My life experiences growing up among the refugees in Rethymnon

Abstract

Growing up in the 1950s, a time when massive immigration had subsided and the refugees had begun to rebuild their lives in their new homeland, my childhood memories were indelibly written in my memory and marked me. I was born in a 40 square meter yard, in a small village of Rethymnon, where four families raised their children, with the warmth and fairy tales from Anatolia, hiding the intolerance and pain of the refugee. Through their stories I learned the history of our homeland, which has never stopped being in their hearts, while the songs and the smells of their food still tickle my ears and nose. I listened with warmth to the stories of the elders and that’s how I learned the tragic history that their marks and scars hid. With my childhood eyes I witnessed conflicts between refugees and natives, but I also remember my teachers who in their eyes all the children were the same. Memories that were deeply engraved in me and defined every aspect of my life until now.