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by George1947 

Posted: 17 October 2018
Word Count: 1825


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Chapter One
 
He had seen the Athens boat steam into the bay an hour earlier, giving him plenty of time to send out for coffee and kadaifi and smoke several more cigarettes.  In his father’s day, (jobs at the Ottoman Customs Service were strictly hereditary), the harbour would mainly have seen craft from around the Eastern Mediterranean.  Sailing boats would tie up and island folk would barter their produce for tools or cloth or furniture from the shops in Franque St or Keramalti Market.    Now vast steel ships, a hundred metres long, driven by steam engines, would arrive from all over the world.  Since the building of the Suez Canal, the port had increased its traffic manyfold.  Passenger ships like this were now common, bringing visitors from all over Europe and America for a glimpse the Ottoman world.
In this city of mongrels, he was glad he had a job that allowed him, insisted even, that he speak his native Turkish.  Out in the streets, away from the customs building, he would speak Greek or, in the market, Armenian.  At home with his family, Turkish was the linga franca but even that was a mongrel form of the language that had developed along this coast of Asia Minor over the centuries.  Mainly subverted by Greek, but also with a confection of French, for that was considered the language of culture and sophistication.   Of the quarter of a million people living in the city, half were Greeks, the rest, mainly Turks and Armenians.  The remainder was made up of Jews, Levantines, Europeans, Americans et al.  It was not uncommon for the average Smyrniote to speak four, five or even six languages.
But now, he chose to speak English.  It was a game he played with himself; spotting passenger's nationalities by their appearance, their hats, their baggage, a thousand clues.
“Passports, please.”  In front of him stood two young men, one tall and blond the other not so tall and not blond at all.  “You are from England?" he said.
"Oh no sir, we're American."   The taller of the two reached into an inside pocket and produced the familiar dark blue booklet.  His companion, who was carrying his jacket, held it up and reached into an inside pocket.  He looked puzzled, it was empty.  He reached into the other pocket but could still not find his passport.  He slapped his trouser pockets, front and rear. 
"I had it right here momentarily," he said, "I made sure I had it when we left the saloon.  Oh my gosh. It must have dropped out of my coat.  I'm sorry, Sir."  He looked stricken.  " I'll have to run back and see if I can find it.  Maybe its been handed in.  The purser will probably have it.  Sorry, sir. Sorry.” He looked back at the steamer.  "I won’t keep you a minute."  He was beginning to panic. "Well maybe five minutes.  I'm sorry - sorry," He paused.  A thought grew in his head.  "Say, you do speak English, don't you?"  The two men had watched this pantomime with quiet amusement with the occasional glance between them,
"Excuse me, sir," said the customs man, "What is that you are holding in your hand?"  The young man looked.  He was holding his coat and his passport.  “What is the purpose of your visit in Smyrna?”
“We will be studying Archaeology at the American University, right here in town
 "This is your first time in Smyrna?
"Yes, sir," said the short, non-blond, " We sure are pleases to be here.  Why, if it wasn't for the darndest thing we would still have been in Athens."
"We'd be in jail, you mean," said Thomas.  "You see, back in Piraeus, shit for brains here, said to the official that he was a bomb so they locked us up for a while."
“I was just practising my Greek.  How was I to know vova meant a bomb.  I was trying to say that what I had in my case was a peach pie."
"While we're here, stick to English, Jerry,” said Tom, otherwise who knows what might happen?"
“Welcome to Smyrna.”
…………………………………………………………………………………..
 
