A Pouchful of Homeland

A Pouchful of Homeland

Content warning: animal injury and deaths caused by illness.

The night his own shepherds came to his door with Greek guerrillas, Mehmet Ağa did not believe it at first. In the darkness, there were shouts, the thud of rifle butts against the door, and dogs suddenly growling as their chains tightened…

“Open the door!” one of them shouted. He recognized the voice. It was Kostas—the man who had worked for him for years, the shepherd he trusted most at the head of his flock.

Betrayal was more painful than a bullet. He took a long, deep breath without a word. His hands went instinctively to his gun. Then, suddenly, he shouted:

 “Arm yourselves! The door will not open!”

The dogs broke free from their chains. Bayonets thrusting through the gap in the doorway instantly caught on their teeth. Steel rubbed against flesh. A dog’s scream echoed through the yard. When it pulled back, the corner of its mouth was cut.  Blood, saliva, and the growls mixed together. Yet it did not retreat for long. It lunged at the door again and again.

Mehmet Ağa’s sons fired into the air. The shots echoed across the mountains. The intruders threatened for a while longer and then withdrew.

No one slept that night. Mehmet Ağa stayed in the courtyard until dawn. He tended to the dogs. He cradled the head of the wounded one on his lap, wiped the blood from its mouth, and tried to treat it as best he could. Then he murmured:

“Today the dog’s blood flowed; tomorrow, ours will.”

From that day on, the danger only grew. They could no longer live in peace. Mehmet Ağa had made up his mind. They had to leave this place for good.

One day, news reached the village: following the treaty signed after Lausanne, a population exchange would be carried out. Muslims would go to Turkey, Greeks to Greece.

One morning, two officials arrived, carrying lists.

“Ahmet, son of Veli.”

 “Here.”

 “Ali, son of Hasan.”

“Here.” …

The names were read aloud. The papers were stamped.

“Prepare yourselves. You will move as soon as possible,” they said. This time, it was not weapons at the door, but the seal of the state.

Mehmet Ağa’s fingers trembled as he took the paper. He had defended his fields, his flock, his home. But there was nothing left to defend anymore. This decision taken by the state had finalized the decision he himself had made. There is no going back now.

The animals were sold for a pittance. The sheep were mingled with foreign flocks. Mehmet Ağa saw each one off with his own eyes. When the pens were emptied, the evening silence grew deeper. Fields, houses, barns… all the inheritance and labor would now belong to the arriving Greeks.

At the village coffeehouse, during the last meeting, no one met each other’s eyes. At home, the women opened their chests. Embroidered cloths kept for years, copper pots, a few pieces of clothing… They could not carry more. Life itself was narrowing with every preparation for the journey.

On the final night, Mehmet Ağa went alone to the graveyard. Moonlight fell on the tombstones. He knelt before his father’s grave. His hands rested long on the earth.

“I cannot return,” he said. “But I cannot leave you or my homeland entirely behind either.”

He let his fingers pass through the soil. The upper layer was dry and cool. Beneath it, damp. In that dampness lay the scent of years. He filled his hand. He put it into the small cloth pouch he had brought. Knees trembling as he tied it, it was not the soil he was taking, but the weight of all that had been buried within it—his memories, his dead, his past. He sat for a while longer, then rose and walked away without looking back.

The carts for the exodus moved at the break of dawn. Mehmet Ağa walked at the front. Women and children were inside the wagon. They kept looking back until the village minaret disappeared from view. By the time they reached the sea, the crowd had grown. Luggage, bundles, crying children… People carried life, not merely burdens.

On board, Mehmet Ağa pressed the pouch to his chest. The waves mixed with the hum in his chest. The journey was long. Crowds, hunger, illness, and cold intertwined. Nights on deck were hard. People huddled over their bundles, holding children to their chests. As the waves rose, the voices of those praying rose higher.

When they finally reached the shore, they were first quarantined, days later, the journey began. Everyone made their way, within their means, toward the new life that had been allocated to them.

The state settled them in a swampy plain at first. “This is compensation for the land you lost,” they said. Deeds were given. Borders marked. New homes assigned. There was land—but in the mornings, a heavy stench rose with the mist. Waters lay still. In the evenings, clouds of mosquitoes descended over the village.

The first to fall ill was their neighbor, Hüseyin. He collapsed with chills, followed by fever. He lay delirious for days. Then, one morning, he fell silent forever. “Malaria,” they said. Then another. And after that, yet another died.

