There was just one thing I couldn’t be certain of, and that was whether we had been seen by anyone on our journey to and from the house. I hadn’t noticed anyone, but it’s not for nothing that they say love is blind. If anyone had seen us and began to talk, it would turn my life into a prison and rob me of this great love.
20
Life for the Turks in Chania, and consequently for the whole of Crete, was becoming harder and more terrifying every day. The refugees who had fled from the rout of Anatolia were attacking men they saw wearing a fez in the streets, even in the city centre, and the number of incidents was rising rapidly. When the attacks were reported to the police, they weren’t taken seriously and no attempt was made to find the culprits. Outside the city, they would lie in wait for a suitable opportunity to murder Turks and plunder their fields and groves. It became an act of pure recklessness to leave the city alone, let alone without carrying a weapon; it required the utmost bravery. After the previous announcement of the Muslim Committee, sanctioning the carrying of weapons, I had bought a hunting rifle with cartridges and hung them up at home. Later, I bought a revolver and carried it around my waist, hidden under my jacket.
Everyone close to me was apprehensive. My sister, brother-in-law, Hüsnüye and Kiri Vladimiros were the most anxious, always worrying that something would happen to me. All the while I was seriously neglecting Hüsnüye, but I didn’t know what to do. Marigo had mentioned to me that she knew all along what was going on between Hüsnüye and me. She had found out with the help of her lawyer, who made some enquiries about me when she was thinking of taking me on as a business partner.
As I write in my diary now, after so much water under the bridge, I recall the impact these two women had on my life each in their own way. From Hüsnüye, I learned how to please a woman intimately. She was illiterate and not greatly knowledgeable about the world, but with her I discovered the pleasure of drinking with a woman in private and the rapture of her handsome body on mine. It was Marigo who enabled me to have a more comfortable life, to become the owner of two houses and to enjoy the respectable status of a businessman in Chania. She showed me how intense a woman’s lust can be after six years of celibacy. She told me how she had held her own against the Greeks who wanted to seduce her after the death of her husband, how she had resisted without exception and that this had gradually turned into a way of life for her. Her feelings began to change when she took to observing me from the window. As the feelings grew, she took me on as a business partner, yet in the two years we had worked side by side, she had not felt any signals from me, apart from the odd time she caught me stealing a glance at her. Naturally, the sudden news of deportations had thrown her into a panic. It was this panic, coupled with the years of sexual abstinence, that had brought us together. We withdrew from the outside world, meeting at her house for fear that we might be seen together in the streets. We began to spend the nights together in her bedroom. We no longer had anything to hide from Ariadne and were open with her. It seemed that she was also getting pleasure from our love life. Her sombre face lit up and a smile appeared on her lips when she spoke now. One night, I got up to visit the toilet after a fervent sexual encounter with Marigo, still naked as I presumed Ariadne would have long since gone to bed. But she was right there, standing to the side of our bedroom door. I froze in surprise, unable to go back into the bedroom. Unexpectedly caught listening at our door and confronted with my nakedness on top of that, Ariadne was rooted to the spot. A motionless, silent statue in the shadows, with her eyes fixed on my torso, laid bare for all to see. The faint glow from the night lamp on the hall table was enough to illuminate the lower part of my body in all its detail. When I came back from the toilet, Ariadne was gone.
I felt a change in me when squeezing the supple breasts and tight skin of Kiriya Marigo’s dark beauty, so different from Hüsnüye’s pale and soft body. Perhaps it was not so much a change, but she made me feel more playful. No doubt she had benefitted from having had a much older man in her late husband and never having given birth. She was fresh as a daisy, there was nothing worn-out about her. I wasn’t sure if it was her true nature or something she had read in a book, but when we made love she used to swear like a sailor; one minute shouting out, bellowing the next, then whispering softly… She used to say: “Get going, you bastard, you’re screwing a virgin here, for God’s sake.”
Maybe she was just drawing attention to her lithe body; that’s how I saw it anyway.
The joy of our nights together waned every morning as the sun rose on a new day filled with thoughts of the migration and increasing acts of intimidation. It was now considered certain that we would be forced off the island. The Migration Commission was preparing the official documents. It was at this time that Marigo made her momentous proposition: “Hassan, this island is where you were born and bred. You love it here, you love it to distraction. Your family are buried here and you and I love each other. Become a Christian and stay here. Let’s get married and have a happy life together. I’m taking quinine now to avoid pregnancy, but if we get married, I won’t. I’ll give you as many children as you want. I trust myself when it comes to that.”
“It’s impossible, Marigo,” I said. “I love you and I love Crete – please forgive me, but I can’t do it. I feel too much for my religion and my people. Come with me, let’s go together and marry in Anatolia. You don’t have to change your religion if you don’t want to; I’d never interfere in that.”
“I took a chance on everything. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you that some Greek bigots complained about me to Priest Agapios, saying I’m living with a Turk… with you. He came to the office one day when you were out. First, he said he was advising me but of course it ended in threats. I’ll stay with you until the day they tear you away, not just from the island, but from my arms. I mean, until the day of the migration. After that, God knows.”
