The war was over, but not the danger, especially for a refugee like me.

Even from the linden trees where I hid, I could tell they were trouble: three Greek soldiers in a horse-drawn wagon, identifiable by their tattered, unbuttoned, khaki tunics. The furry, bear-like driver wore a mustache that covered his mouth like thatch, under a lopsided cloth cap. The bearded, goat-like passenger beside him looked lunatic in a fancy military hat that seemed to have wings. The man sprawled in the back of the wagon wore a metal helmet that made him look German, and hot—his head must have baked like a meatball in the heat of the day. But the sun was setting now.

The bear driver shook the reins with one hand and lifted a bottle with the other, while the goat passenger bit chunks from a loaf of bread while cradling a rifle. The wagon wobbled on the uneven cobblestones. In addition to the helmeted passenger, it was loaded with an odd assortment of crates, a bag of boots, a shiny samovar, a gramophone—all probably stolen.

As a Greek who lived in Turkey, I’d avoided conscription, and now I was trying to avoid soldiers, Greek or Turk—and deserters too, especially deserters. I had stayed well to the west of the retreating wave of defeated Greek soldiers, who were probably looting and burning Manisa this very day, practicing their deplorable scorched-earth policy as they fled toward Smyrna. When possible, the battalions moved by train or in convoys of trucks, but there was never enough transportation, especially now, with the collapse of the Greek army, so thousands of them, along with thousands of Greek civilians, were headed for the Aegean coast—riding animals, walking, or traveling any way they could.

Sometimes they ended up in the less populated areas I sought, rural lands and small villages. The three men in front of me seemed to be stragglers turned bandits, and I followed them because, if there was trouble ahead, they’d find it first and I could slip away.

Instead they found two Turkish women, heads covered, one with a two-piece black charshaf, the other with a black shawl over a brown dress that fell to her ankles. They were walking quickly, arm in arm, toward a mosque. The drunken men in the wagon shouted at them in Greek to stop and join them for a drink, but they only snugged their clothes tighter, quickened their steps, and slipped inside the mosque’s double doors.

The building was small, square, one story, built of whitewashed stone, with a faded blue dome and a single minaret that made me think, not for the first time, of the difference between a church and a mosque—between a cross, symbol of the crucifixion, and a minaret, more like a fortress tower, more like a weapon.

The village looked as if its people had tried to build a tower of houses but a petulant God had knocked it down, leaving a hillside scattered with one- and two-story box structures made of mud, stones, and mortar. Some had been painted in fading pastels, the rest were the color of dust. An old man with a brushed white beard, an intricately folded turban, and a green cloak stepped outside and watched the wagon after it passed, but when he saw me he ducked back inside.

The wagon stopped at the mosque. The bear soldier got out, holding his bottle, and stumbled up the steps to the doors. He rattled the handles and cursed, but he couldn’t get in. Then he looked toward the blazing sunset and, as if inspired, poured his raki onto the steps and pulled out a box of matches.

As he fumbled with them, the helmeted soldier shouted, “Don’t!” in Greek. He hopped out of the wagon and limped toward the mosque, but the goat soldier ordered him to freeze and aimed the rifle at him. Helmet stopped and held up his hands, just as Bear lit the alcohol, which flared into blue flames on the mosque’s steps and door.

Exhausted from my journey and not thinking clearly, I yelled, “Put it out!” Then I jogged toward them in my broken shoes, clutching my bag and pulling the pistol from my rope belt.

Goat swung his weapon at me and cried, “Stay back!”

But Helmet lunged forward, grabbed the barrel of the gun with both hands, and yanked it away. He aimed it at Bear and said, “You heard him—put it out.”

Bear just laughed and threw his bottle against the door, where it broke into more flames.

When I ran up to him, he swung at me wildly, but since he was drunk I was able to dodge and knock him over. After a second, he realized that he was on fire, so he bumped down the steps, patting himself and cursing. I took off my coat, slapped it against the burning doors, and yelled what I thought was the Turkish word for fire. Helmet helped me, hammering on the door with the butt of the rifle.

Finally the door opened, and the people inside scurried out and began to stomp and beat the flames. The old man from the village brought a boy with a bucket of water, and he splashed it on the doors.

Bear, his coat still smoking, managed to crawl back into the wagon. He and Goat lashed the horse and rolled away before the crowd could turn on them.

In a few minutes the fire was put out, and those of us who’d fought it, about twenty in all, mainly women and old men, stood around the steps of the mosque, relieved but nervous, uncertain, speaking thanks and greetings in Greek and Turkish.

