From Katrina to Samothraki: Another Deluge.

The Chóra of Samothraki two years ago,

on Tuesday 20 October 2015.

It was two years ago that I was arriving in Samothraki, no longer a tourist but in preparation for my PhD fieldwork application. It was the same days as this year’s floods that I, ambitious and with a questioning spirit, was stepping foot on the island, just two years ago.

Two years following those first days everything is so different. Pictures depict a landscape all the sudden alienated, a stranger. Questions bear no longer their fruitful character, but instead awake nightmares. Words do not flow; and experience is a repetitious limbo stuck in mind.

Walking amongst the debris and mud last week, in the aftermath of the pouring rain and squall, I could not raise my hands, hold the camera steadily and take pictures. Who would like to remember this anyway? Who would possibly like to store and return to such pictures in time?

Four years ago, while taking a semester of my BA course in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex as an Erasmus student, I enrolled in a course called American Cities: New Orleans, at the Department of American Studies. During the term, one of the topics that mostly preoccupied us was the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which had disastrously and deadly hit New Orleans and, more widely, the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. I bear a memory of this incident myself, when, as a 12-year-old kid, I was watching photage of people trapped on the roofs of their houses or swimming in the muddy water to escape overflown areas in New Orleans. Last week, having just started conducting fieldwork in Samothraki, having my house flooded overnight with rushing water and detritus on Monday 25 September 2017, having been evacuated and found shelter in the neighbours’ house and wearing borrowed clothes, I felt what these people, the people I was watching on TV 12 years ago, must have been feeling at that time.

That was a natural disaster.

Just recently an online Greek media platform published an article reviewing the cities so far flooded in water and mud this year globally and raised, once more, the issue of climate change, calling 2017 “the year of mud”. It seems, 12 years on, not much has changed in terms of our understanding: since Katrina, New Orleans keeps flooding on a regular basis.

Katrina was unprecedented. The deluge in Samothraki was unprecedented as well; 330 mm of rain during half a day. An unnecessary sense of irony makes me think that on both occasions, Katrina and Samothraki, it was Monday. A more necessary burden sinks in my heart considering that Katrina taught us no lessons after all. It is climate change: there had been no rain in Samothraki throughout this summer, while normally there are several squalls breaking each month (1). The land was dry and, on top of that, naked: the wild goats overpopulating the island have already consumed the amount of flora that is vital for the local ecosystem (2). And then, the water had no way out when it rushed in the overbuilt village of Chóra (3). This problematic equation already consists of three very-well-known facts (1+2+3), while the outcome is no longer unknown = it is natural disaster; and it keeps repeating itself.

It is time we asked ourselves a question worse to what happens after a natural disaster; apparently we have mastered that one… We need to ask, how many natural disasters can we survive? You see, people develop attachments with their land. The majority of the civilians affected by Hurricane Katrina eventually returned to New Orleans to rebuild, some from scratch, their homes, their stores and their lives, aware of the danger of another flooding, and another after that, and then another… Minutes after the rain stopped in the morning of Tuesday 26 September 2017, people walked outside in Samothraki and started cleaning up their properties, collecting what could be saved, helping the neighbours… Rebuilding is up next, but the danger of another flood or even a landslide is immanent.

Rebuilding and restoration then need to take place on the proper basis, readjusted to the current situation and the possible climatic outbreaks. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were just TV news for all of us in Greece. Yet, do you remember – back in those days of prosperity – a Greek marathon raising money to be sent to those affected by Katrina? Nowadays, what happened in Samothraki is just another deluge. More are to follow. Nowadays, given the economic situation and the frequency of natural disasters, charities are much rarer and cannot hold the response key for such cases of emergency.

Taking pictures to make the disaster known, raising money, motivating the restoration process immediately, helping each other; it all matters. But, once recovered, we need to see beyond that. The next deluge, near or far, must worry us all. Earth and water are ready to wipe us out. And who could blame them for that?

Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, on Monday 29 August 2005.

Copyright of Josh Neufeld. Source: http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/2007/01/01/prologue-1/12/

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Οιωνοί

Στα φύλλα των πλατάνων που χάνουν τη δύναμή τους και πέφτουν πρώιμα, στα φύλλα το φθινόπωρο που βιάζεται. Στα κύματα που αδιάκοπα χτυπούν το σώμα τους ενάντια σ’ αυτό της γης, στα κύματα οι μέρες που χάνονται. Στα μαλλιά μου που ασπρίζουν - και στα δικά σου – το χιόνι που θα πέσει, το χιόνι που θα λιώσει στην θάλασσα. Τα βράδια του καλοκαιριού αεροπλάνα διασχίζουν τον ουρανό μ’ ιλιγγιώδεις ταχύτητες κι εγώ τα καταλαβαίνω · καταλαβαίνω τον χρόνο που κυνηγούν τους αστερισμούς που έχουν να προσπεράσουν τα σύνορα που οφείλουν να διαγράψουν – τα καταλαβαίνω. Ο άντρας που στέκεται εδώ και ώρα στην ακροθαλασσιά έχει ξεχάσει να κινηθεί, και το βλέπω τώρα πως τα πέλματά του τα έχουν καταπιεί τα βότσαλα, οι αστράγαλοί του δεν ξεχωρίζουν στην σκοτεινή στεριά, και τώρα που το φως έχει επιτέλους χαθεί φαίνονται όλα πεντακάθαρα – το κάθε χιλιοστό που η θάλασσα τον τραβά μέσα της, το κάθε μικρό κύμα στ’ ανοιχτά που διογκώ

