Coming home after 130 years

At the entrance of a small store in Chania, northwest of Creté, Ahmed presents himself. The store owner looks at it with his mouth open. He understands what Ahmed says, but his words are unknown to his family.

He could not believe that someone still spoke the old”, Ahmed says.

42-year-old Ahmed spoke a version of the Cretan dialect that he had learned from his parents, who had grown up in a village in northern Syria in the 1970s and 1980s. His parents spent most of their time in Syria, but some members of his family were born in Crete, reports “BBC”, report Periscope.

We've learned Arabic at school, but we've always spoken at home”, Ahmed says. Children learn Greek dances and recite short Crete poems.

Ahmed's parents had been forced to release Crete in 1890, where the Ottoman Empire had begun to weaken. The island had been part of the Turkish Empire for two centuries, and half of the population, including Ahmed's ancestors, had converted to Muslims.

“was always a part of Crete in our heart”, he said.

We always wanted to visit him, but we never had the opportunity to”.

His trip lasted three months until he reached Crete. When he arrived at his predecessor's place, he was hospitalized after suffering from a chronic seizure problem. The medical staff was surprised to hear the dialect he spoke fluently.

The “people stopped me on the streets to ask me about Syria and war”.

They see us as the restored Cretan”.

Although Chania had no Muslim community for more than a century, things are changing now.

25 Ahmed Family Members and hundreds of other refugees have changed ethnic structure in recent years. /Periscopi/