her natural state. When the river is straightened (for shipping, agricultural irrigation, and protection of towns) difficulties arise. It is against the nature of the river. Her gentle zigzagging gives her time to seep into the land and greet the various species that nourish her and that she feeds in return with her rich deposits carried lovingly from the mountains above. If the river is not allowed to run her natural course, she will burst her banks and create havoc. She will rush at great speed towards the sea, gathering momentum as she goes, pulling along soil and rich nutrients with her. In her precipitation she takes all the precious, rich life-giving sediment. Where once there was time, now there is just haste. What we have done to rivers in an attempt to organise and exploit, we have done to ourselves. The more static and compartmentalised we become, the more we deny our meandering nature. Operating in a linear fashion, the less time we have, the more problems we create. For we, like the river have not evolved to be exploited and to be made more ‘efficient’. Our banks are burst and we are flooded with depression, illness, anxiety. A hedonism with the speed of the straightened river, saps our life-giving energy.
The winter surge of our meandering river gifts us beautiful bathing spots and reshapes the landscape.
Having to choose a country to live in goes completely against my nature. However, there is a part of me that is loving this enforced time to get to know a place deeply. I am lucky, for the island I live on, lends itself to roaming. There are few fences, few borders. I walk out my house and wander straight into the mountain, or into a luscious gorge. I can walk across the land on a dirt road or I can walk across the bush. I have the freedom to choose. I remember when I lived in the city and in the Belgian countryside that my only option was the concrete road that someone had laid out and predetermined for me. Barriers, private property and fences lay all around. Forever banished to a giant labyrinth of roads. Roads on which I was second class, the car always has priority.
The pain that Brexit brings me and the pain that I feel when I think of people fleeing war, persecution and famine then being denied entry at neighbouring borders is deep, rooted in a longing for that innate freedom to tread wherever our feet take us, to follow the flight path of the bird. In my idealistic and perhaps naïve dream, I see a world where borders are abolished. No longer living in a hostile paranoid world of us and them, where you are a suspect by default, instead, a compassionate world of us and us. Particularities of culture, heritage and place honoured, I see meandering populations with story, with ties and with connections to their land of birth and adoption, exchanging rich sediments of knowledge as they flow, free to go left or right when the time calls.
Our young friend ‘roaming’ the land of the wild Rhodopi mountains in search of materials and clues of bear tracks.
After a year and a half without leaving Greece, I must go to the UK for work. The stress levels are high, all the paperwork needed for travel is overwhelming. I must make sure that border control does not stamp my passport because I am now a legal resident of Greece. All those months of stress, paper gathering, official translations, interviews and searching the internet for patchy official information has paid off: they don’t stamp my passport. I feel smug as I walk through passport control, still hanging on to a slither of free movement, thanks to my Hellenic residency card and to the stern Greek Orthodox woman who laughed at my finger prints.
Written by Leah Heming