ANGELA PAPAZOGLOU

Extracts from the book “Angela Papazoglou” by Georgis Papazoglou

Loosely translation by Katerina Barbatsi

….Let’s go to gather the clean carpets they must be dry by now to save them from the flames”, my mother said.
I went up to open the attic door.  The black smoke and the heat from the fire entered into the house.  It was like a night mare.
We finally managed to bring the carpets down and to put them in order.  My beloved mother said that they should be settled even if they were going to be burned because we should be good housekeepers as we always were…..
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....My mother grabbed my hand and told me “Walk like you were an old Lady, do not forget that” …because she wanted me to be saved…..
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....As soon as we opened the front door to get out from our house we faced Ali, the Turk who very often was bringing his sick young son to our grand mother.  She was praying for his recovering to Saint George.  Ali was a Muslim but Saint George was important for his child’s health.  Ali was selling “Salepi”, a Turkish drink.
When we met him in the front door my mother said that she was sure that he came to save Saint George icon from the fire……
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....When we left the house fire was three blocks away.  We were black from the smoke, it was very difficult to breath, our mouth was dry, our throat was burning…
The question was which direction we should take as everywhere we turned was fire.  It was as you are in the middle of a forest with flames around you and you do not know how to escape, how to save yourself… The only solution was to try to walk towards to the sea, to the port of Smyrna.  It was twenty minutes walk from where we were directly; long way; we should try to find a short cut.  So using a ladder we started climbing up and down from house to house to the Levantines’ district were there was fire yet, to reach a safe place until the moment we could walk towards to the port…
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