- I -
I am finally in Iraklion on Crete, November 21st, 2011. It's been years in planning; what a dream, visiting Crete-the land of my people; where my great grandparents lived in a small village at the outskirts of Xania, where my grandparents were born. They were forced to leave their homeland at the turn of their second decades to find a new home across “The Water”. That’s what Turks and Greeks call the Aegean; The Water, over the ownership of which they constantly fight. I should say the Turkish and Greek governments, not the people. I am yet to learn in a few days that the only son of my hostess (who invited me to come to Crete to teach) claims "Aegean belongs only to its fish!" I will smile with a big smile thinking "if he is after my own heart, his parents probably are, too". This will become the first step to our political camaraderie that will sprinkle warmth and ease into my heart. I hope and want to believe that these people probably are not buying the artificially generated Turkish/Greek conflict, which only serves the political agenda of the rulers of both countries, who don’t necessarily serve their people’s best interest.
I am dying to discover this island, the land of my people, which I always had a subtle feeling of ownership, just romantically but persistently, all my life. The bright sun blinds my eyes for a moment as I walk out of the terminal, just as I had read about, just as I had expected: "There is nowhere on earth that sun is brighter than on Crete." I smile. I walk amid the gay colors and bright Cretan sun wondering if that was the reason why my grandmother's skin was all too wrinkled as long as I had known her. Little did I know I would see many a women just like my grandmother during the week to follow. And many more things will make me think "No wonder my grandmother didn't look like anybody in Turkey , but looks like many women on Crete ". I may, genetically, be anywhere from 50-100% Cretan Greek after all!
Both sets of my grandparents came from Crete at the turn of the 20th century. The story goes, their Orthodox Greek neighbors had warned them, the Muslim "Turkos", of the upcoming planned massacre by the Greek nationalists, in the year 1913. Later, during my young adulthood after developing my own interpretation of the world, I would come to appreciate that they had all the right to rise up to the centuries-long invasion of their land by the Ottomans, which never had been the position of my grandparents, of course. The Greek neighbors didn't want their Turko friends get killed. Good people. And the Turkos did leave their land, their home, their olive orchards, and part of themselves behind and got on the boats, went to Anatolia; my mother's side to northern Aegean coast, and father's side to Izmir or Smyrna, for some reason I find the latter much more poetic. 1913 was the year, one of the first waves of Cretans coming to Turkey
I am yet to learn that whenever a Cretan hears this brief story of mine, they will utter, in a mixture of whisper and scream with hands lightly slapping both cheeks "ah, Catastrophie!" with the accent on the last syllable. And their faces will get clouded with sadness and feelings of misery, and a bit of guilt, perhaps… I wonder. Is it the kind of guilt I feel, when Zolton, my 75 year-old Hungarian neighbor tells me “Ottoman Empire invaded Hungary for 2 centuries, you know.” We laugh with my “Zolton, I so apologize for that, but you know, had I lived in those days, I would’ve definitely taken you guys’ side.” He continues chuckling “But, you know, Ottomans treated us much better than Austrians, and they brought culture to Hungary and taught us how to drink Turkish coffee.” This ritual between Zolton and I makes me wonder if Cretans feel responsible for what humanity did to humanity just as i feel ashamed of what the Ottomans did to the peoples of the lands they invaded for centuries. I haven't seen these, yet, those are going to be the experiences of the coming days.
Catastrophy indeed, and not only for those who were shamefully displaced from their motherland, but also for those natives who remained. America helped me understand better what a curtain of shame must have cloaked Izmir, perhaps without the awareness of most of Izmirites with its desolate churches, minority families forced to be isolated from the rest of their communities, my friend Aaron telling me how discriminated against he felt as an Izmirite Jew even in the best school of town, with poor Jews being forced to emigrate to Israel after World War II, on and on... Crete is no different. It doesn't have a functioning mosque any more, nor a Jewish temple. The first 50 years of the last century unfortunately brought such ethnic cleansing and purification to all territories around The Water, it is heartbreaking. I am, yet to discover after this trip, through reading a book about this population exchange that Greeks as far into the east of Ankara were pulled out of their villages and shipped to Greece
Discrimination has been something I heard from my grandparents’ generation over and over again. That was probably at least, one of the reasons why my parents’ generation continued intermarrying with other Cretans staying away from the native Turks. Even I, experienced an event as a young child that had the seeds of potential discrimination: I remember using "kupa" instead of "bardak" to refer to "glass" in school. Well, the kids did not know that word and made fun of me really bad. I would learn later, that was a Cretan word used in my home instead of the Turkish “bardak”. I remember vividly the thought "I need to pay attention to what is Turkish and what is Cretan that I learn at home, otherwise these kids will make me miserable." shaking with fear. Of course that was nothing compared to my grandfather being slapped on his face before his friends by his lieutenant during his military duty due to his broken Turkish. It was nothing compared to Anatolian Greeks being called "The seed of Turkos" in a derogatory manner and the same happening for Cretan Turks on Anatolia . The physical and emotional pain they must have endured…
No comments:
Post a Comment