"The Great Fire" by Lou Ureneck (2015)

I’m not exactly sure why both the media and historians have chosen 2015 to commemorate the Armenian Massacre as the first Genocide of the 20^th Century.  The first of the killings began in 1912 as the Ottoman Empire continued to crumble from lack of new lands to conquer and tax. This trend had begun in the 1800’s and by the early part of the 20^th Century the Ottoman Empire; as such; was doomed. But the massacres began before 1915 and continued on through 1922 and the events at Smyrna; in present day Izmir. This book is chiefly about the massacre at Smyrna; though the author also does a masterful job of giving the reader the entire historical context which led up to it.

Nothing ever really changes in reference to the Middle East and Islam. The lines change; the names change; but the killings go on. IN this masterfully written account of the Massacre at Smyrna in 1922 author Lou Ureneck does a masterful job at bringing to life one of the most awful historical events of the early 20^th century. That he does so in such a way as to leave the reader more informed about the present day political situation in regards to ISIS and ISIL makes the book even more remarkable.

They say that the only thing new is the history you don’t know; and this book serves to prove the point. When the First World War came to an end for most of the world, the Greeks and Turks were still fighting. The Ottoman Empire had been scaled back and the Turks were fighting to keep all of the land that they could. 

Mustapha Kemal; who is known more widely as Ataturk, would become the man who would lead Turkey into the 20^th Century and remake the nation as a secular one. That struggle continues today with the Turkish government doing a tightrope walk between the secular principles established by Kemal, and the pull of radical Islam in the form of ISIS.

The Greeks were fighting the Turks for several reasons; chief among them being that King Constantine was deemed at fault for losing the war to the Ottomans and he was also being opposed by Greek Nationalists, who would eventually remove him in the days following the events at Smyrna. 

The heroes of this book are a sickly missionary named Asa Jennings; and 2 feisty young American naval Lt. Commanders named Halsey Powell and J.B. Rhodes. Together these 3 men bucked a callous and unfeeling Admiral named Mark Bristol and essentially formulated their own foreign policy in order to save almost a million people from being slaughtered on the Quay in Smyrna.

Against the wishes of the Turkish government; and under the most severe of conditions; these 3 men organized a relief effort to remove the helpless Armenian Christians to a safer haven. How they did this, in the age before instant communication, is an unbelievable story of human compassion and the will to do what is right.

This book will do more to inform the reader of the current situation in the Middle East than a month of reading today’s newspapers. Between these covers lay the history of the Ottoman Empire and how it has grown and ebbed in the past; providing a window to the present for those who will take the time and thought to make the connections.

The following excerpts are from Ernest Hemingway’s “On the Quay at Smyrna” and are quoted by the author in the book. They will do more to move you than anything I can hope to write. I offer them here as an inducement for you to read this masterfully written account by Mr. Ureneck.

“The strange thing was,” he said, “how they screamed every night at midnight. I do not know why they screamed at that time. We were in the harbor and they were all on the pier and at midnight they started screaming. We used to turn the searchlight on them to quiet them. That always did the trick. We'd run the searchlight up and down over them two or three times and they stopped it.”

“The worst,” he said, “were the women with dead babies. You couldn't get the women to give up their dead babies. They'd have babies dead for six days. Wouldn't give them up. Nothing you could do about it. Had to take them away finally…”

Also consider this quote from page 243 of the text; 

“At 4AM on May 26, 1908, the drill struck oil, and it gushed 50 feet over the rig. A young British Lieutenant who was present, along with 20 rifleman to protect the operation against bandits, sent the news back to the British government in code; “See Pslam 104 Verse 15 third sentence.”  The passage read; “And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face shine…”

“Gusher followed gusher, and the Near East oil industry was born. In 1909, the British syndicate was reformulated under as the Anglo- Persian Oil Company; later to be named BP, British Petroleum.”

“All this, by way of a winding road, led to World War One, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, Smyrna, and (Admiral) Bristol’s inexcusable response to a humanitarian disaster.”

The Siege of Malta

Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Malta. This battle was pivotal in the war between the Christian and Islamic faiths in their struggle to control the Mediterranean. It was the beginning of the end of a 50 year tug of war between the two cultures, a struggle which continues even now, over half a millennium later.

