Tamama -
The missing woman of Pontus

I was born in 1911, in the village of Ordou and my name is Christos Eliades. I had nine brothers and sisters and my father’s name was Panagiotis and my mother’s name was Pelagia. When the evil began and they were rounding up the Greeks of our country, I was only five years old and that’s all I can remember. But I know that only I and my sister Europe survived that storm. Everyone else perished and no one survived.
Many women followed the exiles, hoping that they could move the accompanying Turkish soldiers by crying and pleading.
When night fell on that day, one could hear in our village, in every house, the crying of children and in the streets the barking of dogs, which also sensed the evil and calamity.
There were 6 children in our house. My four sisters, me, who was five years old, and my brother Charalambos, who was not yet fifteen. We were anxiously awaiting the return and the return of the others. Our unhappy mother followed our father and her three older sons. But the cactus.
The women gave up their futile effort and returned half-dead from the night’s march, cold and despair. Our mother is back, alone. An hour after returning, we lost her. He died and left us alone and unprotected. We were left with six unprotected orphans. I was too young, only five years old, to understand and feel the death of our mother.
Our village was broken up and deserted by men. Everyone was going down to Ordou, the well-known Kotyora. Without any protection, we children were also going down to Ordou. That’s what our church had advised us all to do. To leave the villages and come to Ordou, where there was more security for all of us. Fortunately the people of Kotyora helped us a lot. They hosted us and gave us food…….