THE MIRACLE A True Story   5    My father was deported from Turkey on the morning of 16th July, 1964. In the weeks that intervened until September, when the rest of the family would also leave the country, we waited anxiously for news from him.    "I have arrived and am well. I've been to Pangrati and found Maritsa and Iannis. Such good people - from the first moment I arrived they have been a great help to me. Their only daughter, Jenny, is the same age as Angeliki, so our daughter will have a friend to play with as soon as she gets here," he wrote in his first letter.    Later he informed us: "I have found a small apartment in Kononos Street, opposite Iannis and Maritsa's house. It's in a lovely two-storey building owned by a teacher who comes from Asia Minor. It's a bit expensive, but we'll only have to find the rent to begin with: we don't need to spend money on furniture and other luxuries at the moment. I'll let you know as soon as I'm ready to send for you. Take care, all of you, and watch out ..."    We absorbed every word of his brief letters with deep longing, counting the days until word came for us to join him.    Everywhere around us there was great commotion as the Greeks of Constantinople fled the country. Family and childhood friends were scattering to the four corners of the earth. Kyriakos and Anna, close friends of my parents, were leaving, with their two little girls Eftalia and Evangelia, for Vancouver, in Canada. My sister cried inconsolably at losing her best friend, Eftalia.    Other people we knew were preparing to go to Australia. Most people, of course, headed for Greece, the most natural and most welcoming place to go.    My classmate at high school, Giorgos Vakadimas, was one of those leaving for Athens with his parents. They all had Turkish citizenship, so the Turks were implementing a more "indirect" method of driving out cases such as these: they forced them to leave by exerting unbearable pressures on them and imposing a regime of tyranny, terror and threat amid a climate of intense racial hatred. The Vakadimas family was therefore afraid to stay on in Turkey and decided, like thousands of other Greeks in Constantinople who were forced into the same position, to leave their family homes and move on. I remember that when I said goodbye to my friend Giorgos, I wasn't upset; on the contrary, I was overjoyed because I discovered that in a few weeks he, too, would be in Athens. Knowing little about Athens, I suggested we meet up at 5 p. m. on 15th December at the Zappion. How was I to know that the Zappion was an entire district that needed half a day to walk through!    The final act of the Turkish plan to rid Constantinople of its Greek population was fully under way in 1964. Hundreds of Greek households were in the throes of being dismantled.    Our house was in a similar state of disarray. Following the events of that night in September, 1955, we had moved to a two-storey house in Kordela Street, near Tarlabasi. We lived on the ground floor and also had the use of a large basement. On the upper floor lived a Mr Kleopas with his sister; he was a teacher who had fallen ill and been confined to a wheelchair for over twenty years. The house belonged to a Greek by the name of Ioannidis.    In the chaos and confusion that prevailed in the house my mother was trying to sort out the essential things that 71 and 72 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 (73th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.