It is the first work of the Trilogy of Pushbacks written by Thanasis Triaridis to give visibility to the crime of the murder of migrants on land and sea – a crime continuously committed by the Greek state under the guidance of the European Union. In a not-so-distant but familiarly bleak future, a young employee arrives at the notorious office 20/4 of the state service to take up his duties. His acquaintance with the old employee of the service will prove pivotal for both, with their brief coexistence being explosive. The role of mediator is called upon the service director with his distinctive temperament. The presence of the mysterious cleaner wearing an anti-gas mask intensifies the suspense. The development of the work is unpredictable, with sudden shifts from comedic situations to intense drama, leading to the ultimate truth.

Published in June 2023, a few days after the deadly shipwreck of Pylos, the play "Know that what you hear is a train whistle" by Thanasis Triaridis was presented with great success for three consecutive seasons (October 2024 – January 2026) in theaters of Athens and Thessaloniki. The production, directed by Nikos Marnas and Giorgos Giokas, received rave reviews and managed to stand out both for its aesthetics and its interpretative strength. The two, along with Leonidas Bakalis and Nikos Stergiotis, created a tightly-knit, dystopian universe that shook audiences and critics alike.

It is worth noting that Thanasis Triaridis, one of the most performed Greek-language playwrights of our time, has devoted his pen for three years (with more than six works) to the struggle against the state policy of extermination of migrants, which is increasingly escalating.

As he notes in the play’s prologue: "I would like that, when the performance ends, every spectator knows that while they were sitting in their seat, more men, more women, more children were being murdered at sea. And this crime is committed with his silence and our silence, his tolerance and our tolerance, his complicity and our complicity."

In December 2025, the play was awarded the Karolos Koun Playwriting Award. At the award ceremony, Thanasis Triaridis handed the prize to 28-year-old Egyptian refugee Mohamed Abdel Majet, a lawyer and survivor of the Adriana ship that sank off Pylos in June 2023. Triaridis emphasized that he accepted the award only to give visibility to the victims of pushbacks, as he himself was "only the copyist of a reality written with their bodies, their blood and their death by the migrants murdered in the Greek seas".