Children of War Read online

  My mother repeated her question, “Yes, but where can we go? What’s going to happen to us?”

  “We’ll go north,” he said, “From what I can gather from the imam, the Turks are gathering in places like Chania and Kissamos. If we move to the capital, Chania, or somewhere round there, at least we can sail to our homeland Anatolia from there – only if we don’t have any other choice, of course. Apparently, there are ships from Crete to Anatolia. If things calm down, we can stay there and maybe even find a school for Hassan.”

  The words “Anatolia” and “homeland” rushed through my head, blurring one after the other into distant place names I had heard before like “Konya” and “Amasya”. With all that I had taken in that evening, I was filled with apprehension, a fear of the unknown combined with the mental struggle of trying to grasp what was going on, let alone come to terms with it. I wondered if the nightmares that had haunted me years ago had somehow been a forewarning, nightmares in which the top level of the house was filled with coffins, some lying flat, some upright. I would wake up scared and sweating. People also called Anatolia “Asia Minor”. The simple fact that the mainland was worthy of two different names contributed to the sense of awe it conjured up in my mind.

  “Tell us about Anatolia, Dad!”

  He didn’t speak for a while and looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, my boy. I don’t know much about it either. Our ancestors came from there a long time ago. I was born here just like you. I’ve never been there. It’s supposed to be a rich country with fertile land, but they say the weather is very cold. That’s why people here say, ‘If you want to know what cold really is, go to Anatolia!’ If we have to leave the island, obviously that’s where we’ll go. After all, it is the land of our ancestors.”

  We were all agitated by what we had been told that night; that and the sight of guns. As for me, I didn’t want to see all Greeks in the same light and reminded myself about Manolis, who had taught me to read, write and do sums. If they were all the same he wouldn’t have done it. He would more likely have made fun of me. Then I thought about our neighbour, Big Hilmi, who lived over the road. Despite being blind from birth and quite an obese man, he always joined us on our trips to the edge of the brook and shared the wild plants and pungent herbs we gathered together. What would happen to him? He did have his own parents, but without us what could he do? How would he get around? What would become of seductive Photini, who met secretly with Mahmut in the hut? How strange that one day, as I had watched her with Mahmut, the feeling of excitement had unexpectedly introduced me to the joy of becoming a man. The Photini effect stayed with me for life; from then on it would always be sensuous women like her that attracted me.

  It was the olive grove that my father put up for sale first. The Greeks were reticent for a while. They weren’t in the mood for buying and wouldn’t meet the price. So much so that my father became increasingly gloomy and pessimistic. The overriding sense that we would be thrown from our home and country was growing, yet we couldn’t even save ourselves by selling the olive groves that had been handed down in our family for centuries. To survive in our new place we would need to buy a house and land; it’s not as if we could expect the people there to feed us in the name of God or the prophets. In the end, the olive grove went for way under its value and only due to the help of some Greeks who loved and respected our father; or maybe it was all of us they were thinking of. Aunt Evangeliki and her son Manolis spared no effort in helping us out with the sale, especially after they invited us all for dinner one night and heard the reasons for our fears from my father’s own lips. Throughout his whole life, my father reaped the rewards of being a good, decent man. He was respected by everyone who knew him. Mahmut overheard a group of Greeks discussing him amongst themselves one day. “How can anyone even think about harming a saint like Ali Agha?” they were saying. “How could anyone try to kick him out? It’s unbelievable!”

  Even the taverna owner Manusakis came to his aid, although my father had never once been his customer. It was Manusakis who pressurised Kiri Kosti, the owner of the neighbouring olive grove, to make the purchase. Kiri Kosti saw things very differently to my father: “Ali Agha, our Ali, people respect you here. No one’s going to hurt you or your family in our village, or on this island come to that. Come on! We’re neighbours, don’t spoil our special relationship! To this day we haven’t caused as much as one olive’s worth of bother to each other. In fact, it’s the opposite, we’ve always been a help to each other. Ali, please listen to me, don’t throw everything away.”

