As Europe goes by

image: Greek reporter

How can we forget the days when we, as Western Europeans in our early twenties, lived in a state of constant celebration of Europe and all it stood for? I remember the exhilarating news: the live transmission of the fall of the dictator Ceausescu in Romania; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War… Watching Germans cheering in unity was intensely moving, and the subsequent formation of the European Union fit the zeitgeist perfectly. 

It’s a common mistake to think that people are driven solely by self-interest. Nations can be, it’s true, but in general individuals are ultimately driven by less concrete values: existential fears, religion, values to which they adhere, or love, or, in the case of those that are part of their defining identities, values for which they may kill and destroy, or – on the contrary – build and heal (Scott Atran did wonderful work on this topic). In the 1990s, we certainly never conceived of the European Union as a force for power or selfish interests. On the contrary, Europe seemed to have found her way back to the Enlightenment: to the days of the great philosophers; the days of the great writers and artists, who gave us centuries of pledges for justice, solidarity, rationality in the conduct of public affairs; to the legacy of the French Revolution – freedom, equality, fraternity. Suddenly, these aims were not those of a single country at some stage of its history, dissonant in some way with what was happening elsewhere, but those of the continent as a whole. In hindsight, I think that we understood that the construction of a strong Europe was the final cathartic development, not only post-WWII but also post-1968 riots. The generation preceding ours required a better world, a new society. This was the European Union – even though we knew that it all started with industrial and economical alliances. 

Now the European project is collapsing. And I am living this collapse in an unexpectedly heart-breaking way. I have returned from a week in Samos, one of the Greek islands where refugees crash at night. I witnessed there how the spirit of Europe as we used to love it was only one side of the Euro coin. And why should we be surprised? We know that Europe’s history is mostly one of grand nations claiming leadership and confronting their neighbours with wars and oppression, before they turned their thirst towards the colonies, from which they developed ‘empires’ (and from which the United States has managed to extricate itself). In the gorgeous island of Samos, I was volunteering in a refugee camp, for just one week. Just one little drop in the ocean, yes, but, as Solzhenitsyn writes, “to taste the sea all one needs is one gulp”. 

What I saw in that camp was families and individuals fleeing wars and misery. Beautiful children, the same age as my own, for whom I was happy to help tie the laces of dry new shoes. I will never forget them: the Syrian families, the Yezidi nannies with their eyes of fire, whose people are being slaughtered by Daesh. And the wonderful Kurdish family I met in a café, who had assembled here from all over Europe because the boat some of their beloved relatives were travelling in had sunk, leaving only eight family members alive. I remember how they were trying to deal with the grief, and how I cried with them. I heard little but tragedies: the lady who lost her two little boys who she couldn’t hold when the boat capsized, the man who lost wife and children and who is now prisoner of unbearable pain…

If you go to Samos, you may even not notice that there are refugees at all. Walking in the picturesque city, sitting in a lovely Greek taverna, visiting quaint fishing villages, passing tourist resorts in the midst of preparing for next season, all you will see are breathtaking views and all you will meet are warm and welcoming people. But what you don’t know is that many of the locals are spending the little money they have, in a country facing a tragic economic crisis, helping out with the refugees, together with volunteers from all over the world. A group of young Swiss people prepare the evening meal, and Greek volunteers or the church prepare the lunch. Katina, a 72-year-old woman whose house overlooks one of the popular landing spots, has transformed her home into a first aid area. She greets the half-frozen children with a warm shower and gives food and water to the refugees before the Médecins sans Frontières bus picks them up. 

We know what the European response looks like: Germany opened its arms but now imposes restrictions while being sympathetic to Turkey’s demands; Austria, backing former East-European countries, all without knowledge of the sea, labels ‘border’ the open waters and accuses the Greek black sheep of a lack of control. It has even managed to practically exclude Greece from the Schengen treaty and have FYROM close its border, taking Greece to the verge of a humanitarian emergency and plunging Europe into a serious political crisis. 

And so, European leaders are back on their national thrones, protecting their borders and agitating their imperial sceptres.

I wonder what Ahmed, or dear 15-years old Etan (where is he now?), will keep in their heart under the label ‘Europe’. I know what the Syrian and Iraqi ladies who were looking for nappies for their babies will tell them when they grow up and ask about Greeks. But about Europe’s hostility and FYROM police teargas, I’m not sure.

It’s the European Union that is actually cutting itself off the Schengen treaty, and from the last place where our Europe is actually still real: Greece. Far from being the black sheep, Greece is providing a devastating example of how humanity should be. Does Greece deserve to be part of Europe? Of course. Does Europe still deserve Greece? I’m not sure.