by Loren Edizel
One such day, as he was aimlessly wandering toward the stream behind the trees, he saw Maria sitting there gazing at the shallow water eddy and froth around rocks. She had her chin resting on her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins, humming something he could not quite hear.
Maria lived with her mother; both shunned by the villagers on account of her being illegitimate. No one knew the father, and Maria’s mother never uttered a word in that regard. Maria was teased and taunted in the schoolyard, and her mother was scorned by the villagers who called her putana.15 Needless to say, the girl looked for every opportunity to miss school. She sat by streams, played in the hills, wandered aimlessly in the streets of the village, and even walked to neighbouring towns on sunny days. Her mother did not bother with the belt or other such correctional measures as she had bigger worries of her own. So, it was a matter of time before Mehmet and Maria recognized each other as friends and started spending stolen time together. Mehmet, who did not miss as many school days as Maria, was more advanced in his studies and took it upon himself to teach the girl how to read and write. Sometimes, Maria would hold his hand and whisper, “Come, let’s get lost,” the softness of her husky voice making his skin prickle all over his body. They knew the area too well to get lost; still, they pretended to be wanderers, hiding in familiar caves where they reluctantly exchanged chaste kisses at first and as the years passed explored bolder ways to extinguish the fire in their adolescent bodies.
By the time the First World War arrived, further pitting Christian against Moslem on the island, Mehmet’s idyllic life had already come to an abrupt end. One morning, his father was found stark naked and dead on the matrimonial bed he had been avoiding since his wife’s passing. The doctor who was brought in from the nearest town determined it was likely due to a massive heart attack, but no one in the village believed his post-mortem involving blocked arteries, myocardial infarction, hepatic necrosis, and other nonsensical words. The ghost of his wife had lured him to bed, first seducing him—his crumpled clothes at the foot of the bed proved the theory—and finally, killing him for being a philandering drunk.
Almost everyone, with the exception of his drinking buddies and his mother, agreed that it served him right, too. “Alas, the poor child” they said, momentarily softening at the thought of Little Mehmet. They quickly buried the man and boarded up the house after accompanying the boy to take his clothing and effects from there.
Soon enough, Mehmet’s many uncles and aunts started squabbling over this considerable inheritance that could be possessed by taking guardianship of the boy. Two of those uncles were Orthodox Christians, one aunt was a Catholic, and a couple of others were Moslem, all having been born to different mothers, which further complicated the squabbles. He lived with whichever uncle temporarily won the argument; sometimes, in the heat of such tug-of-war he was taken to the mosque on Friday and to church on Sunday by relatives eager to show him the straighter way to heaven. Mehmet was equally comfortable in the three traditions as a result, and partook in ceremonies heartily especially when feasts followed piety. An advantage during Ramadan, he discovered, was that he could eat with his Christian relatives during the day and break the fast with his Moslem family at night, eating twice as much as a result. When such excesses occasioned vomiting in the middle of the night, his aunts would scold their husbands, “The poor boy has a weak stomach; he shouldn’t be made to fast.” Although it was clear to everyone that the boy took advantage of the situation, no one dared call him out on his hypocrisy, from fear of losing his affection and the vineyards that may eventually come with it. He was left to do as he pleased, and to roam free, meeting Maria here and there, now that the danger of getting whipped had passed entirely. He sensed he was the absolute monarch in his own story, and that his uncles and aunts would defer to his every wish, hoping to sway his opinion in their favour. He nonchalantly gave each one of them hope, without ever agreeing to sign his name on the documents slipped next to his bowl of soup with equal nonchalance by the grownups. He was deeply anxious at the same time, not knowing how long he could keep up the charade in a world where the rules were set by adults.
