Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (37 page)

He was even more shocked when he passed the various churches and graveyards that were dotted throughout Bournabat. The little Anglican church of St Mary Magdalene built by the Whittall family – had been one of the first targets. The graveyard housing the tombs of old Magdalen Whittall and her flower-loving son, Edward, had been torn apart; the church had then been ransacked. ‘All the monuments and crosses are in rags,’ wrote Fernand, ‘broken in fits of rage (the dirty [Turkish] Cretans of this place are largely to blame!).’ The church itself had also been violated. ‘Its coloured panels [were] broken [and] all the upholstered benches opened.’

This was not the only Christian place of worship to be targeted. ‘As for the Catholic and Greek cemeteries,’ wrote Fernand, ‘many of the vaults and coffins have been rifled and a mass of buried, known to us all, lamentably exposed.’

As he surveyed the smouldering ruins of Bournabat from the upper windows of his aunt’s mansion, he felt a deep and terrible sense of loss. For more than a century, the Levantines of Bournabat had lived a charmed existence. Here, in the richest corner of the Ottoman empire, they had built their own financial kingdoms that had enriched everyone. Their factories had employed thousands of local Smyrniots – Greeks, Armenians, Turks and Jews – and the charitable institutions they directed had supported hospitals, nursing homes and orphanages. And in their palatial villas they had courted grand viziers, Ottoman
valis
and even the sultan himself. Now, those same villas lay in ruins.

‘Finished, finished is Bournabat for us,’ wrote Fernand.

The violence had spread to other areas of the city during the night. When Alexander MacLachlan drove from Paradise to Smyrna on Monday morning, he noted many dead bodies by the roadside, as well as abandoned loot that had been stolen from ransacked factories. ‘Among many articles of household equipment, I noticed a number of sewing machines in the ditch at one point,’ he wrote.

MacLachlan was on his way to a meeting with General Noureddin. He wished to ask the new city governor for an increased level of protection for the American International College. While he was waiting outside the general’s bureau, he struck up a conversation with Noureddin’s aide-de-camp. This individual was free of tongue, informing MacLachlan that the Turks had uncovered an Armenian plot to resist Kemal’s newly victorious army.

MacLachlan was as surprised by this news as he was sceptical. He was well connected with the Armenian community and yet he had heard no such rumours. He knew of the existence of a small band of fanatics who had declared their opposition to the Turkish army, but this organisation did not elicit any support from the local Armenian population. ‘I must add,’ wrote MacLachlan, ‘. . . that in so far as the existence and purpose of this organisation were known to the Armenians of Smyrna, not only did they withhold their sympathy and support from it, but they utterly disapproved [of] and condemned it.’ They believed that counter-violence would only serve to increase the danger in which they found themselves.

The two men’s conversation was interrupted by the sounds of a commotion in the street outside. MacLachlan and the aide stepped onto the balcony and watched as yet another procession of Greek prisoners of war were led along the quayside. All were being forced to shout, ‘Long live Mustafa Kemal.’ The aide explained to MacLachlan that they were being thus treated in retaliation for the manner in which the Greeks had behaved towards the Turks in May 1919.

‘I confess it was a sickening sight,’ wrote MacLachlan in his memoirs, ‘. . . yet it is fairly indicative of the spirit of vindictive reprisal that has always characterised the relations of these two races.’

MacLachlan was eventually ushered into Noureddin’s study and given a cordial welcome. The general was the epitome of charm and immediately acceded to MacLachlan’s request for troops to guard the American compound. He suggested that the Americans make direct contact with the district commander.

MacLachlan promised to do this as soon as he returned to Paradise, but he was to find himself delayed by circumstances that put him in peril of his life.

The brutalities that had rocked Bournabat, Paradise and the Armenian quarter of Smyrna had not yet spread to the rest of the city. The great boulevards of the European district were still untouched and – to the amazement of many – several of the bars and brasseries on the quayside remained open for business. When Grace Williamson walked to the British consulate that Monday morning, she was pleased to note that all the principal thoroughfares were being patrolled by Turkish police. She had been concerned by the sound of gunfire during the night but her enthusiasm for the Turks remained undiminished.

