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After I saw Ormina smiling behind the counter for seven days in a row, I decided to ask her why. “I like people”, she said. But is your business doing well? “For instance: a lot of people come and ask for food here, Greek people that want at least a bite. I always offer them something, the situation is hard”, she completed.
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Ormina Marterosyan, born in Armenia, disembarked to the Greek capital eleven years ago, when the country still had growth perspectives. Athens was waiting for the 2004 Olympics and the infrastructure boom was above average. The keyword, she says, was perspective. And any perspective was better than being stuck in the stagnant post-communist Armenia.
Roberto Almeida/Opera Mundi
Ormina Marterosyan: “Tudo é caro em Atenas. E, assim como na Armênia, aqui tem muita gente rica e muita pobreza”
Even though she had a state job in Yerevan, her country’s capital, she decided to fly to Greece and help her sister take care of her baby boy. She now lives close to the Acropolis and found a job as a waitress at Kassinas cafeteria, in Metaxourgio, quite popular among Syrian immigrants and where we are talking to each other now.
“The house is expensive (her rent is 400 euros, which she shares with her sister), the phone is expensive, electricity is expensive. Everything is expensive in Athens. And, as well as in Armenia, there are lots of wealthy people and lots of poverty. I don’t believe in politicians and I don’t want to hear anything about them”, she explained.
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Ormina is happy because she has a job, but asks how much the minimum wage in Brazil is. When I tell her how much it is (around 240 euros) she doesn´t get excited and says she prefers to stay. She also stays because an Athens-Yerevan plane ticket (around 1100 miles away) costs an overwhelming 700 euros. “I can only fly home if I stop eating”, she smiles.
Two blocks away from Kassinas cafeteria, where Ormina works, tourism agencies multiply around Larisssa train station. They promote tickets to Tirana, Albania’s capital, and Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, close to one of the offices of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
She says she is not afraid of violence and changes the subject. A Syrian customer comes and asks if there are jobs in Brazil. Ormina, from behind the counter, says. “Life is happy and it is necessary to smile always.”