Mehmet never got to make his decision. With World War I, vicious unrest came to the island. Venizelos, a Greek hero and native of this rebellious island was dreaming up grand ideals that roused the Greek nation as it gained force against a weakened Ottoman Empire that had dominated the region for centuries. Parts of Anatolia were controlled by the British, the French and Italians, and the Greeks had captured Izmir and a large part of the Aegean region with the help of the British. Kemal gathered an army in central Turkey, and thus began the war that was to rage for a number of years, before ending with the burning of Izmir in 1922. By 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne had been signed, spelling out how peace would now look for the new Turkish Republic. The process of population exchange had begun on both sides of the Aegean. The considerably large Greek Orthodox population in Turkey had to be absorbed by Greece, while the Moslem minorities in Greece and the Balkans were expatriated and migrated to Turkey.
And this was the point where Little Mehmet’s young life had taken a turn for the worst. His father’s house and vineyards were confiscated and ordered to be given to Greek Anatolians who had just arrived in boatloads from Turkey. The uncles and aunts stopped squabbling and put the boy on a boat headed for the coast of Turkey at the first opportunity. They promised to follow. Under his shirt and in a pouch sewn into his pants were hidden a dozen golden chains with rings passed around them. The jewellery his father had given his mother, over the years, many of them in return for forgiveness. There were dozens of bracelets for dozens of indiscretions all padded into a cloth belt to be worn close to his belly for the voyage.
Maria, being Catholic, could have stayed, but wished to leave. Her mother, too glad to see her child abandon this cursed island that had ruined her own life, sewed her own set of bracelets into a belt for the girl and sent her off. The youths boarded the old creaking boat that carried a Turkish ensign, destined for the port of Izmir.
Approximately four hundred and ten kilometres, or two hundred and twenty-one nautical miles away was the city of Izmir, a port they would reach after a day and a night. The two teenagers stood side by side, knuckles whitened from clasping the side of the boat taking them away from home, surrounded by hundreds of exiles like themselves, sailing towards unknown shores, a place they were assured was their true motherland, from the tinny echoes of the speakers on the boat. The captain’s deep and mellifluous voice was advising them in Greek and Turkish of the formalities to expect once reaching the shore with Turkish military band music blaring through the same speakers intermittently. The brassy cadence was intended to elevate moods and instil a sense of national pride in their new Vatan, the place that was going to offer them a new life and where they would never again feel persecuted. Without the music layering its cheerful mood on the visuals, the refugees only had to glance around and see their neighbours’ anxious faces to feel desperate and weep. As Crete disappeared from view, the band music appropriately intensified in decibels. Small children started running back and forth on the boat encouraged by the festive music, giggling and screaming with glee. An old man with a headscarf could be seen sitting on his luggage, leaning on his walking stick, counting his worry beads. Portly mothers were screaming at kids, double-checking their suitcases and papers, feeding their brood meatballs, olives, and bread. There were groups of gloomy men smoking and talking in circles, scattered around the deck. A rooster had somehow made it on board and was monitoring the deck with its majestic gait in his newfound coop surrounded by water. He paraded haughtily across the wooden surface, roosting to gather the stray hens he could not see. A boy started throwing bits of his bread for the rooster to eat; within minutes all the children were doing the same, one giving up his meatball to throw at the bird which fluttered his helpless wings and squawked in anger before running after the projectile rolling off the swaying deck. Se
agulls had sensed food was near and were floating alongside the boat, waiting for their turn.
Maria had grasped Mehmet’s cuff and was twisting it as her face soured into a grimace. She buried her head in his chest finally, sobbing into his shirt as he nervously patted her back to make her stop. “Shh … shh … don’t do this, Maria. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
She looked up at him eventually with a tear-drenched, melancholic face that made his eyes sting. “But you’ve never worked a day in your life. And we’re not even married. What if they don’t let me get off when we reach the port?” To these good points, he had no answers. He gently disengaged from her embrace and told her he would return shortly.
The old man with a cane who was still slouched on his suitcase, was now rolling a cigarette. Mehmet thought it wise to approach him. “Kalimera, papoulis,”16 he said in a subdued voice. The old man nodded taking a deep puff of the cigarette he had just lit, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“So,” continued Mehmet awkwardly, “do you know anyone over there?” he moved his chin toward the Anatolian shores.