  Hearing this emotional plea, my father attempted to hide the tears spilling down his face on to his bushy moustache by wiping them away with his huge palms; but he was resolute in his decision. The olive grove went for next to nothing and soon afterwards, the house and lands came to a similar fate. Kiri Kosti bought the land and Manusakis bought the house for his widowed daughter. They told us time wasn’t a problem and that we could stay in the house for as long as it took us to prepare ourselves and start off on our journey.

  We bought an extra cart and two mules, but still we could only just fit ourselves and all our things on. My mother and sister sorted through our possessions and gathered together everything we would be able to take; my father and brother bundled them up. According to my father, we had a three-day journey ahead of us. We were to head north to the Kissamos area, which was more densely populated with Turks. We would be nearer to both the capital Chania and, although only by sea, to our motherland, Anatolia. My mother was often completely silent as she gathered together the pieces of our home. At other times she was convulsed with sobs. My father worked on the bundles silently, tying them up then taking an occasional break to pace up and down the house, his eyes misted over with sadness. Then, one evening, in the midst of our preparations, events unravelled in front of us like a piece of weaving snagged on a jagged edge, turning this festering tragedy into a perpetual, bitter scar. We were unaware. There was no way we could have known. Nobody could have known.

  Mahmut had gone for a quick stroll around the village that evening, just before the time we always had dinner. The table was prepared but Mahmut still hadn’t arrived. For the first time in my lifetime, we had to wait before dinner. One of the most important rules of the house was that we all sat down to dinner together at the appointed time. How could my brother have ignored this rule, especially at a time when our whole world was being turned upside down and our parents were distraught with grief? We sat without eating as the time grew later and later. Unable to bear it, my father went out to look for him in the village. He asked everyone he knew along the way, but no one had seen him. We had waited silently at first, somewhat irritated; but the atmosphere changed to one of fear and apprehension. Nazire and I huddled into a corner. My parents remained on their chairs, sitting silently with their eyes fixed on the ground. I drifted off to sleep.

  It was daylight when I was woken up by the sound of repeated knocking on the door. Before I had even lifted my head from Nazire’s lap, my father was at the door, pulling at the wooden support behind to open it. A voice was shouting, “Open the door, Ali Agha! It’s me, Kosti!”

  Our old neighbour, Kiri Kosti, who had bought the land, stood in the doorway, his face ashen. He was suddenly lost for words. My anxious father had a startled look in his eyes, “What is it, Kosti? Have you seen our Mahmut?”

  Kiri Kosti was a calm man but now his voice was shaking. “Your boy… your child…”

  A picture of that tragic morning is imprinted on my mind; a picture of my father’s huge hands clutching the shirt of Kiri Kosti while the screams of my mother and sister filled the air. On the table in front of the huge stove by the entrance, the food lay on plates, untouched as we had left it. The family tradition of eating the evening meal together had been shattered into tiny pieces, taking with it the life of a handsome young man, my brother.

  One Friday morning as the sun was rising, we set off on our journey. Along with our Greek neighbours,
a group of Turks who were determined to stay on in the village came to see us off. Big Hilmi’s mother was there, holding him by the hand. The men hugged my father and my mother cried constantly as she entrusted the keeping of Mahmut’s grave to Aunt Evangeliki. “My Evangeliki, I know I’ve nothing to worry about with you. Please send your Manolis to visit the grave from time to time, even if he can’t make it often. Let him carry out my wish in memory of the fact that he was born in my hands.”

  “I wish you a safe journey!” implored Aunt Evangeliki. “I hope you manage to set up a good home where you’re going. If you ever meet anyone who is coming this way, please tell them to pass on news of how you’re getting on.”

  My mother hugged Aunt Evangeliki again for the last time, before climbing into the front cart next to my father. Still crying, she sang the words of a folk song, bringing tears to the eyes of all those who had come to see us off:

  Born on this land where I belong

  The hand of fate now moves me on

  To end my years on foreign land

  A thought that I cannot bear

  As the carts began to move, Aunt Evangeliki broke away from the hold of her son Manolis, waving her arms in the air and crying out to console my mother, “Be patient, Zeynep! The time will come when we ordinary folk will come to find each other and be together again!”

