Book Review: Children of War by Ahmet Yorulmaz

´(...) what kind of sin is that we´re paying for?´

The cruelty humans are keen to inflict to each other for reasons pertaining to religious, cultural or historical reasons, or all at once plus racism is never ending. The more I delve into the world history, the more I see how no nation or group seems to be safe from the mortal sin of hating the other, for reasons that have less to do with the human nature, but more with inherited traits that no one can really avoid or change overnight.

Children of War by Ahmet Youlmaz, translated by Paula Darwish is the first-person story of Hassanakis, a former resident of Creta where his family settled for 15 generations. As a consequence of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne who allowed the deportation of 1.8 Million Turks to mainland Turkey, plus a love affair with a Greek-Christian woman, he is forced to start a new life. Originally written in Turkish, it was inspired by three notebooks left by a Cretan refugee who died in Ayvalik, Turkey in 1948. The author familiar was no strager to his parents were Cretan deportees themselves.

It is a slow paced, evocative story, with a fast forward timeline and many observations about the human psychology, particularly when it comes to the neighbours who are suddenly becoming enemies or the people who never met before deciding to take accountable for all their shortcomings the members of a different cultural group. The Balkans, the Middle East, Europe during WWII has plenty of such stories to tell. Sad stories about the volatility of human fate and relationships. 

For the Cretan Turks, a new trauma was waiting as they arrived in the homeland they never been before: many did not speak the language and they were unwelcomed anyway. In a limbo between countries and cultures, they remained nostalgic about the life as it once been, the graves of their parents left in a country where they most probably not come back. 

The book includes many historical references and notes which are helpful for acknowledging the historical context and the political evolutions. Therefore, the book is both informative and relevant as a story in itself set in a dramatic historical time.

Although I was deeply delved into the story, my honest explanation is because of the novelty of the topic for me, as well as the recognition of elements that I was familiar with from other contexts. Those details put aside, I´ve found the story relatively simple and more focused on the events than on a coherent plot or the encounters between the characters. It follows a relatively simple line and it is nothing wrong with it. Only that I am that kind of multi-tasking reader that wants sparkles of intellectual excitement on every page. That´s one of the reasons I usually avoid historical fiction, because it is rarely enough.

Children of War - the name of a taverna - is nevertheless an important reading in a syllabus of historical and cultural references, dislocation and identity trauma. Unfortunately, the list is growing bigger and bigger every day.

Rating: 3 stars 

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review