I try to choose the voice from which I speak.
I think I have recognized myself.
I see the end of the stream,
but not its beginning.
I am classified as human.
Historically, I descend from the people of Minor Asia and Crete.
Historically, I am the largest stream connecting the Kifossos river to the sea.
I have been known since antiquity; the first settlement on my banks was named Perissos: ”the place of abundance”.
The Hadrianic Aqueduct ran entirely underground. This major Roman infrastructure project was constructed between 125 and 140 CE to carry surplus water from the mountains into me, then to Athens.
I was considered part of the countryside; I was a retreat, an excursion destination for older generations of Athenians.
History, like water, takes root and flows between our stories to deform the grand narratives of divided έθνοι/ nations.
A stream is rain and gravity.
A stream is rain and gravity.
A stream is rain and gravity, such a simple action of falling.
Come now: extend your hands
to feel distance growing.
To feel mountains in place of your fingers.
Now name them: Parnitha
Ymittos
Penteli
Aigaleo
Feel veins of water streaming down your fingers,
choosing a defined channel
that forms the curve/ pelvis from Penteli to the Saronikos Sea.
We are in Attika.
Imagine me!
I am a complex network of streams, creeks, springs, and gathering places where water flows together, to eventually form a larger stream or river rushing to the sea.
I am Podoniftis.
Watering the curve of your palm allows plants to grow and humans and animals to take shelter.
We are in Attica.
See our micro, micro, micro, micro micro, micro existence within this ecosystem.
Fly over in this dense ecosystem of over-habitation:
over the parks,
over the streets,
over the smells of souvlaki (and) spanakopita,
the promise of living your myths in Greece.
Reach the soil.
Plunge deep into the earth’s veins.
Bathe in puddles and mud.
See how water, in the slowness of geological time,
attracts the roots of trees.
See it claim existence through steady roots of alteration,
creating a force of fertility where animals and people can inhabit.
Connect with the smallest animal you have ever encountered.
The first to come to mind.
It may be the spider from Peru mentioned in a friend’s text,
or an aunt you have met: here now, for the first time.
Feel the movement of water through the land.
I was stopped by road works,
by sewage systems,
by housing developments.
I was overwhelmed. I overflowed.
I stagnate.
Stability injures me
and the populations nesting in me.
Remember the flow of free water:
Imagine it through the soil,
through the veins,
through ourselves.
Until it is named a river,
a sea,
a stream,
a creek.
Before naming,
before mapping,
before division,
It is the essence of our existence.
Feel.
I do not exist by myself.
Through deformations,
(αλλοίωση),
erosion-
I transfer sediment. I transfer stories. I become compost.
Humans often confuse my necessary unpredictable form with destruction and disaster.
Yet in this unpredictability of my form, I mold geography, I overflow and rest
to create place diverse ecosystems to come together,
to provide habitats for plants,
animals, humans,
and continue to generate countless forms of life.
I was drawn and made from the stories that came before me.
The stories of my grandparents and the people of this area led me to the river.
History can feel like a stream within time,
allowing fluidity to generate an amalgam of:
past,
present,
consciousness,
and the future within a micro-fragment we call self.
I was here before you were,
and I will remain after.
I exist because of rain,
because of the curves of the land,
because of the mountains,
because of the inhabitants on my banks.
I am not sure when I began to flow,
but I am here as long as the mountains stand.
My name is Podoniftis. My name means washing feet.
People rested beside me. The water in me was always low.
I am a place,
an entrance,
a door to the city of Athens.
I am the biggest stream connecting to the Kifissos River before reaching the sea.
Geography and time make our personal stories relative to history.
Growing up not far from here, I knew almost nothing about Podoniftis until recently.
I felt the presence of the water, but it was nowhere to be seen, except for occasional mentions of a polluted stream near the factories at the end of the street.
Until 1928, I was clean. People drank my water.
I never understood the topography of the factories, the garbage, and the river.
The garbage remained.
The factories turned to relics.
Those relics remained.
But you could not see the river.
“Don’t imagine something great. It was nothing. It was low. It wasn’t like the rivers of Europe.
It would often dry up, mosquitoes circled in great swarms above its bed.
