Birds Without Wings Paperback – June 28, 2005

War and Peace, Turkish Rendition“Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrows.”As a history lesson, what you learn is The word “Ottoman” would fall into disuse and disrepute until such time as the inevitable revisions of later days, when the world would realize that the Ottoman Empire had been cosmopolitan tolerant.This book for me is a continuation of my explorations into Turkish culture. It is the Turkish version of War and Peace. Though there is no relation in storyline or time period the book essentially follows the same format as Tolstoy in describing family and village life and the effects war has on peace. The setting is a sleepy town on the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea called Esckbece. The town is now called Ismir. The time period for the main storyline, told from many different character views, covers the demise of the Ottoman Empire approximately the turn of the 20th century through the Turkish revolution. Any review of the book cannot pin exact dates because of the anachronistic style of storytelling. The main story teller is an old woman of whom the author, a man, captures “the old woman” persona perfectly. She owns a witty sense of humor in detailing the ironies of the cultural clashes that undermined the Ottoman ability to keep up with and then defend against the Imperialism of the Western powers.The clashes involve; Islam-v-Christianity, Armenian-v-Turk, Eastern Anatolia-v-Bulgaria, Greek-v-Ottoman, western fashion-v-Ottoman fashion, the colorful life of a Christian-v-the grey life of a Muslim. In Esckabece, while there were differences that each would gossip about, there was an inbred kinship where the common denominator was Ottoman. The first half of the book portrays a time of peace where the clashes are take on the spirit of gossip amongst women at the well and men in for coffee houses. It seemed that the gossip was primarily from the women, while the men pursued their goals of work and the game of backgammon. To describe it in general terms, the Christians from Bulgaria and Greece were colorful with a Christian holiday being celebrated with drunken hooliganism almost every day. In the balance, the Muslims lived a bland and disciplined day to day life. While the women would gossip, ironically each had a best friend from “the other religion.” In my personal experience living in Manhattan I observed this blend of multiculturalism. New Yorkers love each other in their way, the same way Ottomans did in 1910. They were Ottomans first, and their religion came in second…tied for first. I think that is a Yogi Bearism.Blended into the story is the life of Mustafa Kemel later known as Ataturk, the first President of Turkey, and the George Washington of Turkey. Kemel’ mindset came from western Ottoman, but was clearly of Turkish mindset holding one exception. The Turkey he envisioned needed to get into the 20th Century. Turkey needed to adopt the ways of the West. This included education, custom, government structure, and even dress code. Kemel liked to enjoy life. But he also was a Muslim and respected its discipline. He rose through the ranks with a lot of conflict with his superiors. He disagreed with the strategy of his superiors. Where the military political agendas merged with the political parties, he was of his own mind. Blending the Ataturk story with the personal saga of those small lives in Eskabece gives the book of a sense of authentic history and a real human level. The book is clearly a history novel on par with anything that Michener.The war element describes WWI and the Turkish Revolution from an Ottoman’s perspective. This setting could not be complete without dragging into it the eighty years the preceded it. Boyhood friends would be conscripted in to the Ottoman army either as a soldier for Muslims or a civil engineer for Christians to support the war effort. The life of either left each totally altered as a human being. While they endured the horrors and atrocities of war, their families endured the famines that war bestowed upon them. The Muslim-v-Christian divide tore through Eskabece as ethnic groups were exported to various new countries, and many massacred along the way, according to the new religious orientation. Ironically when the town’s folk were forced to leave, they would ask why. Their masters would say because you are Christian or Muslim. They would say, ‘but I am Ottoman and this is my home.” Their dear Muslim friends would concur and then cry at the departure of their Christians.Today as I do business in Turkey I now benefit from reading this book. I already love the people and the country. I now better understand the Turkish history that formulates their mindset. I can see the mix of the Christian colorful life upon a very clear straight forward Muslim people. The lines are delineated and casually crossed at the same time. Women do not wear burkas but some do wear babushkas with little or no make up. But it is not uncommon to observe at a bus stop one generation of woman dressed in a classic double breasted rain coat and babushka standing next to a very attractive young woman wearing ‘western yoga pants’ (speaking of contradiction) and a T-shirt. The men… they still play backgammon, they still smoke huka. And so do the women. Turkey is clearly a first world 21st Century country of predominate Western life style. But they have kept the best of East-West, old-new. They are one of the most enjoyable people I’ve come to know firsthand. This book is the bridge they crossed.My bibliography is 15 pages that captures the culture of the Ottoman Empire as it evolved to a Turkish nation ready to be a world leader. Keyword cigarroomofbooks and enjoy the history lesson.