“No.”
“And what are you going to do when we get there?”
“Find work, God willing.”
Mehmet nodded soberly. “What kind of work?”
The old man shrugged. “All those people who came to Crete from there, they left work to be done, I reckon … there has to be something for me too. If not….” He looked up at the sky as if expecting a reply to come down.
“Do you know if there is a hodja17 on board?” asked Mehmet.
The old man nodded and took a deep drag of his cigarette. “Over there, you’ll find one.”
Mehmet had to negotiate his way across the deck through the crowd of meatball-throwing children and the angry rooster, the fidgeting mothers and the smoking men who stood gazing at the commotion impassively. Finally he found the hodja on a bench, sitting with his wife and quiet children. “I need to get married,” he blurted after greeting him. “Can you do it?”
“What’s the rush?” smiled the portly man.
“We want to be married before we arrive there.”
“Where is she?” The hodja moved in his seat, ready to get up.
“She is Christian.”
The burly man scratched his neck. “Maybe that’ll be a bit of a problem.”
“I think she would be willing to convert, though,” threw in Mehmet, wanting the hodja to get up.
“What do you mean ‘I think?’ Is she or isn’t she?”
“She is, she is.”
“Has she made up her mind on her own accord?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Good, let’s go,” said the hodja, amused by the prospect of a wedding in the midst of this bleak adventure.
They were unceremoniously wedded before nightfall. At night, the waters got choppier when the poyraz18 started blowing from the northeast. The couple settled on a wooden bench inside the ferry, lying face to face on the narrow plank, their heads propped on folded coats. Children were throwing up their digested meatballs here and there in acrid-smelling brownish puddles, occasional adults could be observed to heave from the sides of the boat leaving trails of yellow bile on the white sidings while those with hardier stomachs tried to sleep, using suitcases and bundles as pillows, ignoring the confused cock that kept roosting every half hour through the night.
When they reached the shore at dawn, the sleep-deprived travellers could see many boats such as theirs already docked, with crowds streaming out, clogging the entrance to the port. Officials in striped uniforms were directing them into a building with yellow walls where they were to submit their papers prior to being ushered onto the Quay of Izmir, the wide cobblestone avenue with mansions on one side and the sea on the other. The building was noisy and stuffy, with echoes of all the sounds getting trapped within the tall, bare walls and patchy ceilings intensifying in pitch. Maria was reassured by the sight of the rooster walking beside the queue; unlike the refugees, he was hopping alongside them with the short-sighted assurance given to his kind, chest pushed out, carmine comb wobbling proudly on his small head, the multicoloured feathers on his tail erect and fluffy. He may have been as anxious as his fellow travellers waiting in line holding their yellowed, folded papers in hand, sweat oozing from their hairlines, Maria mused, but he was not showing it.
A short and skinny official in a brownish khaki uniform a couple of sizes too large was keenly observing the line up, his dark irises rolling to and fro in their white eyeballs like marbles, occasionally raising his arms to fence the crowd into a straighter line while blowing the whistle nestled between invisible lips under a thick brown moustache, in an effort to establish order. The effect was quite the opposite. Babes terrified by the shrillness of the sound began to wail, the cock roosted to chase a potential rival away, all this causing the exasperated official to blow his whistle even harder, at which point the bird suddenly lunged at him in semi-flight and pecked his thigh, sending the surprised man and his whistle tumbling, arms folded over his head to field further attacks. Giggles turned into bursts of laughter in the queue. The official finally managed to straighten himself, dusting his pants and cuffs with irritation, using the tip of his shoe to distance the cackling animal from him. “Who’s the owner of this damned horoz?” he shouted in Turkish. There were baffled murmurs in Greek travelling up and down the queue. The burly hodja who spoke some Turkish stepped forward, apologizing with half a smile, and squeezed the unwilling bird into a tight embrace, trying to keep him still. The rooster apparently upset, defecated on the man’s coat; half-digested meatballs in a watery mix now running toward his shalvar pants. The crowd started laughing again. “Hold him upside down!” shouted someone from farther up the line. The hodja shook his head sternly at his giggling children. His wife took out a handkerchief and attempted to wipe away the mess, suppressing a guffaw.
