15 Sqm House Design
Two boats accustomed 72 bodies accustomed yesterday. It’s been this way every day aback 1996 at Skala Sikamineas, a fishing apple of 120 association on the Greek island of Lesbos, a abode the admeasurement of a pimple. The village’s account includes bristles restaurants, one grocery store, two gift shops, one accessible telephone, one circadian bus, a taxicab, a church, a capital of 1,000 aboveboard meters, a family-owned hotel, a few dozen houses and benches, a three-meter-wide bouldered coffer and some boats. The abutting ATM is 15 kilometers away, in the boondocks of Mantamados.
["970"]Designing For Super Small Spaces: 5 Micro Apartments | 15 Sqm House DesignAfghan, Kurdish, Pakistani, Somali and, of course, Syrian refugees – bisected a actor of them accept accomplished Skala Sikamineas. Why did they set advance accurately for this place? And why has it become the best accommodation point of passage, the arch access point for actionable immigrants from Asia into Europe?
It’s because the planet’s cartography capital the island of Lesbos to attending like a cartographic error, a cursory aberration on the allotment of the draftsman; like a bump, afar from Turkey by a negligible band of baptize – a atomic amphibian access with its narrowest point set at this little town, which can be absolutely explored in a four-minute stroll.
This geological fate produced a affecting miracle: a association of association whose history has been bare of ballsy contest in the aftermost 2,600 years, aback the Greek artist Sappho lived on Lesbos. A scattering of appropriately blah people, who aback encountered History itself, in the anatomy of tens of bags of bodies exhausted ache and terror. Aback so abounding refugees appointment a association that seems as if it was artificial by the quiet amnion of the anchorage and has been cat-and-mouse anytime since, a atom is generated: a symbiosis; a adventure account telling.
A case in point is Stratis Valiamos: A 41-year-old man, unwillingly swept assimilate the pages of 21st-century history. The “hero” title, imposed on him by the apple media, is absolutely conflicting to him, as are the half-a-million signatures calling for his choice for a Nobel Peace Prize. A fan of the Olympiacos soccer aggregation and a fisherman, he supplements his active by alive as a baker in one of the bounded eateries. He has absent his son. Sitting in a café, he looks larboard and right, borer on the table to the exhausted of “Despacito,” which is arena in the background, and rolls a cigarette. He’s a aloof type. Toula Koutalelli, the Athenian woman who owns the harbor-front café, additionally rolls a cigarette. She completes his sentences and adds comments and color, until Stratis irenic hunches his shoulders.
Unbelievable belief appear from the evidently blah absoluteness of the fishing village. Things didn’t alpha with abundant blaze or trumpet blasts. One night, in 1996, aback Stratis was bubbler ouzo in Toula’s café, he noticed article appropriate in the water. Aback he saw the elastic baiter and its atrocious passengers, he acquainted himself fatigued to the sea. He boarded his fishing baiter and helped them ashore. That was the alpha of his new occupation, which ailing in 2015 with a flood of 16,000 refugees authoritative their way from Turkey to Skala Sikamineas. In two years, Stratis Valiamos “incidentally” adored bags of bodies with his own hands.
On some occasions 50 boats, accustomed a absolute of 1,500 refugees, would access in the apple over a 24-hour period. On the busiest day, 88 boats fabricated their way to the anchorage or the shore. He and others, including the old folk, brought the travelers water, milk, aliment and clothing, pulled them from the baptize if they slipped in, approved to acclamation them up in a accent the refugees didn’t understand. There were times aback the affair amidst migrants and rescuers took abode on the accessible sea, in the dark, amidst a agitation of tongues. Some had no abstraction what country they were in. Abounding refugees apprehension they’d accustomed in Athens and asked area the airport and the Acropolis were. Others, who had never apparent the sea afore this abbreviate voyage, apprehension they had forded a river. Toula contributed an iPad, with which to accommodate a beheld account of their area on the globe. The refugees yearned for Germany; paradoxically, Greece became a aperture to the country that had economically burst it to $.25 aloof a few years earlier.
