Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos

by Steven Heighton

In the fall of 2015, Steven Heighton made an overnight decision to travel to the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece and enlist as a volunteer. He arrived on the isle of Lesvos with a duffel bag and a dubious grasp of Greek, his mother's native tongue, and worked on the landing beaches and in OXY--a jerrybuilt, ad hoc transit camp providing simple meals, dry clothes, and a brief rest to refugees after their crossing from Turkey. In a town deserted by the tourists that had been its lifeblood, Heighton--alongside the exhausted locals and underequipped international aid workers--found himself thrown into emergency roles for which he was woefully unqualified. From the brief reprieves of volunteer-refugee soccer matches to the riots of Camp Moria, Reaching Mithymna is a gripping firsthand account of the crisis and an engaged exploration of the borders that divide us and the ties that bind.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Book Club, Biography Memoir, Canada

274 pages, Paperback

Published November 24, 2020

About the author

Steven Heighton (born August 14, 1961) is a Canadian novelist, short story writer and poet. He is the author of ten books, including two short story collections, three novels, and five poetry collections.[1] His most recent novel, Every Lost Country, was published in 2010.

Heighton was born in Toronto, Ontario, and earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree, at Queens University.[2]

Heighton's most recent books are the novel Every Lost Country (May 2010) [3] and the poetry collection Patient Frame (April 2010).[4]

Heighton is also the author of the novel Afterlands (2006),which appeared in six countries.[5] The book has recently been optioned for film. Steven Heighton's debut novel, The Shadow Boxer (2001), a story about a young poet-boxer and his struggles growing up, also appeared in five countries.[6]

His work has been translated into ten languages and widely anthologised.[7] His books have been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award (best book of the year).[8] He has received the Gerald Lampert Award, gold medals for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards, the Air Canada Award, and the 2002 Petra Kenney Prize. Flight Paths of the Emperor has been listed at Amazon.ca as one of the ten best Canadian short story collections.[9]

Heighton has been the writer-in-residence at McArthur College, Queen's University and The University of Ottawa.[10] He has also participated in several workshops including the Summer Literary Seminars, poetry work shop, in St. Petersburg, Russia (2007), and the Writing with Style, short fiction workshop, in Banff, Alberta (2007).[11]

Heighton currently lives in Kingston, Ontario with his family.[12]

Reviews

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

In any life, two impulses compete: the aspiration to be more awake - aware, intentional, passionate, engaged - and a longing for anesthesia. p23

...isn't it often the things we overlook, forget, or bury that catalyze our decisions, as they constellate our dreams? p77

Backing up beliefs and slogans with risky action merits respect....p201

SH may have deep roots and ancestors in Greece, but he was born in Canada and had only a vague feel for the language. In 2015, he put his home life in hiatus to volunteer for a month on the island of Lesvos, where thousands of refugees, mostly Syrian, were arriving daily by small boat from Turkey. In his understated, observant way, SH documents his experiences as he fits himself in to camp life and the long hours of tense waiting alternating with stressful attempts to keep some kind of order flexible enough to deal with the chaos.

It just so happens that I spent a week on the island of Lesvos, in the town of Mytlene, in the other hotel, not the one catering to tourists. We bought our own breakfast at the little market: baguette, a fresh dollop of butter scooped from a barrel, and wild strawberries. When it came time to leave, we were cautioned about the roughness of the crossing. I prepared with gravol, but two mornings we showed up and were sent back to spend a groggy day at the hotel. The 3rd morning seemed no different, so anticipating further delay I did not take the medication. Yet the decision was made to cross, and we set out for a terrifying trip with waves that topped the boat at times and rocked our bones. Reaching the Turkish mainland, we collapsed for a few days in the nearest hotel. I can too vividly imagine how thousands of vulnerable families made the same crossing in reverse, in smaller boats navigated by random mostly unqualified men bullied into assuming the role, and no option to spend a few days recuperating in a hotel.

It's heartbreaking to think on the fact that there are always profiteers willing to take advantage of a grim situation. People die because of faulty, substandard equipment, especially the dummy life jackets filled with sawdust, the leaking boats. And for those that would help, they have their own ways of providing it. SH, poet and philosopher has in this quiet book given us an intimation of what we should be striving for: an end to the conditions that ensure the forced displacement of people. Have no illusions that will be anytime soon, as long as profiteers run the systems that cannot seem to care about the suffering they encode and disseminate.

