My paternal grandparents were born in Cyprus as subjects of the sultan in Constantinople, albeit under British colonial administration. Cyprus came into British hands in 1878, but it remained officially part of the Ottoman Empire until 1914. The island had a mixed population of Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Sunni Muslims, and my father grew up with Turkish Cypriot playmates. One of them, Abdullah, remained a lifelong friend. The separation of Christian and Muslim Cypriots would not come until 1974, when the island was divided irreparably.
My grandparents' history came to mind recently, when I read Louis de Bernières's "Birds Without Wings," a sprawling epic on a Tolstoyan scale. The story takes place in the final years of the Ottoman era—during the Great War, the Greco-Turkish War, and the aftermath. The setting is the small Anatolian village of Eskibahçe, in what is now southwestern Turkey.
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