THE MIRACLE A True Story and Eptapyrgio (Yedikule). In Chrysokeramo there lived a man called Apostolos Nikolaidis with his wife Efterpi and their two children, Domna and Miltos. We knew the family and were shocked when we learned what had happened to them. Early in the evening, when word had spread of the anti-Greek demonstration taking place in Taksim Square, Apostolos Nikolaidis left his shop in Karakoy and took the boat home to Yeni Mahala (meaning "new neighbourhood") in Chrysokeramo.    They lived in a two-storey house which belonged to Stefanos and Tarsi Sarandidis. After carefully locking all the doors and windows, the family gathered in the little kitchen at the back of the upper floor of the building and the owners of the house went upstairs to a small attic. Opposite the house was a street-lamp which lit up the road and an empty plot, where only the previous night, Apostolos Nikolaidis had dumped a load of coal that he was going to store in the basement of his house for the winter. They then turned out all the lights in the house and the Nikolaidis family huddled round the radio, listening anxiously for news of what was happening. Suddenly they remembered that somewhere in the house was a small Greek flag, and as a precaution they decided to destroy it. The little flag was burned, using a small quantity of spirit.    As time passed, their despair and anxiety increased. Turkish Radio started to broadcast news of the rioting and the whole family froze when the noise from the disturbances began to reach their ears as the yelling mob destroyed houses in a district further down the road.    The contents of every Greek household were gradually being thrown out on to the streets and strewn all over the pavements; the sound of the homes being smashed and the shouts of the crowd on the rampage produced an appalling din.    The interior of the parish church was totally demolished and the blackboards from the Greek school, with the last lesson still written on them in chalk, were hurled out on to the streets.    The cordon was beginning to tighten around the district of Yeni Mahala, where the Nikolaidis family lived, when Apostolos Nikolaidis suddenly jumped up; he had heard on the radio that martial law had been declared. It was midnight.    "I hope we're through!" he whispered to his family. "As martial law's been declared they'll have to stop!"    He slipped out of the tiny kitchen and peered through a crack in the shutters, trying to see what was going on down in the street. He strained his ears to hear whether the noise of the mob's yelling and destruction was receding. Then he heard the sound of a jeep approaching and through the chink in the shutters he saw a police vehicle stop outside the house. Its engine was switched off. The hope that the police had come to offer their protection leaped inside him, but his intuition told him this was not the case.    He stood there waiting, as still as the jeep and its passengers outside. Five minutes must have passed and no-one moved. The racket from the mob's destructive operation seemed to be showing no signs of diminishing, much less of stopping altogether.    Then, suddenly, the engine of the police jeep was started up again and it disappeared as mysteriously as it had come.    Soon the rabble's cries became even louder and the family realised it was now very near. Apostolos Nikolaidis went back into the little kitchen.    "It seems they have destroyed Giovanni's grocery store 53 and 54 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 (55th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.