It is not only the emotional charge of those of us who come from those soils, it is the emotion of every Greek who “flows” in his blood nostalgia for what was left behind, for those who did not make it..
Smyrna, September 17th 1922
The “Queen of Ionia”, the “Paris of Anatolia”, the “Lady of the Aegean”, no longer exists…
Great-grandmother Aspasia, a beautiful woman with big green eyes, born in the suburb of Koukloutza (Kokluca) in Bournova of Smyrna, was newly-married to great-grandfather George, a diligent fisherman & restaurant owner. The couple was forced to escape their home taking along only an icon of Virgin Mary (a present for their recent wedding) & little existing – only enough not to add any unnecessary weight in their already “thick” clothes considering the season, that was.
In the prevailing chaos, they managed to roughly stack on a small boat, at start – as already said, George was a great fisherman & very dear to the whole Bournova area, hence he had his sympathies ! They ended up in one of the plenty – overloaded, by people who were struggling to realize what fate had just revealed to them – ships to the port of Piraeus…
Smyrna, August 22nd 2019
No words can describe what it felt like to walk along this “fatal” waterfront ! Even if nothing reminds, any longer, what it used to look like in the past, the horizon opposite is always the same… the Aegean Sea ! These waters unite & split at the same time..
In fact, with a little imagination, it felt like mentally participating in scenes that we often see in those black and white documentaries, where people move very fast up and down ! Ladies with crinolines get off their escorted carriages, while well-dressed gentlemen read their newspapers at the tables of the famous private Club Ke (from the French Quai, dock). In all this noisy human “beehive”, one can still imagine carts dragging horses, porters carrying the ladies’ shopping or the luggage of wealthy businessmen arriving from all over Europe to partner with bankers, tobacconists, producers of excellent quality of raisins & wine, cloth merchants, diplomats, consuls, archaeologists & gyrologists, artists, educators, and even adventurers of the time who consider their passage through this multi-cultural & liberal city a “praise” to be proud of ! A city, which the Greeks, the Levantines, the Armenians & the Jews adorned with their existence & activities.
And then, one can “see” further.. a tremendous smoke not letting people breathe, screams and cries all around, human dramas & families that get separated forever, a human crowd that seeks in vain for help.. there is only pain & despair, a black day for Hellenism ! Of course, none of this can be called “crowding on the waterfront”… !
The return to today was – fortunately – melodic… in my case!
A local with his “santouri” (an Anatolian-rooted musical instrument) was singing a melody “so familiar” in my ears… at the end he smiled at me and – as if guessing -, he asked me:
– Yunan arkadaşım mısın ? (Are you Greek, my friend ?)
That was easy….
– Evet Yunan ! (Yes, Greek !)
By using gestures, I tried to find out how he understood…
– Somurtkan gözlerin var !
I called in for translation to the multilingual member of our family!
“Your eyes are teared up”, he explained to me…
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