THE ICON THAT SURVIVED TO TELL THE TALE
THE ICON THAT SURVIVED TO TELL THE TALE
Description
During the massacres following the Greco-Turkish War of 1922, which resulted in the eradication of the Greek population in Anatolia, Stella Michalaki’s grandmother manages to save an icon of the Virgin Mary that continues to evoke memories of persecution.
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Aggelikh Lyginou
Interviewee
- Stella Mixalakh
Podcast Producer
- Magia Filippopoulou
Sound Designer
- Giwrgos Ramantanhs
Sound Editor
- Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director
- Giwrgos Gkounezos
Voiceover
- Skyrah Archer
My grandmother had brought over an icon from Asia Minor, one of the Virgin. All the women of Rethymno, who came from Asia Minor, would come to worship the icon, which worked miracles.
All her life, she sat at the window. She wore a tsemperi, a head scarf, tied back. Only her face was visible, and she sat watched to see who was coming. ‘Grandma, aren’t you bored of sitting there?’ ‘My dear child, sit, and let me tell you a story’.
In Asia Minor, there were two sisters, Angela and Vangela, and a brother, Sofianos. Sofianos, the brother, was blind from birth. There was the father, who had already gone to war with the Turks – then, when we rebelled – and the mother.
The Turks forced their way into the house to ‘Turkify’ the girls. Back then, I didn’t know what that meant. I thought it meant that they changed their religion... Well, the mother had put cloaks on the boy and the girls. She had sown cloaks and put them on the girls to hide their breasts, so that they looked like boys. She had cut their hair, shaved it, and the Turks didn’t see that they were young girls of twelve-eleven years of age, rape them, and take them away.
They gathered up all the icons from the village, and, from what she said, they put them in the middle of the square and burned them, the Turks... Well, the soldiers... Whatever they were. She said, there was an old man sitting to the side, and he prodded her and said, ‘Run and get that icon and hide it in your breast, and you, go and get the other one’. And my grandmother ran, got the icon and hid it against her breast, underneath. She secured it there. And Angela ran and got the other icon.
‘As we were marching through the days and nights – we progressed slowly, loaded with bundles and more bundles – at some moment, a “dog” came up in front of us on a horse’ – ‘Dog’ was what she called the Turk – ‘And at some moment, my mother got thirsty’.
Naturally, she didn’t have any water, so when the horse stomped its hoof and forced up water, her mother bent over to drink it. And the Turk drew his sabre and cut off her head! Did you hear that! He slaughtered her mother in front of her children. And my grandmother ran up from behind. ‘Mum!’ ‘Mum!’ She says, when she was on her mother’s skirt, he shouted...
She said, ‘And as I was holding on to the skirt, he struck me with the sabre, and got me here! Do you want to see? Look at my leg’, and she got up and showed us the scar given her by the ‘dog’ – The dog! Not the Turk, the ‘dog’! – ‘Right here’. This lay heavily on my grandmother all those years, and she would tell whoever she saw.
They moved on, and passed the beach, one after the other... I don’t know the details. She just said, ‘They put us there and we waited for the boat. We got to Greece, and brought Sofianos’ my great uncle, her brother, who was blind. And they carried the Virgin, bless her, all that time, and they brought her to the house.
The icon had a beautiful smell. As soon as she was present there, it smelled of cypress... Everyone could smell the wood it had been made off. The place was sacred. It started to smell of her blessing. It was miraculous.
Word spread that it was miraculous, and all the women from Asia Minor in Rethymno would come, and I was there, and I would go and make them coffee. They would come and leave oil for her blessing, and they left little coals...
I’m not a religious person, but I’ve seen things. Like... one woman came because she couldn’t get pregnant, and she prayed. She now has a fine boy, over forty years old. I go to see her. Once, my mother fell into a coma. My father took the icon, and snuck it into intensive care, here in Rethymno. He put it under her pillow, and the next day, the feast day of Agios Dimitrios, my mother woke up. And that’s the truth.
There were times when I heard [tap, tap], this... It came from right above. ‘Grandma, what is that? Should I get up?’ I was very young. ‘Do it, my child, it’s her blessing’. And she got up, ‘Cross yourself. We’re going to hear something good’. My grandmother was not so old when she died; she died at the age of eighty. My poor grandmother would always say, ‘It’s her blessing, her blessing. Her blessing is walking on the boards’.