By Maia Hamin

ATHENS, Greece — Syntagma Square was jubilant Saturday afternoon. Music blared, children waved flags, vendors toasted nuts. Stands sold scarves, hats and even kid’s t-shirts bearing slogans like “Macedonia is Greek.”

For all its cheer, the gathering was not a block party but a demonstration against a proposed agreement between the governments of Greece and Macedonia. After a 27-year dispute, the nation north of Greece agreed to change its name to the “Republic of Northern Macedonia.” In return, Greece agreed to stop blocking Macedonia’s membership in NATO.

The agreement set off waves of resistance. Minority parties in Greece withdrew support from the ruling party, complaining that by retaining the word Macedonia in its name, Greece’s neighbor hinted at territorial claims on the Greek province of the same name.

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By Isaac Wolfe

ATHENS, Greece – As the sun set over Mount Lycabettus, a six-story building in the neighborhood of Exarcheia was still brimming with activity. Volunteers at the Khora Community Center shuffled in and out, towing boxes of toys, chunks of drywall and demolition tools as they prepared the center’s equipment for its next move: into storage.

Khora, a volunteer co-operative for migrants, has undergone many changes in its short life. Since the group was formed in 2016 by activists on the island of Lesbos, Khora has evolved continually to keep up with the people it serves.

“Khora is well-known in the squats and camps. People know our name and know to come here to find help,” said Hudson McLane, a 20-year-old volunteer from the United States. McLane, like many of his colleagues, arrived at Khora after unsatisfying experiences at other relief services. “Our goal is to give people a sense of dignity,” he said.

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By Karolen Eid and Isaac Wolfe

ATHENS, Greece — As Neymar Jr. scored a second overtime goal for Brazil in the Russian World Cup, Naim El-Ghandour sat in his living room in the quiet neighborhood of Ilioupoli, sipping chai and watching the game. El-Ghandour’s living room was dark but welcoming. Its walls were lined with photographs of his children, collections of Islamic texts and a framed print of the Mona Lisa. El-Ghandour wore a traditional white robe and sat barefoot on a white couch while his wife, Anna Stamou, sat across the coffee table.

El-Ghandour is president of the Greek Muslim Association, a non-profit organization that advocates and provides for Muslims throughout the country. Egyptian by birth, El-Ghandour moved to Greece in 1974. Since then, he has gained Greek citizenship, served in the military and established himself as the de facto leader of Greece’s Muslim community.

This leadership comes with its difficulties. While trying to provide resources and a prayer space for Greek Muslims and refugees, El-Ghandour has made enemies of groups like Golden Dawn, Greece’s ultranationalist, far-right political party.

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By Matthew Miller

ATHENS, Greece – Two bearded men in traditional Islamic robes left prayer at their underground mosque and ran down Evripidou Street, pushing their motorcycle to jump-start it. They sprinted past generations-old Greek spice stores and butcher shops, past traditional sausages hanging over the sidewalk.

“The neighborhood, the religion here, it’s changed a lot,” said Marios Chatzigeorgiou as the men dashed by. Chatzigeorgiou has operated a shop here for 20 years. He sells classic Greek spices and dried fruit, just as his father and grandfather did before him. But today the store has new neighbors. An electronics store run by Chinese immigrants sits across the street; a few doors down is Masjid Al-Jabbar, an unofficial mosque for some of Athens’ burgeoning Muslim community.

Religion is changing in Greece. The Hellenic Republic traditionally has had largely one faith, Greek Orthodoxy. While Greece offers freedom of religion, the Greek Orthodox Church is the official religion and is interwoven with the government and daily life.

The yellow flag of the Greek Orthodox Church flies alongside government flags throughout the country. In 2008, 98 percent of Greeks called themselves Greek Orthodox, one survey found. In 2015, the migrant crisis hit Greece when hundreds of thousands of migrants began washing up on Greek shores, seeking asylum so they could live legally in the European Union. After three years of the migrant crisis and Greece’s changing demographics, only 90 percent of the population now identifies as Greek Orthodox. Muslims and other Christian denominations are rising. The new Greece must cope with the religious needs of migrants and freshly minted Greek residents as they try to rebuild lives and create spiritual homes.

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A hotelier, two migrants, a grave digger, a camp director, a protestor and an elephant – perspectives on the refugee crisis in Greece

By Isaac Wolfe

LESBOS, Greece. July 11, 2018

I.The hotelier

It was a bright April day in Lesbos when the first boat landed on the beach at the Aphrodite Hotel. On that day, Aphrodite Vati Mariola, for whom the hotel is named, was very busy. She was making sure that the season opening for the family-run hotel would be smooth and enjoyable for her first guests of 2015. She and her family had led the staff in preparing the 52 rooms, preening the shimmering outdoor swimming pool and tidying the pebble beach that opened out into a private cove.

The season was almost fully booked, set to be one of the most profitable in the hotel’s history. Then, Mariola heard sounds coming from the beach.

Perched on the edge of Aphrodite’s shore sat a dinghy carrying a family of fifteen people. Eleven adults and four children were huddled together on the boat, the youngest passenger only a year old. “I had no idea what a refugee was as the time,” Maroila later said. All she saw was a family in need. But these people were indeed refugees, a family of Syrians who had escaped through Turkey and smuggled themselves across the Aegean gap to Greece. As the fifteen shell- shocked passengers leapt from boat to land, touching European soil for the first time, Aphrodite Vati Mariola was there to greet them.

“They were traumatized and scared to death,” Mariola said of the first group of refugees she helped. “They didn’t know us, didn’t know water, didn’t know where they are.” One of the passengers was an older man and as Mariola and her family attempted to help him off the boat they realized he was paralyzed from the waist down. Mariola’s father quickly opened two hotel rooms for the group and provided them with food while Mariola ran home to find a change of clothing for the wet and shivering passengers. She took items from her own son’s and daughter’s wardrobes to cloth the children who washed onto her shore.

As the Syrian family recuperated and the hotel owners began to strategize their next steps, Mariola watched the seven- and eleven-year-old Syrians dressed in her own children’s clothing. “I realized those could be my children,” she recalled.

This was only the beginning.

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By Karolen Eid

KATO TRITOS, Greece — Moustafa Dawa never planned on becoming an undertaker. The 32-year-old Egyptian translator came to Greece to study Greek literature. He now buries bodies in an unofficial cemetery in a remote olive grove on the island of Lesbos.

He works in a small shed, washing and wrapping the bodies. Three pieces of cloth for the men. Five for the women. He prays for them and positions them in the ground with their heads facing Mecca. He hopes that they will be found by their loved ones.

For three years, Dawa has been managing the only Muslim cemetery for refugees on the island. He is just one figure in a fight against the obstacles facing Muslim migrant burial in Lesbos, which include the lack of an official cemetery, lack of support for families in the identification process, and possible corruption by NGOs claiming that they are collecting donations for this cause. Dawa’s experience provides a rare glimpse into the hidden tensions of an often overlooked aspect of the refugee crisis. Not only life and death, but what comes after.

Moustafa Dawa, the unofficial undertaker of the Muslim cemetery of Lesbos

In October of 2015, Dawa was working as a translator for migrants in the camps of Lesbos when the sinking of three migrant boats sent dozens of bodies to the morgue in the hospital of Mytilene. Until then, the bodies of Muslim migrants had been buried in a small section of the cemetery at St. Panteleimon’s church. With the overwhelming increase in the death toll during the perilous journey between Turkey and Greece, the cemetery was full.

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