"Origin Myths" by Mina Hamedi
My grandfather Asım told me our family was born of a feud between three brothers. It was one of the few stories passed down to him.
He held onto these stories—oral versions of truth mixed with folklore and fables, legends and myths. He said the West could trace family histories over hundreds of years. Churches housed births, deaths, and marriage records, but our families weren’t as lucky. Our stories were only kept alive by people, by generations.
Sometimes, when those people leave their homes, they take the stories with them.
***
The Emperor Decius once issued an edict requiring the citizens of the Roman Empire to make sacrifices to the gods. Heifers and deer for Diana and Minerva, white lambs for Juno, rams for Jupiter, bulls for Neptune, and goats for Mars. Altars were adorned with flowers, wine, milk, and honey; the heads of the young were anointed in blood. Those who disobeyed the emperor were persecuted.
In the city of Ephesus lived seven men. Their names were Maximianus, Malchus, Iohannes, Martinianus, Dionysius, Constantinus, and Serapion, though these names have changed over the centuries. They refused to worship the many gods or make sacrifices in their names. Instead, they prayed and fasted in their homes. The seven men were accused of practicing Christianity by roving commissioners who visited cities and villages to supervise the execution of sacrifices and send word back to the Emperor.
The seven men fled Ephesus and eventually found refuge in a cave by Mount Coelian. Decius scoured the lands in search of the men, threatening their families and loved ones. Eventually, his soldiers tracked them and Decius ordered them to seal the mouth of the cave with the men in it.
The men shared the bread they had brought to fortify themselves, knowing they would never make it out alive. They prayed and wept and spoke of their plight until they all fell into a deep, deep sleep.
***
My grandfather says there was a village called Küçükhüyük, twenty-five kilometers outside Afyon in western Turkey. Afyon was a wealthy town during the Ottoman Empire, home to opium fields and marble quarries.
Küçükhüyük had one hundred homes and was once led by three brothers or ağha, the village heads. They were wealthy farmers, hardworking and resourceful. The eldest was named Halil Ağa, born in 1802, and the younger brothers were Ali Ağa and Hüseyin Ağa.
Halil was a natural leader. Ali had opinions. Hüseyin loved to laugh.
In 1830, during the holy month of Ramadan, the brothers gathered in the town hall with village elders to break their fast. They drank sips of water. They tore off pieces of dates and let them melt on their tongues. They heard the call of the muezzin from the mosque’s minaret down the street. They shared the news of the day and their plans for tomorrow. They feasted on spicy meats, roasted chicken seasoned with sumac, and rice boiled in butter and salt.
Spotting the wishbone left over from the chicken, the eldest, Halil, decided that whoever received the smaller part would have to ask his wife to serve coffee for everyone in the hall. Halil, confident that he would end up snapping the larger piece, reached first. He snapped off the smaller one.
His brothers and the other men sitting around the table laughed, saying, Alright, Halil Ağa, you better go inform your wife!
Unrelenting, Halil Ağa raised his head and said, Absolutely not. My wife will not serve coffee to other men!
But that was the deal, Ali Ağa said, standing up slowly.
My grandfather says a fight broke out. Halil was a prideful man and couldn’t laugh off what was meant to be a harmless bet between brothers.
My grandfather says that after these events, the three brothers, Halil, Hüseyin and Ali, abandoned their families and their belongings. They left the village.
Ali Ağa moved to Elvan Paşa village, Hüseyin Ağa to Güney village, and Halil settled in a village named Tazlar, surrounded by forest and mountains.
***
Three centuries after the reign of Emperor Decius, Theodosius II was in power.
A local shepherd in need of stone for his shed began to remove the very ones that had kept the cave sealed. As he removed the last stone, the seven sleepers awoke.
Malchus asked the shepherd to take him into town for food and water to give to the rest of his brothers. As they walked back to Ephesus together, Malchus noticed the crosses marked into walls and rising high above buildings. Am I still dreaming? he thought.
Malchus tried to buy bread with an ancient coin, thinking the language the shepherd and baker spoke was strange yet so familiar.
This is treasure, the baker said, inspecting the coin. Take me to it and you can have all the bread you want!
Malchus was worried, afraid they would take him to the emperor. I swear, it is the only coin I have. I don’t know of any treasure.
Show us where it is hidden and no harm will come to you.
A crowd began to gather. Malchus looked around to find a friend or acquaintance who could defend him, but he recognized no one.
Word was sent to the local bishop and prefect and Malchus was brought before them. He told them he was a native of Ephesus and told the bishop the names of his parents and those of his companions and the streets where they lived. He testified that they had been persecuted for being Christians by Emperor Decius and sealed in a cave just beyond the mountain. He led them to the cave, where the six other men were still waking, fresh-faced and healthy.