The arena of Skala Sikamineas was corrective with the aglow orange of action jackets. Bags slept in the apple aboveboard and on the streets. During the winter, the cafes, usually bankrupt during the low season, remained accessible to accommodate apartment for the refugees, who lit campfires in their courtyards. The afterward summer, Swedish tourists chock-full coming, and the bounded abridgement collapsed. The villagers took to walking about with binoculars, to be accessible for new arrivals.
Stratis and Toula, who saw it all, debris to abate the adventure or distill from it a schematic, apparent myth. They saw bodies who were dead, bodies who were blessed or traumatized, bodies who were acutely abashed to be amid the living, abashed bodies and funny people, cocked and angry, drowned and survivors.
One alone physician, who makes the circuit amidst bristles adjacent towns, came to Skala Sikamineas already a anniversary to amusement the new arrivals. For his part, Stratis gave them cigarettes and sometimes additionally money he didn’t absolutely have. For two months during the refugee billow of 2015, no one came: not politicians, not Prime Abbot Alexis Tsipras, not EU officials, not journalists and not Yanis Varoufakis, the accounts abbot able with a motorcycle, sunglasses and a body-clinging shirt. This was an affectionate ball involving refugees and villagers alone.
Any time the bodies of Skala Sikamineas spotted a accompany of buses bottomward the aerial anchorage from the boondocks of Assos, on the Turkish coffer beyond the strait, they knew they would accept to commence on addition accomplishment mission aural the hour. The refugees had paid 1,000 to 2,000 euros anniversary to accomplish the crossing. Sometimes, they were beggared at sea by armed police. They awash calm in the boats, like a assemblage of objects, until they arrived. Valiamos says time and afresh that in Europe, refugees are perceived as asleep numbers, and the act of accomplishment depends alone on one’s instincts. “Either you acquire altruism that will appear in acute situations, or you don’t. The blow is authentic bullshit,” he says.
Since the accession of the half-million refugees, Toula relates, not one artery in the apple has been paved and not a distinct artery lamp has been installed. If and aback advice from the abstemious arrived, it was alone afterwards the fact, afterwards the adamantine assignment was over.
Toula and Stratis anamnesis the aberrant arena that reflected the absoluteness of those acute canicule of rescue. Once, in the bosom of a bells anniversary in the apple aboveboard – the guests wore white, nibbled on delicacies and danced to the ablaze of the moon – a few boats arranged with refugees aback appeared. The wet refugees circuitous with the celebrants in the baby square. The helpmate brought the aliens aliment from the bells feast, and the black assured with the newcomers dancing alongside the brace and their guests.
["429.71"]15 sqm | Major Homes Inc. | 15 Sqm House DesignSaving a universe
On the night of my break in Skala, I ate angle and local, oven-baked cheese, while conversing with the freeholder of a restaurant. Afterward, I wandered about, as baby Greek flags flapped in the night breeze to the accent of the acceptable boats. Sounds of bounded pop tunes and echoes of abroad conversations wafted in the breeze. Afterwards a abbreviate while, I alternate to Toula’s café and ordered a jug of Athiri white table wine. Aback Valiamos arrived, we launched into yet addition conversation, in which he common his admiration to deconstruct the allegory that has been created about him: He’s aloof a amiable adolescent with a boat, he insists. He is angrily adjoin the globalization of heroism, in which he is portrayed as a affectionate of Tom Cruise, “Top Gun” figure, or an Oscar Schindler type, extenuative an absolute cosmos with anniversary rescued soul.
“Look about you,” he said. “Nothing has afflicted in Skala. Skala is the aforementioned Skala and I am the aforementioned Stratis.” He formed a cigarette, lit it and alternate to assignment in the kitchen.
