Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance Read Online Free

Muslim shrines.
    The majority of the 140,000 people who lived here were artisans and craftsmen ‘[employed] in the manufacture of copper utensils, camel bells, horseshoes, locks, chains [and] drums for packing figs’. So wrote Sir Charles Wilson, author of Murray’s Handbook , who added that these were the only Turks who still dressed in traditional costume. Visitors flocked to the souk in search of the fabled Orient, but even in the poorest part of town, they would find the same imported items that were on sale elsewhere in the city. Louis de Launay noticed ‘all sorts of bits and bobs from Europe. Here, a stall resembling the Louvre, there, one that’s more like Bon Marché. Boots that are “ready to wear”; Indian cottons from Manchester, elasticated bowties, Swiss watches; stall holders in frock coats and fezzes; buyers in Western dress.’
    Although the Turks played a marginal role in the commerce of Smyrna, they dominated the politics of the city. The Ottoman governor of Smyrna was traditionally always a Turkish national and his primary task was to represent the interests of all the different nationalities who had made the city their home. A glance at the 1913 census reveals why his job was not easy. Smyrna’s Christians outnumbered the Muslims by more than two to one; his was a majority Christian city in a resolutely Muslim world. To many Turks – and especially to government ministers in Constantinople – Smyrna had forever been the city of the infidel.
    ‘ Vous êtes interessé par Rahmi Bey? ’ said a clipped voice on the end of the telephone. ‘You must visit me. Today. At four o’clock.’
    I had come on the trail of the affable, irascible and benignly despotic Rahmi Bey, governor of Smyrna at the time when Petros Brussalis and Alfred Simes were still young boys. Rahmi’s elderly daughter-in-law, the tantalisingly worldly Esma Dino Deyer, still lives in the Ottoman mansion that was for a brief period the governor’s private residence. From the outside, it presented a picture of sorry decline. Newspaper-sized sheets of paintwork had detached themselves from the rendering and the latticed shutters were veiled in dust. But inside, its elegant marble atrium was redolent of a more refined epoch.
    I was ushered into the principal drawing room, where an imposing portrait of Rahmi Bey hung above the fireplace. We sat in near-darkness, for the shutters were kept closed and showed no signs of having been opened for half a century or more. On the floor there were richly coloured carpets from Persia and Turkmenistan. On the settle there was a pistol and a scimitar.
    ‘He was rich, extremely cultivated and spoke impeccable French,’ said Esma, as she slotted a Balkan cigarette into an ivory holder. ‘And his wife came from an old and distinguished Ottoman family.’
    Rahmi was to prove a benevolently devious governor. His machiavellian politicking during the First World War ought to have cost him his life, yet once-secret papers in the National Archives in Kew reveal that Rahmi was always one step ahead of his masters in Constantinople.
    Rahmi Bey, in common with many of the city’s elite, lived in one of the elegant suburbs that formed a ring around the metropolis. These leafy districts, which had begun life as country villages, were popular with Smyrna’s Levantine bourgeoisie.
    The Levantines were by far the richest community in the area. Of European descent, but thoroughly versed in the ways of the Orient, they had lived in Turkey since the reign of King George III. They, more than any other community, had helped to shape Smyrna in their own image – rich, cosmopolitan and of mixed blood and heritage. Their factories and mines employed all, regardless of race or nationality. And they had a concern for their workforce that was patrician in sentiment and philanthropic in outlook. In the dark days of the First World War, many of Smyrna’s families would owe their continued existence to the Levantine