The night the first life was taken, Mehmet Ağa awoke at midnight. The house was silent, but there was no peace in the quiet. He went outside. Moonlight cast a pale glow over the marshy plain. Puddles shimmered like silver. The thin whine of mosquitoes gnawed at the night. Mehmet Ağa sat at the edge of the yard and took out the pouch from his pocket. He had not opened it since the migration. He stared at the knot for a long time. His fingers were faltered. Finally, he loosened it. The cloth relaxed. The soil poured into his hand—dark, dense, alive. He raised it to his face, closed his eyes, and inhaled. For a moment, the wind seemed to shift. He recalled the slopes of Zigos, the sheep returning to the pens in the late afternoon, the cypresses of the graveyard, his father’s tombstone.

He sprinkled a small portion of the soil from his hand beside the swampy earth. Two soils lay side by side: one dry and alive, the other damp, heavy, with a pungent scent. He mixed them lightly with his finger. They did not blend. The top was still the soil he had brought. The bottom was something else—sticky, cold…

Mehmet Ağa understood. Not all soil was the same. He placed his own soil back in the pouch. Not a single particle would be left behind.

“I did not abandon you,” he whispered. “You are my homeland.”

That night, the fever of his eldest son Ali's wife rose. Their tiny baby also started whimpering from the illness. Mehmet Ağa held the pouch to his chest. They now had a new homeland, new lands. But these new lands brought no peace; they brought new troubles.

Through the nights by the fire, Mehmet Ağa would hold the pouch, but no longer open it. The scent of the soil inside could not overcome the air here. One evening, Ali’s wife fell to bed, shivering. Her teeth chattered. Nothing they covered her with helped. Her fever rose and fell. She pressed her newborn to her chest, trying to warm it with hands that were already icy. A few days later, the child’s fever rose as well. Mehmet Ağa went outside that night, helpless. The sky was glittering. The stars had not moved. But the people had.

In that malaria-ridden plain, a grave was dug for the first time for one of their family members. The soil was soft. The shovel entered easily. That ease cut Mehmet Ağa deeper. Ali’s child succumbed to the illness and died. They wrapped the tiny body in a small piece of cloth and quietly buried it in the ground. The young woman still struggled to survive.

As deaths increased in the village, a decision was made. “We cannot stay here,” they said. The illnesses and loss of life occurring in the region were reported to goverment officials. The goverment would provide new locations.

A new migration had begun. This time, what they left behind was not their belongings, but deep sorrow and wailing. Mehmet Ağa looked back as they left the plain. His grandchild’s grave was a small mound. These lands no longer belonged to him but now a part of his life remained there.

Mehmet Ağa, once a proud and noble man, had now become a muhacir. Twice displaced, twice uprooted. There was soil—but none held them.

During this new migration, Ali’s sick wife succumbed. Ali’s spirit crumbled. He made no sound. Sometimes one does not scream; something inside simply breaks, leaving emptiness.

After this second migration, they had arrived in their new lands. They settled in a vacant house in a village near İzmir. Old stone walls, a broken chest left by the window. A foreign scent filled the space. Everything was modest compared to the past they had left behind.

Mehmet Ağa was a stranger here. There was soil—but it was not his. There was a house, walls—but no past within.

Years passed. Mehmet Ağa tried to take root in this new place. Yet when he bent to the earth, he could not find that old scent. He was like a shepherd without a flock. His sons worked hard, life went on—but the place inside him remained in exile. In his old age, he carried the pouch with him always. Sometimes he opened it and inhaled. Sometimes he just squeezed it in his palm.

On the last night of his life, Mehmet Ağa fixed his eyes on the ceiling. The mountains of Zigos, the sheep returning to pens, the graveyard—all passed before his eyes. The foreign scents the wind carried, the coolness of the stones, the dampness of the barns—all revived in his memory. He held the pouch in his hand. For the last time, he smiled; there was both sorrow and quiet satisfaction on his face. His fingers relaxed. The pouch fell to the floor. Little Mehmet ran to take it. He opened it. The soil had been taken from his great-grandfather’s grave; his grandfather had told him about it. He inhaled. His grandfather had been right. The soil carried the heavy, silent past of his family. Mehmet Ağa took a deep breath, and slowly closed his eyes.

Little Mehmet poured the soil into the pot where a geranium in the garden. The geranium grew. Every spring, it blossomed anew, a trace of Mehmet Ağa’s silent presence.

Every time Mehmet smelled the flower, he remembered not only his grandfather but also the places he could never leave behind. They had loaded people onto ships; given their houses and fields to others. Names were written on lists. Some lives were left along the way, some buried in malarial plains. But one thing they could not calculate: the soil remembers what cannot be carried, what cannot be returned to, what cannot be left behind. His grandfather died in exile. The earth of his grave was foreign. But the geranium in the garden bloomed every spring, carrying the same scent.

Memory cannot be exiled.

Sometimes, homeland is not a country.

It is a fistful of soil.

It changes hands.

But it never ceases to be home.