Coming home to Aivali

In our family we grew up talking and dreaming about our parents’ “lost homelands” (οι χαμένες πατρίδες)—the lands of what is now Turkey, from which they were uprooted in the Catastrophe of 1922. My father was born in Aivali (today’s Ayvalik, the ancient Chidognies/Kydonies) and my mother in Mersina (today’s Mersin). Aivali is across from the Greek island of Mytilene or Lesvos, on the western coast of Turkey, two hours north of Smyrna (Izmir).
Mersina is on the southeast coast of Turkey across from Cyprus (see circles on the map).


As 1922 unfolded, my father’s family went to Mytilene for a couple of years before settling in Athens. His father, my grandfather, whose name I proudly carry, was a physician and was able to restart his practice there. My mother’s family went to Cyprus and ended up in Salonika, Greece.


The loss of t
heir ancestral home was especially felt by my father and his siblings and friends for whom Aivali was a daily and painful memory. We often attended gatherings of the Aivaliotes Union of Athens and especially loved the tradition of Lazarelia (above), man-shaped cookies distributed after church on Lazarus Saturday.


Living in America did not diminish my interest in Aivali and I always eagerly  participated in social or academic gatherings about the uprooted Greeks of Asia Minor. My sense of the town was based on my father’s and his best friends’ recollections and the autobiographical novel “O Thanasos” written by my father’s brother Kostas. For more about Aivali, its history and culture, check: http://www.mparaschos.com/aivali/The_Early_Days.html


In 2010 I discovered a blog entitled the “Camel Barn Library,” written by Dr. Caroline Foster, a British professor of English who had taught at a university in Ankara and retired in Aivali. Ms. Foster said her blog was a “love letter to my adopted home of Turkey in general, and its north Aegean coast and the town of Ayvalık in particular; to the Ottoman Greeks and
all the other civilisations that previously inhabited the western shores of Asia Minor; and, perhaps most importantly, to libraries.” She described in beautiful and vivid prose the town’s “stunning location, beautiful architecture and strange, sad history.” She wrote about Aivali’s daily life, its food, people, vegetation, neighborhoods, architecture, and history.


The blog’s writing was superb, and its research accurate and fair, which encouraged me to ask its author if she might have an interest or the time to look for my family’s house if I sent her a photo my father had taken when he visited in 1952. To my pleasant surprise Ms. Foster loved the idea and after 72 hours of intense walks around the old town (my father’s “κάτω πόλι” or low town) and tens of photos, she and we (using magnifying lenses) agreed that she had found it. Her September-November blog entries describe the circumstances of her search: http://camelbarnlibrary.blogspot.com/2010/09/email-from-ghost.html [NOTE: In September 2014, the site appeared to have been disconnected.]


Eventually she visited the current house owners and told them about us. Their immediate reaction was to invite us to visit any time.


Three years later, in spite of my personal insecurities, hesitations and inhibitions, my wife Janet and daughter Sophia persuaded me to go. So in May 2013 we went to Aivali.


On the first night there, Ms. Foster had arranged a dinner for us with her best Aivali friends, and the next day she took us to visit the former Paraschos homestead.


We were we
lcomed extremely warmly by the current owners Tarhan and Mina, who told us it was an honor for them to have us in their house. They shared with us all the ins and outs of the house, including how the first owners used to save rain water in a basement cistern and how the ceiling now was insulated with seaweed. The house’s original second story was destroyed in the 1947 earthquake and only its street level remains.


During our visit, we found the Paraschos’ parish (Zoodochos Pigi or Κάτω Παναγιά/Kato Panagia), where the children were baptized, as well as their elementary and high schools. We saw several of Aivali’s original 11 churches (now mosques or in disrepair), but we were unable to find the hospital of Saint Haralambos, which my grandfather, Dr. Emmanuel Paraschos, once directed.


It was an unforgettable and emotional visit. The unconditional hospitality we were shown by the current owners and people in hotels, restaurants, shops, etc., made me rethink my attitude about the people of Turkey. Especially gratifying was the show of genuine excitement when they heard that my parents were born in what is now Turkey (it didn’t take long for me and Sophia to start “looking Turkish”). Equally gratifying was for us to find out that most Aivali’s current residents’ roots were in Greece, where their grandparents lived before the population exchange in 1924-25.


Visiting the town where at least two generations of Paraschos had grown up was unnerving, perplexing and often numbing--after decades of imagining, here I was in a Paraschos house, which did not belong to us and in a land that was not ours.


In several ways, it was an exercise in learning and tolerance--an exercise in understanding and a challenge to prejudice.


We tried to return every ounce of warmth and sincerity we were shown. If we succeeded, the trip transcended the personal and might have even helped lift, ever so slightly, the curtain of suspicion that still separates our two peoples. In this way, at least we had a chance to peek straight into each other’s souls.


That alone made the trip worthwhile.


Manolis (Manny) Paraschos

Boston, MA

June 2013

mparaschos@aol.com

Illustrations above: Turkey’s map (Google maps); Lazarelia (M. Paraschos), Aivaliote Captain (Valsamakis); Prosfyges/

Refugees (Valsamakis); the Dove of Peace over Aivali (Valsamakis). Page background photo credits: 1952 house door (Evmenis Paraschos); the Paraschos family in Aivali, 1922; 2013 house door (Sophia Paraschos); Kato Panagia church 2013 (Janet Paraschos). [P. Valsamakis, a world known ceramist/author/illustrator, was a family neighbor from Aivali.]




 

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