‘This is a rather celebrated day,’ she wrote, ‘the taking over of the whole town by the Kemalists. No end of blue funk . . . Houses on the quay that were occupied by the G.H.G [Greek head of government] left wide open and a Turkish flag stuck on the door.’

Grace gave the Armenian quarter a wide berth, having heard stories of atrocities, and she thought it imprudent to remain outside for too long. After having secured some provisions from the consulate, she returned to the nursing home.

The Armenian doctor, Garabed Hatcherian, also ventured out that Monday morning. He was heartened by the fact that the trams were still running and that women were out and about, ‘which inspires some kind of hope to our troubled souls’. An eternal optimist, Hatcherian believed that the worst of the ordeal was now over.

Yet signs of the previous night’s violence were everywhere in evidence. In the marketplace, he noticed a twelve-year-old girl with terrible bruises on her head. When he enquired as to how she had acquired her injuries, he was informed that she had been beaten and raped by Turkish soldiers during the night.

Hatcherian, still wearing his Turkish military medals, found himself being treated with uncustomary respect. When he entered the butcher’s shop, he was addressed as ‘Bey effendi’, offered a chair and told to wait while the butcher fetched better meat. As he did so, he looked out of the window and noted that the street was strewn with official papers from the former Greek headquarters. All the filing cabinets there had been broken open and their contents thrown out of the windows.

George Horton spent much of Monday morning collating all the intelligence reports that he was receiving from different areas of the city. He had no reason to mistrust them. Most were from people he knew personally – men and women who worked for American charitable institutions ‘whose duties took them into the interior of the town [and who] reported an increasing number of dead and dying in the streets’.

When he finally ventured outside to see for himself what was taking place, he was shocked by the scenes that greeted him. ‘I saw a number of miserable refugees with their children, bundles and sick, being herded toward the quay . . . One grey-haired old woman was stumbling along behind, so weak that she could not keep up, and a Turkish soldier was prodding her in the back with the butt of his musket. At last, he struck her such a violent blow between the shoulder-blades that she fell sprawling upon her face on the stony street.’

Horton was under strict instructions from Admiral Mark Bristol that no American official should be seen to be helping the Greek or Armenian communities. Yet many Americans living in the city were no longer prepared to turn a blind eye to the terrible events that they were witnessing. Horton encouraged them in their humanitarian work, proud that his fellow compatriots were so courageous in offering shelter to the wounded and needy.

‘There was not one who showed the least indication of fear or nervousness under the most trying circumstances,’ he would later write.

Among the hunted were the Berberians – a family with three children who lived in the heart of the Armenian quarter. Mr Berberian owned a barber’s shop in the suburb of Karatash and had headed there on the previous Friday in order to protect his business. He did not return on the Saturday or Sunday; indeed, he was never seen again. He was almost certainly killed in the massacre at Karatash that took place on Monday night. British officers on the
Iron Duke
watched it through their field glasses.

By Monday morning, Mrs Berberian was desperately anxious about her husband and increasingly fearful for the safety of the rest of her family. All night long, her sleep had been punctuated by the sound of screams and gunshots. Many years later, Rose Berberian – then just sixteen years old – recalled Turkish soldiers in the streets outside taunting all those who had remained in their houses. ‘Come out!’ they would shout. ‘Why are you hiding like mice? Come out or we will come in and kill you!’

Two doors away from the Berberians lived a wealthy Armenian merchant named Mr Aram, who had provided Kemal’s army with much needed supplies and equipment. In return, he had been given an official letter, requesting that he and his family should be left unmolested in the event of trouble. Knowing this, Mrs Berberian was therefore delighted when Mr Aram offered to shelter the Berberians over the next few days. The two families spent a tense Monday morning together in the Arams’ salon, listening to gangs of Turkish soldiers forcing their way into nearby houses and looting anything of value.

