Read Online Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance by Giles Milton - Free Book Online

considerable aplomb, ruling with an iron fist, yet using his authoritarian streak for beneficent ends. ‘[He] was a shrewd despotic person,’ wrote Horton, ‘whose intellect was an equal blend of Oriental and European, the latter doubtless inherited from his Jewish ancestry.’
    The governor felt a particular affinity for Smyrna’s European and Levantine communities. ‘He was especially friendly with the leading British citizens of Smyrna,’ wrote Horton, ‘who entertained him lavishly at their palatial homes.’ They enjoyed his company, for he was a most diverting guest. ‘He was a hearty eater and could carry any amount of European and Oriental liquor without losing his wits or power of locomotion.’ Horton’s admiration for Rahmi was shared by almost all who met him. Only the French consul, Jean-Marie Colomies, was critical of the manner in which he managed the affairs of the city, claiming that he seemed to view Smyrna as his personal satrapy.
    If Rahmi Bey had a tendency to autocratic rule, it was because he had a well-nigh impossible job to perform. He was governor of a city whose population was majority Christian and not always in agreement with the decrees of the central government in Constantinople. Rahmi foresaw the potential problems that this might cause and wisely chose as his director of political affairs a wealthy Greek named Carabiber Bey. ‘[He] spoke perfect French without an accent,’ wrote the Frenchman, Paul Jeancard, ‘and used expressions which manifested his culture.’ Carabiber was an important go-between – someone who could represent the Greek community within the framework of Ottoman rule.
    In a metropolis of so many nationalities, the foreign consuls also had an important role to play. They were the figureheads of their communities, but also their representatives, and they provided another channel of communication with Rahmi Bey. There were scores of foreign consulates in Smyrna, each equipped with a large staff and a hospitality budget to match.
    One of the most outgoing consuls was George Horton, custodian of the powerful American interests in the city. Cultivated, worldly and highly professional, he was a cut above the average American consul serving in the Levant. Horton’s first posting had been to Greece, a country whose rich past had cast a spell over his undergraduate years. He taught himself ancient and modern Greek while studying at the University of Michigan, and he had translated Sappho’s poems into English. He also wrote his own poetry, both in Greek and English. It was good enough to impress Walt Whitman; he preferred Horton’s poetry to that of any other living American.
    Horton married his Greek fiancée, Catherine Sacopoulo, in 1909. Then, after a brief stint as consul in Salonica, he was appointed to Smyrna in 1911. He was not the first to recognise that the city’s prosperity and spirit had been created in large part by the great Levantine dynasties. The tensions that William Childs had found in the countryside of Anatolia were wholly absent from Smyrna. The Levantine factories employed all, regardless of race, and, in the dried-fruit warehouses and flour mills, Turks, Greeks, Jews and Armenians found themselves working alongside each other.
    ‘We got on well with the Turks,’ recalled a Greek lad named Ilias Kourkoulis, one of many refugees interviewed in the aftermath of 1922 about Smyrna’s happier times. ‘We visited them frequently and our homes neighboured theirs. We spent our leisure time together and all played in the same football team.’
    By the early twentieth century, the lives of these groups were becomingly increasingly intertwined. Communities freely borrowed each other’s customs, even helping themselves to bons mots and expressions as well. Two of Smyrna’s champion wrestlers were thoroughbred Greeks who elsewhere in Turkey would have certainly vaunted their race and religion, yet to do so in Smyrna would have been frowned upon as