 
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. No sooner did she think it was the worst, the filthiest city she had ever had the misfortune to visit when, without a pause, without missing a beat, she knew she would have swapped a year in London for just one more day in Paris.  It Was unthinkable that she would never again sit at a pavement cafe with a cup of coffee and a pack of coarse, French cigarettes or walk her cobbled streets in the moonlight.  Never again marvel at Mr Eiffel’s tower, so tall and delicate, you would swear it would blow over in a gust of wind.  Had she shown you her journal, it would have revealed that when she had arrived two years earlier, the entry for that first day had read, "I think I'm in love.  This place is beautiful!!!!  The streets, the houses, the people.  Everything is beautiful!!!  True fact!"  Had a breeze blown through the window of her little room six months later and turned the pages, a different éclat would have been observed. "I hate Le Chat Noire, I hate  Lefevre.  I hate all Frenchmen.  I'm going home” And then, had it been a  blowy day on her balcony overlooking the Place Pigalle, the pages of her journal might have turned to her most recent observations. 
“Why am I so stupid?   I’m ruined. I’m never, ever, ever going to drink again. I am so stupid” Should she stay in Paris?  Could she leave Paris?  Or go back to Camden Town?  Life had become so complicated for Maisie.  She seemed to attract men: the way that moths are drawn to a flame. Trouble was, too often, it was she who got burned.  She thought on.  Or should she use the ticket?  Why not?  she decided.  Why not indeed.  After all, a change was as good as a holiday and she certainly needed to change. 
 In the baggage car of the train, her monogrammed valises were filled with the finest dresses and flimsies that Galleries Lafayette had to offer. In a smaller, matching attaché case close beside her was a letter of introduction to a Mr Avedissian, General Manager, The Grand Hotel Huck, Smyrna, Turkey, a one-way ticket on the Orient Express and 10,000 francs. 
Her couchette was luxurious, better than any hotel room she'd ever paid for herself.  And, the dining car was a fairy tale in gold and blue, the tables laid with white linen, silver knives and forks and on each a blue, shaded lamp.  During those days she wasted no time in getting to know her fellow travellers.  The women on board had given her the cold shoulder, refused to associate with her, whispered that they knew her 'type', as they gossiped to one other.  Her most ardent companion had been the Right Honourable Percy Swan.  She liked him.  He was no more than thirty, handsome and wore his family's wealth lightly.  He knew her destination, he said, spoke well of it, but had not been there of late, not since he and his family had berthed there some years earlier. Of the callers who were going to visit, Percy, would receive her best attentions.
Though she knew little about Smyrna, what she had learned made her smile.  It might just be her kind of town, Paris-sur-Mer.  For a start it attracted an abundance of thrusting young men who were drawn to the city from all over, hoping to build up a chubby bank account for themselves.  Of course, there would also be the men who spent their time drinking and gambling, talking a lot and laughing loudly.  Men who were always around but did never seemed to do anything.   'Lurkers', she called them.  She could spot them a mile off.   Flitting from one hotel lobby to another, they seemed to possess only one set of clothes. Their business was invariably 'import/export' though if you had pressed them for a little more detail they would have glanced around the room, lowered their voice and muttered "Pas devant les autres, s'il vous plait."   Though she recognised herself in that demi-monde, she was different.   She knew what she wanted, and now, she had the capital to fund her ambitions.  She pulled her collar up, draw the attaché case closer and looked out the window.
Au revoir, Paris, hello Smyrna.
 
……………………………………………………………….
Alan Jones was an archaeologist.  He had spent many months digging in the Valley of the Kings but after some initial success he had hit a dry patch.   Whilst those around him, Randall and Fitzbingham and Rees-Thomas, had found new tombs and relics, his plots had yielded nothing.  Schliemann, who had been excavating Troy, was now an international personage, giving lecture tours all over the world, charging 200 dollars per night.  He had heard, through the grapevine, that in Ephesus, Otto Benndorf had uncovered some spectacular finds and that they were just the tip of the iceberg.  Nadia would be heartbroken, of course, but he did not owe her anything, he'd never promised her a thing.  No, he was moving on. 
So long, Egypt.  Ephesus, here I come.
 