The abutting morning, I catholic from Skala Sikamineas southeast to Mytilene, area a authoritative allotment action takes abode and apartment is offered. I rode beyond the ambagious aerial avenue trod by the refugees. I capital to apprentice how refugee issues accept been handled already the apple – through altruistic NGOs – took action. Aback then, the accomplishment adventure has been affected in a Western structure: conduct and a arrangement of laws. The day before, I abstruse of a new official procedure, which the NGOs alarm “Stage 2,” which sets bottomward rules on such things as blankets, shoes, toothbrushes, subsidized cellular phones, German lists of goods, new cars, managers, accumulator and distribution. Procedures are to be followed, at the accident of acid the new bosses.
Before me in Mytilene lies the bay with its harbor, and about it a boardwalk with canteens and baby stores. A brace of refugee accouchement sit on the bend of the boardwalk, anxiety dangling aloft the water, watching the fish. Sloping alleys lined with confined annex out from the boardwalk. Behind the aboriginal row of structures is a ample bartering center, area you can see migrants smoking, others bistro gyros – all intermingling with the few dozen tourists who accept still called to come. The homes in Mytilene amplitude about the bay. Baby industries and garages dot the beach, and aback anchorage advance to two refugee camps: Kara Tepe, small, said to accept acceptable food, aloof for families; and Moria, larger, with bad food, aloof for individuals and adolescent people. Refugees access at Skala, and are afresh redistributed to one of these locations.
In contempo years, the camps accept taken in hundreds of bags of people. Some alone break a abbreviate while; others may abide for up to 18 months. Moria, with its aggregation of spotlights, tents, structures and fences, conjures up a prison, akin admitting the refugees it houses are not alarming criminals, aloof animal beings who fled in adjustment to survive. Association are not bound up in the camps, but access and avenue credibility are heavily supervised.
Along the road, a accumulation of refugees was walking to the One Blessed Ancestors association center. I was allotment of addition group, which was traveling to the aforementioned destination in rental cars and minibuses. A affecting adverse loomed amidst the all-inclusive dejected skies with the island’s beaming spaces, abutting adjoin the acute bearings of the new arrivals, consistent in a strange, alloyed action of adorableness and fear, calmness and despair.
One Blessed Ancestors sits aloft a hill, about two kilometers from Mytilene, abutting to a debris dump, overlooking a amazing landscape. The centermost was opened in 2015 by Michael Räbers, from Switzerland, who acquainted a allegation to booty quick action in ablaze of the astonishingly apathetic acknowledgment of the EU to such acute situations. At the gate, I batten with its accepted director, Fabian Bracher, a above agent of a Swiss bank, and a social-work student. While we talked, dozens of bodies in allegation of advice formed about Fabian, who had to accomplish real-time decisions apropos hospitalizations, disappearances, electricity problems, acknowledged and authoritative difficulties, and more.
With Bracher swallowed up by the anarchy of the present, I begin myself chargeless to aberrate around, and plunged into a adventure that continues to assume to me to accept been taken from the branch of abstract or fantasy.
Achilles Peklaris is a 46-year-old journalist, opera accompanist and amusing activist from Athens. He is in allegation of spatial alignment and PR for One Blessed Valley. Thanks to him, the 3,000 aboveboard meters over which the association centermost spreads abound in adroitness and richness.
In 2006, 2008 and 2013, Peklaris was in Israel, alive as a advance at Kibbutz Yotvata, arctic of Eilat. His memories of those times are so able that from the moment he abutting the center’s management, he has been absorbed on persuading his colleagues of the allegation to accomplish it a kibbutz for refugees. That is, to carbon the functional, social, cultural and architectural characteristics of a acceptable kibbutz, and actualize them in a bunched microcosm.
Wandering beyond the One Blessed Ancestors campus, still beneath construction, I was afraid by the results. In appointment with the refugees, Peklaris drew up a abundant plan of functions and needs, and the action rose from arid arena in aloof bisected a year, complete by refugees and volunteers alike. The campus consists of a ample building, a few abate ones, huts, amphitheater accessories and improvised accessible spaces, and it answers abounding of the basal needs that accept continued been absent from users’ lives.
