In the cemetery of Sebastian, among dozens of lighted candles, whose flames flicker in the afternoon light, a chant suddenly begins to emerge in an unfamiliar language. Six melodic voices, among them children’s. You listen to them and you shudder. Even if you do not understand what the words mean. Voices of refugeeswhich only a few days ago have reached Sebastian of Skydraafter a journey of 36 hours and thousands of kilometers, uprooted by the war in Ukraine.
They stand between two tombs of Greeks. And their psalm is a prayer for the rest of the soul of the two foreigners dead to them, formulated in ancient Slavic language. The dead are the father and brother of Ifigenia Parastatidou, the woman who welcomed the six refugees to Greece and offered them shelter in her empty paternal home. Their desire to accompany the woman to the cemetery and to pray with her, chanting for her dead, was spontaneous. Family with four children, aged eight to 14 years. All musicians. Leaving Odessa, they may have taken little clothes with them, but they carried most of their musical instruments: a cello, a saxophone, a clarinet and a flute.
“The cello is part of our daughter”
“Our musical instruments are an extension of ourselves, a musician would find it very difficult to leave them behind,” the father of the Maxim family, a member of the Odessa Municipal Orchestra, told APE-MPE. When we ask him specifically about the cello, an instrument so massive that you can hardly imagine it on the back of a man leaving his refugee country, persecuted by the war, his answer is disarming: “The cello is a part of our daughter, her Ray. ” The fourteen-year-old girl is studying at the Music School of Odessa. The cello is a tool and an escape, and having it with her she can continue her rehearsals and studies – one firmly in a present that has changed drastically overnight.
The four children – Raya, twelve-year-old Ivan playing the wind, ten-year-old pianist Anna, who is missing a piano, and eight-year-old Byron, who also plays music – struggled at first, but now they are starting to relax. At the moment they are attending online classes at their school in Odessa, but as Maxim says, maybe they should go to the Greek school, to learn Greek.
“We rely on the will of God to help people return. But I do not know where they will return “
The family of six left Odessa about two weeks after the start of the war. “We made the decision when we saw that even houses in Kherson and Nikolaev were being bombed. “We left to save our children,” he explains. The last time he closed the door of their house in Odessa, he was thinking about the eighty-four-year-old grandmother of the family, who did not come with them, did not make the big trip. She said goodbye to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and at her side were her own children, Maxim’s parents, who were also left behind.
“We want to return to Odessa. When we left, I was thinking, “it is temporary, we will be back soon”, but as I see the situation in Ukraine now, as I see the bombing, I understand that this can not be done soon, that we must stay in Greece. For how long; We rely on God’s will to help people return. “But I do not know where they will return,” he said, adding that in their telephone conversations, his father told him how he had begun to be affected by the war and the city of Odessa: “there is no petrol. In the shops, the cheap products have disappeared and only the expensive ones are left. “It already seems noticeable that a problem for survival is being created.”
How did they decide to come to Greece, instead of another country? “We were told that Greece is a deeply religious country, with a strong sense of solidarity and that was the reason” he points out and adds that what he did not expect was that the family would receive so much love: “When we got on the bus, we were told that is waiting in Greece for a lady who would host us, but we did not expect so much love. Both from her and from all the people in the village. Until they call us every day and ask us if we want them to bring us coffee! ” notes, referring to the Sebastian community.
As the lawyer from Thessaloniki, Ifigenia Parastatidou, who hosts the family in her paternal home in Sebastiana, tells APE-MPE, the response of the villagers, where many refugees from Pontos live, was magnificent: “Supplies have been collected for months. A woman with “pi” came, with her arms full of goodies: chicken, sauces, jams, onions. They send sweets to the children every day. “On the first Sunday that the family came to the village, they asked me to go to church, at 8 in the morning, and when the service was over, there was a crowd of people at home, bringing various things.”
Ifigenia Parastatidou herself comes from a family of refugees and immigrants and knows what it means to be suddenly far from your homeland. Her grandparents arrived in Greece from Sevasti in the depths of Turkey. And her parents immigrated to Germany for work, facing all the difficulties of the “foreigner”. “Feels” the refugee, knows from the stories of her own the difficulties of uprooting. And she is not the only one who is in a hurry to help in practice.
“I have loved my father again”
Describes what lives as shocking. He knows a country through his family, he explains. “During the first days I stayed with them, I woke up with a flute and fell asleep with a cello. In my parents’ room, in this house from which I only counted absences and had unpleasant memories after the death of my father and brother and my mother’s illness, at the moment children are sitting on the bed, playing the flute and cello . “I have loved my paternal home again, a house I was thinking of selling, because now I was associated with it only with unpleasant memories”, he adds and says that the couple of parents, Maxim and Christina, call her sister – and the younger children “babuska” .
Ifigenia Parastatidou narrates the first moments of the meeting with the family: Earlier I hurried and prepared the house, cleaned it, whitewashed it, filled the oil tank, not to miss anything, to be clean and warm to receive six souls. All I knew was that they are an artistic family and have four children. Arriving at the meeting point – the bus had just arrived from Odessa – I was anxiously looking to see who my new family was. Somewhere on the street corner I see six people looking anxiously, who will come to pick them up. A few bags with their clothes, a big suitcase and a bag and … the cello and the saxophone. Their eyes are sad and the fatigue is obvious after the trip. I tightened my heart and pretended to be pleasant and smiling, so that we would not all be in pain. On the way to the village we were silent and listening to our sorrows. When we arrived at my house, the embers of the fireplace and a special chicken soup, “made” by my friend, Sofia Kallianidou, were waiting for us. I feel great blessing to host them. It is an experiential life lesson. The family is wonderful … They are pious with spirituality and kindness, with constant gratitude that they express with hugs and prayers. I am moved because I had such beautiful emotions inside me, so important for the rest of my life “.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
I have worked in the news industry for over 10 years. I have a vast amount of experience in covering health news. I am also an author at News Bulletin 247. I am highly experienced and knowledgeable in this field. I am a hard worker and always deliver quality work. I am a reliable source of information and always provide accurate information.
