HAPPY NEWS: VOTE FOR US

Dear Friends, HEART, NOT SHOES is a finalist at the ChallengeTEDxAthens competition in Greece. HeartNotShoes wants to become a book and a series of workshops and to act as a good virus, by transmitting the words of the kids and the HEART, NOT SHOES philosophy to the world!

hey, hu, haiku!

The scarf on your head — by Aziz Soltani

The scarf on your head like this… ah

And the moon is appearing in the dark night

Kiss — by Jek Jawadi
Don’t tease

Just kiss

Do it please

Cobuli rice 

I love cobuli rice

So fluffy and white

Tasty cobuli rice

I WANT TO GO HOME

What I want in my life — by Mohammd Hosein

I want to be alone

I want to talk to my family

I want to go to Italy

I want a computer to connect to the internet

I want not to get a job done everywhere

I want to quit

I want to die of love

I want to kill for love

I want to visit my parents soon

I want to get married with my future wife

I want to kiss my mother’s hands and cry

I want to say to my mother ‘I love you’

I want to tell my mother ‘I am sorry I couldn’t visit you for many years’

I want our people to stop warring

I want some people to understand me and say to me, why, you are very quit, but there was no one, I was very lonely

I want to have a good job

I want to go home

LOVE & OTHER DISASTERS

Their life experiences, at the age of 18, were already remarkably dense, so different from ours. Such an eventful life has brought about Ali’s poem who has witnessed friends be beheaded by the Taliban, and himself in shivering fear of a similar fate; yet, what nearly killed him was love. 

LIMBO ---Ali Mohamedi, 17

I arrived in poorness

That is not full yet

And to the strange things

That can’t be done yet

And a new criminal I become

The sin of wheat and apple

that can’t be committed yet

i have arrived 

in love that feels holy

love 

that can’t be done yet

 (part of the poem) 

I want to shit on all passports!

“I want to be a bird and shit on all passports

 cause all birds are free and they don’t need passports”

                                                                            Mahdi Hassani

This was written by a young Afghan in urgent need of a passport - as all of them are. All they want is to be legal. And they are. They just don’t have the papers to prove it. How human is that?

You know me, the Mother Tereza type I am so not, however, if I happen to stumble upon a bunch of shoeless kids in need of art, on a far away mountain, I shall start a writing workshop with them. Because i have suddenly started seeing them. i mean, really seeing them. And beacause they are worth it. And we – the prejudiced ignorant narcissistic eastern people – need it. Maybe even more than they do. 

HAPPY WRITING

Evi Labropoulou is a fiction writer and occasional teacher of English as a foreign language who has been saved by literature and believes in the life saving qualities of writing and in bringing the healing powers of it to people in need of miracles. When exhausted by simply teaching the same old Present Tense to students who rarely stuck around long enough to learn the past perfect, she started an after-class writing workshop that became incredibly busy and happy. People would pass by and just be dragged in the room by the sizzling energy of it. Some did not speak a word of english. In the safe warm surroundings of Bertol Brecht and Nicole Blackman they found joy for an hour or two. They were happily typing away their philosophical thoughs, needs, desires, dreams, even when dinner was being served in the other room. 

HEART, NOT SHOES: a good virus

“I am sitting at the other side of a sentence space/

and you are here with a question mark”. Ali Mohamedi, 17

This is work to which attention should be paid. It was produced from the heart, in the writing workshop of Villa Azadi, of Lesvos Island, a shelter then for the adolescent immigrants who were looking for one. it was an idea of writer Evi Labropoulou.

What good is literature to ‘illegal’ immigrants who arrived in Greece, after weeks on the road, with no shoes or cell phones on?

People with no shoes on, don’t need shoes; shoes are easy enough to acquire, even if second hand; and there is everywhere some food to be found. They need something to hope for; to establish to the world that they are not swarthy dangerous starving savages. They want to call their mother until she hears them. They need to write to her and to the world. And the world needs to read them; and realize the alikeness. And love them.

Western societies, are based on intelect. We easily deem others to be non-persons when they do not speak our words. Seeing their words, though, works as a good virous! It is like words restore their humanity.

Their fresh voice resonates against the tired, unfair stereotypes of the “illegal, dangerous, disease bearing immigrant” with the kind of urgency and defiance only heard in Greece during wars. They ‘ve had thick lives, experiences of the kind that we don’t encounter in Europe. ‘Hungry’ is a stronger word when it comes out of their lips; as for ‘death’, that in Europe happens in sterilized hospitals, they ‘ve really seen it. And they carry it around in their mobile phones. 

I swear. These kids are clever, kind, cultured, they are just like us. And they have their words to prove it. Viva la literature and viva la HeartNot Shoes!