A tiny, withered woman rushed up to me, wailed, and pounded feebly on my chest. The old man gently pulled her away, and the boy—about fourteen, not yet soldier age, with bright eyes, curly black hair, and a gap in his teeth—said in Greek, “Her son was killed by the others.”

“What others?” I asked.

The boy translated my question, and several people responded at once. I understood some Turkish, but the boy was more bilingual than I was, so I encouraged him to speak. His name was Erdem, and I introduced myself as Costa. Helmet pointed to himself and said Stavros.

Erdem told us that the villagers were upset and confused because, an hour earlier, a band of Greek soldiers had swarmed through the village, killed a policeman, chased away the town’s other officials, broken into homes, and stolen food and drink, money and jewelry, clothes and boots. They tried to set fires, but they didn’t have petrol and were in too much of a hurry to find any, thanks be to Allah. And now here we were, obviously Greek. What was our story?

I looked to Stavros to answer. He lifted off his helmet, wiped his grimy face on his sleeve, and said in Greek, with Erdem translating, “I’m a soldier. I was fighting at the front, at Dumlupinar. Kemal beat us, and now we—the whole Greek army—we’re in retreat. I was one of the farthest in, so I’m one of the last out. I rode on top of a train for a day, until someone pushed me off. Then I asked those two jackals to give me a ride, but they wouldn’t share their food.”

Several of the women began to speak among themselves and consulted the old man, who nodded once. A middle-aged woman pulled her sagging headscarf over her thick brown hair, looked at us with decisive eyes—the eyes of a judge—and spoke for the group. Erdem translated: “You saved our mosque, maybe our lives. We are poor, and the others took almost everything, but we’ll find something for you. Where are you going?”

Stavros said, “To Foca. I heard a Greek ship would be there to pick us up.”

She turned to me and asked if I was a soldier too.

I was about to lie as usual, then decided to tell the truth to these decent people—and then changed my mind again, because I was embarrassed to confess my status as a non-soldier in the presence of a man my own age who’d fought in the bloody final battle. In Greek I said, “Yes, I’m a soldier, but I wasn’t at the front. I was stationed near Bursa, and now I’m walking to Smyrna. But I’m hungry too.”

The last part was true. For weeks I’d been walking, stealing food when I could and otherwise sustaining myself off the land—with purslane, wild asparagus, artichokes, okra, fruits, nuts, and berries—as I’d learned to do in the summers of my childhood, on the range with my father and his herds. Still, I was very hungry.

The woman smiled, as if pleased by our need, and said, “The others will pray for us, but you come to my house. I’m Ozella. You’ll have to leave the guns outside.”

Stavros obediently handed his rifle to the old man, who was surprised, didn’t want it, but took it anyway and carried it as if he’d done so before. I dropped my pistol into my bag. We trudged into the village behind the group, as the muezzin called from the minaret. I imagined the others inside the mosque, facing Mecca and joining their imam in sunset prayers.

Stavros asked me, “Do you have a cigarette?”

“No, sorry.”

“Are you really a soldier?” He could see I wasn’t wearing a uniform of any kind. I looked at his face, trying to discern his attitude, but he kept his eyes down, as if he were too tired to lift them. He said, “I don’t care if you aren’t. There isn’t an army anymore.”

I believed him—he wasn’t going to turn me in; all he wanted was a meal and a ship. And so, even though he was just the kind of man I’d spent weeks trying to deceive or avoid, I told him the truth. “No. I’m one of the million Greeks who grew up in this country. I was living in Constantinople with fake papers that said I was too young to fight in the war, but then, when a friend betrayed me to the military police, I sneaked away. I’ve been walking for weeks, sometimes blending in, usually hiding.”

I’d left the city at dawn on a steamy August morning, just as the red trams began to run. My employer, Dr. Bayat, a Turk of Persian descent and a skilled dentist by trade, had advised me to flee three hundred miles south to Smyrna, a diverse, cosmopolitan city undisturbed by the war. Most of its citizens were Greek, but his sister, a Turk who had married a Frenchman, lived there and could help me. He gave me a gun, a gold lira, and some change, and suggested that I take the tram down to Yedi Coule, then buy passage on the ferry that crossed the Sea of Marmara to Bursa.

But I feared the authorities checking papers. Pantihi also lay to the south, and I’d gone there by train every day during the last year that I lived with my Uncle Stamati. The regular passengers and authorities knew me there; they called me “Doctor” because I wore expensive clothes, handed down to me by Dr. Bayat, and carried a bag of dental equipment.

