Flames in the sky, someone staggering out of a building, burning. Not a man or a woman now, just a heap burning after walking hundreds of miles to get here, walking all those years just to get here of all places, but then you couldn’t see that far really, not here, you couldn’t see more than ten yards but of course you didn’t have to, here the universe was ten yards wide and there was nothing more to see after that.
Stern picked up the knife, Joe watched him do it. He watched him take the little girl by her hair and pull back her head. He saw the thin white neck.
The wet knife clattered on the stones beside him and this time he didn’t look up. This time he didn’t want to see Stern’s eyes.
Not all the city was burning. Neither the Turkish Quarter nor the Standard Oil enclave was touched by the fire, which the Turks claimed later had been started by the retreating Christian minorities. But the American government argued that the fire was an accident, since the English insurance policies held by American tobacco merchants in Smyrna didn’t cover acts of war.
From the quay overloaded little boats carried Greek and Armenian refugees out to the foreign warships that were there to protect and evacuate their nationals, but not authorized to evacuate anyone else lest the Turks be offended. When they came alongside the English warships and threw ropes over the rails, the ropes were cut. Soon the few boats had swamped and sunk.
People were pushed off the quay and drowned. Others jumped in to commit suicide. Still others swam out to the warships.
The English poured scalding water on the swimmers.
The Italians, anchored much farther out, took on board anyone who could swim that far.
The French launches coming into the quay took on board anyone who could say in French, no matter how badly, I’m French, I lost my papers in the fire. Soon groups of children were huddled around Armenian teachers on the quay learning this magical phrase.
The captain of an American destroyer turned away children at the quay, shouting Only Americans.
A small Armenian girl from the interior heard the first English words of her life while swimming beside the HMS Iron Duke.
NO NO NO.
From the decks of the warships the foreign sailors watched the massacre through binoculars and took pictures. The navy bands played late and phonographs were set up on the ships and aimed at the quay. Caruso sang from Pagliacci all night across a harbor filled with bloated corpses. An admiral going to dine on another ship was late because a woman’s body fouled his propeller.
At night the glow of the fire could be seen fifty miles away. During the day the smoke was a vast mountain range that could be seen two hundred miles away.
While the half-million refugees went on dying on the quay and in the water, American and English freighters went on shipping tobacco out of Smyrna. Other American ships waited to be loaded with figs.
A Japanese freighter arrived in Piraeus packed with refugees, having thrown all its cargo overboard in order to carry more. An American freighter arriving in Piraeus with some refugees was asked to go back for another load, but the captain said his cargo of figs was overdue in New York.
And on the Greek island of Lesbos, the strangest admiral in history was about to launch his fleet.
He had arrived in Smyrna only two weeks before the Turks marched into the city, a Methodist minister from upstate New York who came to work in the YMCA. When the massacre began both his superiors were on vacation so he went to the Italian consul, in the name of the YMCA, and persuaded him to commandeer an Italian freighter in the harbor to carry refugees to Lesbos. He went with the freighter, hoping to bring it back, and in Lesbos found twenty empty transport ships which had been used to evacuate the Greek army from the mainland. He cabled Athens that the ships had to be sent at once to evacuate refugees from Smyrna, signing the cable ASA JENNINGS, AMERICAN CITIZEN.
The reply came in a few minutes.
WHO OR WHAT IS ASA JENNINGS?
He answered that he was the chairman of the American Relief Committee in Lesbos, not adding that he was the only American on the island and that there was no such thing as a relief committee of any kind.
The next reply was longer in coming. It asked whether American warships would defend the transports if the Turks tried to seize them.
It was now September 23, exactly two weeks after the Turkish army had entered Smyrna. The Turks had said that all refugees had to be out of Smyrna by October 1.
Jennings had been sending in code. On that Saturday afternoon he cabled an ultimatum to Athens. He said, falsely, that the American navy had guaranteed protection. Falsely, that the Turkish authorities were in agreement. Lastly, that if the Greek government didn’t release the ships at once he would send the same cable uncoded, so that Athens would stand accused of refusing to save Greek and Armenian refugees who faced death within the week.
He sent the cable at four o’clock in the afternoon and demanded a reply within two hours. A few minutes before six it came.
ALL SHIPS IN AEGEAN PLACED UNDER YOUR COMMAND TO REMOVE REFUGEES FROM SMYRNA.
An unknown man who was the boys’ work secretary of the YMCA in Smyrna had been made the commander of the entire Greek fleet.
Jennings sailed twice and brought back fifty-eight thousand refugees. The English and American fleets also began to evacuate refugees and by October 1 two hundred thousand had been taken away. By the end of the year nearly one million refugees had left Turkey for Greece bringing epidemics of typhus and malaria, trachoma and smallpox.
The estimate of deaths in Smyrna was one hundred thousand.
Or as the American consul in Smyrna said, The one impression I brought away from there was utter shame in belonging to the human race.
Or as an American schoolteacher in Smyrna said, Some people here were guilty of unauthorized acts of humanity.
Or as Hitler said a few days before his panzer divisions stormed into Poland to begin a war, Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? The world believes in success alone.
Stern eventually found them a way out. They set sail at night in a small boat, Sivi and Theresa uneasily asleep in the bunks below, fitfully stirred by their own mutterings, Stern and O’Sullivan Beare slumped on deck against the cabin, Haj Harun in the bow where he could keep a steady lookout on the calm sea.
The few waves rose and fell quietly and only one of the travelers was awake that night and still awake at dawn, untroubled by the dreams that haunted his companions. For unlike them he was going home and his home never changed.
They might weave slaughter in the streets but what was that in the end? The other weaving also never ceased, the weaving of life, and when they burned one city another was raised on the ruins. The mountain only grew higher and towered ever more majestically above the plains and the wastes and the deserts.
Haj Harun looked down at his birthmark. It was faded now and indistinct, once more an obscure tracing of darkness and light and shifting patterns, a map without boundaries. He gazed back at the two men sleeping on the deck. He listened to the agonized sounds from below and shook his head sadly.
Why didn’t they understand?
It was so clear.
Why couldn’t they see it?
In the early gray light he turned to face east, happy and more. He adjusted his helmet, carefully he straightened his cloak. Any moment now it would appear and he wanted to be ready, to be worthy of that glorious sight.
Solemnly he waited. Proudly he searched the horizon for a glimmer of his Holy City, the worn sturdy walls and the massive gates, the domes to be and the towers and minarets softly radiant and indestructible, eternally golden in the first light of day.