Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (45 page)

Hovakim Uregian awoke that morning to the smell of burning flesh. ‘Curious, I thought, how we had come to think of hell as an inferno of fire and blood, but totally neglected the continuous torture to the human mind that the stench of burned flesh, human flesh in particular, could cause.’ Uregian was still hiding in an enclosed courtyard that lay in a quarter of the city that had yet to be devoured by the fire. Nevertheless, he knew that it was only a matter of time before he – and all the Greeks hiding with him – would be flushed out.

The endgame arrived soon enough. Turkish soldiers entered the courtyard, taking prisoner all the males aged between fifteen and fifty, including Uregian.

The reason for their arrest soon became apparent. That morning, Mustafa Kemal decreed that any refugee still in Smyrna on 1 October would be deported to central Anatolia. In theory, they were to be given two weeks to find passage to Greece or elsewhere, but in practice the deportations began immediately. Any Christians of military age were deemed to be enemies of the Turkish nationalists. As such, they were to be held as prisoners of war.

The treatment of these newly arrested prisoners during their detention was brutal in the extreme. Uregian and the others were marched across the ruined city to a large military barracks that lay in the unburned Turkish quarter, and were housed in its outside courtyard along with many others who had been seized several days earlier. ‘Hundreds of them were lying on the sandy ground under the blazing sun,’ wrote Uregian. ‘Their clothing reduced to rags, no shoes, no hats – everything stolen by the marauding, greedy Turks.’

The soldiers guarding them were irregulars from the Anatolian hinterland – men who had little respect for human life, carried whips made of barbed wire and indulged in cruel psychological games. There was one tap in the centre of the courtyard and this would be turned on during the worst heat of the day, but no one was allowed to approach the cool stream of flowing water. ‘The poor prisoners were not only prevented from quenching their thirst, but under the threat of whips they would sadistically be pushed over to the sunny side of the yard.’

The sound of the splashing water drove some men crazy. Uregian watched one prisoner, who had been deprived of water for several days, rush to the tap in desperation. As he lapped the liquid from the ground, three guards started beating him with their barbed-wire whips. They continued until his back was raw and then carted him away. He was never seen again.

Although Uregian fully expected to meet a similar fate, for there seemed to be no hope of getting out of the barracks alive, he was to be saved by a most unexpected intervention on the part of one of the commanding officers. At some point that Saturday afternoon, all the men aged eighteen or younger were told to stand up and form a line. Uregian guessed that everyone below fighting age was going to be released and he therefore joined the line, even though he was actually twenty-two.

‘I rubbed my cheeks,’ he wrote, ‘knowing that a flushed appearance made me look more boyish.’ His ploy saved his life. He and a few others were led back into the main building and told that they were free to go. ‘I looked into the yard to see the prisoners,’ he wrote. ‘I almost felt guilty for “abandoning” them now.’

Uregian’s luck was to continue that night. After almost being beaten to death by two Turkish irregulars on the quayside, he managed to jostle his way aboard a British freighter. After a terrifying week, he found himself a free man.

His was one of the few uplifting stories to emerge from that terrible weekend. Many thousands of others – Greeks and Armenians – were marched into the interior of the country and either killed or held as prisoners of war.

Among them was a young Greek man named Panagiotis Marselos. He was told that he was being taken to Magnesia, some thirty miles from Smyrna, along with 5,000 other prisoners. The forced march resembled the deportation of the Armenians seven years earlier. Every few miles, the guards would lead a group of men away from the roadside and shoot them.

‘The slaughter didn’t stop,’ he wrote. ‘We headed to Bournabasi, which we reached at night, and they put us in a barbed wire enclosure. They started taking five at a time and killed them.’ Marselos escaped the death squads but he and his fellow survivors were deprived of food and water for three long days. When they finally came to a river, they were given a few minutes to slake their thirst in water that was contaminated by a putrefying corpse. ‘I couldn’t resist my thirst,’ recalled Marselos. ‘I drank . . . and my brother drank too, and our lips were sticky from the fat secreted by the broken body.’

This was to be their only stop for water. When Marselos and his dwindling band of fellow Christians finally reached Magnesia, they were once again desperate for water. Their thirst was intensified by the fact that they were locked in a dusty warehouse. ‘[It] was made of limestone,’ wrote Marselos. ‘As we moved about, the dust rose and we breathed it in. We had burns on our lips and in our mouths. All you could hear was the phrase: “My God, water!”’