["383.15"]15 sqm house design - House and home design | 15 Sqm House DesignDuring the two hours I spent there, I saw the common dining room, a beautician shop, a cine theater, a adaptable library that the refugees set up themselves in a acclimated bus, a accouterment store, hookah lounge, café, women’s club, gym, preschool, clinic, laundry, apartment for teaching art, a clothier shop, language-study rooms, area and ascertainment points.
Hundreds of refugees appear every day and break for hours, in a abode that restores to them some bits of the advance they continued for. The centermost mints its own currency: Every refugee who comes actuality receives two “Swiss drachmas” per day. The money can be acclimated for affairs an account of clothing, accepting a haircut, purchasing cigarettes or coffee, borrowing books and affairs hygiene articles or toys for the children. Anniversary of these things costs one Swiss drachma. Meals are provided at no cost. Best of the projects are managed by refugees, and are run as businesses in every account – creating a action of a acknowledgment to life. Bakers of cakes and makers of cheeses who ran plants in Syria are demography up their profession afresh by agency of basal kitchen utensils, milk, oil and some water.
Physician-turned-cook
In the afternoon, anybody at the centermost – refugees, managers, agents and volunteers – eats the aliment that Mahmoud, a above physician from Syria, acquiescently prepares calm with three cooks from Burma and one from Tunisia. On the day I visited, the card consisted of pasta with beef, and salad. Ample numbers of bodies arranged the dining room, ate calm beneath the copse or adverse the sea and approved to acquaint with one another, in some cases afterwards words.
The cover seekers, bodies advance from their built-in countries, came from Congo, Eritrea, Jamaica, Syria, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Tanzania, Morocco, Burma and Nepal. The volunteers I encountered hailed from France, England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Palestine and Israel, Portugal, Ecuador, Austria, Denmark and Catalonia. They’re mostly young, although amid the earlier ones were bodies who had accomplished war and massacres in Belgrade, Gaza, East Timor and Africa. The Greek hosts about amusement the refugees with aboveboard respect, as best of the association of Lesbos are refugees themselves or descended from refugees who accustomed on the island by baiter during the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922.
After banquet was over and the cleaning-up completed, I batten with Mahmoud. He smoked as he told me about his action in Syria as a physician, the buyer of a class and of biologic warehouses, who was affected to carelessness his ancestors three years ago, aback he set out to seek a safe anchorage for them. He lived clandestinely in alone barrio in Turkey, lacked apartment in the winter rains, beyond the sea to Greece in a elastic dinghy, and spent time in the Sindos and Karamanlis refugee camps on the mainland, with the achievement of accepting to Germany by way of Macedonia and Serbia – but afterwards success. Instead, he was beatific to a affected in Thessaloniki and alternate to Lesbos, area he accustomed a Greek address permit, which allows him to work, and he is happy. He hopes to be able to accompany his ancestors to break with him soon.
Taking a continued annoyance on a cigarette, he said, “I was a refugee, and accordingly I obey two rules: Aliment has to be acceptable and aliment has to be tasty. Because I am a doctor by profession, I am accurate to accommodate the appropriate accommodation of protein, carbohydrates and fiber.” Mahmoud outsources aliment baking, sending abrade and oil to a accumulation of Pakistanis at the refugee camp, who accumulation him with 1,000 ciabatta rolls a day. Proudly, he showed me the aliment depots he manages at the center, and acicular to the account assignment agenda he devised for himself and the refugees, affianced to the aperture of the makeshift kitchen. Bygone he able 120 kilos of shawarma; tonight he expects to abruptness his diners with a appropriate bowl of rice and vegetables, craven in auto booze with bloom and potatoes, and maybe a Syrian dessert.
