THE MIRACLE A True Story When dawn finally broke, they began to get ready to leave.    "We shouldn't carry suitcases!" Apostolos warned them. "We'll only attract attention, and they'll think the cases are full of things we've stolen from people's houses. We'll each put on four sets of underwear and carry as little as possible in our hands. We'll leave by one of the first boats from Karaköy and then go on up to Pera on foot."    They set about boarding up the windows of the house until they were all covered with pieces of wood. Then they decided to leave all together, but in pairs: Apostolos with his daughter and Efterpi with her son. All the way to the pier, there was an almost tangible feeling of terror in the air. The Turks, overjoyed at the havoc they had wreaked during their night on the rampage, were celebrating the damage they had caused to giavours' property.    "Dün Seker Bayrami, bugün Kurban Bayrami (yesterday we celebrated the Festival of Sweets, today it is the Festival of Sacrifices)," they told the terrified Greeks when they saw them leaving. It was as if they had said "Yesterday we looted your property, today we'll kill you." They wanted to make sure no-one would dare to go back to Çengelköy amid such a formidable atmosphere of terror. This is precisely what happened with the Nikolaidis family. After the night of 6th September, 1955, they never returned to their house. They made straight for the centre of the city and stayed there until they had to leave Turkey a few years later.    Some months after that dreadful night, Apostolos Nikolaidis was suddenly smitten with amnesia. The blow he had received on the head caused serious injuries from which he never recovered, despite two major operations. There were times when he could not remember whom he had seen or what he had said just a few moments earlier. He was to relive that September night in 1955 over and over again for many years.    Among the many Christians who lived in the district of Eptapyrgio (or Yedikule) were the Vafias and Soukas families. They lived in a three-storey wooden house in front of the castle walls. The building was in the middle of a row of houses which formed a semi-circle around the western wall of the castle; in front of the houses was an enormous garden full of trees. It was an idyllic place for children to play or generally to relax in. How excited I was whenever I learned we were going to visit people there!    At one end of the semi-circle was the local police station. Most of these wooden houses, which all looked alike and were linked by a huge communal garden with a high fence round it, were occupied by Christians. At the bottom of the garden, right up against the castle walls, was a spoon factory owned by some Armenians who, although they had converted to Islam and had Turkish names, were at heart still loyal to the Christian faith. They never showed their Christian feelings overtly, but it was obvious in the way they behaved towards their Christian neighbours.    In one of these three-storey wooden houses lived Thanassis Vafias with his wife Irini, two of their sons, Sideris and Iannis, and their newly-wed daughter Olga with her husband, Nikos Soukas. The previous year the young couple had had their first child, Iannis, who from the day he was born was an unusually restless baby.    Nikos had installed some sewing-machines in the basement of the house where he could work at home, stitching clothes. Early in the evening of 6th September, 1955 he was just finishing an order for a hundred shirts 59 and 60 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 (61st of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.