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
 
It was Ugur’s first day here in Smyrna.  He felt completely at sea, well, the opposite, sort of, more like a fish out of water.  He’d been a uniformed policeman for four years but this was his first day as a detectif.  In the past he had thought of his uniform as a burden, a necessary evil, but now he felt the lack.  He felt naked and vulnerable standing behind the front desk at the Konak District Police Office.  His first job had been to get a holding form from the Duty Sergeant.  “No problem,” the sergeant had said, a kindly-looking old gentleman, if a bit brusque. “No problem at all, sonny, just ‘hold on’ a moment and I’ll get it for you.”  While he waited he examined the notices pinned on the wall. They involved rosters for night shifts and routine patrols and notification of the arrangements for St Polycarp’s Day, the patron saint.   Next to it, hung a large map of the city.  He had always liked maps.  He read them the way people read books.  He could look at the lines of elevation and the symbols; town halls, libraries, mosques, synagogues, orthodox churches, with and without domes and easily picture the scene.  He thought of his own village, many days travel to the East.  It did not possess this wonderful location on a wide bay facing a setting sun.  It did not possess green hills and a coastline that disappeared off into the imagination.  Nor did it have this clarity of light that seemed to illuminate his mind and made him think he could see clear into the future. 
Hello, Smyrna. I’m here.






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Comments by other Members



Carlyagain at 11:09 on 18 October 2018  Report this post
Hi George

It's great to see your work. You haven't said what type of critique you want - a more gentle starting point or a more detailed one. There is no title to this piece or an indication of genre. The latter would be helpful to know.

I enjoyed reading this excerpt but my gut feeling is that you don't need either Alan or Ugur's contributions at this point. Their stories could be weaved in at a later stage.

Also, we start with the viewpoint of a customs man, rather than Tom and Jerry who, I assume, will be our future main characters. If this is the case, I feel we need to know a bit more about them, or get a better feel for them, before we move on. What would make us want to revisit their story later on?

I think there is a typo in one of their comments:

We sure are pleases to be here. 


Maisie's story has an interesting start. I love the idea of the diary pages blown by the wind.

I did feel the word 'chubby' didn't work in relation to the bank accounts of 'thrusting' young men. 

Typo in draw the attaché case closer  - drew.

This is my viewpoint and not necessarily that of other people or yourself. This does look like an intriguing story and I look forward to seeing how things pan out for all the characters in Smyrna. I look forward to reading more of this story.

Carly

Catkin at 12:26 on 19 October 2018  Report this post
Hello George,

It's great that you have posted work here. I will look at it as soon as I possibly can.

Catkin at 00:01 on 23 October 2018  Report this post
Hello George.

You haven’t said what “strength” of critique you would like. When you post work, you will find at the bottom of the screen a box with various options to click, which range from “Be gentle with me” to “Go on - I can take it”. I am going to assume you want the “Go on - I can take it” type, but please forgive me if you would have preferred a gentler approach.

It’s also helpful to know what genre you are writing in, as a commercial fiction thriller, say, needs very different input from a literary work.

This looks as though it could be an involving story. The characters have the potential to be very interesting, and the location is exciting and exotic.

I’m going to talk first about showing and telling. People really do have some misguided ideas about this subject. If “telling” is done in the right way, it can work very well. In this chapter, there is an excellent example of the right sort of telling: the introduction of Maisie through the windblown pages of her journal. It’s clever and original, it’s interesting, and it’s effective in conveying a lot of information about the backstory of the character in a short space of time. It works because it’s a form of “telling” that is close to showing - each vignette of her life is dramatised and personal, like a tiny story in itself.

Unfortunately, at the very beginning, you have an example of the sort of telling that people object to. The first sentence is fine:
 

He had seen the Athens boat steam into the bay an hour earlier, giving him plenty of time to send out for coffee and kadaifi and smoke several more cigarettes.