‘We were frightened,’ recalled Rose, ‘but Mr Aram kept waving his letter and telling us to relax. He was a fat man, normally jolly and easygoing, but he was perspiring and pacing the floor and fingering his letter. He couldn’t sit still. Once, he was on the verge of running outside and offering it to a Turkish officer supervising a gang of looters across the street.’

After lunch the young women tried to get some rest in an upstairs room but their repose was brutally cut short by the stampede of feet on the stairs. Mr Aram had finally lost his nerve, opened the front door to his house and proffered his precious letter to a Turkish sentry. The soldier snatched it, scrunched it into a ball and – after throwing it in the gutter – forcibly entered the property, followed by three comrades-in-arms. After a cursory inspection of the ground floor, they went upstairs to the room where the women were resting.

Young Rose presented a most enticing prize for the soldiers and they lunged at her, but she was too quick for them. She ran out through the french doors and onto the terrace, hoping to scale the wall and jump down into the adjoining garden. ‘Lift my feet, my feet,’ she screamed to Mr Aram’s fourteen-year-old daughter, a burly girl who was far taller than Rose. With help, Rose managed to scale the wall and throw herself over into the neighbouring garden. As she did so, she heard Mr Aram’s daughter scream as the soldiers grabbed her and pulled her away.

Rose was in a blind panic, yet she kept her head. She noticed that the terrace doors to the adjoining house were open and thought this a good sign, indicating that the house had already been sacked and looted. Making her way down into the concealed cellar, she hid there for the rest of the day.

‘I had the feeling that I was the only Armenian alive on the street,’ she later recollected, ‘that soon I would be the only one in the entire city.’

It would be nightfall before she was to discover what had happened to the rest of her family.

While the Armenian quarter was systematically being ransacked, Alexander MacLachlan found himself caught up in a most desperate predicament in Paradise. He had returned to the American International College after his meeting with General Noureddin, arriving shortly after noon. He was hoping to snatch a few minutes’ rest after lunch, but was disturbed by news that one of the settlement houses was being ransacked by Turkish soldiers. Furious about this intrusion on American property, he asked Sergeant Crocker and a few others to accompany him to the far side of the campus in order to scare away the looters.

They drove over in one of the college cars and parked some one hundred yards from the house. As they walked towards the building, they saw that all the windows had been smashed and that there were Turkish irregulars moving around inside.

‘I shouted in Turkish, “What are you doing here, this is an American house; this is American property! Get out of here!”’ The Turks immediately raised their rifles and pointed them at MacLachlan.

MacLachlan shouted a warning to Sergeant Crocker and his men, who had fanned out in front of the house, but it was too late. The irregulars emerged from the building in considerable force; Crocker, realising that he was dangerously outnumbered, decided to hold fire. ‘He took his revolver from his holster and threw it on the ground before him, holding out his empty hand as a sign that we do not wish to fight,’ wrote MacLachlan.

In the intervening stand-off, the American troops were able to retire to a distance of fifty yards. MacLachlan and Crocker, however, were not given the chance to escape. Unarmed and defenceless, they were at the mercy of the
chettes
. ‘One man . . . came up to me and said, “Give me that watch,”’ wrote MacLachlan. ‘I started to give it to him but he snatched it from my hand and tore it loose from my coat.’ He then helped himself to all of MacLachlan’s money before taking the coat itself.

‘By this time, I was almost completely surrounded by the Turks and then I noticed that two men about twelve feet distant were levelling their rifles to shoot me.’ At this critical moment, a Turkish college student arrived on the scene and pleaded with the irregulars not to fire.

In the pause that followed, MacLachlan displayed a bravado that bordered on foolhardiness. ‘This building belongs to the American college over there,’ he shouted, ‘and I am the head of that college.’ He warned the Turks not to shoot him, informing them that it would have serious consequences.

As he parleyed, the looters relived MacLachlan of yet more clothing and continued to harass him. They stole his shoes and stockings ‘[and] knocked me down three times with the blows of their rifles’.