Ruminations from Greece...

Finding rivers that lead to the sea, warships and kuffiyehs, nature louder than the system, Greece's pro-Palestinian history and an encounter with an Israeli mother...

On one of our adventures driving up the peak of some mountains to get over the other side of them, down to a secluded beach cove whose waters washed in from Africa

I’ve just returned to the UK from Greece after spending most of the month there; feeling deeply grateful for being able to soak up the last of the Summer sun in Europe and as always, for being able to travel at all. And there are tales, magic and ruminations I’d like to bring here to this space.

As I shared in my last post, I have a deep affinity with Greece. I have done ever since stepping foot on the land 11 years ago (on the island of Mykonos no less - before the hype though, before season even began!) and it has become the most at home I feel outside of India, and by far the most at home I feel across all of Europe full stop (really resisted typing ‘period’ there even though it sounds better, but brits can’t pull it off).

And it’s not just the stunning WATERS, mountains, landscapes, FOOD, old towns, energy, PEOPLE, mythology, vibe, CULTURE (anyone else share this love affair with Greece?!) the land speaks to me there like it does in India. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe it’s something to do with ancient cultures and civilisations; I’m from an ancient land so maybe I see/feel/hear it in others, although India is next level for me I’m in numerous dimensions at any one time; Greece is not as intense but it’s similar. The incessant noise of the world doesn’t find me as easily. I can be working and feel untouched by the stress of productivity and next to no matrix energy because the mountains, the oceans, the stars are so much bigger, louder, brighter than the gnarly, soulless fingers of the system.

That doesn’t mean that every time I am there I get an easy ride. She brings everything to me without a filter; some of it has been the hardest work of my life. And she also brings the most synchronous, aligned, spine tingly happenings that cannot be explained any other way than direct communication from the universe. This time was just as full of them as any other.

One of them was through the synchronicity of a song. Throughout the late Summer in London, a dear friend was piloting a medicinal singing circle called ‘Sound Capsule for the Revolution’¹ and one of the songs we sang together was a Native American song about a river flowing to the sea. It has a sweet, syrupy melody accompanied by these lyrics:
“The river is flowing, growing and flowing // The river is flowing, down to the sea //
Sweet mother carry me, your child, I will always be // The river is flowing, down to the sea.”

Instinctively, when I began singing I changed the second ‘down to the sea’ to ‘Palestine be free’ without thinking (which isn’t particularly profound it’s an obvious connection) and I’ve been singing it outside in nature with my firecracker of a 3 yr old, weaving liberation spells in song everywhere we go (I also add to it Sudan be free, Congo be free, everywhere be free etc). So imagine then my awe that on almost every new adventure that we took whilst in Greece, we came across rivers flowing directly into the sea. I had only seen this once before and it will forever be breathtaking no matter how many times I see it/them, but after the first encounter on this trip it happened again on the next beach that we found and again on the one after that! Three different rivers all leading to the sea, on three different occasions, three different adventures, over three different weeks. The signs are never subtle in Greece but this was as blatant as they come. After being in those singing circles I deeply heard the call to sing, loudly, everywhere, and to remember it more in the fight for freedom; it’s an unparalleled power and I was reminded multiple times that my entire lineage is rooted in it.² (this footnote is an invite to join us at the National March for Palestine this Saturday in London for some singing - scroll down to see).

So I stood with my daughter and we sang the Native American song as a liberation song-spell, over and over again, on every one of the rivers that we found that led to the sea, calling for a free Palestine, a free Sudan, a free everywhere. If you’ve ever experienced it yourself, you’ll share the wonderment of how the river water is CHILLINGLY cold, regardless of what time of year it is, and even where it mixes with the ocean it remains freezing (even when meeting the luxuriously warm October Mediterranean sea that has been heated up all over Summer). The current also doesn’t change and somehow the ocean water doesn’t flow backwards into the river water either - even when the tide is coming in - it flows steady and strong down to the sea, as the song says. By the time we reached the 3rd river, my daughter spotted it before I did and began singing straight away.

In contrast something else that was very visible (and audible) on the island was the presence of NATO. We heard fighter jets flying every day / every other day, which made my daughter run for cover (my heart would sink to my knees at how terrifying the sound is even without bombs), witnessed military submarines emerge out of the water and even explosions in the sea.
I did some digging about what was going on there which of course came up very vague, wrapped up in the framing of protection and defense etc., but beyond it being a training ground, it’s also a base for fighter jets and war ships (which look abhorrent floating atop the beautiful, sparkling seas) strategically placed in the Eastern Mediterranean - and the only place big enough to hold aircraft carriers. Which means despite there being no explicit confirmation (other than the undeniably heightened and visible activity); in addition to Cyprus’s US base it is 100% being used in part, to support Israel’s genocide on Gaza.

