Left behind for a Square Space
​Adrianne Kalfopoulou

Any good magician or psychoanalyst knows, it’s the deliberate chalking of a particular square that allows for the discovery of personal order and private mythology. 
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You leave what you know, leave your shoes at the rim of the blanket or sheet. This is what Henieh does, a 4 year-old Afghani girl, slipping off plastic clogs to step onto a sheet placed over the concrete. I haven’t bothered to unlace my boots (it’s November). I sit so they don’t touch the fabric. Scattered crayons, drawing paper, colored pipe cleaners to make rings and bracelets, children’s books; a world covers this square of cloth.

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In what used to be a schoolroom, where Azize and her family live on one side of a hanging sheet is where I meet Maedeh. Some families lucky to get relocation papers for Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, will move on — northern European countries equal an imagined future, a past left for a possible tomorrow.

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It’s Henieh’s 4th birthday. “Mama Henieh” Maedeh and others call Azize who crouches in a corner of the blanketed floor to put on makeup. It’s the lipstick especially that changes her, a bright red that lights up her pale skin. “Mama Heni” says Maedeh, or “Mama Maedeh” says Azize when she speaks to Saliha, Maedeh’s mother, both in their early 30s. First names less important than the bonds that transcend the singular. Months later Azize will say she’s forgotten Saliha’s name when I’ll ask how they address each other over Messenger and Viber, the family now in Sweden; they call each other “sister” — “xocharn” — at least this is how the word sounds to me.

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A windowpane falls out of the schoolroom wall. As randomly as a bomb might explode in war, the pane almost hits Azize but we grab it, matter-of-factly. For Henieh’s birthday party Azize tapes a cluster of blinking Christmas lights to the blackboard for decoration but the tape isn’t strong. She keeps taping the lights until they fall again. She left Bayan where she is from, left a home, her mother, and 2 sisters, to get to Iran.

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Rakia’s pregnancy is starting to show. She raises three fingers to say 3 months. When we gather in the sheeted-off space where there are no men she takes off her headscarf to dance. Maedeh finds music on her tablet. Her headscarf comes off too. Some of the women have changed into dresses with low necklines, others with hems above their knees, but it’s the hair, the lengths of it that I haven’t seen, and the colors the hair dyes have streaked in blond and red shades. Some look almost punk. Henieh’s four-layered cake of chocolate, biscuits, orange and strawberry slices sits on a tray. My store-bought lemon-meringue pie is pretty and Henieh and Azize like it, but it doesn’t feed as many, the 3-tier cake baked in a portable oven is enough for everyone.

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Maedeh finds the music and Rakia lifts me off the floor. She takes my hand, sways her shoulders and motions me to follow. I’m self-conscious. She smiles as I move my shoulders. We’re in a circle of women whose usually covered hair I’ve never seen before, lays newly brushed over shoulders and down backs, and falls into their eyes, and gets caught in the corners of mouths as we dance and laugh.

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Outside the sheeted partitions: the uncovered floor, scattered shoes, a freezing hallway. The closed classroom doors keep in what heat is made of floor heaters and layered blankets. It’s more heat that I expect; there are families, sometimes up to 5 and 6, in a classroom and lots of blankets. The floor heaters are small and the rooms have high ceilings, but the walls are thick.

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My 13-year-old friend Narghes lives in #14, one of the rooms where up to 28 people have slept; now it’s 2 families. Narghes’ family includes her mother Malihé, her twin brother Unés, Ibrahim, her 15-year-old brother, and her grandmother Fatima. Music, coughing, plates stacked in basins, conversations, cell-phone chats, YouTube clips, are some of the sounds floating between the sheeted-off spaces. Plates and pans and clothes are washed in the schoolyard sinks. Old faucets spew water the municipality has not cut off. And pigeons gather. Mar calls them “flying rats” and shudders. But the children chase them, delighted when the birds cluster and take flight.

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The first time Azize invites me into her floor space she’s anxious I might not take off my shoes, respect what has become a home. Parameters make of what’s within them something specific: “Bring for me glitter?” Maedeh asks. She is going to the local Greek school in Exarhia with Narghes, Ibrahim, Unés, and Amir Houssein (Azize’s 11-year old son). The glitter, like hair dye, aspirin, dentist visits, shoes, hair tonic for lice, antibiotics are some requests that begin to contour my day. Maedeh wants the glitter “by Friday” for the school Christmas party. I want to get the fancy 4-cylinder container available at the all-purpose JUMBO store. Alicia has some. Can it wait for tomorrow? But tomorrow is Friday. “Can we stop by the school to drop off something?” she asks her husband over the phone. He wants to know what’s so important that it can’t wait for tomorrow. It’s 8 in the evening. She says “a container of glitter for one of the girls,” he almost hangs up.

