Bloodlines Remembering Smyrna, 1922

[Orphic_Hymn]

by Annee Spelios Scott


I was very young when I began to hear the family stories, the history which is passed on verbally from one generation of women to the next. I can vividly remember the setting, the silver and crystal, the velvet furniture, and the carpets imported from Turkey. This was my great aunt's home, in a booming post WWII America. We always called her "yiayia," which means grandmother. That is who she will always be to us here.

We were not of Turkish descent, we were Greek, although this environment seemed far more exotic to me than that of my paternal grandmother, who was also Greek. My yiayia sat on the couch, crocheting surrounded by sepia portraits. They were my relatives who resided in Paris and Athens. Above her head was a portrait, her eldest brother, Yianni. Across, on the table, was a couple with their son. That was the Jacobs family. They were Americans, and yiayia revered them as latter day saints. She crocheted, and with each stitch, recorded memories of the early part of the twentieth century, in a cosmopolitan city that doesn't exist anymore, in southwest Turkey, a city named Smyrna.

World War One had ended, my great grandparents had fallen on hard times. There were many mouths to feed, and they were forced to send their young daughters to work as domestics in the homes of wealthy Europeans. Yiayia was nine years old. It was the custom to marry off the adolescent girls to older men to insure financial stability. Most marriages were arranged.

A loyal and hard working servant, yiayia was fortunate to come into the employment of the Jacobs. They were wealthy Americans, living in Smyrna. He was the Director of the Young Men's Christian Association, and she was with the American Red Cross. There was political unrest simmering beneath the surface. The Turks had been defeated by the Allies, the rivalries of European colonialism still riding high, and America's Standard Oil also had its eye on this rich piece of pie.

The ongoing war between Orthodox Christians and the Ottoman Muslims was finding a new incarnation. Smyrna was a tinderbox, waiting to explode. The match was nationalism, so easily manipulated in the face of wounded pride. Fighting broke out amongst Greek and Turkish soldiers. It was 1922.

"Mrs. Jacobs summoned me one day," yiayia's lips quivering above her nimble stitching. "She said that the Turks had plans to exterminate the Christians, but she had the power to save us. She told me to bring my entire family to hide in her home. She believed that no Turk would dare enter home which had an American flag posted in front of it."

Yiayia's fingers raced, I could not see the needles, except in a blur. "I ran home to find them, to implore them to come at once. I wanted so desperately to save them. The women began to frantically gather some basic belongings, but the men stood steadfast, refusing to come. 'We are men, and we are not going to hide behind the women's skirts. We will go out together to fight the Turks!"

"We never saw them again. They were ambushed by the Turkish soldiers, lined up against a stone wall, and executed by a firing squad. All the men were gone, except for my youngest brother Michali. He was a child and came with us." She wept as she continued. "That woman in the photo is your real grandmother, she is my sister. She was five months pregnant with your mother and had a toddler when her husband was executed. She was sixteen years old. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs were able to use their influence to remove us from the burning city. The Turks killed all the men, raped all the women, looted and burned everything in sight. We became refugees. There are my two other sisters who reside in Paris. They met their future husbands in a refugee camp. The Jacobs' later sponsored me to come to America, and in 1933, I adopted your mother and brought her here to rescue her from the grips of poverty which still plagued the ones who remained in Athens." The words stopped, and the needles clicked. Yiayia seemed lost in another place and time.

She lived to the age of 92, although most of her brain had been destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. She would have nightmares and scream at the top of her lungs, "Yianni!!…Yianni!!" At the very end, she had completely returned to the place from which she had been rescued.

Epilogue:

In researching the facts of this war, it was stated in the book by George Horton, "The Blight of Asia," 1926, that Turkish soldiers invaded all homes with an American Flag in front of it, except for two. It is truly a miracle that I am here to tell this story. On a recent trip to Greece, I interviewed my Mother's sister, the only other living survivior, who is now eighty years old. Some new facts were revealed to me: My great grandfather was not shot by the Turks. He fainted as he witnessed them killing my grandfather, and the Turks left him for dead. He awakened and helped some of his family to escape on one of the small boats. He died in Athens six monthes later of a broken heart from witnessing the murder of his eldest son. The ones who escaped to Paris became part of the French Resistance in World War II. They tried to give back what had been given to them. My mother was born in a small school in the Monasteraki district of Athens on January 25, 1923. She never knew her real father. All photos were destroyed. None of us knew what he looked like. She is now in the third stage of Alzheimer's disease and cannot speak. I have become their collective voice.


Bloodlines Remembering Smyrna, 1922