  As I sit writing this twenty years after leaving Crete, thinking back to the apprehension of a young boy sat in the cart, watching the mules pull us away to unknown, faraway places, the words come alive once more in my mind, and I see Aunt Evangeliki’s slender, sun-kissed face full of hope.

  “The time will come when we ordinary folk will come to find each other and be together again!”

  Neither the profiteering warmongers, the religious men who stupidly supported them, or the politicians could bring us back together. In fact, the opposite became true; we became further apart than ever. Evangeliki, whose age I can only guess by the fact that I called her aunt way back then, must have long since migrated from our earth before seeing the reunion she dreamt of. It won’t be long before I follow her, and I can still see no reunion ahead. I don’t even think the next few generations will see it. But the important thing is that a Greek woman from a Cretan village, who came from a family where the only person who could read and write was her son, imagined that the day of this reunion would arrive, enough to cry it out in the middle of our tiny community.

  I was in the first cart; my mother and father sat at the front and I sat behind, with my back leaning against the bundles and my legs dangling over the edge. In the cart just behind were my sister Nazire and brother-in-law Arif. In a third cart sat our close family friends, the black couple Mullah Mavruk and his wife, Cemile. They had no children and had decided to come with us. They too had picked up on the scent of advancing disaster, had spoken to my father and had made their own preparations to join our convoy. We had stayed in the village for a further two months after Mahmut’s body was brought to the house. Manusakis, the taverna owner who had bought the house, told my father we could remain in the house for as long as the period of mourning lasted. While Imam Sherif Efendi was preparing Mahmut’s corpse, he noticed a suspicious purple mark and a fine line of blood on his left breast. At a closer glance, he saw that a long spike had been thrust into his chest. To put it plainly, my brother was killed by a long spike pushed into his body as far as his heart. But who would do such a thing? Why, and how? That bit we couldn’t figure out. I was a child and I had lost a brother I loved and admired, but for my parents it was worse; for them it was a double blow. Not only were they being torn from their roots, but they had also lost their eldest son, and in such a way that they would never be able to forget.

  Forty days after the terrible event, my parents accepted Arif as a groom and as a son, partly for the sake of Nazire and partly because of the extra physical strength he would add to the family. He had no one else anyway. The village imam performed the wedding ceremony and Arif moved in with us until it was time to go. The marriage would never have taken place so quickly if it hadn’t been for the need to flee and the raw, bitter wound left by Mahmut’s murder being inflicted on us in quick succession. No doubt Nazire would have been happier if the faces of my parents had not been stoically withdrawn and on the verge of tears at the wedding. But even despite the sadness that overshadowed the occasion, my sister acquired a distinct fresh glow that wasn’t there before. Her life would soon be completely overtaken by the struggle to survive.

  __________

  * Razing of Kandanos: In 1941, 180 villagers and the homes and livestock of the entire village of Kandanos were decimated by Nazi troops. This was in retaliation against the local resistance movement, which despite being untrained and poorly armed, fought Nazi paratroopers, holding up the German invasion for two days.

  * The Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869: The third in a series of [Christian] Cretan revolts against Ottoman rule. Locals set up regional revolutionary assemblies and petitioned the Ottoman sultan and foreign consuls in Chania for reforms.

  3

  Our convoy of three carts had only been on the road about half an hour when five Greeks, armed and on horseback, cut in front of us.

  “Ali Agha!” one of them shouted, pointing his gun towards the sky.

  “What’s this, an imperial procession? There’s something you need to know. Your people aren’t at Kissamos,* they’re gathering not far from here, in Kandanos.† Kissamos is a long way and Kandanos is nearby. If you want to get to your people in one piece, turn your cart towards Kandanos.”

