by Defne Suman
The Copper-Coloured Cloud
Adriana’s mother, the washerwoman Sofia, shook her head as she gathered in her laundry from the line. The sheets she’d scrubbed with soap and bluing had suddenly turned black. Soot was raining from the sky.
‘Adriana, kori mou, you’ll have to wash these again tomorrow, endaksi? They’re covered in soot – I don’t understand why.’
Adriana nodded from her chair in the corner of her father’s cabbage patch. Sofia didn’t want to add to her daughter’s troubles that evening. Adriana was very sad. Before daybreak that morning, Minas had snuck onto an American ship transporting tobacco to Alexandria and escaped. Protestant missionary friends who’d given him American comic books as well as other books to read had saved his life.
The previous day, word had spread that the Turks were rounding up all Greek males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who were still in the city and taking them as prisoners of war. Rumour had it that several had already been hunted down in the basements and attics of their mothers’ houses where they’d been hiding.
Minas didn’t wait to find out whether the rumours were true or not. He went straight to the cinema where some Americans had set up camp; he was already known there because he’d been to one of their missionary meetings, and that really paid off now. If he converted to the Protestant faith, a tall man with a red moustache told him, they would send him to university in America. The man didn’t drag his feet: that morning, before dawn, he’d taken Minas to the port. Following an argument with the ship’s captain, who was unhappy at being roused from his sleep, Minas was taken down to the hold and hidden behind crates full of tobacco.
Minas hadn’t had time to say goodbye to Adriana, but he wrote a note while he was in the hold and pressed it into the hand of an Italian sailor who was loading more cargo onto the ship. The sailor, may God bless him, immediately stopped what he was doing and went off to find Adriana at the address Minas had directed him to.
Panagiota, sitting beside Adriana in the cabbage patch, was no longer praying that Stavros would return. The last Greek ship evacuating soldiers had left the harbour. If Stavros came back, he’d be taken prisoner, and then who knew where he’d be sent, what suffering and torture he’d be subjected to. It was much, much better to die a hero on the battlefield than to be taken prisoner. She was consumed with fear and regret; her heart felt like it was in a clamp, being squeezed ever more tightly. She should have escaped to Chios five days ago, on the fishing boat Pavlo had arranged, and saved herself and her parents. There was no knowing now whether they would live or die.
From the quay came a roar like a wild animal dying in agony.
‘Panagiota mou, it’s late,’ Sofia called out from over by the washing. ‘You should go home now. Your mother and father will be worried.’ Hearing machine gun-fire in the distance, she crossed herself three times. It was rumoured that Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostomos had been flayed. Her fingers trembled as she collected the clothes pegs.
‘I’m waiting for my father, Auntie Sofia. He doesn’t want me to be out on the streets by myself. He’s gone to Uncle Petro’s and will stop by for me on his way home.’
Sofia raised her head and looked at the darkening evening sky. A copper-coloured cloud appeared from the direction of Basmane.
Grocer Akis and the other men of the neighbourhood were sitting in Warehouseman Petro’s garden, which was near Adriana’s house. They were discussing what to do. They too saw the reddish cloud above the city.
‘The quay is so packed that if you dropped a needle it wouldn’t hit the ground,’ Petro said. ‘There are thousands of people on barges lined up alongside the dock. White-bearded old men and grandmothers are sleeping on the streets – homeless, helpless, still waiting for boats to come from Greece. The boats came, yes, but who did they take? Only those working for the commander of the occupying forces and the Greek central bank, along with strongboxes of money. There are swollen corpses floating in the water now, and just a couple of steps away, mothers are giving birth. There are outbreaks of cholera and typhus. Things are so desperate, we shouldn’t just be thinking of ourselves – we should go down there and help, take in a family each, feed them bread and soup.’
‘My wife has been feeding two families in our garden for a week,’ said Adriana’s father. He was known as Gypsy Mimiko because he was tall and lean, with straight black hair and dark skin. ‘They walked all the way from Manisa on bare feet. Children, elderly grandmothers… We share our bread with them.’
