Homes, families, flags and depictions of the journey across the Aegean Sea to Greece are shown in artwork produced by refugees in Lesvos, Greece where the Durango nonprofit Artists Giving Back ended its latest program on Jan. 19.

Durango resident Anne Zalbowitz joined AGB founder Suzanne Horwich in Lesvos, where they provided free art supplies, space and conversation to refugees from the Middle East and Africa, including Gaza, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Chad and Kurdistan, Sierra Leone and Syria.

Zalbowitz described sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at a crowded table, painting with refugees and using Google Translate to talk with them as best she could.

She said there was a sense of solidarity at the table.

Many people have been waiting over a year in Lesvos to be granted asylum in Europe. Some have crossed the Aegean Sea more than once, with trips costing some people the equivalent of $1,600 and another gamble on his or her life.

Many of them are living in tents or shipping containers without regular access to showers or toilets, Zalbowitz said.

Horwich and Zalbowitz were told not to ask questions about people’s backstories, as doing so could trigger trauma. But some of the refugees opened up on their own, Zalbowitz said.

She said an interpreter translated for a 26-year-old Palestinian man from Gaza, who said he left for Europe to earn money for his family but never would have gone had he known the Israel-Hamas war was coming.

“it's just the emotional torture of not being able to communicate (with his family) and being locked out,” she said.

Last time they spoke, the man didn’t know if his family was alive or dead.

They met another Palestinian man who told them it took him eight attempts to get into Greece.

The man traveled from Gaza to Egypt, got a passport, went to Turkey, then walked to the coast to find a smuggler to take him 8 miles across the Aegean Sea, ​​Zalbowitz said.

People like that man leave with smugglers from the coasts of Turkey on an 8-mile ride over the Aegean Sea in overcrowded lifeboats, she said.

Horwich said the man left Gaza in August before the Oct. 7 attack by the militant Palestinian group Hamas against Israel, which set off the Israel-Hamas war.

A lot of the art created by the refugees, who used supplies provided by AGB, showed national flags, she said. Children drew and painted pictures of boats in the water, reflecting their recent voyage. Some of the pictures showed people underneath the water, having fallen out of the boat packed past its maximum capacity.

“We're getting a lot of boat pics because that journey has got to be horrific,” she said. “A lot of pictures of home. A lot of flags. Today we had a woman draw herself in a burqa looking in a mirror and in the mirror is a woman wearing a graduation cap and gown. And she wrote, ‘Every woman deserves the right to study.’”

Refugees told Horwich and Zalbowitz about their journey over the sea. They said “pushbacks” - a tactic that can involve towing a raft or boat of asylum seekers, migrants or immigrants out to sea and abandoning them there with no means of propulsion - conducted by military vessels on the Greek coastline could result in a raft capsizing and dumping people into the water.

Sometimes, refugees bought life jackets in Turkey before crossing the sea, only to find they were poorly made and ineffective, or outright scam jackets with no function, Zalbowitz said.

“(The refugees’ boats are) balanced very precariously,” she said. “They're going over the waves like this and trying not to fall out of the boat. And it's like one more body would sink the ship.”

Greek or EU ships, which Zalbowitz said were abundant on the coast, would make contact with the refugees’ rafts to push them backward toward open water and away from the coast. This could lead to the refugee boat sinking.

To avoid pushbacks, many smugglers and refugees try to land on the coasts of Greece at night when they are harder to see, Zalbowitz said.

Overwhelmingly, the refugees she encountered were men, Horwich said. That’s in pretty stark contrast to her experience during her first nonprofit outing to Krakow, Poland to give art to Russia-Ukraine War refugees, who were mostly elderly people, women and children.

Her mission, which is to help healing through art and to give refugees the ability to be seen as people with dignity rather than as victims, hasn’t altered between her time in Poland and in Greece, she said.

Horwich has lived and worked as an artist in Turkey, Scotland, Israel, the Caribbean, back home in Colorado and most recently Poland and Greece.

She said she started her nonprofit to give struggling people access to the visual arts to inspire them and help them heal from their traumas.

Zalbowitz volunteered for the Peace Corps, which included time spent in the Philippines, and worked as a teacher at Durango School District 9-R for 16 years. She currently works as a real estate agent in Durango.

She said the refugees she spoke with in Lesvos wanted their stories shared because they’ve often felt ignored by the world throughout their struggles.

cburney@durangoherald.com