The island of Malta is literally the point at which the East meets the West. And it was at this place where the two cultures came to a violent confrontation during the final years of a war that waged between the Ottomans and Western Europe from 1521 to about 1571. The Siege of Malta is one of the defining battles of that war. It bears examination if we are to learn anything at all from history.

The Knights Hospitallers of Saint John – who were originally based in Jerusalem, ended up in Malta when they lost Rhodes to the Ottomans in 1522. This was the beginning of a long and brutal period of tension between the East and the West, which remains unresolved, even today.

The island of Malta became a Christian fortress, as well as a barrier against the further spread of Islam. The Knights of Malta, during these years, essentially became bandits and adventurers in their own right. They were also anti-Semitic, disallowing the Maltese from joining their order. At the same time as the Maltese endured these insults from the Knights, they were also mindful of the crimes committed against them in the past by the Turks, regardless of their common Semitic ancestry.

In 1530 the Grand Master Villiers de I’lsle Adam returned from his tour of Europe, during which he had persuaded Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to make a gift to him of the Maltese Islands. (You may recognize this part from the Dashiell Hammett novel “The Maltese Falcon”,or from the Humphrey Bogart movie of the same name, but it is true nonetheless.) Charles granted the gift of the islands, with one stipulation; that each year a falcon would be sent from the island of Malta to the Viceroy of Sicily, and that a mass be held in Charles honor by the Pope on All Saints Day.

Malta's sister island Gozo fell to the Ottomans in 1551, with all of her inhabitants becoming slaves to her conquerors. This was a lesson not lost on the Maltese, who realized that they must ally with the Knights, or suffer the same fate as their fellow brethren on Gozo. In short, the Maltese were caught between a rock, and the proverbial “hard place.”

The Siege itself was the inevitable conclusion, which arose out of decades of conflict between the Christian Alliance and the Ottomans. This conflict was largely about trade, and control of the Mediterranean Sea for that purpose. In the decades leading up to the Siege, Turkish Corsair Turgut Reis led the first, unsuccessful assault on Malta in late 1551.

By 1559 Turgut Reis had reached the shores of Spain, which prompted Philip the Second to assemble the largest fleet of the time, in order to reclaim the conquered territory. With 54 ships, all galleys, and 14,000 men, the fleet set out to confront Turgut off the coast of Tunisia. The battle took place just offshore, at the island of Djerba, where over half of the Christian fleet was lost, or captured.

The Knights, too, were busy during this time. They had become pirates, preying upon non-Christian shipping vessels, while taking over 5,000 Muslim and Jewish slaves in the bargain. In 1564, Romegas, the Order’s most brutal pirate, captured several ships from the Ottomans, taking prisoners of rank, such as the governor of Cairo, as well as the governor of Alexandria. These actions lead to the Ottomans, under the rule of Suleiman, to vow and wipe the face of the earth with the Knights of Malta. The stage for all out war was set, and Peace was a long way off.

The Turks set forth from Istanbul with a fleet 193 vessels carrying 48,000 in all. The Knights numbered all of 6,100, half of whom had to be enscripted from the Maltese population.

To prepare for the battle, Grand Master Vallete ordered all crops to be brought in from the fields, ready or not. There was a twofold purpose to this; the first was to ensure there was enough food for the siege; secondly, anything outside of the walls could be used to aid the invaders. With no crops left growing on the island, the invaders would have much less time to conquer Malta. In addition to this precaution, all wells were poisoned in order to deprive the enemy of drinking water.

The Turks arrived on about May 18th, but did not begin the siege immediately. A disagreement between commanders would keep the Ottomans aboard their ships for another week, while the commanders decided upon a strategy. Had they attacked Malta, the battle would have been shortened. Instead the Turks decided to split their troops 3 ways, with the first force attacking the fortifications at St. Elmo, which guarded the harbor at Malta. The other plan was to attack the old and undefended capital Mdina, in the center of the island, and then branch out from there.

The plan to take Fort St. Elmo first was the beginning of the end for the Ottomans, as they were unable to place their guns effectively, relying instead on a bombardment by sea. But, by the end of June, Fort Elmo was in Ottoman hands, though much time had been lost, and supplies were growing short for the invaders, while the Christian forces had resupplied their remaining garrisons.