- but after this, the information given becomes general. We are no longer seeing the character, or seeing what he does, and we are not seeing anything in the harbour happening in real time. This section:

In his father’s day, (jobs at the Ottoman Customs Service were strictly hereditary), the harbour would mainly have seen craft from around the Eastern Mediterranean.  Sailing boats would tie up and island folk would barter their produce for tools or cloth or furniture from the shops in Franque St or Keramalti Market. Now vast steel ships, a hundred metres long, driven by steam engines, would arrive from all over the world.  Since the building of the Suez Canal, the port had increased its traffic manyfold.  Passenger ships like this were now common, bringing visitors from all over Europe and America for a glimpse the Ottoman world.

- is like a history lesson. It isn’t about anything that the character is seeing when the actual story is happening. Because of that, it doesn’t work as effectively as it should to set the scene. If you said that as he is watching, there is a vast steel ship sailing into the harbour, the reader would be there with him, really seeing that particular ship.

In this city of mongrels, he was glad he had a job that allowed him, insisted even, that he speak his native Turkish.  Out in the streets, away from the customs building, he would speak Greek or, in the market, Armenian.

- this works better. It’s still telling, but it’s about the character, not the past history of the location.

At home with his family, Turkish was the linga franca but even that was a mongrel form of the language that had developed along this coast of Asia Minor over the centuries.  Mainly subverted by Greek, but also with a confection of French, for that was considered the language of culture and sophistication.   Of the quarter of a million people living in the city, half were Greeks, the rest, mainly Turks and Armenians.  The remainder was made up of Jews, Levantines, Europeans, Americans et al.  It was not uncommon for the average Smyrniote to speak four, five or even six languages.

- and then, you move away from him again, and talk about how the use of languages developed in that region. This could be interesting elsewhere in the story, but here, right at the beginning, is the wrong place for it. What readers want to know at the beginning of the story is what the characters are like and what situation are they in. They want to know what sort of story it is that they will be reading.

But now, he chose to speak English.  It was a game he played with himself; spotting passenger's nationalities by their appearance, their hats, their baggage, a thousand clues.


- and this, in contrast, is great. It tells us an interesting little detail about him, and we immediately want to see him playing his game - which, immediately, we do.

If this were my story, I would cut the beginning to something like this, perhaps adding a few details about what the bay looked like:

He had seen the Athens boat steam into the bay an hour earlier, giving him plenty of time to send out for coffee and kadaifi and smoke several more cigarettes. In this city of mongrels, he was glad he had a job that allowed him to speak his native Turkish. Out in the streets, away from the customs building, he would speak Greek or, in the market, Armenian. But now, he chose to speak English.  It was a game he played with himself; spotting passenger's nationalities by their appearance, their hats, their baggage, a thousand clues.
 

"Excuse me, sir," said the customs man, "What is that you are holding in your hand?"  The young man looked.  He was holding his coat and his passport.

- I didn’t understand what happened here. Did he have the passport all the time and didn’t realise?

I’m not sure that the exchange between the customs man and the Americans is significant or interesting enough to be at the very beginning of a story. I think it needs something more.

stick to English, Jerry,” said Tom

- Tom and Jerry. Did you want the reader to think of the cartoon?

What time period is this story set in? Some of the expressions used in dialogue are modern, but Smyrna is the pre-1930 name of the city (I looked it up!), and you have steam power and valises, which suggest this is pre-war.

I think you are absolutely right to introduce Maisie after a scene set in Smyrna, as it is much more effective to know something of the place she will be going to.


She seemed to attract men: the way that moths are drawn to a flame. Trouble was, too often, it was she who got burned

- I like this observation, but I think it would be more effective if you re-phrased it. “Moths to a flame” is a cliche. I’d find a way of letting the reader know that is what you mean without using those exact words. “Men flew straight to her flame, but sadly, it was often she who got burned”, for example.

The introductions of the final two characters are too short to be truly effective, and seem rather like afterthoughts as a result. They need some expansion.