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The families have left homes in other lands: Rakia, 20, and Mohammed, 24, with their 7-month old Asma, came from Iran to Turkey to Lesvos to Athens. Saliha, or “Mama Maedeh” has a soft spot for Asma. She rolls Asma over pillows and Asma laughs. She buys a single sweet from the corner Kiosk to give her. Rakia talks to me in gestures, some French, a smattering of English. She will show me a tin of baby cream that’s empty, I’ll bring her something for diaper rash and she’ll nod thank you. Another day Maedeh tells me her brother is in Sweden, that he’s 14 and walked 21 days to reach Germany once he made it to the Macedonian border, then Sweden when the border was still open. The family is waiting for relocation papers; a year and a half will pass of living in the classroom when the papers come through, a total of almost three years from the time they last saw him will pass.

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Moha explains the EU family reunification policy allows for an under-aged child (under 18) to request their mother but this no longer involves all family members. He will be relocated to Germany after leaving Damascus, after being taken to an ISIS camp where he is almost shot. Moha helps out at the squat, translates, reads poetry; wakes the kids for the Sunday morning dentist appointments. His mother will die in Syria before a chance to travel to him. He will file for relocation after considering, like many, of making a go for it at the border. Offered a full scholarship to finish his degree in English (which he was studying in Damascus) at the American College in Athens, he will have signed his papers for Germany already and will regret he didn’t know of the scholarship in time.


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Narghes shows me the Swiss flag above a café in Geneva. Her brother took a Selfie when he made it to Switzerland as the borders closed. He’s now 17. “Family connections” Narghes says as if she’s been practicing the phrase, when I ask how they found him. It’s a phrase she repeats, and the word “Katehaki” where asylum requests and relocation petitions are filed in Athens. “They say no” Narghes says pointing to Fatima. The Swiss government has given their okay to Malihé, Ibrahim, Unés, Narghes, but not Fatima for relocation. Fatima crouches at the edge of the sheet where the children draw and paint and concentrates on filling in the wings of butterflies and flowers with bright colored markers.

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Narghes says her mother would like hair dye. Ibrahim tries to explain the color very specifically, “a little bit olive little bit aubergine.” He shows me images of vegetables on his cell phone, and points to an eggplant.

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The layered 5 or 6 blankets donated by UNHCR make the floor soft. Someone is singing. I am sitting with Maedeh’s family when Azize comes in with Henieh. We cut the photographs Eirini and I have taken. I’ve made Xerox copies. We hope the pictures become a memento of the school and our times together. Malihé bring us tea, or chai, with chocolate wafers.

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Your expectations are changed; you take being seated for granted, having a surface for arranging a hairbrush, hair bands, hair clips. You realize this when Henieh’s 11-year-old brother, Amir Hussien, says it’s hard to sit for long periods cross-legged. When you go to a Luna Park on a Saturday morning a metro stop away everyone grabs a seat. These seats with stiff plastic backs are welcome after sitting on a floor. You bring your daughter’s American Doll to Henieh; her name is Felicia and the doll has a four-poster bed while Henieh sleeps on a floor mattress. I ask Henieh to give Felicia an Afghani name so she calls her chemistry or “Kimia.” The next time I visit Kimia’s bed has been turned into a side table where Azize has placed some jars.


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Nirgina is new to the squat, she arrived with her 6-year old daughter Naz and is painting henna designs on ankles and calves and the backs of hands when I meet her. She offers to do the same for me. I marvel at the steadiness of how she uses a paper cone. She says the cone tip needs to be smaller, sharper, that the henna is not good, and will fade in a few days.


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She left Kabul with Naz because her husband “was bad.” Her mother is in Sweden with her father and older brother; In Kabul she had been a schoolteacher, taught “Oxford English.” Now she wants to get to Sweden because there’s “no work in Greece…” I say she could teach English, be paid for her henna designs. She will get herself to Sweden she says, with the help of smugglers. “But they are expensive… also dangerous,” I say. She nods, concentrating on the design she is making on my hand. I repeat she could make money doing this when she says quietly “it’s for free.”