This brought up so many feelings, conflictions, grief, embodied and ancestral responses that some days I need to just sit at the bottom of the ocean for a bit with the fishes and corals and crabs and be away from it all.
What in the fuck is this reality though? How fucking gross is it that the US has fucking bases anywhere in the world other than their own country? The ache of seeing such magnificent nature contrasted with death ships and explosions in the SEA??? The heavily polluted fuel trails from the fighter jets even if they were just “training” (training for MURDER though) - how about you get out of the fucking SKY and stop terrorising the people, the land, the birds, the animals?? Why is this the norm? How does ANYONE justify their own money being spent in the name of ‘defense’? Is it so ridiculous to suggest we make a global effort to rid the world of any type of killing machine from bombs to planes to guns, and live in ACTUAL fucking peace? How is that harder than every country playing into this fucked up game of ‘security’ through militaries, NATO agreements, arms purchasing, bomb making and and and? And I beg you show me anyone even feeling SECURE??!!

I have so many more of these burning, raging exclamations that I know make total sense, I know I’m not being naive, I know that this isn’t some wishful hippie talk, I KNOW this world is possible and I know the only thing that allows this repugnant corruption of our beautiful world, is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The biggest stain on humanity that has ever existed.

So there I was stood one day, on another adventure, stumbling across a quiet beach cove where only the locals go, with the warm, jovial chats of Greek elders floating in the ocean together in a circle, having their daily catch up in the light of the setting sun (this is one of my favourite people watching scenarios when I’m in Greece; they never pause for breath, it’s continuous talking for a good hour or so and a major inspiration for learning the language properly haha) and it happened to be October 7th. I had brought my journal with me, some battery operated candles and my kuffiyeh. There were some cats and their baby kittens on the beach, 3 big Muscovy ducks (like turkeys) and 4 tiny dogs that all played together so harmoniously, not bothered at all by each other.

I decided to get out my kuffiyeh and create a make-shift altar, adding stones and shells and lighting my candles just as the sun went down, sitting for a while watching the ocean. My daughter closed her eyes and said a prayer in baby mumbles and then ran off down the beach splashing in the ocean with her dad. I took in the joy of her and sent it to every mother in Palestine (and everywhere) as I always do whenever I breathe in her light; the love and the grief side by side. And then just at that moment, a war ship came sailing by. Right there in front of me, with all of its grey, hostile, death machine stench, its eyesore of a self stinking up the abundant waters before me.

My heart was pounding the blood to my face and neck, hot angry tears rushing to my eyes. My insides were teetering between molten rage and overwhelming powerlessness, taking me on a speedy highway to fight / flight / freeze mode. And then I dropped my heart into my body and found myself moving without thinking. I leant forward and took apart the altar, picking up my kuffiyeh. I stood up and strode to edge of the shore standing in the ocean and raised the kuffiyeh with both arms above my head. Chest heaving, stomach full of knots and the hot angry tears making rivers down my face, I shouted FALASTEEN HURRRHA HURRRHA across the water.

I was blazing with all of it; the death machine in front of me, the entire year, war as a fucking business model, white supremacy and its pathetic inability to create and how much trauma there is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. I stood there until it completely disappeared from view. I lowered my arms and wrapped the kuffiyeh around me sending every breath of life East, across the sea to Palestine. The poignancy of that to have happened on October 7th is typical of what Greece does for me; the clarity is crystal.

Greece has historically always been pro-Palestine; one of the only Christian states to oppose the 1947 Nakba (along with Cuba), open support from previous prime ministers for a Palestinian state and even provided refuge to Yassar Arafat back in the 80s - to then doing a complete 180 with their current right-wing PM, as being one of Israel’s closest allies. As ever, the government does not reflect the people and there remains strong support amongst the general public for Palestine. Just last week, members of a Greek dockworkers union managed to block a ship containing weapons and ammunition from being sent to Israel and I learned that the US base that I was seeing the warships come from also had ongoing protests from the public, as well as reported unrest from the workers there themselves, opposed to being a part of a genocide. Travelling for me in this time and seeing people from all different corners of the world making a stand, refuels me to keep going. There are billions of us in this, despite what our murderous governments are doing, we have to constantly have this at the forefront of our minds (and movements).

Me wrapped in a kuffiyeh, sending a prayer into the sunset after the warship had disappeared

The final thing I wanted to share was an interaction I had towards the end of our trip, with a mother who happened to be Israeli. We had just taken the wildest, windiest ride up and down a mountain side X2, (up then down, then up another one and then down again) to get to this remote beach that you then need to take a boat to. I was dizzy and hungry but desperate to just get into the sparkling aquamarine waters. A woman, her mother and her children were on the beach and as we walked past she immediately said “oh hey!” like we knew each other, I said a friendly hey back and noticed she wasn’t looking at me but really keenly trying to entice my kid to play with hers.

