I’m welcomed cordially into the basement home beneath the car repair shop of Mitsos and family. It sits just across the dirt road from the shanty homes of Evangelia and Marinos. The girls, Eletheria and Kris set up a table, chairs, “Ela, Vera. Kathesai!” Sit down, says Mitsos. Konstandina, his wife joins us, a tall stately woman with thick black hair wound into a giant straggly knot atop her head. She is as quiet and contained as Mitsos is gregarious. The kids hover about curious to listen in; some play in the corner in a make-shift sandbox near a line of parked abandoned cars. All the women and girls wear their dark hair long, tumbling down their backs or more often twisted into a top knot. On a hot summer day, the twisting upwards and refastening of thick dark manes becomes a gesture as common as sipping a glass of cold water.
I ask if they have melons today. No melons. The prices were too high in Volos where they buy all their vegetables and fruits. Konstandina shows me their basement bedroom improved now with cupboards picked up somewhere and an extra bed for the kids. The high small windows now have curtains and the space is subterranean and cool away from the summer heat.
“Ah, but there is no work,” Mitsos complains but in spite of it the family jokes and the cousins cut up. The handsome blue-eyed Mr. Hollywood is there, silent but peering intently into his smart phone. Then he flashes his screen where a shimmering belly dancer wiggles and sways. Mitsos laughs and begins a sensuous belly dance and the young men join in too as I take photos. Mitsos belts out a soulful Roma tune in a rich full tenor. For now, work is forgotten.