Birds Without Wings

This book, written by Louis de Bernières, is set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli campaign and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks. Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in south-west Anatolia - a town in which Christian and Muslim lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully for centuries.

When war is declared and the outside world intrudes, the twin scourges of religion and nationalism lead to forced marches and massacres, and the peaceful fabric of life is destroyed.

Shortly before reading the book Barry read Patrick Kinross's biography of Kemel Ataturk and became fascinated by the history it told and the character and influence of Ataturk. As you may have gathered from these writings we have adopted Turkey as a second home and have found the Turks friendly, polite, gracious and full of a sense of humour which seems so akin to our own. Barry found the book Ataturk very good background to Birds Without Wings.

The novel is said to be based around the village of Kaya. Our friends John and Bea who live in the Kaya valley have taken us around the village and we can relate quite a lot of the details in the book to places in the village and vicinity.

Kayakoy

The book follows the lives of several people from the village. We are introduced at the beginning to Iskander the potter and his son Abdul and his best friend Nimo. One day Iskander creates some small bird-like whistles from clay, gives them to the boys and shows them how to fill them with water and blow on them to produce bird song. The boys are entranced and become "maestros at imitating the songs of two birds". The two birds that they imitate are the backbird and the robin and eventually each lad is known by a nickname. Abdul is called Karatavuk (blackbird) and Nimo is called Mehmetçik (robin).

A pottery bird whistle like the ones described in the book