The Rust Sanctuary

An encounter in the Peloponnese.

The following piece is something I wrote in 2020, for a travel writing competition held by Intrepid Times and Exisle Publishing. My story was one of those chosen for the final volume – Fearless Footsteps – curated by editors Nathan James Thomas and Jennifer Roberts. I reproduce it here with their kind permission.

The Rust Sanctuary

In Athens the streets smelled of bread. It was a hot July: tourists thronged the Acropolis, cats begged noisily at tables in outdoor restaurants, the streets choked with taxis and every market vendor spoke just enough English to harass the crowds with shiny trinkets and ice-cold bottles of Coke. It’s amazing how fast Greece changes however, when one leaves the capital behind. Five hours south we travelled, down a coastline that alternated from picturesque beaches, to shipwrecks and oil refineries. We shared a train carriage with villagers, and an Orthodox priest in full black robes, who smelled of sweat and incense. When we ran out of serviceable track, we took a bus the rest of the way.

Somewhere along the highway, the police pulled us over. Two officers entered the bus, lumbered past us down the aisle then escorted a pair of boys from their seats, out to the roadside. These boys had dark skin, hardly any luggage, and, from the sign language pantomime they performed beside the police car, under the cypresses, it seemed they didn’t speak a single word of Greek. Syrians, someone whispered, and then the bus continued on south without them.

We reached Patras, Greece’s third-largest city, just as it was getting dark. The streets here were narrower, free from the tourist hordes of Athens, and busy instead with the mosquito-whine of mopeds. The local city beaches weren’t the best, we were told. Too small, too crowded. So, the next day we followed a tip, and went looking for a scenic spot further down the coast. That’s when we saw it – the old paper mill, sat beside the road out of the city. A citadel of rust and barbed wire reared up behind a security fence, the building’s plaster façade baked to dirty orange by the sun. The factory looked ominously out of place on this sea-front strip: a hulking shadow of a former industrial age… and with the promise of deeper, darker shadows within.

There was a police patrol car parked on the road to the factory yard. Look like you belong here, my Greek friend said. Don’t make eye contact. The car was faced down the road away from us, and we walked quickly past – heads down, hands in pockets. Through the gate ahead, the dead factory loomed and we slipped out of sight from the road, scampering inside and melting into its embrace. The police didn’t budge from their post; we didn’t yet understand that they were here for someone else.

When the old paper mill died, almost 30 years ago, it left behind a colourful corpse. Red rust residue bled down yellowed walls, meeting the green creepers and leaves that burst up from below. Waxy Mediterranean vegetation tore its way through the old concrete plaza. The first building we passed was little more than a roofless hall where sunlight sliced through broken industry: beams and rafters, winches and gears, the guts of the old factory rent open to the burning sky. What remained of the ceiling looked fit to fall in at any moment. The next building was larger though, hard-edged and formidable. Its steel and concrete skeleton was broken only by windows of thick orange glass, grown fuzzy with cobwebs… and just a single tear across the wall, where the bricks parted like an open wound to reveal an inky blackness within. Our curiosity won: checking to make sure no one had seen us, we focussed our courage and stepped hastily into the void.

Inside the gloom, a steady drip of water kept time: a metronome for a place that time had otherwise abandoned. In that first hall, archaic pipes, valves and canisters lined the back wall. A heavy winch hung dead from its chain. Machinery that had long-since forgotten its purpose. Deeper into the bowels of the factory we went, following a trail of corruption – broken bottles, soiled newspapers, ceramic machine parts and coils of rusted wire that clutched lifelessly for our boots. We turned a corner and I think I must have gasped out loud to see the space beyond: a darkened tunnel extended ahead, its floor flooded in pooling water that reflected every concrete pillar to give the illusion of a grand, high-ceilinged gallery fit for a temple; while at the far end, light burst in through a busted roof to illuminate white pillars tangled in a shock of green growth. We passed through the darkness of the cloister into light, to this strange garden, where old industry had been transformed by a chaos of life and health. That’s when the residents found us.

The first sign was voices. We heard them outside the walls, coming around the back side of the factory. We listened, waited… the voices stopped and we could breathe again, for a moment, but then a metal clang rang out in the neighbouring hall and my friend said: They’re inside.

I peered around the corner, looked down the empty factory hall. Framed in the light at the entrance were three figures, lithe, muscular, and heading our way. It was too late to hide; we’d been seen already. One of them whistled as they walked towards us, a series of discordant notes that bounced about the empty factory space. Stood stock-still, I felt my hand tighten around the shaft of my camera tripod. Suddenly another whistle took up the call – the sound drifting down from above. With a heavy feeling I cast my gaze up, to see bodies moving in the rafters. Then another figure broke from a pillar, high up on the far wall, walking the ledge that circled the factory floor. There were voices behind us now too and I guessed there were eight of them, at least. Maybe more… maybe many more.

Three strangers closed in, and then they stepped out of the shadows and in the soft light of the garden hall we saw that they were only in their teens – early twenties, at most. For a few awkward moments we simply looked at each other, until the first stepped forwards and quickly shook hands with each of us. Hello, he said, though they continued to eye us with caution. It now seemed clear they were living here, and that we’d wandered straight into their sanctuary. We asked where they were from, and they told us Afghanistan. How is it there right now? my friend asked. Not good, the reply.

Above us, in the rafters, others listened in on this exchange. As my eyes got used to the shadows I made out more faces peering down from metal beams; and the corner of a sleeping bag, dangling over the edge. In another corner of the hall, a basic clothesline was strung up with socks and shirts.

Only one of these young men spoke English, and we asked him how long he’d been here in the factory. I arrived today, he said. He had the youngest-looking face of the three but wore a beard that would have made an ageing lumberjack proud. Some of the others, he told us, had been here for a year or more. Most were fleeing the Taliban. They wanted to go to Italy – the ferry sailed six times a week from Patras to Bari – and their plan was to hitch a ride, stow away somehow, and maybe find a better life at the other end.¹

We talked for a while, and we all shook hands again before we left. I said Good luck to each of them… although really, the words felt hollow. It wasn’t luck that got them here, but rather, bad luck that had driven them, then courage and perseverance to see it through. I thought about my own luck, in comparison – a good passport, a credit card, and family who, while by no means wealthy, would probably mortgage a house if my life ever really, truly, depended on it.

I will likely never experience the kind of fear these travellers had already overcome: sometimes the illusion of courage is itself a luxury.

On the way out of the paper mill I noticed a sign pinned to the fence. Approach is Strictly Forbidden, it read, in English. The Buildings are Uninhabitable & Dangerous. Alongside that, the same message was printed in Perso-Arabic script.

1. I later discussed our experiences in Patras with my writer friend, Aram Balakjian. Soon after, he made the trip out there himself and spent some time getting to know the young Afghan refugees who lived in this factory while planning their onwards travel. I highly recommend reading his report, published by The New Arab.