THE MIRACLE A True Story headmistress who was known as "the snake". I pretended I hadn't seen her as I had no wish to see her satisfaction that we "infidels" were finally being booted out of the country one by one.    Slowly I climbed the stairs to my classroom on the first floor. I took one last look round, and then left.    As I walked towards Cihangir, I passed the Zappion School which my sister attended and found myself in front of my father's shop. I looked despondently at the new owner standing inside and remembered all the evenings I had kept my father company while he mended something in the shop.    I went into the barber's opposite my father's shop. The barber, an Armenian who was extremely fond of all of us, looked at me in surprise.    "We're leaving tomorrow," I said, "and I've come to say goodbye."    His eyes filled with tears, and without saying a word he came and hugged me tightly, patting me on the back.    "Give my greetings to your father! Have a safe journey, and good luck! God is there for all of us, and He is great."    I emerged from the shop with a lump in my throat and began to walk on slowly, unable to see where I was going for the tears in my own eyes.    Without my being conscious of it, my footsteps took me towards Karaköy. I went past the indoor market and began to climb up the steep hill when I suddenly found myself in front of the magnificent Church of Saint Sophia. I stared at it as if in a dream, imagining the scenes which the people who had passed through this historic place had witnessed over the 2,500 years of its history - since 665 BC when Byzas consulted the oracle at Delphi, wanting a prophecy that would tell him where to build his new city. And when the oracle told him to build it at the place where three seas met, he came to where I was standing now: I could see the three seas before me - the Bosphorus, with water from the Black Sea; the Sea of Marmara, with water from the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea; and Golden Horn Bay (Halic), with waters from the rivers of Thrace. On this hill, the first of the seven on which Constantinople stands, the temples of Apollo and Athena were built. Nine hundred and twenty-five years later, Constantinos the Great and his son Constantios built the Churches of Saint Irini and Saint Sophia on the self-same spot. I thought of how the Church of Saint Sophia had been destroyed by the Arians in 381 and later by supporters of Patriarch Chrysostomos and Queen Evdoxia in 404, to be finally and totally demolished during the Nikas Rebellion in 532. It had taken 10,000 people five whole years to rebuild the ruined church from its foundations. I recalled the words of the Emperor Justinian at the church's inauguration on 27th December, 537 when, enraptured by the magnificence of the building he proclaimed: "Glory be to God who found me worthy to carry out so great a work. I have outdone you, Solomon!"    I stood transfixed, gazing at the sacred place while other events in its illustrious history passed through my mind: the defeat of the Persians and the Avars by the Emperor Heraclius in 628; the schism of the churches after the Great Synod in support of Patriarch Fotios, from November 879 to February 880; the acceptance of Orthodoxy by the Russian people in 967; the excommunication of Cardinal Umberto at the altar in the Church of Saint Sophia in 1054 which resulted in the final schism in the Christian churches; the plundering carried out by the Crusaders in 1204 and its conversion to a Western church; the great celebration of 1261 when 101 and 102 Leonidas Koumakis THE MIRACLE A True Story If you prefer a hard copy of the book, please send an email to HEC-Books@hec.greece.org Previous Page | Initial Page | Site Map | Next Page (103th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.