Tasnim and her brother Adam, refugees from Lebanon, sleep in the lobby of a squatted hotel in Athens. (Carter McCall/for The Washington Post)--A resident prepares a pasta dish for dinner at the City Plaza hotel. The squats refuse aid from governments and non-governmental organizations. Teams of residents and volunteers share the cleaning and cooking responsibilities at City Plaza. (Carter McCall/for the Washington Post)
Abdul Jalil Haddad and his brother Mohamed have been living at School Squat 2 for two weeks after arriving in Athens from the island of Chios with no place to stay. The men, who are from Homs, Syria, heard about the squat through word of mouth, Abdul Jalal said. They now live in a classroom with 15 other young men. (Carter McCall/for the Washington Post)--Residents hang their clothes to dry on an old chain link fence in playground of School Squat 2 in Athens. (Carter McCall/for The Washington Post)
Opposite the toolshed, a Victorian-style tower serves as the main gateway between the courtyard and the building. The once-shuttered school is now full of children who sprint up the spiral marble staircase to classrooms where families sleep on donated mattresses and stacks of thick, gray blankets provided by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Offices on the ground floor were repainted with sky-blue signs reading “No Borders One Love” and transformed into storerooms for donations, a technology room and a medical clinic.
Welcome to School Squat 2. This is one of seven major squats in the city where approximately 1,500 refugees have found an alternative to government camps that have rampant health and safety issues.
Many of the roughly 57,000 refugees now stuck in political and physical limbo in Greece never expected to spend more than a season here, but they found themselves still sweltering in tents at a makeshift camp at Piraeus Port this spring and summer. Camps were usually either full or host to a range of problems:
scabies, knife fights, food poisoning, inadequate facilities, snakes and scorpions. In response, frustrated local activists and refugees started teaming up to house people in abandoned schools, hotels, apartment buildings and hospitals.
School Squat 2 is one of four opened by a team led by Kastro S. Dakdouk, a Syrian from the sea town of Tartus who came to Greece in 1989 for art school. He paints drooping faces and political cartoons, and he made his name in the Greek anarchist community as one of seven activists jailed after a 2003 protest.
