Ancestry 26 - Eudoxia & Leonidas: Once in Bayindir

 Grandmother Eudoxia and her refugee family arrived at Thessaloniki from Bayindir after the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922. Bayindir, the hometown of the Kampakis’ family, did not feature in the annals of history as much as Smyrna or even Aydın further south and inland. Nor did that town, a few hours by train from Smyrna, was endowed with the cosmopolitanism and the cultural backdrop that history and refugee testimonies and legends attributed to the beautiful metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean and its iconic waterfront promenade. Alas, when the maturity of adulthood generated a long overdue interest in the lives and history of past generations, my beloved grandmother was not in the full possession of her faculties to tell stories of her childhood, the very details of her distant past that had begun to intrigue me. On the other hand, it is possible (and in a respect comforting) that the impressions from that dramatic and, for many, a tragic period in their lives might have faded, because the destruction and passions and sufferings of those directly involved blurred their memories and inadvertently pushed them to the margins of their conscience from early on in their lives.

Until recently, long after her death, I did not even know she originated from Bayindir. To my old Greek friends, former comrades and acquaintances, in my ignorance I used to say that part of my family and relatives descended to my hometown as refugees from Smyrna. I was saying this with the covert pride of being a descendent of a family of persecuted and destitute refugees, who, nevertheless, managed to stand on their feet despite the stumbles and challenges and insurmountable obstacles history presented them with· despite the cynicism of the Great Powers, and the insensitivity of the Greek state and its political arrivistes. Along with their pride and inherent passion for life, despite their abject poverty, but thanks to their culture, the generosity and dignity, the sociability and the humility, the honesty and gentle manners, thanks to their food and songs, the innocent and benevolent 'καλέ!’ instead of the slang 'ε!' or ‘ρε!’ of the locals, brought with them color and warmth and life and character to the city I was born. Just a short time before I embarked on this narrative, I spotted Bayindir on the map and read about it in the only remarkable source I could find: in the book "Bayindir 1922" by a certain Iris Tzahili, whose family shared the roots and adventures of the Kampakis and grandmother, then a young girl.

The Greek community of the town, although a relative minority in the years leading to the Catastrophe and its final uprooting from the land of their ancestors, had remained relatively compact and cohesive under Ottoman rule and in peace with their predominantly Muslim neighbours; with their church and seminary and their social events on the religious holidays of the saints of Orthodox Christianity. Even joint holidays with the Muslim population of the town were celebrated in Bayindir, such as that of St George, which brought the communities of the small town closer together, putting aside the economic inequalities in the stratification of the society that the industrial development formed and established amongst coreligionists and ‘non-believers’ and largely entrenched them in classes. The Greek Orthodox community had generally an envious upper hand in the productive and socio-economic relations of the region. The landowners and the bosses in workshops and factories, which gradually began to appear in the area, were mainly Christians and predominantly Greeks. However, along with the cultural, historical, and local differences and social friction, a racial segregation had apparently been forming: Turks and Greeks inhabited different district and neighborhoods and settlements in the countryside. From conversations I recall amongst relatives of my grandmother, I could only detect a handful of Turkish words in their discourse, apart from those that had already penetrated the Greek vocabulary from the Ottoman era. I compared this linguistic purity to the other side of my family, from Constantinople, who adopted more elements of the Ottoman heritage, and preserved despite decades of grinding in the mill of Greek nationalism.

Not that all Greeks from Bayindir, Smyrna and the towns of the ancient Ionia were bourgeois, that is, educated civil servants, teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc. There were also shopkeepers and traders, even farmers, factory workers and day labourers. In fact, it was a Greek worker-unionist named Gabriel who spearheaded the strikes of 1908, in the railways of primarily British interests, which ended peacefully thanks to the mediation of the government, albeit ingloriously. Despite the ups and downs and setbacks of the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution instigated by the Young Turks movement and later led by Kemal Ataturk, and the violent transformations in the new post-war Turkish state, as it emerged from obscurantism and backwardness, and in the face of the reactionary forces of an anachronistic and crumbling empire, small workshops and factories, as well as some larger scale manufacturing, a substantial export trade of mainly farming goods, ensured sustainable livelihoods for most Greek families and a relative economic vigour in the region.