“In the gardens of hardship” : Descriptions of Refugee Camp Conditions in Hashimi’s When the Moon is Low

“In the gardens of hardship” : Descriptions of Refugee Camp Conditions in Hashimi’s When the Moon is Low

As Fereiba navigates her family from the “toxic air of Kabul” she never imagines a refugee camp. She admits, “I had no better plan in mind. We would go to London” (128). It is not until they reach the Greek mainland that they begin to hear horror stories of refugee camps.

The first actual refugee camp mentioned in the novel is Pagani on the Greek island of Lesbos. Saleem is out trying to locate other Afghanis in Athens. He meets a group of six young boys playing cards that describe their experience at the camp. “Pagani was a detention center for immigrants…The building was a cage…the biggest cage any of them had ever seen” (191). The conditions were not unlike those in many other camps we have studied thus far in the course material….deplorable. They describe sharing a toilet with a hundred other people, some never went outside, and crowded a central courtyard (192). No matter how harsh their treatment at the hands of Athens police, the boys would never consider returning to “the cage.” It must have been horrible.

Pagani has been a focal point for much of what is wrong with many detention centers. It was a converted former storage facility which was initially planned for only 300 refugees. At times, it held up to 1200 people at a time in extremely cramped conditions. It got so bad at one point in August of 2009, 160 underage refugees who were locked in a single room and shared a single toilet began a hunger strike (Wikipedia).  Hashimi has done her research and conveys the experiences of those who had to experience such hellish conditions appropriately. They would rather live free in limbo for years in Athens, subject to harassment and beatings from police than to return to Pagani.

            We learn what many of the camps conditions are like when Saleem asks questions of the volunteer with the aid group handing out water. “Tell me what happens here?” Saleem said instead. “This is what happens to most people who come here. They are arrested and the police take them to detention centers. They should be clean and safe places for people to stay, but there are too many people. There is no room. People say it is like a prison….they say it is worse than the place they came from (198). So again, Saleem has been told from two separate sources that he is a great risk of being placed in a “cage” or prison; no wonder he becomes anxious.

Works Cited

Hashimi, Nadia. When the Moon Is Low. New York, NY: William Morrow, an Imprint of             HarperCollinsPublishers, 2015. Print.

Wikipedia contributors. "Pagani Detention Center." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.             Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 25 Oct. 2014. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.