Editor: Sophia Vexler

Translation: Stavroula Moysiadou

Mitsos, my son’s-in-law best man, has got a great sense of humor and a fiery personality. He usually talks loudly and feeds the stray cats of his neighborhood, till they become parts of the family. One of them, Pitsa, has got three legs, but lives a happy feline life at Mitsos’ home. Mitsos’ wife, Natassa, and their six-year-old child, Michael, live there, too.

Mitsos works in a factory under terrible working conditions; little money, too many working hours, no medical insurance. Every day, he wakes up early in the morning to go to work, and goes back home quite late, because it is a long distance from home. Being too tired when he returns, he has no time to spend with his son as he falls asleep. He is not allowed to go on leave filling his wife’s residence permit in Greece, and, as he works day and night every day, the paperwork is pending.

He often confides in us his fear of victims during work, due to bad working conditions and lack of medical insurance. Natassa worries a lot about her husband. Every time he is late, she is afraid of him having an accident at work.

Yesterday, Mitsos had finished working, so he called his wife saying that he was about to go home. However, there was a problem with the ceiling of the building that he and two other fellow workers had to check.  They didn’t fasten the safety belts.

There was no need to do so, as Mitsos is strong, his last name, meaning “lion” in Arabic, says so. Probably this is the reason why he didn’t die immediately after his fall when the floor fractured beneath his feet. Maybe this is why he died in hospital….

Did he had the time to realize that this was the end?

If so, I am sure that he worried about his family’s life without him. If so, he probably thought “How unfair life is….”. The same thought we share now.

But his thoughts would be the same as ours in these very moments: “Unfair life made by bosses and modern slavery. Unfair life is, depending on banks and multinational corporations which sacrifice people’s lives, considering them as “meaningless”, in the name of their profit.”

Who will tell the child that his father will not return home?

Even we cannot believe it, silent audience of this tragedy…

Everyone needs an explanation. The directorate is supposed to apologize for the accident, despite not happening during working hours.

Mitsos is another victim of capitalism and austerity.

Mitsos was a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend.

Not anymore…