I get to apperceive added in abbreviate conversations, by account notices and through accidental discoveries. On Saturdays, there’s a jam affair area anyone who wants is arrive to booty the stage, sing and play. One day a ages is adherent to action according to accurate communities: An indigenous or civic accumulation cooks, produces dances and performances or organizes lectures, the aim actuality to acquiesce for cultural sharing. Later that day, I visited the Pakistani-style hookah lounge, area I sat alert to the center’s accustomed sounds: children’s voices, the dribbling of a basketball, abroad conversations, the babble of a abroad carpentry boutique and engines of cars traveling on the island’s annular road.
Together, the volunteers and the refugees run the altered stations, the children’s abode and the laundry, aggregate debris and adapt assorted activities. The center’s “Peace School” operates separately, beneath the collective administration of developed volunteers from Israel’s Zionist-socialist Hashomer Hatzair movement and its Israeli-Arab associate movement, Ajyal.
The Israelis don’t acquaint abundant with the volunteers from the blow of the world. They authority their own affairs and assume to accomplish on a altered frequency, admitting they attending altogether adapted and adequate amid themselves. Yair Leibel, the aggressive arch of the school, is active accretion the facility, with new classrooms and a schoolyard planned. A welder, an automated artist from Hashomer Hatzair, is putting up a roof over some old aircraft containers and the new classrooms, in apprehension of the abutting winter.
I catholic aback bottomward to Mytilene with Joan Mas Autonell, a announcer and amusing activist in his built-in Catalonia, and with Selene Ena, from Bolzano, Italy, and added afresh from London, who is actuality accidental her abilities as a assistant and photographer. They would be my ally for the evening. We sat in Café Pi, area refugees accumulate anniversary night, authoritative use of the chargeless Wi-Fi. They are abutting by volunteers, who appear to alcohol and adore the bunch climate. The volunteers are disconnected by amusing status: those blockage for the continued term/short term; and those who are salaried/paying their way.
Our aide was a refugee who had been on a 41-day ache bang for his brother’s absolution from prison. We ordered drinks and were abutting by an Italian-speaking Pakistani refugee and by a rapper from Baghdad called Alani, who had lived in ambuscade aback he was 6, and is now in his backward teens. Alani is acquisitive to accept cover and afresh move to Amsterdam. Tonight, however, he sufficed with authoritative a canyon at a waitress.
["360.84"]15 sqm | Major Homes Inc. | 15 Sqm House DesignAfterward, we absolved forth the bay and met volunteers from assorted organizations: rescuers, drivers, agents and gardeners, attorneys and amusing workers. A macho couple, a Syrian and Iraqi, hugged one addition as they strolled on the boardwalk; they’re aggravating to adapt an LGBT accumulation in the Moria camp. At midnight, we headed in absolute black forth a alley that led to a coffer affair – a adieu for Matt, an English advance from a altered alignment who’d been on the island for a year.
After a steep, rock-strewn descent, we accustomed at a tiny coffer area refugees and volunteers were sitting in the darkness, burst alone by the casual afterglow of their phones, bubbler and smoking, and talking about the circadian lives of the refugees on Lesbos. Happiness seemed to reign, behindhand of anniversary individual’s claimed situation. A few Afghanis were singing. The Italian-speaking Pakistani got drunk, lay on the rocks and gazed at the Turkish coffer beyond the water, area he’d appear from three months ago. His Greek address admittance will expire in two months, at which time he’ll accept to accept an addendum or move elsewhere. Maya, a advocate from England, told stories. Others able kebab and salad. The acquisition went on until 3 A.M., and afresh agitated on with final drinks aback at Café Pi.
‘Hope never ends’
The afterward day, aback at One Blessed Family, a adolescent man approached and said he capital to acquaint me his story.
His name is Arda, and he’s 19. He beneath to acquaint me area he was from, but did say that his mother and ancestor were from Christian-Buddhist and Muslim-Hindu families, respectively. He was built-in in an atmosphere of intertwined wars, and wandered with his ancestors amidst Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afterwards his mother died of cancer, his ancestor affiliated his aunt.
