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« I’ll tell you what. Maybe it’s not right, but we are foreigners. Everybody should know what it means to be in a foreign country. If she (her daughter) goes out at night with friends, you never know what might happen […] You’re afraid. I remember once she was with a girl friend of hers who was from Albania too and she told me, "Mom, can we go out to have a coffee with our teacher on the seafront?" "Okay, you can go." I remember I gave her one thousand drachmas to buy herself a coffee. "Okay, you can go." I didn’t want her to think that her mom doesn’t give her money because she’s not working. "I’ll give you the money but you have to remember that we are foreigners here. There on the seafront, there will be different kinds of people. I’m not scared for you, but for people’s mouths that will say this and that. People will watch you there." […] People won’t know that you will be there with your friend or with your teacher. They’ll make up stories about it." »
« That was when I started getting a sense of Greek nightlife. I liked it very much. During the whole week I was dreaming of this thing, and that made me feel better. By then I had learned the language well and I went out a lot. In the summer I started going out all the time, every night. I was on vacation, so I went out all the time. I started spending all night out. I would return to Spata around three o’clock in the morning. At that time we were living in Spata. I still had the same group of friends. I met up with them every day. My mom yelled at me: "Where are you? Why are you behaving like that?" I liked going out very much. It made me feel better, it relaxed me. It helped relieve my mind. We would have a coffee or we would go to have fun, we would flirt with some girls on our way. There were also two or three girls in our group. All these things helped me feel better and deal with the difficulties at work and the racism I was facing. »
When the kids go out