We were better off without it.”
Unseen rivers have guided my paths.
The stream was gradually covered after the arrival of populations forcibly exchanged through the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which ended the Greco-Turkish War under the influence of the Great Powers. The population arrived from Ionia, Pisidia, Smyrna, Philadelphia, and other regions of Asia Minor. They brought specialized knowledge of carpet weaving and textile production.
Textile industries, housing developments, and neighborhoods without running water on the outskirts of Athens hosted the newly arrived populations.
I grew up close to the bazaar—the agora formed along the main street, where small stores and stories still create the flow of history—from the personal to the official narrative—that I continue to discover.
In the 1960s Athens embraced the urban character of a modern city.
Streams, because their form is unpredictable,
can overflow.
They continuously affect and alter the environment,
they are dangerous.
Control.
Settlements were established on my banks: Nea Ionia, Nea Chalkidona, Nea Filadelfeia and Chalandri.
I am still here, even if I am erased from those areas.
Several areas were given the prefix “Nea” (new), creating an unseen mapping of the tragedy of the war of 1923.
The naming still flows through our daily language,
it curves our memories and narratives,
and perhaps it connects us to the continued trauma of migration until today.
The land was green and hospitable.
The water could be used by the textile industries.
In fact, we are now standing between Nea Filadelfeia and Nea Chalkidona, a meeting point.
Families often lived in what was known as a square house:
a plot divided into four or six sections,
with a single room and a small open space for each family.
We were neither refugees nor migrants.
We were the ανταλλάξιμοι.
The exchanged.
That is how we have been referred to ever since.
When I first heard the word, the pain was immediate.
Like commerce.
We were traded.
Populations were forcibly exchanged between Greece and Turkey:
Muslim communities living in Greece were sent to what Turkey is today,
while Orthodox populations from Asia Minor were relocated to mainland Greece.
The flow of pain reached all the way to the East,
to the Çağlak Stream.
And all the way back to Podoniftis,
where the traces of pain revealed similarities in our stories.
By the river,
I find the voices of my ancestors.
Mainly women found employment in the textile factories established in these new settlements.
Some factories stood close to me,
others a little farther away.
All depended on my water for washing,
dyeing,
and textile production.
Giannis, now in his early fifties, remembers how my color changed when the factories released their dyes into me.
Some of the most important industries in the Podoniftis–Nea Ionia–Nea Filadelfeia area included:
The ELLINIS Textile Factory was founded in 1935 by the brothers Isaac and Symeon Tsalikoglou and operated until 1987. Located near the electric railway bridge on Alekou Panagouli Street, it became known for manufacturing much of its own textile machinery, which was rare at the time; most factories relied on imports. Its innovations improved production speed and worker safety, reflecting the development of Greek industry. The factory was also known for its welfare practices, offering medical care and support to workers and their families.
Britannia Textile Factory (1931) was a manufacturer of cashmere in Greece, yet British in almost every aspect—British raw materials, British managers, British organisation. Everything produced was treated as a British product, exported as one system.
In 1938, Britannia received an honorary award from the Ministry of Labour for worker welfare, health, and safety. In 1940, its workers supported the “Soldier’s Shirt” and “Soldier’s Sock” campaigns, producing clothing for soldiers at the front.
I am standing here with you today thanks to community advocacy and the resistance of the city council. In1995, the Council of State issued a landmark decision that prevented this stretch of the Podoniftis from being enclosed in a concrete conduit.
Along my banks grow poplars,
plane trees,
pines,
reeds,
eucalyptus trees,
and oleanders.
Water continues to flow even during the summer months. More than thirty species of birds still nest here.
Even in some of the channelized sections,
frogs and small aquatic organisms continue to survive where pollution remains limited.
While researching Podoniftis, I read that many springs have already dried up.
I tried to forget about it.
It felt almost pointless.
Yet hope remained.
And as different initiatives began appearing,
as my algorithm slowly adapted to my research,
I became interested in the fragility and humility of locality.
How small gestures and larger gestures alike might nourish empathy,
provoke action,
and support the possibility of a clean stream once again.
A stream with drinkable water.
