Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (8 page)

As neighbours became friends, so they were invited to each other’s feasts and festivals. When the young Greek girl, Aglaia Kontou, got married, the couple received some fabulous presents from their Turkish neighbours. ‘[One] gave us a long clock with an eagle that announced the hours. On another occasion, we offered them a gramophone and seven records.’

In such a heterogeneous city, it was inevitable that there were occasional tensions, particularly among the poorly educated. The Jewish Passover was often a moment of stress between Greeks and Jews. There were those among the illiterate older generation who believed an ancient superstition that the Jews sacrificed a Christian child in order to mix its blood into their unleavened bread. When, in 1901, a young Greek boy went missing, a rabble flocked to the Jewish quarter and rang the bells of a nearby church as a call to arms. The Greek Orthodox archbishop and the city government were quick to condemn the mob. Its leaders were arrested, appearing in the dock in Smyrna’s courtroom. Their humiliation was complete when the missing Greek boy was found alive and well. He had run away from home to escape a punishment from his parents.

Such disagreeable incidents were rare and quickly quashed by the city’s governor. The rule of law always prevailed and for more than half a century – from the early 1860s until 1914 – Smyrna was one of the more enlightened cities on earth. Horton gave a great deal of thought to the reasons for this in his quest to identify the city’s magic ingredient. It was not merely the fact that the city stood at the interchange of a dozen worlds. Smyrna’s allure was more elusive and complex. Happiness was an emotion that defied measurement and yet it was the general sense of contentment that, time and again, struck foreign visitors to the metropolis. ‘The lightheartedness of the Smyrniots was well-nigh irrepressible,’ wrote Horton, ‘and continued almost until the last days.’

Visiting European intellectuals were fascinated to observe such a racially mixed city at close quarters. When the Austrian savant, Charles de Scherzer, had visited Smyrna in 1874, he brought with him a most negative image of the Turks, yet he went away with all his preconceptions shattered. ‘In matters of religion,’ he wrote, ‘they are – contrary to their reputation – the most tolerant people of the Orient.’

Scherzer concluded that the Levantines – torch-bearers of culture and learning – had created a truly remarkable environment. ‘The philanthropist notes with satisfaction how the progress of western civilisation has swept through every layer and class of society and that Smyrna acts like a beacon to every other province of the Ottoman Empire.’

Smyrna’s population continued to enjoy the gaiety of life throughout the spring of 1914. There were afternoon tea dances in the salons of the clubhouses and a season of Italian operettas in the Alhambra garden theatre. But as Easter approached, it became clear that the beautiful coastline to the north of Smyrna was in deep turmoil. Thousands of Muslim refugees had fled in panic from the continued fighting in the Balkans and they were now bent on revenge. Their target was the Greek community living on the Aegean coastline of Turkey.

The crisis began in May, when a large number of refugees arrived in the town of Adramyttium, some seventy miles to the north of Smyrna. They were accompanied by armed bands of
chettes
, or irregulars, equipped with clubs, knives and rifles. Surging into the centre of town, they began ransacking homes and shops owned by Greeks. The offices of the town’s richest merchants, the Kazaxi family, were destroyed and the family was given twenty-four hours to leave Turkey. When they appealed to their Ottoman overlords for help, they were met with a wall of silence. The government in Constantinople was still smarting from a string of military defeats in the Balkans and in no mood to leap to the defence of the Greeks living in its midst.

‘So far from discouraging them [the irregulars],’ wrote Arnold Toynbee, who was to travel widely in Turkey over the coming years, ‘the authorities armed them, organised them and gave them a free hand to accomplish results which they desired to see accomplished but preferred not to obtain openly for themselves.’

Faced with a complete absence of any protection, the Greeks of Adramyttium found that events quickly began to spiral out of control. ‘What a night we passed you cannot imagine,’ wrote the town’s physician, Dr Charalampides. ‘The sound of shots increased our agony . . . towards dawn, shrieks and lamentations filled the streets.’ Hundreds of Greeks were forced from their houses and sought shelter in the town’s church. ‘The
bashibazouks
[irregulars] broke open the doors of the houses, attacked and stripped the men of their belongings, robbed the women of their trinkets, insulted the young maidens and drove them all out of the houses with clubs, and then proceeded to loot.’

Dr Charalampides was evicted from his home, getting badly wounded in the process. He made his way to the harbour, along with the other Greeks of the town, and sought passage to the nearby Greek island of Mytilene. When he finally reached safety, he asked himself why the great European powers – which he had long respected – had turned a blind eye to the crisis. ‘I have often wondered how it is that Europe, and especially England, which is so famous for her love of liberty, allows the half-civilised Turks to perpetrate these atrocities and this destruction.’ It was a question that was to be repeated many times over in the years to come.

The sack of Adramyttium was the start of a long summer of persecution for the Greek communities that had lived for centuries on Turkey’s Aegean coastline. Scores of other villages were attacked and their Greek inhabitants massacred or ordered to leave Turkey. As spring turned into summer, the attacks drew ever closer to Smyrna. By June, there were reports that Muslim
chettes
had landed in Old Phocaea, a mere twenty-five miles to the north of the city. The French archaeologists, Félix Sartiaux and Monsieur Manciet, were working on an excavation at the time of their arrival. ‘I shall never forget the day and night which followed,’ wrote Sartiaux, ‘the cries of the victims, the scream of the bullets, the torture and massacre of old men, women and children and the brutal expulsion of the population.’

The Levantine families in Bournabat read with consternation of the upheaval that was taking place to the north of Smyrna. Yet they remained surprisingly sanguine in the face of such violence. Although these events were occurring less than an hour’s ride from the city, they were confident that they would be safe. It was unthinkable that Rahmi Bey would tolerate the arrival of
chettes
anywhere near the vicinity of Smyrna.