Louis de Bernieres intertwines his beautiful narrative of a small Anatolian town and the lives of its inhabitants with that of the biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. "Birds Without Wings" is superb historical fiction which chronicles the rise of Turkish nationalism, following the horrific massacres of Armenians and Muslims in the 19th and early 20th century. Similar ethnic and religious mass murders occurred in the Balkans, and other such slaughters were perpetrated by the Russians in their vast territory. Refugees fled in droves into the Ottoman Empire, to life in exile, trying to escape the killing fields. The destruction of the Ottoman empire in WWI put an end to a tradition of religious and ethnic tolerance in Asia Minor, areas of the Balkans, and many Arab countries. De Bernieres also takes the reader to the battlefields of various wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions, and portrays the Battle of Gallipoli from the Turkish point of view - although I don't think he captures the true extent of the horrors of Gallipoli.De Bernieres' dedicates his novel to: "....the unhappy memory of the millions of civilians on all sides during the times portrayed, who had become victims of the numerous death marches, movements of refugees, campaigns of persecution and extermination, and exchanges of population."Karatavuk, now an old man and the town scribe, remembers his childhood when he spent almost all his time running free with his beloved friend, Mehmetcik. Of course they both had to spend time at home with family and/or working, but there was always plenty of opportunity to play and adventure. Mehmetcik is a Christian and has long since been deported, with all the other non-Muslims, from his home in the former Anatolian town of Eskibahce, a fictional coastal village carved into a hillside in southwestern Turkey. The refugees were shipped to Greece, to live as strangers amongst strange people who called them Turks, in spite of their shared Greek Orthodox religion.They were transplanted to replace the Greek Muslims, who were transported from Greece to Eskibahce, which was part of the former Ottoman Empire but now belongs to Turkey. In the old days Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jew lived together in Eskibahce, in relative harmony. Everyone spoke Turkish. Christians learned the Greek alphabet in order to read and write Turkish with Greek letters. Muslims learned to recite the first few lines of the Koran in Arabic, but otherwise remained illiterate. Mehmetcik taught his Muslim friend to read Turkish in Greek, making letters and words in the dirt with a stick, thus enabling him to become a scribe when his arm was crippled by a gun shot.Karatavuk and Mehmetcik are not the boys' real names. Karatavuk's real name is Abdul, Mehmetcik's is Nicos. Iskander the Potter made them terra cotta whistles in the shape of birds. These whistles are extremely special and unique. When half filled with water and blown, they sound like the bird they resemble. Abdul, Iskander's son, received the karatavuk, a completely black bird with a yellow beak which makes a "vuk, vuk, vuk sound in the oleander tree and sings to praise God in the evening." Thus Abdul, who whistled and flapped his arms much of the time, fancifully trying to make them function as wings, got his nickname. Nicos received a smaller but beautiful bird whistle also - the mehmetcik, "sometimes called kizilgerdan, and sometimes the fire-nightingale." He too became more than proficient in making the bird song. Iskander warned them both, " Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrow."Now Karatavuk remembers his old friend and happier days, so long ago. He writes his memories in a letter to Mehmetcik, which the man will never receive, even if he is still alive. No one knows where he is. Karatavak writes that he misses him, even now that his eyes have dimmed and he has grown old. He tells of people they cared for so much and who are long gone from Eskibahce, killed in wars, displaced to God knows where, murdered by ethnic cleansing: wealthy Aga Rustem Bey and his beautiful, mysterious Circassian mistress, Leyla Hanim, who was not Circassian at all; Abdulhamid Hodja, the local imam, who was friend and wise man to Muslim and Christian alike, and came to bless Philothei, a Christian, when she was born; Ayse, the imam's wife and a good woman, who once asked her Christian friend to light a candle before the icon of the Virgin - just in case; Father Kristoforos, who encouraged the Muslims to enter his church on holy days when the religious figures honored by both Christianity and Islam were celebrated. The priest also accepted "offerings from Muslims who were anxious to hedge their bets with God by backing both camels;" Veled the Fat who gave his camel cigarettes to smoke; Ali the Snowbringer and his family who lived in a hollow tree; the Dog; the Blasphemer; Ali the Broken-Nosed; Stamos the Birdman; Mohammad the Leech Gatherer; Charitos and Polyxeni, parents of Mehmetcik, and tragic Philothei the Beautiful; Drosoula the Ugly, best friend of Philothei; Sadettin who was forced to kill his sister and then ran away to be a bandit; and Ibrahim the Mad. He also remembers Firket from Pera, and other war comrades - all of them gone.He remembers when, as boys, they fancied themselves to be birds, and were happy even when they fell. He was a robin, Mehhetcik a blackbird. But in reality they were birds without wings. "For birds with wings nothing changes; they fly where they will and they know nothing about borders and their quarrels are very small...But men are confined to earth...and because we cannot fly, we are condemned to do things which do not agree with us. Because we have no wings, we are pushed into struggles and abominations we did not seek."Unlike his other novels, especially my favorite, "Corelli's Mandolin," the author introduces and sets in motion a huge cast of characters, who are restricted in their development as a consequence of their large number. They are remembered most for one or two salient characteristics, sometimes charming, occasionally comic, and, as time passes, more and more heartbreaking. Although this device works, and is effective in an epic tale of this proportion, I found something significant lacking here. I wanted to become more intimate with some of the personages - to find out more about them, their thoughts and dreams. This is impossible in "Bird's Without Wings," because as in real life, these figures are as grains of sand in the scheme of world events. "History," de Bernieres writes, "is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas." This book is extremely powerful and pertinent now, given global current events, especially the last few years in the Balkans, Middle East, and former USSR.On the down side, although one cannot help but be caught up in de Bernieres' lyrical prose and a storyline packed with adventure, joy and so much sorrow - this novel is too long at 554 pages, 95 chapters, a six part Epilogue and a Postscript. Although I really found it difficult to put the novel down, it is nowhere as fluid or as accessible as "Corelli's Mandolin." Nor is the narrative as passionate. I do highly recommend "Birds Without Wings" as it still makes for excellent reading!"There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one's native land." --Euripides--JANA