The Wrong End of the Telescope

by Rabih Alameddine

Three days after the Turks took back control of Smyrna, a devastating fire erupted and destroyed at least half the city—the Christian and Armenian neighborhoods but not the Muslim or Jewish ones. Depending on who was writing the history or who was telling the tale, anywhere between ten thousand and a hundred thousand Greeks perished. But that was not what upset you, was it? Most of the Armenians and Greeks who survived ended up suffering a bit more than death by fire. Many of the women were raped. Most of the refugees were sent into the interior of the country, where they died an even harsher death. Thousands of deaths, some historians claimed as many as one hundred thousand. Definitely upsetting, but that was not what made your blood percolate in its veins. When the fire started, Nikolaos’s grandmother and her sister ran to the port along with thousands of Greek refugees. They crammed the waterfront. Many ended up jumping into the water to escape the flames even though they could not swim. Allied ships docked at the harbor refused to pick them up. The allies were supposed to be neutral. They could not get involved. No, even that was not what made you as angry as Achilles. To alleviate the discomfort of the sailors who had to listen to the cries for help from drowning refugees, the British ships played loud music on their speakers. Refugees wailed while listening to popular tunes of the time. Nikolaos told me you kept asking him in your bad French if his grandmother recall...