Within a week of leaving Smyrna, fewer than 500 of the prisoners were still alive. The guards forced these hardy survivors to harm themselves and their comrades. When one of the guards saw that Marselos had a gold filling, he made him knock the tooth out with a rock. Next, Marselos was ordered to bite off another man’s ear, which he was unable to do. The unfortunate victim – left in terrible pain – was eventually shot by the guard. Marselos then had all his remaining teeth pulled out by another prisoner.

For three long months, Marselos was to suffer great cruelty. The prisoners were marched from village to village, occasionally being sold off as slaves to local Turks. These were often tortured and killed in revenge for the excesses committed by the Greek army. Marselos was witness to the murder of one of his comrades. ‘[They] cut off his nose, ears and other bits and then drove a sharp stick into the ground and forced him onto it. The stick went through him and then they set him on fire and burnt him.’

It was not until the spring of 1923 that both Marselos and his brother – who had also cheated death – were finally freed under the terms of a deal struck between the Greek and Turkish governments. They made their way to Piraeus before settling in Greece and rebuilding their lives in the countryside around Patras.

Everyone still stranded in Smyrna over that weekend would later have his own story of suffering. For many, survival was a combination of quick thinking and good luck. This was certainly the case for Aristotle Onassis, the eighteen-year-old son of Socrates Onassis, one of Smyrna’s wealthiest merchants.

Socrates had been arrested by the military some two days earlier and was being held in a prison in the Turkish quarter. Aristotle had meanwhile been allowed to remain in the family villa at Karatash, a cosmopolitan suburb that was connected to Smyrna by ferry. Even so, he knew that it was not safe to stay for much longer. His favourite uncle, Alexander, had been hanged in Kasaba; two other uncles, Yannis and Vasilis, had been deported into the interior. Aristotle suspected that it would be only a matter of time before he would meet a similar fate.

He was starting to plot his escape from Smyrna when a Turkish general pitched up at the villa and decreed that the building was to be commandeered for his headquarters. Young Aristotle displayed a pluck and sharp-wittedness that was to save his life. He suggested to the general that he be allowed to remain in the house in order to service the temperamental heating and plumbing systems; he added that through his father’s Turkish business contacts he had access to the latest gramophone cylinders, as well as the finest cigars and whisky.

None of this was true, yet it bought him time. The general allowed Aristotle to stay on the condition that he could fulfil these promises. He also gave the lad a military pass that gave him freedom to all areas of the ruined city, unmolested by the Turkish military.

The pass proved invaluable to young Aristotle. He was able to visit his father, from whom he learned about the scale of the deportations. And, with the help of one of his father’s Turkish business contacts, he began to lobby for Socrates’ release. Although his father was not freed for many weeks, he was assured by the prison governor that he would not be harmed.

Much of the Onassis family’s money had been held in the safes of their head office. The building itself had been burned in the fire, but Socrates thought it possible that the heavy metal safes might have survived since they were specifically designed to withstand fire. Following his father’s advice, Aristotle made his way through the ruined city until he located the burned-out shell of the Grand Vizier Han. He managed to ease his way inside the building, clambering over timbers and fallen masonry until he finally located two of his father’s safes. Upon opening them, he found that many wads of Turkish banknotes had indeed survived the flames. He stuffed them into his jacket, shirt and trousers; later that day, he managed to smuggle some of the money into prison. Socrates used it to buy better food, treatment and – eventually – his freedom.

Aristotle himself realised that life in Smyrna was becoming too dangerous for comfort. Knowing that he was unable to fulfil his promises to the Turkish general living in his family’s house, he decided that it was time to make a hasty exit. He made contact with America’s vice-consul, James Loder Park, and managed to secure a passage aboard the American vessel,
Edsall
. Money and connections made his escape from Smyrna rather easier than it was proving for the majority of refugees.

The general who commandeered the Onassis family villa was not alone in seeking suitable quarters for himself and his staff. All of Mustafa Kemal’s senior aides and advisors had been looking for accommodation – most of them in the unburned bourgeois suburbs. Kemal himself was drawn to Bournabat, where the beautiful villa belonging to Hortense Wood proved an irresistible temptation. He decided to hold his first military meeting here, in the house where his senior army marshal, Fevzi Pasha, was still lodging.