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I offer to bring Nirgina English language books; my suggestion is more to do with my feeling of helplessness I try to imagine a solution, alternatives, when she says she finds free lessons on YouTube. YouTube is where Henieh finds nursery rhymes and videos of kittens, where Mina checks for recipes. Nirgina tells me there is no future for her in Greece, if she can’t manage to get herself and Naz to Sweden she’ll send Naz with a Pakistani family.


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A series of emojis turn up on my Viber from Narghes — a weepy face, a shocked face — the line, “Unés go!” another weepy face, then “vat taim you kam???” I don’t understand. I text, “I there in 1 hour!” and leave for the squat. My syntax paired down to some belief that less syllables makes for easier understanding. Narghes answers, “Okay god god vere god”; while I know “god” is “good” and “kam” is “come” I learn urgency is its own syntax of worlds and grammar. Narghes’ twin brother Unés was left on the metro platform as the subway doors closed and he was separated from Malihé and Narghes.

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Unés is taken to the children’s hospital, picked up by the police. Narghes’ 13-year-old twin has a different but acute intelligence, and is sometimes made fun of. He knows the side streets from Omonia square when I am lost; he knows to unknot the tangle of my jacket strings when I’m ready to cut the fabric in frustration; he did something mysterious to fix my cell phone that had frozen. But his 15-year-old brother Ibrahim is bullish with him. “Unés’ brain is this” Ibrahim says showing me a pebble when we’re on a walk. Unés understands the insult and pushes him. Ibrahim hits him back when Malihé intervenes in rapid Farsi. In the first days of our visits Unés swipes the handouts then gleefully shows me the markers, scissors, socks; it was a game. When I ask for things back he gives them and they disappear again, and again he’ll show them to me. Sometimes I see a hardened expression on Ibrahim’s face. Other times it breaks into a fabulous smile. He wants me to print out the reams of photographs he’s sent me over Messenger after Eirini and I turn up with stapled paper booklets to glue in pictures.


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A sheet or a blanket makes for a boundary — where the sheet or blanket ends are the imagined places beyond mattresses on the floor, pushed against a wall, crates covered for shelf space, planks to place suitcases, pots, plates, cups, piled up pillows and clothing, beyond the coughing and snoring and drifting harmonica sounds, the hallway where Narghes will chip her front tooth from a fall off a skateboard; where Hala has a pet, a table and chairs and food on the table.


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We leave to find Narghes’ apartment who my friend Narghes, with the same name, tells me is “a good girl”; we are lost in the backstreets that cut across to Exarhia, her family is in an apartment rented for them by PRAXIS, a Greek NGO. They both go to the Greek public school with Maedeh and Amir Hussein; Narghes wants Narghes to come with us on the trip that Judi has planned to Rhodes. I discover parts of the city I haven’t seen before; stop at an ATM, make a point not to cover the #s as I punch in the digits. Narghes watches then says, “People say no look.” I explain the code is to protect the person’s account but I’m uninterested in my explanation. I’m interested in what trust might mean in lives that find themselves in the corner of a classroom because cultures from countries that have been destroyed continue to dream.


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Narghes’ friend Narghes doesn’t wear a hijab, leaves her shoulder-length hair loose. Narghes tells me this before we arrive. When Narghes’ family first came to Athens Malihé wasn’t strict, but Narghes says her mother now wants her to cover her head when she goes out. “We don’t know her,” her friend Narghes’ mother says in soft-spoken Farsi, referring to me. We are asking if she will let her daughter come with us. My Narghes says Narghes’ family knows her, and she knows me, “for a year now”; as if all this should be enough for the family to entrust their daughter to strangers for an excursion. Narghes’ mother excuses herself to speak with her husband in another room; they don’t know me, but I’m invited into their kitchen. Narghes and I leave our shoes at the entranceway and are offered water and tea. I sit with the two chatting 13-year olds. When Narghes’ mother returns she tells Narghes they will allow their Narghes to go on the trip if the contact person at PARXIS gives their permission.