In conclusion, there is lots of potential here for an interesting and worthwhile story, but it needs work. I think you should cut out the history and get into the action more quickly.

I particularly like the character of Maisie, and I want to know what happens to her. The great thing about Maisie is that we have an idea of what her problem is, and we already have an idea of what she is going to do to solve it.

michwo at 11:05 on 23 October 2018  Report this post
Am I right in thinking your surname is Armenian, George?
Have you actually lived in the part of the world you are describing so fondly?
The one thing that struck me in this is the name Schliemann and the mention of Troy.  You mention him in passing as if he's still alive ... giving lecture tours all over the world, charging 200 dollars per night.  He died in 1890, so your story is actually set prior to that date.  The Suez canal, joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, opened, if I'm not mistaken, in 1869.  So it seems to me your time frame is pretty much that of an historical novel.  Am I right in thinking this is what you have in mind?  The local colour is already looming large.  Indiana Jones also hails from America of course.  Is there going to be an archaeological dig in this eventually?
 

Chestersmummy at 12:56 on 23 October 2018  Report this post
Hi George,
This looks very promising.  It has an exotic background and interesting characters and I'm intrigued as to where you are going to take us.

I would agree with Catkin about the 'info dumps' in the first two paras - these need not be wasted but could be slotted into the story later on, otherwise it is a well written piece.

However, the 2nd sentence when you introduce Maisie jars a little (at least to me) 

No sooner did she think it was the worst, the filthiest ciy she had ever had the misfortune to visit when, without a pause, without missing a beat, she knew she would have swapped a year in London for just one more day in Paris.

I was under the impression she was talking about Smyrna and Paris and then you suddenly mention London.  I think that by doing this you lose impetus and you would be better off by forgetting London and concentrate on her missing Paris.  Just a thought,,,,,

Best wishes

Janet

 





 

George1947 at 21:10 on 23 October 2018  Report this post
Thank you, Catkin, Carly, Janet and Michwo (Michael?)  Thank you all.

I can't tell you how pleased I am to be here.  I've been to a couple of writer’s groups and the usual form is "Who's got something to read?"  Then in the space of 5 - 15 minutes say, a piece is read and commented on, generally warm praise, and so on.  You wonderful people have given me a platform to show my writing and taken the time to read and think about what you have read.  That is exactly what I had been hoping for, (and what I hope I can return). I can’t tell you how constructive your comments are. 
  1.   No name, no synopsis: I wasn’t sure how much or how little to say at the very beginning.  I chose to say nothing.  Next time, I will introduce it.
  2.   It was invaluable, Catkin, to let me know that the historical stuff on page 1 is as interesting as someone else’s baby stories (present company excepted, Janet.).  Now that you tell me, its obvious.  Even mitigating it when you say, ‘this piece of documentary writing is OK because it refers to the character in question’
  3.  Tom and Jerry are actually Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, that sort of dynamic.
  4.   The story is set in Smyrna, 1911.  What I learn from your critiques is that in it is not clear that the year is 1911 and the place is Smyrna. (Now called Izmir.)  This is a big failure.
  5.    Michael, I am half Scottish/half Armenian, born in Glasgow and raised by my mother and grandmother who were both born in Smyrna.  I have visited Keramati Market, in Izmir and sat by a marble fountain where my grandmother must have sat.  Having said that, I am a jock who has lived in London nearly sixty years.
  6.    Again, thank you, Michael, for pointing out that my research is awry.  (Until recently, I thought that ‘awry’ rhymed with ‘Laurie’)
  7.   Finally, may I say that I have not forgotten your other criticisms but I still need to be convinced that I am wrong.
I hope you can see that I am happy to be associated with you and look forward to more back and forth.If anyone would like me to read their work, past or present, please let me know.And, a final word. I don’t know how to critique a translation.Can anyone give me a clue?
 
Thank you again, all of you,
 
George
 
ps I normally write my stuff double-spaced.Should I submit it that way?
 


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