The upside of the occupation of the Olympic baseball stadium in Greece by thousands of refugees is that the
stadium is not an empty ruin.
The down
side is that the baseball field and the stadium are full of people who’d rather
not be there. They’d rather be home. For many of them, that’s Syria. As I
understand it, they left because home was exploding all around them and people
like them were dying in great numbers, whether or not they had taken sides in
the war, which they might or might not understand.
In the
pictures lots of the refugees are smiling. Some of them are children who’ve
been refugees for most of their lives. They may be smiling because they can’t
remember living any place more comfortable than the tents set up in the
baseball stadium.
The
juxtaposition of “children” and “baseball stadium” shouldn’t feel like this.
When
children attend their first big time baseball game with their parents or by
sneaking past the security guard, they’re supposed to marvel at how green the
grass is, even if they’ve seen that grass on TV. When they grow up, they all
tell the same story about the first time they went to a big league game, and
how green the grass was. Maybe they also remember who hit a home run that day,
but for certain they remember how green the grass was.
In the photographs
of the refugee camp that’s been set up in the baseball stadium in Greece, it’s
impossible to tell if there is any grass. All the ground is covered by rows and
rows of tents, which suggests that there isn’t any. In fact, it would be sort
of miracle if there was any grass, wouldn’t it? There is dirt, and there is
heat, and there are crowded conditions.
There are
also some ramshackle playhouses and some creative decorations inside some of
the tents, where some of the smiling children were photographed. The creative
decorations and some of the more basic improvements in the camp have alarmed
some of the residents. In a recent story, one of them suggested that although
she welcomed the improvements in sanitation and the water supply for health
reasons, she wondered if all the work put into the improvements meant that the
expectation was that the refugees would be on that ball field for a long time.
In the
aftermath of the Olympics in Greece, there were lots of sad stories about
waste, corruption, and economic collapse.
Now we have
a sadder story.
The field
meant for games and covered with row after row of tents is bordered by a
grandstand featuring row after row of seats. In the photographs I’ve seen, the
seats are empty. I wonder if the photographer set up the shots that way to
suggest that nobody is watching?