‘Good for you, Mimiko! And bravo to Kyra Sofia. We should all be following your example.’
The men pivoted in their chairs and looked at him with admiration.
Gypsy Mimiko turned his thin face to the ground. He looked a bit like a pigeon, with his small head and his beaky nose that jutted straight out from his forehead. Of all the men there, his was the poorest family, and the biggest, with eight children. He played a new instrument called the bouzouki in taverns and his wife Sofia took in washing. Even so, they were the only ones who’d thought to open up their home to the destitute refugees.
‘They cook shish kebab and beans right in front of those poor wretches and then ask for money. That is inhumane!’ grumbled the ironmonger Androulis. ‘I saw them this morning when I went down to the quay. Barbers have set up chairs and are giving shaves in the middle of the street.’
Like it or not, the mention of villagers getting shaved in the open air brought to the men’s minds the image of their beloved Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostomos, forced into a barber’s apron in Konak and then having his beard ripped off and his eyes gouged out.
Akis’s heart was as heavy as an ingot.
‘They pulled the Armenians out of their homes and slit their throats. They raped all the girls and women.’
Mimiko’s yellowish face went even paler. He had five daughters.
Seeing him shake, Akis placed a hand on his shoulder and said in a voice which was unconvincing even to himself, ‘They will not touch us, Mimiko, my friend. The Armenians opened fire on Turkish soldiers from the Church of St Stepanos. That was their punishment. We are sitting quietly in our homes. The danger has passed. We have to be smart, get reaccustomed to Turkish rule and not be taken in by the tricks of an adventurer like Venizelos. The European newspapers are all saying this.’
He glanced round Petro’s garden for a newspaper, as if there were any among them who could understand a French newspaper. Seeing that no one, including himself, was comforted by his words, he got up.
‘Come, gentlemen, let us get to our homes. Our women and daughters should not be left by themselves. We will meet again tomorrow morning and talk.’
They all rose and began making their way back to their homes in the streets around the square. The evening had turned purple. Venus appeared then disappeared in the sky of the setting sun. Akis and Mimiko followed the wall and turned into their small neighbourhood square. It was usually full of people at this time of the evening, but tonight it was completely empty, blanketed in unaccustomed silence. The bakery was still baking bread, but the coffeehouse was closed, the table and chairs under its arbour upturned.
Mimiko bought five loaves of bread to feed the refugees in his garden as well as his large family. Tearing off the heel of one, he handed it to Akis. Steam spiralled up from the soft white dough. As he chewed the bread, Akis raised his head to the twilight sky and thought for a moment that everything would again be as before. The reddish cloud over Basmane seemed to have got closer.
‘Kyr Akis,’ Gypsy Mimiko said, speaking in a low voice, as if he was afraid of the grocer, who was both respected by everyone in the neighbourhood and famous for his burly frame and his roar. ‘You know best, of course, but I say let’s hide our daughters before the gangs come to ransack our neighbourhood. Let’s not let what happened to the Armenians happen to us. They broke down their doors and forced their way in at night while everyone was sleeping.’
Akis scratched his black beard. He hadn’
t shaved in four days. He was planning to go down to Fasoula in the morning and get a shave, if he could find an open barber’s shop.
‘Do you have any suggestions?’
‘I heard from the refugees that people are hiding their daughters in the tombs at the Daragaci graveyard. The bandits, gangs and soldiers are apparently afraid of going into the Greek Cemetery.’
‘They’re putting their daughters in graves? Ti les vre, Mimiko? What are you saying? Have we sunk so low? This is what war does, turns human beings into monsters.’
When they arrived at Mimiko’s house on Katipzade Street, they could hear gunshots in the distance. As the two men passed through the garden gate, they were both thinking the same thing – which was why they were reluctant to look at each other. If the sound was coming from far away, it meant it wasn’t their family but some other family. Thanks be to God.