‘Arrival of Kemal Pasha in our house,’ wrote Hortense on Saturday, 16 September, ‘together with Ismet Pasha and other generals, and the famous Turkish lady, Halide Edib.’

Hortense had long harboured an unstinting admiration for Kemal and it remained undimmed by the destruction of Bournabat. She blamed the irregulars for all of the ongoing violence; as far as she was concerned Kemal himself remained above criticism. ‘I so admire [him],’ she wrote. She chatted with him for a quarter of an hour before Kemal asked whether he could use her house as a temporary headquarters. Hortense duly obliged, no longer clinging to the pretence that her sisters would be returning any day.

‘[Kemal] with five others went upstairs to discuss the answer to the allies [regarding Constantinople],’ wrote Hortense. She was delighted to have so many young generals in her house, especially as they were discussing matters that would decide the future of Turkey. ‘The fate of the empire was being discussed just outside my bedroom door, near the piano.’

Kemal was planning his next move with great care. The British were utterly opposed to withdrawing their forces from the neutral zone around Constantinople. At a cabinet meeting on the previous Friday, Lloyd George was adamant that British forces would not ‘run away before Mustafa Kemal’. He was supported by Winston Churchill, who requested that reinforcements be sent to Constantinople with immediate effect. But when the Allied governments were asked to send troops too, there was a lukewarm response. And when British ministers appealed to the empire for help, they were met by a wall of silence. Only New Zealand was prepared to come to Britain’s aid.

Knowing that Lloyd George was becoming increasingly isolated, Kemal held several secret meetings with representatives of Britain’s allies. He played his hand with skill, appealing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis while threatening force to get what he wanted. When the French High Commissioner urged Kemal to call off the advance on Constantinople, Kemal replied that he was unable to stop his triumphant soldiers. ‘Our victorious armies . . .’ he said with a chuckle once the High Commissioner had left the room. ‘I don’t even know where they are. Who knows how long it would take us to reassemble them.’

Kemal had neither the desire not the inclination to fight for Constantinople, for he remained convinced that he could win the country’s capital by other means. ‘We are pursuing a very calculating and moderate policy . . .’ he wrote to one of his generals. ‘We are trying to isolate the British.’

After hours of discussion in the upper rooms of Hortense Wood’s house, Kemal and his entourage emerged and asked for something to eat. ‘These gentlemen dined here,’ wrote Hortense proudly, ‘and later on Kemal asked for a bath. He had one, after which we renewed our conversation. He promised to come again.’

On the following day, the Turkish high command issued a decree, informing all of Bournabat’s surviving Greek families that they were free to return to their homes. Many were confused by the mixed signals coming from the Turkish high command, especially as they had only recently learned that Kemal intended to deport all Christian refugees within a fortnight. ‘[They] are still timid and frightened,’ wrote Hortense after having wandered through the rubble-littered streets of Bournabat. ‘Most of their belongings have been stolen and their houses wrecked.’

Later that afternoon, Kemal and his generals gathered once again at Hortense’s villa. ‘They assemble in Ernest’s room,’ she wrote, ‘and discuss the political situation and [then] leave to visit Noureddin.’ Fernand de Cramer arrived from Smyrna while Kemal was still there and was introduced to him. He was impressed with the Turkish leader’s ability to deal with his aunt, ‘complimenting [her] and kissing her hands. He is a real charmer.’

Kemal’s generals had by now commandeered all of the remaining villas in Bournabat that remained undamaged. ‘Emin [is] staying at Edward Whittall’s,’ wrote Hortense, ‘Ismet is staying at Mary Giraud’s.’ Kemal himself had moved into Latife’s house, which was also in Bournabat. On Monday, 18 September, Latife and her grandmother invited a select group of senior nationalists to dine with them. In the seclusion of the spectacular walled garden, it was almost possible to forget the fact that Smyrna no longer existed. ‘We passed through a pleasant old Turkish garden which overlooked the blue waters of the bay,’ wrote Halide Edib, who was one of the guests. ‘The steps leading up to the veranda and the veranda itself were muffled with ivy, wisteria, jasmine and roses in charming profusion and disorder.’