My kid stops traffic wherever she goes - Indian and Jamaican genes don’t play - so it’s not unusual for her to get attention but I felt something else. She asked where we had travelled from, I told her and asked the same back even though I was so despo to get in the water I wasn’t super invested, until her tone changed and she apologetically said “Israel”. I nodded slowly without blinking and suddenly became so aware of how a single word can make you feel so many things in one tiny flash; so many things ran through my body. Of course before anything, she was a human sat before me, I didn’t have any detrimental feeling toward her at all. It was more my brain moving in top speed to process the moment: her sat on the beach with me, »Gaza being bombed« her children safe as all children should be, »the children from Gaza that I saw killed the night before« me too being on that beach having the privilege of a holiday and safety of my family, »the people of Gaza with no safe place, not even the beach, on the other side of this very same sea« all flashing before me, one by one at lightning speed.

She babbled for a bit about her kids and their ages, asking if mine was at nursery etc., and I said yes, hers must be too, to which she replied “Well yes but not at the moment. We live in the north so school has been stopped for now…” alluding to the Israeli bombings in Lebanon. I nodded again and was about to say something when she carried on, “…so we’re here in Greece for now, I don’t know for how long, we don’t really have a plan....” And then my mind jumped again: Israeli freedom of movement, »the border still blocked at Rafah; Gaza is an extermination camp« Israeli’s taking holidays to contemplate becoming refugees »the entire population of Gazans becoming refugees in their own land« me also sat there on holiday »the country I was born in being responsible for this genocide starting in the first place«

“We don’t have a plan, we need to think about things. Think about everything. Because even if we go back after this holiday… Israel is a very problematic place to live”. And then just at that moment I suddenly noticed her child’s swimming costume; covered all over in dozens of watermelons. I flashed back then to how keen she was to talk to my daughter, how she almost latched onto me as I came onto the beach (as a South Asian woman I am often assumed to be Arab, especially with a beautiful, Persian name :)) and I got the impression she wanted to talk to me about it all. Our children then stood up to show us their sand castle and my baby girl proudly announced to me, “Mama, that’s my bruvva”; everyone is her brother (regardless of gender). I smiled genuinely and said yes, we’re all brothers sweet-pea. Because we are, whether we know it, believe it, or not.

The interaction then ended as her other kid had climbed on top of an actual boat #toddlerlife and my family and I went to get food. But the feeling of that moment won’t leave me, and everything it brought up even though so much was left unsaid. It’s not as clear as the other things I’ve mentioned but it still feels important to share as I love words (obviously) but I don’t believe they can describe / identify / portray everything. Some things are just *……* I have more to feel out about it but the conflict in my body was noticeable, as was the searing truth, grief and humanity all rolled into one.

The rest of the trip was filled with messages in the moon, the stars, the olive trees, the mountains. I rooted deep into the knowledge that everything surrounding me had lived long before us and would long outlast us, that they had seen everything before and survived it. I heard them all telling me the same thing; they had the reassuring energy of nodding elders watching over me, over all of us. I have shuddered on each occasion that I hear repeated, ‘Palestine is the litmus test of our time’³ but it is indeed a marker in history not only for the injustice and horror, but for also getting ourselves organised to the max. For the liberation of all peoples, for everything to come, for the gift of life itself, for pulling back the veil further and further for those still under the spell of illusion, for knowing and understanding ourselves as so much more than just consumers or workers for capitalism, aka the real fucking reason we are here, alive in these times.

I appreciate you so much for being here and the warmest of welcomes to the new folks that have joined this week! I know that was a long post (!) but I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of it or any similar experiences you might also have had.
With love always and sending extra strength to our US family with these gruelling final day of the election…in light of that, who knows what I’ll be writing next week but hey one day at a time. XX

Sending solidarity from a neighbouring land; my kuffiyeh tied between to 2 olive trees

1. I will share more about them in a separate post because aiiiiyyyyyyahhhhh they have been such a significant part of my sustenance and self care this year, in so many ways. Some of that magic is still unfolding and will come pouring back out into the community (of which you are a part of here) because ain’t that just the beauty of how it’s meant to be.

2. And if you’re coming to the UK national march for Palestine this Saturday, I’ve listened to this call and will be leading a singing circle with families as part of Parents for Palestine bloc - come and sing with us. They will be holding a static bloc near the US embassy which is the end point of the march. Details here.

3. I don’t deny that this is true, it’s more the analyst and commentary nature of it; reducing the genocide of a people down to anything, regardless of it holding truth or not, is such a white western phenomenon and it highly pisses me off.