Emperor Decius has been dead for three hundred years, the bishop said. A messenger was sent to Theodosius, to tell him of the seven sleepers and their miraculous resurrection. Theodosius traveled from Constantinople to Ephesus to greet them, weeping beside the cave.
***
My grandfather didn’t say anything else but I wondered how the three brothers could leave everything. Leave each other.
Did they stand on the hill overlooking their beloved home? Did they shed tears?
Maybe they were looking for a reason to break away, finally. Maybe they wanted to go after new stories.
Halil didn’t divulge his new location to the people he left behind and he built a new life in Tazlar. He remarried and eventually became one of the village heads. In 1835 he had a son named Hasan who then had a son in 1862 and named him Hüseyin, after the uncle he never met.
This particular Hüseyin became the village chief, married twice and had several children. His second wife, Fatma, gave birth to three boys and a girl. One of them passed away and the surviving children were named Halil, Ahmet, and Emine.
Ahmet was my great-grandfather.
***
The Cave of the Seven Sleepers is a medieval legend, shared within Christian and Muslim circles.
In the Quran, it even says a faithful dog belonging to one of the seven men stood guard beside the mouth of the cave.
There is a miniature depicting the seven sleepers in the Menology of Basil II, an illuminated manuscript that was designed as a church service book also containing stories of the lives of various saints. It was compiled in Constantinople for the Byzantine Emperor Basil II around 1000 AD.
But the Ephesus site is one of many sites attributed to this ancient legend. Other possible locations include Afsin, near the Roman city of Arabissus, or Tarsus in the Mersin province, both in Turkey. There is a cave near Amman, Jordan, with seven graves cut deep into the rock and an ancient olive tree beside the entrance. Just outside Damascus, Syria, near the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, several caves were found with etched motifs of the Seven Sleepers.
***
In July, my family and I took a detour on our journey along the Aegean coast to the ruins of Ephesus. As we walked toward the Library of Celsus, the marble façade gleaming in the morning sun, I saw a sign in the opposite direction: Yedi Uyuyanlar or “Grotto of the Seven Sleepers.”
We walked up the nine steps of the library, posing beside the four aediculae containing statues of Sophia (wisdom), Episteme (knowledge), Ennoia (intelligence) and Arete (excellence).
We went through what was once the main street, spotting marble reliefs of Medusas, turned upside down to protect those from her stare. Our aim was to see the House of the Virgin Mary before the heat of the midday sun. The house is a small stone chapel located on Mount Koressos. Everyone was silent. We took turns walking through, glancing at the altar and at the small room to the side where Mary supposedly slept. It is believed that Mary was brought to this house by Saint John and lived there until her earthly death.
But we didn’t have time to visit the Seven Sleepers.
***
My great-grandfather Ahmet married a quiet girl named Satı from the neighboring village of Uluköy, and she gave birth to two sons. Two years later, in 1914, Ahmet joined the Ottoman army.
He fought for eight years. First, for every front the Ottoman Empire engaged in, and later, for the Nationalists in the Turkish War of Independence.
During that time, Tazlar village was under Greek occupation. Satı walked up and down dirt paths, staring at the polished boots of Greek soldiers and avoiding their eyes. She worked in the fields during the day, climbing up the mountains to collect wood for the fires at night.
She competed for water to tend to her small vegetable garden. She did everything she could to provide nourishment for her sons, but they both died.
When Ahmet returned, eight years later, they had five more children. The eldest was my grandfather Asım.
When the flowers bloomed and the daylight hours were long, that is when God gave you to me, Satı said to Asım.
He was born in 1924, but the exact date has been long forgotten.
***
The legend of the Cave of Seven Sleepers was found in nine medieval languages, preserved in over two-hundred manuscripts from Latin, Greek, Ethiopian, and Armenian to Middle Irish and Old French.
Which account should we believe? Was the cave I passed truly the site of a miracle?
Is there some trace of truth in the remaining stones, the trees, the soil?
Is the coin Malchus used in the bakery buried somewhere under sacred ruins?
Did three brothers really fight over a wishbone and tear apart a community, to build three new ones?
I wonder just how much our origin myths determine our present. Here was a myth I could finally inhabit; I could step on the same stones, imagine the roots beneath the soil, know that it was the same sun above me and feel the heat on my skin.
My grandfather never knew his exact birthday. Knowing the year was enough for him. So maybe the myth of the Seven Sleepers is enough for me, too. The possibility. The story. One I can pass down.
Mina Hamedi grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and is of Turkish/Iranian descent. She works at the literary agency, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, where she is building her own list focusing on literary fiction and experimental non-fiction. She is writing a collection about her grandfather, the family company he founded 75 years ago, and the nature of legacies.