Then again, if our illusions are harmful, isn't disillusionment a good thing, a necessary correction....? Nobody ever changes unless they have to. p269

Sooner or later something is going to jar you out of your slumber, if only for an hour. The question is, what are you going to do when it happens? p53

[Christina McLain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the saddest and most poignant books I have ever read. In it, Canadian poet and novelist Steven Heighton recounts the true story of his stint as a volunteer working on the island of Lesvos in 2015 when a tidal wave of (mainly Syrian) refugees escaped the horrific war that had been waged there since 2011, and arrived on the shores of Greece. The migrants were all trying to make their way to northern Europe and presumably new and better lives and Heighton recounts the joy and relief felt by those who arrived safely on the island. This was before a lot of European borders were shut and many of the temporary shelters became the fetid and dangerous refugee camps they are today.
Lesvos is one of the nearest Greek islands to Turkey, which was paid billions by the EU to allow displaced persons to leave internment there. The Greeks, who had suffered through bankruptcy after the economic crisis of 2008, were given little help financially or otherwise and the small island was ill equipped to receive the hundreds of thousand of people who had paid smugglers and risked their lives to get there.
Heighton recalls with sympathy and affection the small ragtag army of volunteers, idealists, adventurers, anarchists and free spirits who helped the migrants on their way. He also has little use for the often pompous and well-paid NGOs he met, who rode around Lesvos in fancy SUVs, and treated the volunteers, who did most of the heavy lifting, with condescension and contempt. Later in the book he describes his visit to a sprawling refugee camp in Athens filled with those who were unlucky enough to get stuck there and who now exist in a state of hopelessness and despair.
While there, the writer recalls his idyllic childhood in suburban Canada in the 60s and 70s and wonders about how those of us who were young then in the golden age of capitalism would never had imagined the roots of the much darker future buried underneath.
For me, the book created a new realization of the connectedness between events. I am no conspiracy theorist but one can't help but notice how unchecked capitalism and imperialist dreams indirectly led to 911, terrorism, Isis, the economic downturn, the great migrations of the last few years and now throughout our monied world of globalism and privilege, the pandemic. The world once again is on fire and unlike the author I see very little hope for it. Though Heighton quotes Leornard Cohen that "every heart, every heart to love will come, but like a refugee," he also tells us that no one gets away with their crimes forever. Or, as I like to say, the greatest lesson of history is that no one learns anything from the past until they have to.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

With 'Reaching Mithymna' Steven Heighton has created a deeply personal masterpiece that immediately draws the reader into a reality that is very different from our own. He invites us to share his experiences and observations during his month 'Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos' in late 2015. It is the hight of the Syrian refugee rescue crisis and the Greek island of Lesvos (Lesbos) has been overwhelmed by the sheer number of refugees landing on the island's shores.

Steven Heighton, the writer, the poet, and astute observer of human beings in all their complexities, came as an active volunteer to help wherever he could be useful. He hardly finds time to write in his notebook... Yet, even among the rugged landscape of Lesvos, the desolation of the campsites and the desperate conditions of the refugees, Heighton also finds resilience, hope and patience as well as friendship. While published just this summer, Heighton's sensitive voice of the story teller and imagery of tbe poet has lost nothing of the immediacy of the experiences when evoking the different scenes, images as well as his personal reflections and memories. (5 stars plus)

[Lubna · Rating 2 out of 5]

A somewhat superficial account of the influx of mostly Syrian refugees into Greece in 2015. While the author’s intentions might have been good in volunteering in Greece for one month at the refugee intake camps there, he ends up describing them in very superficial ways, in some places even dehumanising them a bit. He almost entirely writes about the mostly white, Western and most probably well-off volunteers who mostly don’t speak any Arabic. There’s no nuanced and personal telling of the refugees’ experiences that would humanise them, allow us to view them as people with stories, lives, or what they were running from, probably due to the fact that the author utterly fails to connect with any of them beyond the most superficial level. He never truly makes an effort to talk to them or listen to them opting instead to remain aloof. He doesn’t come across as someone who is truly able to connect with other people, even his experience with the other volunteers barely scratches the surface. There’s an enormous amount of repetition, useless descriptions that add nothing to the story or context, and really the book should have been at least 100 pages shorter. There are rare scenes that are decent enough. All in all, it’s a wasted opportunity to tell what could have been an important story.

[A.M. Potter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Reaching Mithymna, Heighton writes of refugee waves overwhelming the Greek island of Lesvos in 2015. Mithymna is a harbour town on the island’s north coast. Heighton joined a cadre of volunteers aiding the refugees (many fleeing the Syrian Civil War), not knowing what his role would be.

He prefaces the book with a definition:

“The Greek word for refugee, prosfyges, breaks down etymologically into something like toward-fleers or those fleeing forward, people not so much in flight from former homes as urgently seeking new ones.”

