There is only one woman completely enrobed in black, in the Iranian style. There is another who is also clothed in black, except that she wears an ordinary black headscarf and skirt, and a black T-shirt. She is trying to be both East and West, and she is indeed fortunate that she is innocent of the English tongue, for her T-shirt bears the immodest and un-Islamic message “Red Hot and Ready to Go.”
All this is quite normal and unremarkable for the town of Fethiye, whose old name was Telmessos, meaning “City of Light,” or “Megri,” meaning “The Faraway Land.” The truly anomalous and remarkable thing about Fethiye, its market and the region of Lycia, is that there are no Greeks.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2005
Copyright © 2004 Louis de Bernières
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Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2004. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
De Bernières, Louis
Birds without wings / Louis de Bernières.
eISBN: 978-0-307-36887-4
I. Title.
PR6054.E132B47 2005 823’.914 C2004-906979-9
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