Where’s Home for you? Say it with an Object!
On the first Saturday of June, the doors of the Greek Forum of Refugees opened to welcome the storytelling workshop with the theme “Our Home.” Those who attended brought with them various objects: teacups, teapots, a handmade rose, metal tools, photographs, cookbooks, an identity bracelet, a piggy bank, handmade rugs, embroideries, gloves, a komboloi (worry beads), a tobacco case, a ribbon, and even a comic book.
Twenty people—refugees, migrants, and locals—under the guidance of storyteller Vasileia Vaxevani, who set the stage for storytelling, let the objects speak and narrate stories of difficult, often violent separations, nostalgia, strength, and creation.
People with different experiences, through the beneficial act of storytelling, listened to each other and met at the point where the threads of different narratives intersect— the universal need for a place to call Home.
Refugee experience Knows No Borders
“The small photograph shows my mother with her beloved brother. In the larger one, she’s with her cousins. Her father came as a refugee from Smyrna and settled in Kallithea and P. Faliro, where my mother grew up. The look in her eyes in these photos reveals the misery of being a refugee and an orphan, as she lost her mother when she was just two years old. This is what made me close to refugees,” says Eleni, taking us back to 1922 when over a million Greeks came as refugees from Asia Minor.
Havva, a modern refugee from Smyrna, couldn’t bring anything with her but she chose to start her life in Greece with two cups. “These are the first things I bought when I arrived in Athens from Rhodes, for me and my husband, so we could have coffee together and feel at home.”
When the war broke out in Ukraine, 42-year-old Olena left her city, Odessa, with her family and came to Greece. She brought with her the family photograph that had been on their refrigerator. “I took it with me to remind me of our life there, but now I don’t need to look at it anymore because I will create something new here with my family.”
Diana, 32, who has lived in Athens since before the war and volunteers at the Opora center that has been supporting Ukrainian war refugees since 2022, brought a blue-yellow ribbon. It was tied around handwritten papers given to her by her beloved Mr. Dimitris, 75 years old, before he returned to Ukraine. “Mr. Dimitris came as a refugee from Ukraine when his house was bombed. In 2024, he chose to return to a refugee camp. When he left, he gave us a piece of himself—his writings—on the condition that we wouldn’t read them. They were tied with this ribbon.”
Sarah, 20, who fled Afghanistan, managed to bring with her part of her dowry: handmade rugs, pillowcases, and curtains from her family. One of these depicts the Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan, which were blown up by the Taliban government in 2001. “My dream for the future is to have a room in my Home like a museum with the things I brought,” she says.
‘Talismans’ from the First Homeland
Yonous, Ghana, Hanan, and Nini, after many years in Greece, now have two homelands that often cause them equal pain due to the difficulties they still face in integrating into Greek society.
Hanan, who has lived in Greece since 2001, made and served us tea in a beautiful teapot she brought from Morocco. “This tea set was my mother’s favorite. She kept it like a treasure in the cupboard of our home in Morocco. Now, I keep it safe.”
Yonous, President of the Greek Forum of Refugees, lovingly holds two items his father gave him during their last meeting. “In 2021, I went to see my father, whom I hadn’t seen for years. He didn’t want to part with his komboloi with 33 beads and his tobacco case. I never saw my father again, but with these items, I feel that he is always with me.”
“A cooking book from my mother. It’s one of the few things I brought with me from Ukraine in 2001. A new book with recipes written and illustrated by Olia, with whom I organized many things in Greece. She was killed in the war. This book reminds me that someone understood me without many words,” says Ganna, President of the Club of Ukrainian Women in Greece, who brought two books in the workshop.
Nini, 24, who came to Greece at 15 from Georgia, tries to harmoniously combine her two homelands in her heart. “This identity bracelet is a gift from my grandparents when I turned 18. I didn’t want to wear it because it reminded me that I wanted to live in Georgia. But recently, I started wearing it again.”
Sofia, a repatriated Greek from Kazakhstan, illuminated an aspect of Greek migration history. She came to Greece in 1995 and packed a few impressive tools in her suitcase. Their price is engraved on them as was customary at the time. “These are some of the only things I brought with me so we could open cans and crack nuts if we had nothing to eat.”
Dionysia, who returned to Greece after 17 years in England, also brought with her a cup that passes knowledge from generation to generation. “This cup was the first item I bought when I went to study in England, a foreign country at the time, which became my home. Back in Greece now, my children, 3.5 years old today, learned the names of animals from this cup.”
Chara from Larissa chose to bring with her in Athens a cup that means a lot to her. “This cup was used by my father and aunt to drink their morning coffee at the bookstore they opened with other friends in Larissa in the 1970s. In 2010, the economic crisis came, and the bookstore closed. “The cup is now in my home in Athens, always surrounded by books and now also comic books.”
But the comic books are another story, which you can discover by viewing all stories here.
The storytelling workshop with the theme “Our Home” was organized within the framework of the Working Group “Intercultural Inclusion and City Communities” of the ACCMR of the City of Athens and the Refugee Week Greece festival, in collaboration with the Greek Forum of Refugees, the Greek Forum of Migrants and the Club of Ukrainian Women in Greece.
The initiative was implemented with the support of UNICEF.
Photographs: Dimitris Tzetsas
Text – Video: Marina Tomara
ACCMR operates with the support of the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, based on a trilateral collaboration with the City of Athens.