That day my clothes and bag were casual, but I said I was going to the Prince Islands for a few days of vacation, and the officials on the train nodded with envy. From Pantihi, to avoid all the dangers—both armies, local authorities, bandits, chettahs, and vengeful Turks who earned money or favors by killing Christians—I started walking at night and stayed off the main roads. I knew enough Turkish to tell simple lies, and I found all kinds of places to hide: barns, haystacks, caves, ravines, underbrush, the hollow trunks of trees, cemeteries and ossuaries, the storerooms and attics of churches, occasionally even the spare room of a sympathetic Greek.

Stavros didn’t regard me with either disgust or respect. He just said, “You must be good at hiding.”

“Mostly lucky.”

“Why’d you take the risk today?”

“I guess burning a mosque with women inside was too much.”

“Where’d you get the Mauser?”

He’d recognized the rectangular magazine of my pistol. “From my employer, a good man who helped me get away.”

“Have you used it before?”

“Yes.” I paused to remember the two men I’d killed. Then, curious about Stavros’s experiences, I said, “I’m sure it was brutal at the front.”

“Yeah. We were winning almost all the way to the Sakarya, but at the end the bastard allies abandoned us and the bastard Turks had more knowledge of the terrain, as well as more incentive, more food and water, more artillery, more everything. I’m lucky to be alive.”

“Is there really no more Greek army? Nobody falling back to defend Smyrna?”

He snorted. “No. I don’t know who that bunch was who came through here earlier—probably a rogue detachment of the main column on their way to the coast—but most of us don’t have the weapons or the will to fight.”

Stavros, limping, set a slow pace, and Ozella led us through the village. Like all towns with men away at war, it looked dilapidated—broken shutters, peeling paint, rusted tools, and weeds flourishing where there should be crops. But at least it hadn’t been burned. Ozella greeted a few curious neighbors and tried to shoo away the children who ran out of their homes to gawk at these strange creatures, friendly Greek soldiers.

Her house was small, its stucco a faded green. Outside the front door hung an empty birdcage that looked as if it had been beaten with the butt of a rifle. Ozella must have smelled us—she asked if we wanted to use the worn, porcelain wash basin in the kitchen. We took turns. I let Stavros go first, then splashed the remaining water on my face and neck and wiped off as much sweat and grime as I could with the towel he’d used.

In the selamlik, the old man sat fidgeting in a wine-colored armchair. Stavros and I sat on a low divan with a blue, evil-eye amulet hanging behind us and an Anatolian carpet at our feet. One door led to what I assumed was the bedroom; the other opened onto the kitchen, where Ozella was preparing food. Beside the window stood wooden shelves with potted herbs, faded photographs, an open Quran, and various knickknacks. A basket held rolled-up prayer rugs. The pleasant smells of red pepper and coffee filled the room.

The boy, Erdem, sat on a cushion and leaned toward us as if he couldn’t wait to hear more about the war—or maybe he just liked to hear our language. I said, “You speak Greek very well. Where did you learn it?”

“I have Greek friend, and grandmother.”

Another woman shouldered through the front door without knocking, bowed to us, and carried a tray of food into the kitchen. The old man, who had said very little but was treated deferentially by the others, asked us in Turkish, “What do you think of Mustapha Kemal?”

Erdem translated, and Stavros answered in Greek, “He’s a good general, tough, smart. Somehow he talked our allies into turning on us. As we got close to Angora, he fired up his troops—probably told them the same thing he told his men at Gallipoli: ‘It’s not your duty to fight for your country; it’s your duty to die for your country.’”

The old man smiled, proud and pleased that an infidel could quote their leader. He asked, “Is he coming this way?”

Stavros said, “I think so. He wants to make sure we’re wiped out or driven into the sea.”

“If he were here in our village, would you try to kill him?” The old man pointed to the rifle that he’d leaned by the door.

“No, I’m finished.”

“What about you?” he asked, turning to me.

“I agree. No more killing. Would you kill us, if we hadn’t helped to save your mosque?”

He smiled again, but then, as if the smile had been an uncomfortable mask, he ripped it off, revealing a stern mouth and hard eyes. “No, I’m too old—but there are others in the village who would do it gladly.”

“I hope you haven’t invited them to eat with us,” I said.

He didn’t smile at that. “Maybe Christians and Muslims will be able to live side by side again some day, Allah willing, but not yet. As you said, Kemal wants to kill you or drive you into the sea. And the cowards who supposedly run this village, they’ll return. So you need to go.” He called to Ozella, urging her to hurry.