The brutality of the invaders was matched by the Knights in every regard. When Mustafa Pasha captured Fort Elmo, he decapitated the bodies, floating them across the bay on wooden crucifixes. Not to be outdone, the Maltese Commander, de Valette, decapitated all of the Ottoman prisoners and fired their heads into the Turkish camp using cannon.

The fighting went on through August, when the Christians were ready to retreat. But, by September they had been reinforced by Don Garcia from Spain, with 8,000 men and supplies, allowing them to continue the battle. By this time, and due to the timely intervention of the Spanish, the Turks packed up and left, leaving one third of their men dead on the field. By September 11th, that’s right, September 11th, the Turks had fled the island, and the Siege of Malta would turn out to be the last epic battle of the Crusades, which finally came to a halt in 1571.

The victory was so important, that money began to pour into Malta from all corners of Europe, in order that a more secure and fortified garrison be constructed. The aim was to deny, for all eternity, the island of Malta to any future enemies. Had Malta fallen, the Ottoman Empire would have penetrated the underbelly of Europe, forever changing the world in which we find ourselves today.

Baklava - World Peace Through Food

Food is the universal peacemaker. Baklava is a perfect example of this. There are two schools of thought on this subject, one group worships this sticky and sweet confection, which contains fruits, crushed seeds and nuts or raisins. The other group reviles this pastry either because they don't like it, or more often, are unfamiliar with the ingredients. I'm not Julia Child, or the Galloping Gourmet, so you will have to look elsewhere for a recipe. I am a consumer of Baklava, not a producer.

The Baklava you see pictured here was sent to me by my son Keith in Rochester, N.Y. He got a huge holiday tray of Baklava from a family down the street, whom I have never met. Hence, I have no idea where they are from. But I do know that they make great Baklava!

In years past, when I was a working man, huge platters of Baklava would be delivered to the offices in which I worked. While all the other Christmas chocolates and cakes disappeared at an alarming rate, the tray of Baklava went down at a slower pace, mainly because I was the only one eating it.

In my travels, as a younger man, I came to see that each region of the world has it's own form of Baklava. Some use crushed sesame seeds and raisins, or dates. Some use minced apples and berries. But all are surrounded by a light flaky and layered crust which seems to melt away in your mouth. There are so many different versions of this wonderful treat, and all scattered so widely throughout the world, that it makes you very aware that we all must share some kind of mutual background.

Even the Arab and Israeli cultures have much in common with regard to the Baklava issue. Unlike their counterparts in Europe, with the flaky crusts, the middle eastern version is usually more likely to take the form of Halavah, which is made of finely compressed sesame seeds and sometimes with chocolate swirled in. There are also chocolate covered versions of this treat as well as ones mixed with jelly, which, at least for me was pushing the envelope a bit too far.

The Chinese have a version of their own, as do all the European countries. The European dough tends to be heavier, but the sweet sensation is still there. The lightest, and flakiest Baklava seem to have come from the Ottoman Empire and the kitchens of the Topkapi Palace, the residence of the Sultan. Even the Janissaries got into the act, being the receipents of this treat each Ramadan.

The oldest known recorded recipe is from China in about 1300, during the Yuan Dynasty. Others claim it originated in ancient Mesopotamia, where it centered itself around the use of walnuts.

The dough is referred to as phyllo dough and each layer is placed in warm milk with sugar and then topped with the various nuts and fruits before being re-layered with more phyllo dough. The Persians like to cover theirs with honey, as do the Hungarians. I like mine unadorned, in order to enjoy the taste of the crushed seeds and nuts, with their natural sweetness.

Whichever you prefer, the treat is there for the tasting. I have long had a fantasy for a commercial to sell Halavah, which could also be used to promote Baklava and World Peace. The commercial would open with two armies besieged. One army is surrounding a fort in an attempt to starve the enemy out. But the siege lasts too long, and as both sides run out of Baklava, they forget the issues over which they were fighting, declare peace and set off together to obtain some more of this tasty treat.

I did try selling this idea to the people at Halavah, but they rejected it out of hand. I am currently toying with the idea of a special session of the United Nations Security Council that would focus on the Cultural Links that we all have to some form of Baklava. Wish me luck!