We sit cross-legged in a circle, laughing as plates brimming with food are passed around. Chicken dressed with Aleppo peppers, charred aubergine smothered in garlic and adorned with precious pomegranate seeds, green mulukhia (a soup made from minced Jute mallow leaves – my all-time favourite) are just some of the offerings people bring to share. Golden saffron rice spills all over the carpet, but the hosts don’t mind; besides, Snoopy, the local dog, has just had her puppies and will gobble up whatever remains on the ground when we aren’t looking.
We’re not at a restaurant or a tavern but in a shipping container in a Greek refugee camp, made festive with Christmas lights left hanging from a few months ago. Spaces of suffering often turn into spaces of tremendous care. Everyone brings what they can: some baklava from a local shop, a bottle of wine poured out into tiny beakers for those who partake, a box of diapers for a new mum in need.
After years of being stuck here without knowing when limbo may end, people turn towards one another, recognising that we are stronger together. This is mutualism, creativity, and care in action, a reminder that all is not lost in this era of polycrisis – of one disaster after another, all of them worsened by the fact that they are linked. Many people are doing what they can to work towards a different world, an antidote to despair.