One can only imagine the first impressions of these refugees in those early days of the republic when the fire that reduced Izmir to a pile of ashes was still fresh in the locals’ memory whenever they stepped onto the quay, and their noses twitched remembering the smell of cadavers and smouldering cinder, and their pitiless ears replayed over and over the blood-curdling screams of those jumping into the sea and suffering countless other horrors. The ashes had been swept away in one year, and the mansions and houses that were spared from the fire were being restored. Saplings were planted here and there, and those who saw an opportunity in such catastrophe started rebuilding the city and made their fortunes.
When Mehmet and Maria finally passed customs and took their first steps on the cobblestone avenue named Kordon, weighed down by their bags and an old suitcase, luck smiled upon them in the shape of a pleasant, tubby, middle-aged woman holding a cardboard panel on which the words “Welcome to Smyrna” were written awkwardly in Greek alphabet. They were immediately drawn to her, knowing she spoke Greek and could direct them as to where to go. They had heard it said on the boat that the Turkish government was placing refugees in houses left behind by the Rum19 who had been deported or had escaped during the war. There were promises that everyone would have a house to live in, and that those who were farmers, or had vineyards or olive groves in Crete could take over the abandoned lands in Ayvalık and other coastal towns and continue to do what they knew best. The desire to go on and survive had suppressed the homesickness that tormented their hearts on the ferry. The grey-haired lady introduced herself as Inez. She was a Franghisa, a Levantine, and invited them to rent a room in her house until they found a place of their own. The two teenagers readily agreed and followed her through the narrow streets where blocks of houses with rubble in between reminded them of an infected gum line with missing teeth. Kirya Inez was prattling on, giving explanations about the fate of such and such a house or the absence of one, and what happened to those who had lived there, as they walked along. The words came out in torren
ts from her cracked lips. Once in a while she tightened the kerchief around her chin as she walked and nodded to a few other pedestrians.
The two-storey house with an extended bay window on the second floor was in one of the narrow back streets of Alsancak, within walking distance from the port. The couple settled on the second floor, in the bedroom with the bay window. Inez provided them with towels, soap, and other necessities, leaving them to unpack their belongings undisturbed until suppertime.
After freshening themselves up and placing the few things they had brought with them into drawers, the young couple descended to the kitchen hesitantly, the creak of each wooden step accentuating their feelings of awkwardness in the new space they were to call home. The bowls of steaming tarhana soup and slices of fresh bread invited them to the kitchen table where Inez was already sitting, waiting for them. She motioned for them to sit and eat, which they did while she recounted her stories: the husband who died years ago as a soldier in the Balkan wars, the young daughter who perished from a bout of dysentery before the fire, the desolation of her solitude when the war and subsequent fire came to Izmir, the ships that left the harbour gorged with refugees, her flight to the hills of Bayraklı with countless others to escape the fire, and her return weeks later to find her house miraculously intact. She crossed herself a few times at this part and moved her lips quietly in prayer. By the time she had gotten through her stories, the soup had already been finished, the bread had disappeared, and the wide-eyed teenagers were focused on this chapped mouth that was producing chains of stories, one more tragic than the other. She sighed at the end, feeling despondent and became quiet. Maria reached over to gently rub the woman’s cuff mumbling that they would now be her family if she wished, as they were both orphans in this strange land in need of someone they could trust. They promised to take care of her in return, and the woman nodded and patted the girl’s head. “I reopened the haberdashery my husband used to run. It’s a small shop, not much business. But I can find you ironing work, if you wish.” She told Mehmet of an acquaintance, a carpenter who was looking for a trustworthy apprentice, a Cretan like themselves. “I will take you there tomorrow,” she continued, “and God willing you will have a job.”