Reaching Mithymna is written with clean, evocative prose. The book is an addictive blend of direct reportage, sharp dialogue, and strong characterizations. It brings to mind George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, an account of Orwell fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Like Orwell, Heighton is self-effacing but fully engaged. He reveals his doubts. Are he and others actually helping the refugees? The short answer: Yes. However, he doesn’t portray himself or anyone as a hero. They’re simply human beings helping other humans the only way most of us can—our own small way—which, on Lesvos, was more than welcome.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a true account of one man who was working as a volunteer with refugees from Syria who came from Turkey to the Grecian isle of Lesvos in 2015/16. It was so inspiring. Made me want to join some international organization to work with people in need. I was reading a fictional account of the same event which followed the real-life event very closely. In fact, one would hardly know which was the fictional account and which the journalist's report of the volunteers and refugees.

[Adam Sol]

Gets you right in there, the rich and distracted view of one person who didn't even fully know why he went to help, with the type of quick character portraits and images that you'd expect from a great novelist. This isn't the book for a big explanation of the context of why refugees were coming, or what their individual stories were -- there are other books for that. This is just a captivating snapshot of one man's attempts to immerse himself and to try to be of use while waves of desperate people sought shelter in a place that couldn't really cope with them coming.

[Jimminnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a totally understated first hand account of a Canadian who decided to just go to Greece to help refugees. This book showed a very human side to the crisis. It is sad that even though the book was written in 2015, the crisis seems more dire now than it has ever been in the refugee camps.

[Saige · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a perfect example of how amazing a personal account can be when written by someone with some real literary ability. Heighton tells the story of his time in Greece not only with compassion, intimacy, and political fire, but also with truly lyrical prose. I deeply appreciated how self-reflective he was about his own actions and his privileges as a volunteer. I also appreciated his ability to narrative the communication disconnect between himself and the refugees without ever dehumanizing them because of the language difference. Between his deft, nuanced narration of the critical situation in Greece and his ability to render characters vividly alive and legible in a few sentences, Heighton has produced a powerful, beautiful account of his time among the refugees of Lesvos.

[Andrea]

After starting to read this memoir about Steven Heighton's time spent volunteering to help Syrian refugees on the Greek island of Lesvos, I am transported to Europe with its vivid descriptions of attempting to help after arriving with jet lag. A gripping read so far.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late fall of 2015 Steven Heighton impulsively left home and offered his services as an aid worker on the Greek island of Lesvos. This was during the worst moments of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions, when hundreds of thousands of desperate people were fleeing the Syrian Civil War. Lesvos, located a mere ten kilometers from Turkey’s western coast, is a natural landing point for refugees being smuggled into Europe. Then, as now, traffickers were taking full advantage of that proximity. In Reaching Mithymna, Heighton’s memoir of a month spent among the volunteers and refugees, he arrives with little notion of what he will be doing and who he’ll be doing it with. It is not an easy transition, from naïve Canadian writer insulated from much of the world’s turmoil to front-line aid worker rolling up his sleeves and trying to convince himself he’s ready for anything that comes his way. But Heighton jumps headlong into the fray, making plenty of mistakes but learning as he goes, about himself as much as the situation unfolding before his eyes. The book is a clear-eyed chronicle that places its focus squarely on the people the author encounters: exhausted volunteers approaching burnout, anxious and despairing refugees—families, men and women of all ages—who have left behind the ruins of their lives and risked everything for an uncertain future. Heighton’s narrative takes an even-handed approach. He makes no arguments or moral judgments in these pages. He does not try to convince us of anything. He lets the facts speak for themselves, and some of those facts are more than simply harrowing. In many respects the book is concerned with belonging—Heighton’s own mother was Greek and he is haunted by the remnants of a heritage that he has neglected. The flow of refugees on their way to other places is ceaseless, and he can’t help but wonder what will become of them and how they will be received when they reach their various destinations. In the end, as he approaches his imminent return to Canada, the author is frazzled by his experience and more than a little disillusioned by yet another example of human willingness to inflict horrific suffering on other humans. He finishes by telling us, “Nobody ever changes until they have to.” Hopefully the change, when it comes, will empower those who care to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

