The remains of Despoina Moustani’s refugee house

The family knew a Greek sailor with the Royal Navy who was from Karampasi (Agios Vlasios) of Pelion and this acquaintance proved crucial in their time of need. After a short stay in Mytilini, Despoina Moustani reached Volos in 1924 and from there headed to Karampasi, searching for the only person she knew in Greece. In Karampasi, she worked as a house servant for the doctor of the village. Her five daughters became sewers and knitters for hire, while her younger son, Giorgos, worked in the fields at the age of 12.    

A year after her arrival, Despoina filled in her compensation application to the Mixed Commission for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Population, detailing the mobile and immobile assets she had left behind in Ayvalık. According to her estimate, the value of her assets amounted to 1,440 lira, a sum deemed excessive by the Appraisal Committee, which finally granted her 817 lira a few months later. It seems that Despoina received thirty bonds from the National Bank of Greece, which allowed her to move to the refugee settlement of Nea Ionia.   

Her new home from 1927 onwards was on Block D, at 4 Makedonias Street, next to Evangelistria. Giorgos worked as a builder and found a house on the same block, where he settled with his family. Despoina Moustani was lucky enough to have a long life and meet her great-grandchildren. She died in 1972 at the age of 92. She never expressed the wish to return to Ayvalık.

In the extract below, her grandson, Evangelos Moustanis, is standing outside the small, dilapidated ground-floor house of his grandmother. It was the house where he lived until he finished elementary school. He describes what life was like there, but also tells stories about the people who used to live in the neighbouring houses. Listening to him, it feels like the stories of different families meet and intersect in these small houses which ‘practically nested together, one inside the other’, as mentioned by Kyriaki Moschou earlier on our walk.