EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE
« They were jammed by the thousands for months in ports and boats on the way to Greece. When they finally arrived there, they neither understood their mainland hosts nor were they understood by them because the Pontian dialect was unknown to the local people. Thus they withdrew into themselves. Introversion, awkwardness, and reticence were the norm. They were simultaneously here and somewhere else. Their speech was hushed, and some of the voices, I recall, were barely audible, as if there was a permanent obstruction in their throat. Even at moments of joy their smile remained frozen, like that of an ancient statue and nothing more. Time for them seemed to have come to a halt, balanced on the boundary between a happy ”before” and a tragic “after”. Precisely there on that boundary, their days ended, on the incision of the wound, which remained unhealed up until their dying day. They may indeed have sung, danced or cried at the sound of the Pontian lyre. As a rule, however, and in the majority, they were silent. Etched in my youthful memory., they were distant and inconsolable, irrevocably embittered. They are those who never laughed.»