They found Adriana, Panagiota and the other children sitting at the table under the mulberry tree eating olives and growler fish. The barefooted refugee children had adjusted to their new home, having been there a week now, and one had even crawled into Adriana’s lap. In the light cast by the lamp that was hanging from one of the mulberry branches, Mimiko saw that his daughter’s eyes were red from crying. Beside Adriana sat Tasoula, one size smaller; across from them were the twin girls, and four-year-old Irini was on Sofia’s lap.
The boys were ashen-faced; they too had heard the rumour that Greek males would be taken as prisoners of war. In the eyes of the Turks, they were all traitors who had taken up arms against their country. But Mimiko’s sons hadn’t gone to war; they’d never even held a gun in their hands. God willing, this was only a rumour. The youngest boy had just turned fifteen; the eldest, Aristo, was twenty-one and last Easter had got engaged to a girl from Agios Voukolos. There was still room for new dreams. There had to be.
Hadn’t the European newspaper written that the danger had passed, warning people not to fall for the tricks of ridiculous politicians again? God forbid! thought Gypsy Mimiko. They would never trust outsiders again; they’d seen how they all just packed up and left. Mimiko and his friends were the ones who’d stayed, he thought bitterly, and now they were considered the traitors. He tried not to think about the Metropolitan Bishop, for fear of weeping in front of his children. Despite the urging of the Europeans, the man had not run away but had stayed in Smyrna to protect his community.
Sofia’s hands were trembling as she cut the melon.
‘I’ll come again tomorrow,’ said Panagiota at the gate, hugging her friend. Then she turned anxiously to her father. ‘I can come, can’t I, Papa? Will you walk me here again?’
Akis nodded. During these sad, tense days, it was better that Katina and Panagiota spent their time in busy households; he felt easier taking them to a friend’s house than leaving the two of them on their own in the house on Menekse Street. They turned into the square. Katina had joined the women looking after Auntie Rozi at her home next to the coffeehouse, and as Akis and Panagiota passed, they picked her up.
When they got home, Panagiota and Katina set the table. They ate, dipping the bread Akis had brought from the bakery into the juice of the beans cooked at noon. None of them had any appetite and no one felt like talking.
‘I saw a red cloud over Basmane,’ said Katina, her eye on a stray piece of lace hanging off the edge of the couch in front of the bay window.
‘I saw it too. Auntie Sofia said soot had rained down on all her washing.’
The two of them turned and looked at Akis, thinking he might be able to explain the cloud and the soot. Seeing his daughter’s wan face, Mimiko’s advice came to the grocer’s mind. So the refugees were hiding their daughters in the cemetery at Daragaci, huh? He’d have to bring this up with Katina when they went to bed. Or would that be frightening the poor woman for no reason?
With nothing else to do, they went to bed early. Perhaps sleep would ease the weight of the fear pressing on their hearts, at least a little bit.
Fire
Midwife Meline’s house on Nevres Street was the first to burn. Thank goodness that when the flames raced through the wooden door, already smashed open by rampaging soldiers, and hungrily attacked the wooden staircase, nobody was at home. After that, fires broke out simultaneously at different spots in the streets around the Church of St Stepanos, bursting into flames at the same moment, like fireworks being set off. People who’d been hiding in attics, cellars and basement apartments ran screaming into the streets like rats leaving a sinking ship. Some of them had their throats slit right there; some managed to disappear among the European groups protected by foreign sailors and got down to the quay; some died halfway there.
Avinash, who’d been dozing on a sofa on the top-secret floor of the British Consulate reserved for the Queen’s spies, opened his eyes. The shouts and yells of the hundred thousand people massed on the quay had made it almost impossible to sleep, but he must have nodded off for a couple of minutes. From behind the closed shutters he tried to work out what he was hearing, and smelling. Someone was screaming, ‘Fire!’ He opened one of the shutters. The roaring of the crowd intensified. The wind had changed direction and gathered force; it was now blowing from the hills to the sea. If a fire had broken out in the upper neighbourhoods, it would take less than fifteen minutes for the flames to reach the hundred thousand on the quay.
