THE MIRACLE A True Story    "Drop everything, close the shop and come with us to the police station!"    Uncle Sideris looked at them in surprise and asked:    "Why should I go to the police station?"    "You'll find out when we get there!" was the sharp retort, which left little room for argument.    My uncle's surprise gave way to a vague feeling of foreboding. Taking off his apron, he locked up the shop and followed them.    On arrival at the police station, they entered a room just as someone was coming out. It was the Turk who had appeared at the door of my uncle's shop a short while before and reprimanded him for working.    As soon as the door was shut, one of the three Turks suddenly began, without saying a word, to punch my uncle in the face and stomach and beat him around the head. When my uncle passed out, they dragged him to a chair and threw a bucket of cold water over him.    After some time, he started to come round. He gradually realised where he was and what had happened when he heard a voice swearing at him spitefully.    "Isidoros Vafias, you are a filthy infidel who dared to insult the sacred Turkish flag! We should have killed you on the spot for such a crime -but your life is over anyway. These worms, the Greeks, have to learn that this is Turkey and they can't insult the Turks and the Turkish flag without expecting to pay for it with their life! You still don't seem to have grasped that you are living in our land, which belongs to us! And as if that were not enough, you even insult the Turks! Like you, you filthy infidel, who dared insult the sacred Turkish flag!"    "No, no!" stammered Uncle Sideris, in protest. "I didn't insult the Turkish flag! I haven't the faintest idea what..."    His words stopped abruptly when two of the policemen pounced on him and began to beat him up again until, totally defenceless and quite unable to put up any resistance, he lost consciousness. When he came round, several hours later, he found himself in darkness on the damp floor of a cell.    Time began, torturously slowly, to trickle past. His whole body was a mass of open wounds and the pain was unbearable. "It's all over!" he thought. "That's it, I'm done for ... I'll die in this place!" Twenty-four hours passed, then forty-eight hours, then seventy-two. The monotony of his squalid prison was relieved only once or twice when a dirty plate of what was supposed to be food was thrust noisily into the cell.    Meanwhile Uncle Sideris' family was making frantic endeavours to find out what had happened to him. Neither his parents, nor his five brothers and sisters, nor his friends could explain his sudden disappearance. On the third day after he failed to return home, they went to the police station where they learned that Isidoros Vafias was being held on charges of vilifying Turkism, in accordance with the Law passed in 1931.    Things looked very black. The Turks never missed an opportunity to exterminate an infidel -unless, of course, he had money. Then the scales of justice in implementing the Law were known to tip in favour of the accused in direct proportion to the amount of gold placed on his side. And Uncle Sideris had plenty of gold. Thus began the battle to save him, a battle based on the unfailing Turkish "weakness" of widespread corruption which permeates the whole of Turkey from top to bottom.    First, it cost a small fortune for his file to be "removed" from the "current" cases and placed at the bottom of the pile so as to gain time. Then a huge sum was handed over as "bail", guaranteeing his release by the date set for the 15 and 16 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 (17th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.