  They disappeared as quickly as they had come. We were all shocked. They not only knew my father’s name but also where we were going. My father shared his thoughts with us all: “All the signs point towards a huge storm. Those horse riders didn’t kill us, but they could have. Kandanos is about an hour away instead of a three-day journey – let’s go and see what’s going on. May God help us!”

  So we changed direction and travelled for another hour, reaching Kandanos before midday. It wouldn’t be long before we would find ourselves wishing we had stayed to be slaughtered in our own village. Kandanos left us fatherless and destitute.

  At the border of Kandanos, it was Turkish guns that stopped us… Who were we? Where had we come from? They needed weapons for defence, did we have any? My father showed them the rifle he had stuck between two bundles and the revolver in his belt. They rode in front of us, showing us the way, then got us to close off one of the roads into the town with our carts – we weren’t to allow anyone in but Turks. Mullah Mavruk had brought along a gun left to him by his father, but he was afraid of guns and had never used one, so it was given to Arif. Neither Mullah Mavruk’s family nor mine could understand or accept the barbarity of having to kill to live or live to kill. It was not something we associated with the human race. We were all against killing and death.

  As soon as we entered the town, we realised there were only Turks living there. Along with others like us who had fled from the surrounding villages we were altogether around 750 to 800 people. The new arrivals were huddled in groups of makeshift shelters around the village, together with their animals and whatever belongings they had been able to bring with them. There had been twenty-five Greek families living alongside the Turks, but hearing news of the uprising, they had moved to areas where there were more Greeks. They had uprooted their entire households just to move a few miles within the same border. That just about summed up the desperate situation; first it was Venizelos shrieking “Turks out!” at us, then it was his armed supporters, ready to kill us without batting an eyelid. The ground was being prepared for an attack. Although I don’t know why I’m saying “prepared”… Considering that our worldly possessions had been sold for next to nothing, and sometimes literally for nothing, and that we were as good as driven from our homes: that was clear proof that their plan to get rid of us was already in motion.

  As we rushed to lay down blankets and mats to set up camp next to our
carts and find a place for our mules under the nearby trees, we were approached by a short man, who introduced himself as Hassan, commonly known as “Daggerlad”. He told us that he had been given the nickname due to his preference for using the all-purpose Cretan dagger over a gun, then went on to tell us about Kandanos and the Turks that had gathered there.

  “I’m a local,” he said. “There are about 800 people here, including those like you who’ve fled from the surrounding villages. Now let me tell you something else – a Greek officer called Vassos has sent 17,000 soldiers from Greece to join up with the armed rebels on Crete. Some of them are on their way here now.”

  “Don’t say that, for God’s sake!” said my father, incredulous, “Daggerlad, are you making this up? What are we going to do?”

  With a manner noticeably sterner and more hardbitten than my father, Daggerlad replied knowingly, “There’s nothing we can do now, Agha. Keep on as you are, and make sure you don’t go anywhere without a gun!”

  “I’m sure the Padishah Efendi in Constantinople* will come to our rescue,” my father insisted.

  “Agha, I think he’s a bit busy at the moment; there’s not a whisper from that quarter.”

  We were all taken aback by this reply. The Padishah was the greatest power – he wouldn’t leave our people like this. Yet here was this slip of a man with two daggers stuck in his belt saying all manner of things about the Padishah Efendi! We were astounded.

  Daggerlad was a shrewd character and evidently read our thoughts from the expressions on our faces: “Not long ago, I thought of heading to Chania. I stayed only two days, and that was hard enough. There’s no relief for people there either. Apparently, the reason the Greeks are getting excited is that the Padishah Efendi’s navy is weak. That’s what they say. How should I know? When the time comes, I’ll get these things out of my belt. This dagger is my sweetheart. I only use it in hand-to-hand fighting. Here’s a small slim dagger as well. Before the shooters can even point their rifles, I’ve already jumped in and finished the job! Well. Enough talking. I’ve told you as much as I know. From now on, we’ve got our work cut out! All right, now look after yourselves.”