Smyrna was an emporium and a seaport and a kind of polyglot city-state inside the Ottoman Empire; it was marble mansions, tobacco leaf and opium cake; it was a long table set with grapes, lamb, eggplants, artichokes, red fishes, caviar, oysters, pomegranate, and cheeses; it was rows of busy cafés and coffeehouses; it was folded carpets on the backs of sleepy-eyed camels; it was the sound of the Anatolian lute, the smell of jasmine, and the taste of anise from its favorite liquor, raki; it was Italian opera and Greek operetta and the call to prayer of the muezzin and the ringing of the
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