Time

Warm earth homecoming warm body a storm beyond the sea warm hands – your hands are warm at summer’s end. Your hands are warm amidst the ashfall your hands are real. Warm earth cold water – the goats descend . Sept. – Oct. 2023, Kipoi, Samothraki.

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Συγκλονιστικές είναι οι εξελίξεις σχετικά με το μέχρι στιγμής ανεξιχνίαστο έγκλημα στη Σαμοθράκη. Η σωρός του Μολδαβού επιχειρηματία βρέθηκε τελικά σε δύσβατο κομμάτι του βράχου Βρυχού, περιφερειακά του οικισμού της Χώρας. Η αστυνομία κάνει λόγο για δολοφονία, αλλά δεν έχει δώσει προς το παρόν λεπτομέρειες για τυχόν υπόπτους ή για τον τρόπο που αφαιρέθηκε η ζωή του θύματος! Ρίγος στην τοπική κοινωνία εν μέσω καλοκαιριού! Θα επιστρέψουμε κοντά σας μόλις έχουμε νεώτερα... Ο αστυνόμος Μακρής έκλεισε το ραδιόφωνο με αργές, σχεδόν θεατρικές κινήσεις. Όχι πως ήταν λάτρης του σανιδιού · μάλλον το αντίθετο. Τον επιβράδυνε περισσότερο η σκέψη της τελευταίας φράσης που άκουσε. Θα επιστρέψουμε κοντά σας μόλις έχουμε νεώτερα... Ήξερε τι σήμαινε αυτό. Το τηλέφωνο θα χτυπούσε σύντομα. Στην Αλεξανδρούπολη επικρατούσε πνιγηρή ζέστη. Ο απογευματινός παραλιακός περίπατος περισσότερο είχε αυξήσει παρά ανακουφίσει τη δυσφορία που ήδη ένιωθε. Βέβαια δεν ήταν μόνο ο καιρός. Στην πρα

Bosphorus

In their cracky voices the seagulls talked – they truly did talk – about things that parted continents and seas. The crowd moved in a mass dance a choreography of nothing momentarily interrupted by streetcars. And the waters howled underneath they howled like a heartbeat soon (any moment now) to cease. Souls passed me by; some lost some wandering and some mine. Jan. 2024, Istanbul.

April’s fools

I All our traumas sat around the table to dine courteously and with crooked smiles (too civilised for their own good). They exchanged words superfluous and untherapeutic. They drank until it was late and memory appeared to dissolve into nothingness. II Sometimes even after all this time, when the restaurant is empty and the music has stopped, I hear them trying to re-emerge from the surfaces that surpassed them the flowers that outlived them the lights that fooled them – intoxicated and vindicated by no one – into the shadows. I ask myself, sometimes, what will happen if they ever escape the shadows only to find that the dining table has since been replaced and most of their torturous attachments have ceased to be? What hidden and unresolved traumas will we have then? April 2024, Athens. Photograph: March 2024, Loutropyrgos.

Mountain stars (a collection of irregular haikus)

I Your dreams are lately red. In the defiant light of the sun we appear less clean. What if I hide underneath the surface of the sea? Love was supposed to be effortless at start. Same songs same rain all the things you are doing with others. Storms unleashed threads pending cuts; your dreams are red. II Night butterflies fill the room night flowers drop tears reflections of us populate the walls underneath the sky I inhale the stars. The sea will expand to the world’s end (I know now) mountains will for once retract is it possible is it thinkable to stand here still? May 2024, Samothraki.

Sharp objects

Incapacitated words as spoken hit fully unequipped against the hard surfaces of objects across the room. They roll each surface until they meet the floor, or are forced by their velocity to an abrupt, deep fall. Some – very few – cling on to sharp edge s where accidentally they made contact and attempt to stand breathless and silent expecting this to postpone their demise. But the edges are cutting so the words become torn apart as they hang helplessly above the ground and letter by letter they lose the fabric of their sense. Poor words, the poorest words ever spoken, result demolished on the floor their letters illogically spread across space, their meaning irreparably deranged. Athens, July 2023. Photograph: words colliding against each other; Dundee West End, Scotland, June 2022.

Poetic Movements

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