Birds Without Wings

I did finish it, with a half hour to spare before my book club meeting. As I mentioned before, the book starts out as a very charming portrait of this little village in the Ottoman Empire -- what's now Turkey -- just prior to the start of World War I. Very charming. In this village live Muslims and Christians, Greeks, Turks & Armenians, living side by side, intermarrying happily and even attending each others' houses of worship on occasion. There are all kinds of "characters" like the aphorism-spouting potter, the imam who's deeply in love with his horse (not that way, shame on you!), the two young boys who play that they're birds, the beautiful young girl and her betrothed, the village drunk, the weird deformed hermit-beggar, the Armenian pharmacist: quite a cast. The first part of the book has a flavor that reminded me of The Sotweed Factor, which I never finished but loved all the same. And here's something: the author has a wonderful ability to write with different voices. Chapters are told from the point of view of many of the characters, and they are each very different in tone and style. A real treat.

Interspersed among these chapters, subtle at first so you (at least I) don't realize exactly what's going on at first, is the biography of some guy named Mustafa Kemal. His birth, childhood, schooling, etc., a little at a time. He doesn't seem to have anything to do with the village people. Eventually you realize that Mustafa Kemal is real-life historical figure Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who becomes the founder -- "liberator" -- and first president of Turkey.

And after awhile the two storylines begin to converge. World War I starts. The Ottoman Empire declares it a jihad, a holy war, and only Muslims are allowed to enlist as soldiers. Suddenly people are divided where formerly they coexisted peacefully. The Armenians are deported first, then the Christians. And the war heats up. I already mentioned the gruesome descriptions in a previous post. The casualties are . . . endless. And not just for the soldiers. No one is left unscathed. No one. It is extremely painful to read; the best I could do was skim my way through it. The book does not get better after the war ends.

To sum up: I would highly recommend the first section of the book to anyone. And I would recommend the whole tragic thing to anyone who believes in the possibility of a just war.