Israel x Palestina
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Are you hungry?”, she asked, in poor English. Without waiting for my answer, she turned around rapidly and, seconds later, offered me a hot falafel on that warm Athens night. The fried dumpling was wrapped in a napkin, made in the moment, and tasty. It contained a symbolic dose of anti-fascist activism.
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“Greek is not only hate and discrimination. It is also violence”, says an immigrant
Nermeen Alkasm is 26 years old and has an obvious scar perceived by anyone that talks to her for more than 5 minutes. When she talks about her cousin, she looks down. Her eyes, that were shiny before, get darker because of the pain of her lost. He was another victim of the civil war in Syria.
Scared, afraid to be the next, Nermeen took money from her father and escaped the country. In her pilgrimage, she stopped in Greece. There’s no way she could have known that she had escaped one war to enter another. She recognizes her new enemies by the black outfit. They are members of the neo-Nazi Greek party Golden Dawn, which terrify the immigrants.
Because she wears a hijab, she is an easy prey. She’s always at gunpoint and doesn’t deny the fear of walking through the chaotic streets of Athens. In the Muslim community, the girl found refuge in her new friend Ahmed Kabani, 33 years old, who has been living in the Greek capital for ten years. Father to two sons, he works in a tannery in the outsides of Athens.
“Greece used to be great. Now what we see on the street are barbarians. People that want our bad. Of course it’s not like everybody is like this, but one thing is for sure: I want to leave”, said Kabani. Nermeen agrees and says she dreams of Switzerland or the United Kingdom. She wants to be treated as a war refugee and to teach the world that Islam doesn’t hurt people.
The interview with Opera Mundi ended as soon as Nermeen received a message on her cell. Her fiancé was informing her about the assault of a friend. She was before excited to be able to speak English, a language she studied in Syria, but she said good-bye quietly and apathetic at the Acropolis. Violence got her tongue.
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