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I bring Maedeh sweatpants and ask if she’s seen Narghes. They’re in another spat, and aren’t speaking. When I find Narghes in her room she’s upset. Maedeh keeps boasting of her high marks in school; Ioanna and Argiris, their young schoolteachers, give Maedeh stars and encouraging comments in Greek. Narghes says she doesn’t like math. Judi says Maedeh is the more secure of the two because she has her father. Malihé, Narghes’ mother, was married at 12. Ibrahim tells me this with a short laugh. Narghes shows me a picture on her cell phone, a child with makeup. The makeup looks garish. The picture upsets me but I smile. Unés is asleep on a mattress after his metro escapade. Malihé offers me a patent leather bag with plastic gold links I will not use, and I thank her.


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Malihé is not being treated well, according to Narghes. An Afghani woman alone means a woman who is half-seen. And Ibrahim refused, when it was his turn, to clean out the toilets in the school where some 300 people are squatting. Ibrahim wants to hang out with attractive girls and the cool boys. I get over 30 pictures over Messenger from him, pictures of him looking very Brando-like with the smiling girls. I’d brought photo albums for Narghes and Maedeh hoping they would remember this time, Maedeh says she will always remember.


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Images from Narghes pop up on Viber — “pants for cold,” a winter coat with a rim of lavender fur. She’s 13 after all. I’ll say the lavender-rimmed coat is “expensive,” I tell her my own coat is a couple of years old she’ll nod, “if no money never mind.” I take her and Maedeh shopping during the winter sales. I want to reconcile them. Narghes will ask “expensive?” as we pull clothes off their racks and she and Maedeh go into the dressing rooms.


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Space will reconfigure its occupants as much as being reconfigured by them — take any mapping, take the once-Native North American continent occupied and remapped by a cluster of Calvin-inspired fanatics. Take the fact that that group inspired a nation that pushed indigenous groups off their lands forming reservation camps. Today casinos are one of the ways the reservations fund themselves. The current Greek prime minister wants to open casinos on islands and tourist hot spots to generate tax-free incomes, as an economically imploded Greece has become something of a reservation within a larger Europe. Hot spots, a term given to refugee camps first supported by organizations such as the UNHCR, suggests some of the ways boundaries engender value. Like a reservation, a camp, a hot spot, the terms of habitation become dependent on what organizes them.


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​On the floor in room #14 Saliha, Azize, Rakia, Mina, Nirgina, Maedeh and others have arranged clusters of bud-like pouches, a meal to celebrate EID, and the end of Ramadan’s fasting. It takes 3 bus rides to another part of the city to borrow “a poot” Maedeh says. They got it from one of the shelters. I eventually understand “poot” is the 5-tired pot that the dough pouches are steamed in. We spend time filling and shaping the dough, separating them into batches on a square plank from a broken cabinet.


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Nirgina finally sent Naz with “the smugglers.” It cost 4000 euros. They provided a false passport and passage with a Pakistani family whose daughter she was supposed to be. “It was the only way,” she tells me, and sees me beginning to tear, “you cannot cry” she says very seriously. She, the mother, has cried since Naz left but they had been turned back several times when the two of them tried to cross together. Two days later Naz arrived in Sweden. She was given “good clothes and food.” But she wants her mother. “We have not been apart for more than 10 minutes,” Nirgina says, and shows me Naz now in Sweden on her cell phone, dancing for her in a dress her grandmother had just given her.


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We, the spectator, visitor, we who occupy our framings of meaning suggest a language that arranges sentences, that becomes its own sentence of meaning. And for those outside the frames, to smuggle in their meanings, to make a space for what is excluded is to reconfigure the parameters of geography and time.
Adrianne Kalfopoulou lives and teaches in Athens, Greece and serves as a faculty mentor in Regis University’s low residency MFA program. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, A History of Too Much (Red Hen 2018). Her publications include two essay collections and several chapbooks. Recent or forthcoming work appears in HOTEL, The Common, Plath Profiles, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (JMI), Slag Glass City, Hotel Amerika; erratic tweets @akalf1; blogs, reviews, rants, etc. @ www.adriannekalfopoulou.com

About the work: “In my time with refugee groups I found I was using words in ways that was de- and re-contextualizing their ability to signify — "a square of space," literal and discursive, was made of what was found, including not-always-grammatical uses of language (sometimes a mélange of English, Arabic, Farsi, French). The world took on nuance and immediacy in ways that reconfigured it, syntax skewed assumptions left behind in efforts to communicate across languages and culture. What a thrill to find a journal with just that idea in its mission, where "a space of disruption" might express what it "means to be vulnerable… to invert syntax… to articulate the visceral." What an opportunity to renew and better house ourselves.” 
All photos by Adrianne Kalfopoulou