In 1922, Ernest Hemingway was a novice reporter for the Toronto Daily Star when he was sent to Constantinople to report on the tens of thousands of fleeing refugees in the Greco-Turkish War, a savage and bloody proxy war that followed the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. His wife, Hadley, strongly opposed Ernest’s trip abroad to report on the war. Inspired by things he witnessed on this trip, “On The Quai at Smyrna” is one of Ernest Hemingway’s more unusual short stories. It is about 1-page in length, and in some senses, it is hardly even a story at all. It presents a stream-of-consciousness collage of images from Smyrna around 1922 in the immediate wake of the Greco-Turkish War, wherein the Turkish Nationalists very nearly committed genocide against Anatolian Greek Christians (much like the case of the Armenians).

The story is narrated by an anonymous soldier who makes note of the fleeing refugees, dying children, their mothers, animals, and other general chaos. These scenes are contrasted with a harsh leader only known to us as “The Turk.” All of this destruction is referred to as “pleasant business.” The disorienting content of the text helps to create a befuddling, paranoid atmosphere where names and places are obfuscated.

For those who may be wondering, a “quai” is a French word meaning dock, and the historical significance of Smyrna cannot be overstated as a Greek city in Western Turkey dating back to antiquity. At any rate, a fascinating example of modernist short story writing, “On The Quai at Smyrna” was initially published in Hemingway’s In Our Time collection in 1930.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories. New York, Scribner, 1955.