Within five minutes, the women brought us two fat, paper-wrapped bundles of pide stuffed with tomatoes, cucumber and yogurt, and slices of cheese, along with two demitasses of good, strong coffee. It had been brewed for sipping, but we gulped it down. They’d also filled our canteens with water.

The old man waved his hand to discourage the women from asking questions, so we thanked them, and they wished peace upon us. Then he and Erdem showed us out.

He pointed west and said, “Foca,” turned south and said, “Smyrna.” Finally he asked Allah to go with us, bowed, and headed back inside.

Stavros said, “Do you want to come with me?”

We’d saved the mosque together, and I knew I would enjoy his company after traveling alone for so many weeks. It might be safer, too, to have a companion. But still I looked in both directions to see if the roads spoke of trouble, then said, “Are you sure there’s a Greek ship in Foca, that it hasn’t left already?”

“No, I’m not sure. We were just told to go to any port along the coast and get picked up. Foca is the closest port from here. What do you know about Smyrna?”

“That it’s a beautiful, sophisticated city for one thing, and that the harbor is full of ships.”

“Yes, Smyrna very nice,” Erdem agreed, cutting in. “Foca, my cousin live there, he say is small but also nice. Old Greek city, then Turk, then Greek again three years, but now Turks come again. He like Greeks better.”

Stavros tousled Erdem’s hair. “Foca is closer, so I’ll stick to my plan.”

In truth I was afraid a Greek ship wouldn’t take me, since I had no uniform or papers. “I think I’ll keep going to Smyrna,” I told him. “I’ve heard it’s more Greek than Turk, that everyone there lives in peace.”

“I doubt it. But who knows? The main thing is to get to a boat, the sooner the better. I don’t think you need to hide anymore. We’re all deserters now, or refugees.”

“Thanks, that makes me feel better. And thanks for your help. I wouldn’t have this food if not for you, and I’m starving.”

“Me too,” he said.

Erdem asked him, “I go with you part way to Foca?”

“If you want to.”

We shook hands, and I waved. I felt lonely as soon as they turned toward the pink and purple sunset, and wondered if I’d made the right decision. Then I took a big bite of my pide and resumed my journey south, to Smyrna.

ONLY WHO IS LEFT is a historical novel about the burning of Smyrna in 1922, at the end of the Greek-Turk war, and the extraordinary accomplishments of Asa Jennings, who saved approximately 250,000 refugees there.

At the end of the war, when Mustafa Kemal defeated the Greek army, hundreds of thousands of refugees, primarily Greeks and Armenians, fled from their homes in Turkey (a flight described by Ernest Hemingway in his dispatches from the war) and headed for Smyrna because they’d heard that ships of many nations were anchored in the harbor, and they thought they’d be rescued. Indeed, the ships were there, but no government, including that of the United States, would help the refugees. The Turkish army, pursuing them, considered them enemy combatants and felt free to rape, rob, and murder them. To finish the job and hide the evidence, the Turks then burned two thirds of the city in a massive conflagration.

The novel is narrated by Asa and two other characters. One is a young Greek man, Costa, who’s lived in Turkey all his life. He feels neither hatred for Turkey, the only country he’s ever known, nor devotion to Greece, where he’s never been. He doesn’t want to fight on either side or kill anyone, but neither army will allow him to be neutral, and so, when the Turkish authorities come looking for him, he escapes from Constantinople and heads for Smyrna.

The other narrator is a young Greek woman named Lydia, who was away from home with her brother when the Turks killed all the Greeks in their town. They escape to Smyrna, and she moves into a safe house run by Asa Jennings, where she dedicates herself to caring for women and girls who have been accosted by the Turks. There she meets Costa, when he turns up with a seven-year-old girl whose parents were killed by the Turks. Costa and Lydia develop a flirtatious relationship that is one of the narrative threads of the book, but he is not allowed to live at the house, and he struggles for weeks to evade the Turks. Many of the novel’s secondary characters are based on real people, including Aristotle Onassis, an eighteen-year-old boy who grew up in Smyrna, befriends Costa, and tries to help him escape.

Most of the Greeks who did escape went to the Greek island of Lesbos, whose capital, Mytilene, even today, has an active refugee camp that helps those trying to flee war-torn countries in the region and find safe haven in the EU. This is a book, in part, about the plight of refugees, and its narrative arc leans on the kindness of strangers. It bends toward justice, but it’s crimped along the way.