Glancing up, he saw that the consulate employees working in the building next door had gone out onto their roof to observe the fire. Below the window, a young girl turned to the family she was dragging along with her and shouted, ‘We’re all going to die! They’re going to burn us all to death.’
Avinash flew outside. Hurrying past the crying, shouting people trying to climb over the ornamental wrought-iron gate of the consulate, he ran into Ingiliz Iskelesi Avenue. The crowds camped on the waterfront were staring at the hills in despair, but the Turkish cavalry holding the southern and northern ends of the harbour weren’t letting anyone through; there was no way they could escape. He turned around and without slowing his pace ran up Sari Street and then Maden Street, past the Italian Girls’ School with its courtyard full of people whose eyes were popping with fear, and on to Fasoula Avenue.
Yakoumi’s Pharmacy had been ransacked. When Avinash saw that the front window had been smashed to pieces, he came to a standstill; he felt as if he’d been stabbed in the side. The shop was empty. Bottles, tubes, needles and medicinal powders were scattered everywhere. For a moment Avinash considered going in through the broken-down door and grabbing a bottle of the rose oil that the elderly pharmacist guarded with his life, but time was short and his sensitive nose told him that all the bottles of oil had been smashed long ago. Taking a deep breath, he carried on running.
The fire was roaring now, as if it were a river rushing towards the sea. Avinash thought he heard a church bell ring in the distance, then something collapsing with a resounding crash. With all its might, the wind was blowing the flames from the hills to the sea; the blaze was raging through the Greek and European neighbourhoods. The glass windows of some of the fashionable shops on Fasoula had been shattered and their contents raided. The looters had strewn whatever they considered to be worthless across the glass-splattered pavement – toys, dresses, rolls of fabric, rugs, books, all smeared with blood. Avinash ran on, not looking, not thinking; numb.
The roar from the quay, as if in competition with the roar of the fire, was getting louder and louder. ‘Kegomaste! Kegomaste! We’re burning up!’
He was drenched in sweat. The city had become a huge oven. The streets were deserted and shuttered, but the courtyards of the schools and churches were packed with evacuees. Avinash was breathing steadily now as he ran, but suddenly he couldn’t decide which way to go.
He saw old grannies being carried on the backs of young men, young girls with chic leather suitcases in their arms, sewing machines being shouldered, women dressed only in thin nightgowns but with fancy feathered hats on their heads. These were not refuge
es who’d walked barefoot and bare-headed all the way from their villages; these were residents of the city who’d fled into the streets as flames engulfed their houses. Neighbourhood squares that connected several streets were littered with tables, stools, mandolins, sieves, coffee grinders, pots, pans and much else besides.
When he finally got to Vasili Street, he was as wet as if he’d been swimming in the sea. He found Edith in the garden. She had plaited her hair and wound the plaits around her head. She was applying vinegar compresses to the forehead of a young girl lying on a makeshift mattress. The whole garden, even the pool, was filled with sitting, crying, moaning people. As yet they were unaware of the fire. Standing at Edith’s side was a tall man in baggy trousers holding a gas lamp; presumably the girl’s father. When Edith looked up from where she was kneeling, the lamplight was in her eyes and at first she couldn’t make out Avinash (or at least that’s what Avinash hoped). ‘What do you want?’ she asked in a cold, harsh voice. The black circles under her eyes were a sign that she’d not slept for several nights.
There was no time to argue. Avinash grabbed her arm, pulled her up from the ground and dragged her towards the house. ‘Quick, gather up anything of value. You must be really quick. We’re leaving – they’re burning down the city.’
Edith was momentarily dumbstruck. But what she saw in her lover’s face made her turn and run up the stairs. Avinash followed. While she was filling a suitcase with jewellery and clothes, Avinash was drawn to her library. Edith had many valuable books, bound in leather and with their titles embossed in gold. Russian and French classics, American literature… He took a few in his hands, then put them down again. He was in no state to carry books on his back.
