Thread by @Dweilius

As dawn breaks on 9/9 in İzmir, it marks 100 years since this woman protected the family of the Greek doctor who had cured her children when they were deathly ill. She was my great grandmother. One of the children was my grandfather. I wonder: what happened to the doctor?

I had grown up with some family stories of the liberation of İzmir. My grandfather had been traumatized, first by the death of his father at the hands of Greek forces, then by the violence of Turkish soldiers when they retook the city.

Distant stories of a distant world. But they took on a new life when I went to Izmir to research my family history and meet my Turkish relatives.

The doctor, I learned, had treated the family, and in particular had saved the lives of my grandfather and his two brothers when they had a terrible fever as young children. So the story went, he stayed by their bedside through the night until their fevers broke.

When Turkish Nationalists took the city 100 years ago today, my great grandmother sheltered the Greek doctor and his family until the violence and fires subsided and they could safely leave. Afterward, her cousin spat in her face in the street for protecting one of the enemy.

That caused a rift within the family that never closed.

But even as new details brought them to life, these were still just stofies. Then, while I was going through drawers of old family relics, I came upon a seal.

First I assumed it was my great grandfather’s: written in Ottoman script, it wouldn’t have belonged to his sons, who grew up in the young Republic.

Anyone who has attempted to decipher Ottoman knows that it can be impossible to read if you don't already know what it says. So thinking of my Turkish family, I spent several fruitless hours trying to differentiate the loops and squiggles.

Finally, as they say, the token dropped. I had just heard the story of the Greek doctor, and realized that the first word in the seal wasn’t Ottoman, or even a name. Doqtor.

Could it be? The letters turned into words: Doctor Apostol Apostolidi.

I imagined the scene: the doctor, expelled by war and treaty to Greece, would have no need of a seal with his name in the Ottoman script, so he left it with the Turkish family that had protected his own.

My cousin could tell me the story of my grandmother protecting the doctor and his family; I could tell her his name. So Twitter, perhaps you can tell me this: what happened to the Smyrniot doctor Apostol Apostolidi?

Any Greeks out there with a family story of how their ancestor barely made it out of the flaming wreckage of Smyrna alive, protected by the woman whose children he had saved?

More prosaic, might there be a mention of a doctor named Apostol Apostolidi in Greek records of the Population Exchange?

Here goes nothing, let’s see what happens.

Doing this now is spitting into the wind given the news from Albion, but I believe in #dokuzeyluel #dokuzeylul and perhaps a boost from @NicholasDanfort @jdryan08 @M_E_Hoffman @ishaantharoor