“Not Even My Name” by Thea Halo
on WSKG Radio’s OFF THE PAGE

For all the ages the crossroads of civilization at the eastern end of the Mediterranean – the “middle of the world” – is a place called Asia Minor.  National borders may be drawn, but nationalities exist across them.  Sometimes the intermingling of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and others has been peaceful and beneficial to all of humanity.  But there have been terrible times too, and even today this part of the world faces both hope and ethnic conflict.

In the years following World War I Turkey experienced tremendous upheaval.  The once-mighty Ottoman monarchy was overthrown and a new Turkish republic led by the western-oriented Mustafa Kemal Atatürk embarked on a campaign that a later time might call “ethnic cleansing”.  Among the most unfortunate of groups to be banished from Turkish soil were Greek Christians who lived in the Pontian Mountains near the Black Sea. 

Although the story of the banishment, death marches and dispersal of Pontic Greeks was reported at the time, this tragic history has been often overlooked or denied.  But one of the most powerful accounts came eighty years after the fact in the book Not Even My Name by Thea Halo.  It is the story of Thea’s mother, who was originally named Themía, from the village of Iondone. At about the age of ten she was forced from her happy home and childhood and sent off on a death march with the rest of the Pontic Greek population.  Her parents and siblings died but somehow she survived and was given shelter and sustenance under both caring and harsh circumstances. 

                       --from Not Even My Name

Sano arrive in exile in Syria where, at the age of 15 she was married to a man she hardly knew who was three times her age.  Her husband, Abraham Halo, was an Assyrian who had been living in America and in 1925 he took his new bride back with him.  Not Even My Name is really a sequence of stories: Sano’s horrendous experience during the persecution of the Pontic Greek people and her life as an immigrant in America. Bracketing them is the account of Sano’s return to Turkey with Thea in a pilgrimage to find a remnant of Iondone and the Pontic Greek land.  Thea Halo tells the whole story in the first-person, so it is her mother’s spirit that dominates the pages.

            Sano Themía is now 95 years old.  She and Abraham were together for 45 years and raised ten children.  Thea Halo is an artist, poet and broadcaster, whose book Not Even My Name has become an important testimony of ethnic cleansing and a valued document within the Pontic Greek community.  Thea joins Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to share her mother’s life and her own experiences, and to discuss the tragic history of the Pontic Greek people.  To join in the conversation, call during the live broadcast to 1-888/359-9754 or post a comment to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.

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