Their complacency was to be rudely shattered one Saturday morning in late June. Edmund Giraud was sailing the
Helen May
across to Long Island when he got the shock of his life. ‘On entering the bay shortly before midday,’ he wrote, ‘a most astonishing sight came into view.’ The little Greek village on the island had been overrun: ‘[It was] in the possession of a number of armed Turkish irregulars gathered in groups and loitering about the sea front.’ On the other side of the bay – on land that he owned – there was an even more startling scene. ‘I could see the entire population of the village, about four thousand souls, all herded together within the barbed-wire fences of my hillside.’ When Edmund turned his gaze towards his house, he received the third unwelcome surprise of the morning. ‘My wife, with our Albanian guard, Izzet, was down below at the gate by the sea, keeping a number of more venturesome Turks from entering the property.’

Edmund landed and – in true patrician style – demanded to meet the leaders of the irregular forces. When brought to him, they were suddenly cowed by his imposing presence. ‘[They] seemed anxious to make a plausible story of what had occurred,’ informing him that they had been sent from the mainland to search for weapons. Edmund’s wife told a rather different story. Fourteen men from the village had been shot in cold blood; everyone else was being menaced by the Turks and in fear of their lives. All links with the mainland had been cut and even the daily food supply had been prevented from landing.

Edmund acted with characteristic energy. He immediately despatched the
Helen May
to the nearest telegraph office on the mainland and relayed to his friends in Smyrna what had happened. ‘As a result of this,’ he wrote, ‘the Greek Consular authorities sent several boatloads of bread the following day to feed the unfortunate villagers.’ Edmund also ordered the Turkish irregulars off his property, informing them that they were trespassers and would be treated as such. They meekly complied, moving themselves over to the other side of the little bay.

As soon as Edmund realised that he had temporarily defused the volatile situation, he returned to Smyrna and paid a visit to Rahmi Bey. When he told the governor what had occurred, Rahmi was extremely concerned and decided to visit the island in person. ‘He made arrangements to do so on a gunboat the following morning and invited two of my friends and me to accompany him.’

For such an event to have occurred in his fiefdom was indeed alarming. Rahmi had not sanctioned the landing of irregulars on Long Island and was furious at their intrusion. He resolved to calm the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As his gunboat headed out across the bay, Rahmi Bey noticed a large steamer approaching the island from the other direction. It was flying the Greek flag ‘[and] had been despatched from Mytilene by the Greek government to relieve the islanders, at the suggestion of the Consular Authorities in Smyrna’. When the Greek captain realised that Smyrna’s Turkish governor was about to land, he kept a discreet distance from the island.

As soon as Rahmi Bey was ashore, he was led up to the panoramic terrace in front of Edmund Giraud’s house. He was shown exactly where the irregulars had landed and was able to see the difficulty of the situation in which he found himself. There were still scores of terrified villagers crowded around Edmund’s property and they refused to leave until the irregulars had been sent away. ‘They clung to the walls of my home,’ wrote Edmund, ‘as if there was some saving virtue in the very stones they touched.’ Although Rahmi gave them his absolute assurance that they would not be molested and encouraged them all to go home, the fact that fourteen of their number had already been killed had caused them to lose all faith in the Turkish authorities.

In the end, Edmund himself managed to strike a deal that was acceptable to everyone. Those who wished to return to their homes would be able to do so with a guarantee of safety issued by Rahmi himself. He selected a guard of twelve gendarmes who were to be permanently based in the village. Those who wished to leave, meanwhile, would be allowed to board the Greek steamer and take all their possessions with them.

In the event, the villagers decided to leave en masse. Having heard dark stories of massacres up and down the coastline, they no longer felt safe and asked to be taken off that very day.

With no desire to witness the spectacle of their departure, Edmund and his wife set off into the bay on the
Helen May
. But later that evening, his little yacht passed quite close to the Greek steamer. ‘I never expect to see such a sight again,’ he wrote. ‘Herded about the ship in every corner available were donkeys, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs and poultry mixed up with crowds of men, women and children of all ages.’ The villagers had taken absolutely everything they possessed. ‘Baggage and litter of every description were piled up in all sorts of ways, as even doors and shutters had been wrenched from the houses and carried away. Quite a lot of this was hanging on the rigging Christmas-tree like.’ There were too many people to fit aboard the steamer so other craft had been requisitioned. ‘The steamer had about fifteen or more small boats in tow, all likewise full of baggage and with one or more human beings in charge.’

When the Greek villagers caught sight of the
Helen May
, they let out a great cheer. ‘The people must have been glad to get away and feel quite safe at last, for the shouts which greeted us as we passed afforded unmistakable evidence of this.’

Edmund had promised the villagers that he would continue to water their crops and harvest them when they were ready. This he duly did, selling them in Smyrna and then delivering the money to the islanders who had built new lives on Mytilene.

Although Edmund was glad that he had been able to evacuate the villagers in some semblance of order, he was desperately sorry to see them go. ‘I do not think that I shall ever forget the awful loneliness which brooded over the village after its evacuation by the inhabitants, about four thousand souls. A few stray dogs and cats were the only living creatures left behind and it was pitiful to hear the dogs howl at night.’

The evacuation of Long Island was one of the last upheavals in the long months of unrest. A visit to Smyrna by the Minister of the Interior defused the tension and the
chettes
’ reign of terror temporarily came to an end. But as the summer heat intensified, it became increasingly apparent that all was not well in the world of international politics. Turkey was about to become embroiled in the countdown to war – and the side that she would take in the forthcoming conflict would be decided not in Smyrna or in Constantinople, but in the English city of Newcastle, on the River Tyne.

Enemy Aliens