[Janet Mercer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vividly descriptive story about the Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Greece and the various vounteers trying to help them. It is interesting, well written and informative. It is sad to think the political unrest continues, the refugees keep coming and hope seems to be getting further and further away.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title – Reaching Mithymna – has several meanings. One, of course, is that Mithymna is the destination of many refugees making the often-deadly 10-kilimetre crossing between Turkey and the island of Levbos (Lesbos). Two, it is also Steven Heighton’s destination when he decides to drop everything to volunteer with the refugees for a month at the end of 2015, the height of the crisis. Three, Levbos was also the destination of Heighton’s own Asian Greek family fleeing from Turkey during the Greek genocide (1914–1923) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) a century before the current refugee crisis.
But a fourth meaning that emerges from between the lines of this very moving, very personal book begs a more global question: How did we reach here, a place where “the world’s endemic pain is spiking” (255)? A world where millions of people are forced to flee a country where, as one refugee puts it, his president, ISIL, the Americans, the French, and now the Russians, are trying to kill him (102–103)? Or perhaps, more accurately, why do we still live in this bloodthirsty, medieval world — where people, families, children are extorted in exchange for supposed safety and freedom, but given leaky dinghies and life jackets filled with bubble wrap or sawdust? Greed and profit seem insufficient explanations. Is there, we are left wondering, something deeply corrupt in the human psyche or soul? The concept of survival of the fittest has, after all, been questioned by a newer theory of survival by co-operation, but it seems that some of us, especially human traffickers and right-wing governments, didn’t get that memo.
Very deservedly, Reaching Mithymna was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and lauded by the Globe and Mail, the CBC, and the New York Times. Sadly, we lost Steven Heighton in 2022 to cancer.

[violet haase · Rating 2 out of 5]

im not quite sure how this book made it into my collection but when i found it on my shelf i decided "why not?" i was interested in a first hand account from the volunteers helping with the Syrian refugees in Greece as i havent read much on the topic at all. however this book took a lot of effort to get through. i couldnt get into it at all. there was hardly any talk about/with the refugees themselves and it felt as if Steven was making the Syrian refugee crisis about his own struggles instead. i would have enjoyed this book so much more if there were interviews/proper conversations with the refugees he helped rather than just his perspective on the whole thing. i learned a few things about the struggle that refugees have gone through to get to safety, (emphasis on few) and i finished this book with an unsatisfactory feeling. i dont think i would recommend

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 4 out of 5]

From life jackets filled with bubble wrap or sawdust to rafts barely sea-worthy, Heighton's book
recounts the many horrors as he volunteered on the island of Lesvos helping refugees from Syria.
Black and white photographs accompany the text. The often-exhausted volunteers each had his/her
own reasons for providing much needed help. Kudos to all.

[Jgknobler · Rating 2 out of 5]

An account by a Canadian of Greek heritage of his time spent volunteering in the Greek island of Lesbos during the Syrian and North African refugee crisis of a few years ago. It describes a chaotic period of competing NGOs and individuals sort of winging it in trying to accommodate the influx of large numbers of people trying to make their way to Europe.

[Isla McKetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful humble and insightful look at one man's experiences volunteering. A fascinating read when paired with The Wrong End of the Telescope.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author describes his month-long stay as a volunteer in Lesvos, Greece, where refugees from war-torn countries struggle to retain their dignity and humanity, and often, even just to survive. A wake up call to those of us in privilege parts of the world.

[Susandixon · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very bland account of this 1 month travel account. You don't get to know the author or the people he helps, or the plight of those who travel to Greece as refugees. It is really a journal that doesn't add up to much.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The young Canadian author vividly describes working in a Syrian refuge camp in Mithymna including the disorganization and chaos of coordinating volunteers from many different organizations. The story is compelling but redundant and probably would have read better as a magazine article or podcast.

[Ana Mendes]

(…) [I said] “Here, please!” - and flee. I believe that’s exactly the right word. I have spent some six hours - not even a full shift - in Moria and am half-giddy with relief at the prospect of escape.
P.172

[Kim]

2020 CBC Books Fall Reading List

[Haley]

Meh. Superficial

[Natasha Penney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful.

[Mar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Considering how this is exactly what I want to do with my life this book did not satisfy me at all

[Debra Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is good, but I found the story superficial, we never learn the refugees stories and little about the other volunteers. It was a noble cause, but the book doesn't seem to go anywhere

[Kate Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Heighton’s extraordinary memoir, Reaching Mithymna, transported me deep into the realities in a world of which I had awareness but honestly couldn’t fathom. Heighton’s story of travelling to the Greek island of Lesvos, as a volunteer to assist refugees fleeing Syria through Turkey in 2015, intersects the seemingly distant, tragic events of human suffering half-way around the globe with his own intensely personal and relatable narrative that hits very close to home. A convincing and moving read, highly recommended for everyone who believes that the common denominator for the troubles in our world is rampant dehumanizing of others based on race, gender, and religion and is seeking a boost of inspiration on how to show up as part of the solution.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astounding and revealing

The ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean from up close, lived through the experience of a volunteer who's also a gifted and disciplined writer. Steven Heighton's deceptively simple prose lets us see the colors, taste and smells of Greece and the refugees' exhaustion, tragedy and joy.

[kaity · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nostalgia for disaster relief work and international community/conversation. Themes of exile speaking to the lost history of my Greek great-grandparents. Travel stories read in a time of no travel. And some vocabulary-stretching words in a few languages. 4.5