We’re Levantines … hold your head up high and say, ‘Yes, I am. What of it? Byzantine and Ottoman…’
We’re Levantines … hold your head up high and say, ‘Yes, I am. What of it? Byzantine and Ottoman…’
These are the words of Lev- ent effendi, a dignified out-of-work teacher, a ‘Turk’ who turns out to have been born to a Greek family in Smyrna in 1922, rescued and raised by Muslim foster parents. ‘Why are you filling his head with this nonsense? This is dangerous talk for a child,’ Kakmi’s mother observes with uncharacteristic restraint. The boy’s primary school teacher, a ‘tall-as-a-poplar woman’ sent from the mainland, tells him, ‘Because you’re not a Turk, may the bread you eat be poisonous.’ Life was made impossible and, in 1970, the family left for Australia. To the nine-year-old child, it was a calamity.
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