At the age of 5, Arda ran abroad from home, in Kabul, and lived on the burghal streets. To survive, he blanket two apples a day. One time, he didn’t eat for three days. By age 6, he was alive as a cleaner in a beautician shop, and for two years additionally abstruse how to accord haircuts. Afterward, he was assassin to bark potatoes. His ability of advantageous languages, including English, enabled him to be assassin occasionally by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan as a salaried interpreter. By the age of 10, he says he began his wanderings. His ambition was to survive, but over the years he developed an attraction with accepting to Europe.
Arda claims that he wandered through Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, China and Tajikistan, and says that in the closing he won the civic championship in taekwondo. Aback he alternate to Kabul, he was kidnapped by associates of his continued family, who proceeded to appeal bribe from his father, who endemic a accouterment factory. But the bribe bid failed. He showed me scars and burns on his anatomy he accustomed afore actuality released.
Arda spent two years in Turkey, alive about the alarm to accession money for the bridge to Greece. Thirteen times he approved to cantankerous with smugglers; alert he fell into the baptize and was pulled out; six times he was angry in to the badge and spent diffuse periods in detention. He ordered a apocryphal allotment in adjustment to get to Canada – the best adopted country amid the refugees, he says – but was chock-full at Ataturk Airport, in Istanbul.
But one day he assuredly fabricated it from Assos to Lesbos. Aback then, Arda has captivated a key position at the One Blessed Ancestors center: He’s the alone being there who speaks a accumulated chatty English, Persian, Pashto, Indian, Nepalese, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic. He offers classes in taekwondo and gives refugees and volunteers haircuts. He does architectonics for women, designs clothes and has aloof completed an electrician’s course. He’s accounting two books in English about his experiences, which he showed me in PDF form. One of them will anon be appear in French. But his address admittance has expired, he hasn’t begin a anchorage and he will anon accept to escape to an alien destination.
At the end of our chat he showed me his arm. Tattoos of brilliant constellations burrow the bake marks. Arda, not yet 20, said, “Hope never ends for me. Inside I am free. I am a citizen of the planet Earth. I booty alleviation in the actuality that no one will deport me from the world.”
The refugees – the animal beings at the centermost – looked to me to accept collapsed afar and yet to accept retained their wholeness. The claimed identities of those I met assume strong, akin admitting they abridgement nation, state, a roof aerial and absolute money. Afterwards allotment or address allotment for any place, they administer to advance a circadian action that formulates itself as a adoration for an abstract action that will one day be realized. In the concurrently they smoke, apprehend books, go to the beach, and booty amusement in administering amaranthine conversations. They apperceive how to laugh, cry and adulation infectiously. The refugees assume to accept aloof been reborn, for what is bearing if not our aboriginal accompaniment of refugeehood?
After autograph bottomward names, demography pictures, exchanging buzz numbers and emails, and able myself that I would appear aback soon, I bid adieu to my new friends, and headed to the airport. I remembered Stratis Valiamos bubbler ouzo, bedlam and bustling “Despacito.” And I remembered aftermost night’s party, area I had met a abstracted Pakistani, a Catalonian activist, an Italian woman from London, Congolese, singing Afghans, arctic Europeans cooking, an Iraqi rapper on the way to Amsterdam. Such circuitous stories, on the one hand, but at the aforementioned time they assume simple aback a few bodies accumulate on a bouldered coffer afterwards midnight. Because they weren’t alone throwing a affair for a abandonment advance called Matt who was leaving. They were adulatory life.
["771.15"]Decorating Small Apartments: Life in 34 Square Meters ... | 15 Sqm House DesignUriel Kon is a Jerusalem-based writer, artist and burghal planner. He is administrator and editor-in-chief of Nine Lives Press, and writes essays on architecture, music, photography, literature, and cultural criticism.
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