Marigo was an honourable woman and never broached the subject again, just as she had never said anything, negative or otherwise, about her dead husband, and who knows what shortcomings his age may have left in their marriage. He was never mentioned, neither when we were alone together nor in her daily life – it was as if she had never lived as the wife of this old and, who knows how unsuitable, man.
The threat from Priest Agapios came to me too, via Ahmet Agha. Our group of friends still met together twice a week to share our sorrows, either at Nuri’s, Renieri’s, Bolari’s or Pavli’s place. We had plenty of tavernas, but for safety reasons, it was more often Nuri’s place that we chose.
Ahmet Agha was more afraid than me.
“For the life of me, I just don’t know what’s best, Hassan. They’ll do away with you… And throw your body in the water. Now the Commission is doing its work, the fanatics have got a free rein. They can take you wherever they want and get rid of you without leaving so much as a ripple on the water. You need to think about saving your skin. It’s not a joke any more.”
Was it a neighbour who had discovered our relationship? Was it Ariadne? Or Hüsnüye, whom I had been forced to abandon? There was no way of knowing where the rumours about me and Marigo had originated. But one thing was certain: it was a catastrophe.
Marigo’s eyes became red and swollen from crying. She was unable to sleep. Finally, one evening when we were at her house, she announced her decision. I was not to set foot outside again until a passenger ferry came – and it must be Italian, not Greek. She would make sure I left Crete alive – that was her wish. I was to travel by ship either to Alexandria in Egypt or to Brindisi in Italy. The route was up to me, but when and wherever I arrived, I was to use a Greek name to send a telegram letting her know. If I ran out of money, I was to let her know. She hadn’t let on to me, but she had been frantically making plans because the threats were getting out of hand. I left the house just once after that, to finalise the official procedures to sell two of my houses to Marigo and transfer the other one to Nazire. Marigo brought out all her shiny Ottoman gold
and divided it between three pouches so I could hide it under my clothes in different places on my body.
Mid-afternoon on a cheerless February day in 1923, at the Port of Souda in Chania, I boarded the San Marco ferry bound for Alexandria, feeling like an animal destined for the slaughterhouse. There was no one waiting for me with knives on the boat; they were all behind me now on terra firma. But the fanaticism that had driven me from my land, robbed me of everything I owned and separated me from the graves of my ancestors turned my stomach. I cursed all the events that had caused me to be there. In the fading light of evening, as I boarded a ferry for the first time, the sound of Greek words mixed in with the shouts in Italian filled me with dread. Here I was, leaving my home to go to the motherland, as if I would never come back again. There was no one there to wave me off; there was too much risk that I could be caught fleeing and killed in broad daylight on the shore. Although Marigo had planned everything down to the last detail, it had slipped her mind until the last minute that the fez I wore would give me away to my enemies. So she sent me off to the port, alone, in a phaeton she had ordered to wait for me three streets away from the house, saying, “I’ll get a cap and bring it to the dock on a phaeton. I’ll catch you up, there’s time.”
I boarded the boat. There was no one waving me off with a handkerchief, no one shedding tears and holding me tightly while saying goodbye. Marigo made it up the gang plank just in time, as the steamboat crew were making the final preparations for departure. We withdrew into a corner. She quickly took the fez from my head, then squashed and squeezed it into her bag. After placing the cap she had bought for me on to my head, she took a step backwards, examining me through wet, swollen eyes.
“It suits you,” she said. “No one looking at you can possibly tell who you are or what’s going on until you get to your destination. No one’s going to bother you now. I’ll go and see Kiri Vladimiros to explain why you had to leave suddenly. I’ll ask him to think kindly of you, don’t worry. It won’t be often, but I’ll visit him with some food from time to time. He’s a sweet man. It’ll relieve his loneliness and give us a chance to reminisce about you together.”
I felt sick to the stomach. Frozen by the fear and trepidation of going into the unknown, I was unable to speak. She grabbed me by the collar, trying to bring me round, and gave her last words of advice: “Keep your money and travel papers somewhere safe. I spoke to some of the people who’ve come from Anatolia. They said the only place you’ll be able to stay without any problems is a town called Ayvalık. Find out how to get there.”
Out of view, in a recess of the deck, we held each other silently for the last time, both of us crying. I had lost my country, and I was on the way to my motherland in secret, passing through places I had never seen, and along who knows what dismal roads. Marigo was losing a successful business partner and a lover who could measure up to her at the pinnacle of her life and desire.
When I had come to the dock to send off my Turkish teacher, Kemalettin Bey, I had waited on the shore until the boat shrank into a dot on the horizon, then disappeared. This time it was me on the deck returning Marigo’s waves, and as the steamboat moved away, it was Marigo becoming smaller, turning into a dot and then disappearing completely.
I can’t begin to explain what a terrible time I had in Alexandria with the Egyptian peasants as I couldn’t speak Arabic. They knew neither Turkish nor Greek. Marigo had said, “If you’re having problems in any country, go to the port and you’re bound to find a Greek somewhere around that you can ask to help with translation.” I followed her advice and found a Greek cotton merchant, who helped me overcome my difficulties. It seemed it wasn’t possible to travel from Alexandria to Izmir. First, I had to go to the Italian port of Brindisi and from there I would be able to get a boat to the Greek port of Piraeus, and from there on to Izmir.
