I felt like a refugee yesterday in the train from Thessaloniki to Athens.  Entering the train station, I saw many refugees and immigrants queuing outside the ticket’s office. I didn’t know which direction I had to follow to reach my platform and I asked a guard standing a few meters away: “It’s on your right, down the stairs. Mind your bag, they steal here”, he told me.

I followed the direction he showed me and I reached my platform. Before embarking on the train, another guard checked my tickets: “This is your carriage”, he said to me, pointing the carriage next to us. “Please, mind your personal belongings!”. I hesitantly took a seat, feeling stressed about my bag, after all these precautions. A couple of minutes later, I see a dark-skinned man, around the age of 60, approaching me. He kindly asks me -in English- if he is at the correct place and after my confirmation, he sits next to me. He seems polite and willing to start a conversation. However, after all the warnings I received, my sociability is moderated and replaced by my phone and earphones. In that way, Ι will seem more distant and nobody will be able to bother me.

Not long after, my fellow traveler asks me a question about the movie I am watching on my phone. “Actually, it’s a Spanish series” I reply back and I quickly put the earphones back to my ears. But I don’t like my behavior. That’s not me. I can’t stand knowing that I will spend the next 5 hours next to a stranger, who will remain a stranger. That I will miss the chance to get a sneak peek inside his life, the life of a man older than me, with different skin color and origin. And actually, he is not even a stranger to me anymore. For the next few hours, he will take the identity of my fellow traveler, of my travel companion. I take the earphones off again and I look at him:

–          “Where are you from?”, I ask him curiously.

–          “Me? From India?” he replies back.

 Name: Shriram

Nationality: Indian

Shriram is a lovely man from India. He has been living in Greece for a year and he works in a bakery, in an area outside of Athen’s city center. He is the one who operates some machinery in the production of the bakery. He lives with a friend from India and earns €500 per month. A few years back he was working in Kenya, Africa. That’s something he does often, he told me. He leaves India for about two years and then he goes back. It’s his first time in Europe. He was planning to come here earlier, but it took him a while to gather all the necessary documents. He doesn’t want to stay here. Neither did he want to stay in Africa. What he really desires is to go back to India, to marry off his daughters. That’s the main reason that brings him in Greece: to earn money and give it to his family, invest it in his daughters’ wedding. “I have two daughters and one son”, he said, showing me- full of pride- some family pictures on his phone.

 I learned that in India, the girls put “bindi” – that spot on their forehead- when they get married. And that’s a way to distinguish a married woman from a single one. I also learned that nowadays, women have started to have more rights and more freedom. Now girls go to university, while in the past their parents were marrying them off at the age of 15 or 17 years of age and they were since acquiring the role of the housewife.  Today the majority of the girls get married to the man of their choice, around the age of 25. However, they still have to take their father’s approval.

Shriram advises his daughters to not pay attention to the economic status, but to get a man with a good heart, someone who truly loves them. And that’s what he advised me as well: “You have to be with someone you really love. He has to be a good man. You have to believe in him, and he has to believe in you.  What’s money’s importance when the other person is not good hearted? The God- Fedra- is in our heart. The God is one. It doesn’t matter if I go to the temple and you go to the church. None of these matters. God is the good that lives in everyone’s soul”.

Taking the earphones off and starting talking to the person sitting next to me was the best decision I could have made. We say that today’s society is impersonal. However, I believe that we are the ones giving that personal touch. Even on occasions like this. When we decide to not see our fellow traveler as a stranger, but as a person with his own, unique identity. In my story: “Shriram from India”.

Fedra Mour