The journey of five women and a baby—grandmother, mother, three little girls, and an unbaptized boy—from Ayvalik to Mytilene in 1922, based on real testimonies. The seven men of the family stayed behind and left no trace, as if the earth swallowed them. This journey resembles matryoshkas, the Russian nesting dolls, each hiding many smaller ones, because the more you open the nests of history, the more you find that there are many hidden passages. The main narrator is the eldest of the three girls, Eleni, nine years old in that fateful year. The materials of this Asia Minor narrative consisted of fiction, testimonies of Ayvalik residents recorded in books and the press over the decades—one of these Ayvalik residents is Elias Venezis, whose literary work shed light on many aspects of history—historical events, memories from the families of the author's grandparents, and the ever-present oral tradition in her life. "You know, even sorrows diminish and disappear. At first, they seem like huge waves of screams approaching, coming and deafening us, taking over our entire life, and then slowly they recede, until, when the fullness of time comes, they sink beyond the horizon and no longer disturb us."