Days later, I arrived in the cold, damp air of Brindisi. I found a room in a hotel used by sailors, and one night, I took a woman there. As I didn’t know any Italian to tell her how much I appreciated her good company, I gave her a gold coin, but the hotel owner got wind of it and managed to wheedle one out of me for himself by constantly pestering me with his relentless Italian blather. My Greek came in useful at the port and I managed to find out how to get to Piraeus by way of a Greek sailor who showed me the way to the bureau of the right company.
In Piraeus, the coffeehouses and shipping bureaux, bursting with waiting passengers and unemployed sailors, smelt of sage tea and cognac. On the day of my arrival, I was able to get a ticket for a boat leaving for Izmir later that evening and before long I was on board settling into my cabin. It was a relief to be able to understand the languages around me once again, although it was overshadowed by the fear of being recognised by Chanians who might make trouble for me.
After managing my way around Piraeus, Izmir wasn’t difficult for me. Despite the agonising resentment of being separated from my country and the woman I loved, I found myself feeling quite pleased, simply down to the Turkish I had learned from Kemalettin Bey. After being lost amongst the Arabic of Egypt and Italian of Brindisi, then being unnerved by hearing Greek again in Piraeus, the sound of Turkish all around was soothing.
The first thing I did after embarking at the Izmir dock in Kordon was to take off the cap on my head and replace it with a fez bought from a small place in the back streets of the nearby district of Punta. It was easy for me to find out where Ayvalık was and how to get to the place that was to be my new home. I had little difficulty buying a ticket and after one day and one night, I arrived in Ayvalık on a boat called Hamidiye, owned by Ali Bey, a banker from Edremit in Turkey.
When I walked from the boat on to the dock, I was stopped in my tracks by a military salute from a soldier of the Turkish army! Seeing my long boots, khaki trousers, chain watch, walking cane and fez, he must have thought I was an officer.*
THE END
__________
* The dock that Hassan arrived at would have been teeming with people, some wearing all they owned, and speaking in different dialects of Greek or Turkish. The crowd would have consisted of people fleeing from many Greek islands or those being deported to them, all the result of the signing of The Lausanne Convention, which specified the conditions for the compulsory exchange of minority populations between the countries of Greece and Turkey and was signed on 30 January 1923. It was one of a number of legal instruments related to the Treaty of Lausanne.
GLOSSARY
abaya A full-length outer garment worn by some Muslim women
Agha A term of respect, literally means “master”
-akis Greek diminutive used as a token of affection or meaning “small”. Surnames ending with -akis are normally associated with Crete
baglama A traditional instrument of Anatolian folk music
baklava A pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey
Bayram A generic Turkish term for a public holiday (not necessarily Eid and not necessarily Muslim. In the Cretan context, it may have taken on the meaning of a Muslim holiday and vice versa with yortu)
Bey Mr: Term of respect in Turkish, used after a forename
biberiye Turkish word for rosemary
fez A flat-topped conical red hat with a black tassel on top formerly worn by Turkish and other Muslim men
halihut From the Cretan expression “Halikoutides”. An old derogatory term which is said to derive from the African command “Hal il kuti”, meaning “put the box down”, a phrase which was used among African porters. Africans were brought to Crete as slaves or came as economic migrants from the seventeenth century onwards. They worked mainly in the harbour and lived in shacks in the Chania district called Kumkapı which still exists today
Kiri/Kiriya Mr/Mrs: Term of respect in Greek, used before a forename
kipohorta Famous Cretan dish made from a type of leafy greens also called kipohorta
kitro A type of citron fruit
koliva Boiled wheat associated especially with
a specific memorial event for the recently departed
Karamanlides Greek-Orthodox Christians in Central Anatolia (Turkey) who spoke Turkish as their primary language
Kumkapı In the mid-nineteenth century the area was a Bedouin village hosting 2–3,000 African immigrants that worked as porters, servants and boatmen
meze Appetiser dishes served as starters or accompaniments to alcohol
Noah’s Pudding Also called “ashure”. Pudding made of grains, fruit, dried fruit and nuts. There is a story that when Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat in Turkey, his family made a pudding to celebrate. They had very little food left and so made the pudding out of anything they could find
oka An Egyptian and former Turkish unit of weight, variable but now usually equal to approximately 1.3 kg (2¾ lb)
pasatempos snacks
Punta District of Izmir now called Alsancak
raki Alcoholic drink made of grapes and aniseed
shalvar Baggy trousers with a tapered ankle
Souda Souda Fortress was the last place on Crete to fly the Ottoman flag; the flag was taken down on 13 February 1913 by the crew of HMS Yarmouth, the last European warship to leave the port before the unification of Crete and Greece
Tarawih prayers Special prayers performed by some Muslims during the month of Ramadan
yashmak A type of veil worn by some Muslim women that covers all the face except the eyes
Yortu Christian feast
Children of War Page 13