Their boat did not leave till after breakfast. They went up to Saint
Sophia; at the gate of the mosque a sentry, before letting them in,
asked them whether they were Greeks or Armenians.
"I am a Greek subject," answered Irene proudly.
The Turk barred the way ferociously, and Lewis had to produce Irene's
new French passport.
"To think that we so nearly came back, we who are the guardians of
Christianity in the East, and that these fanatical, besotted, dishonest
Turks, who never knew how to do anything but massacre, are still here.
They want to get rid of all Greeks from Constantinople! They want to
have Turkish commercial houses and Turkish banks! It's too funny!"[1]
Lewis followed Irene across the prayer rugs and Byzantine paving of
Saint Sophia, dragging his feet shod in immense Turkish slippers like a
man on skis, and trying to keep Irene quiet. He had never seen such an
exhibition of contempt in the West; it was quite different to the
aversion of French and Germans, who even in their most terrible moments
remained human. Five centuries of the fiercest hatred shone in Irene's
eyes. She who was usually so calm could not control her fury. How could
a being so closely connected with him allow herself in a single instant
to be ravaged by feelings which he could not himself imagine? For the
first time Lewis felt that he had bound his life to a woman of an
unknown race. In the courtyard near a rococo fountain in marble and gold
which ran with gleaming water, peaceable ogres wearing the new astrakhan
fezes were smoking, sucking at the hookah tubes sheathed in blue velvet,
amongst the circling pigeons.
After leaving Constantinople, the ship put in towards evening at
Mudania, on the coast of Asia. They went on shore for a short time.
Hardly had they disembarked when they came across a lorry park abandoned
in an olive grove by the Greeks during their flight in the summer of
1922. Half smothered by mallows, saffron, asphodel and tobacco plants,
lay the skeleton of lorries supplied by the English, their wheels in the
air. Inscriptions and the number of their army corps could still be
deciphered on their sides.
"A whole Greek division surrendered here," explained the guide.
"Let's go. I'm going back on board," said Irene.
Her eyes were full of tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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