Just got back from Cyprus, which has been divided since Turkish forces occupied the northern third in 1974.
I was reporting a water story, but managed to get distracted by this adorable Turkish Cypriot girl, who is like a Mediterranean version of Laura Ingalls (but in a jean jacket with pink faux-fur trim).
Ten-year-old Buse Ozyarali likes the vastness of her country town, the herds of goats and sheep that she greets every morning, the scents of earth and water. And like most little girls in the prairie, she loves animals.
Her parents, both aging hippies with long hair and a love for American rock-and-roll, own a tiny general store in a tiny northern village, and their backyard is home to a collection of chickens, roosters, rabbits, guinea pigs and a domesticated but still fiery hawk.
“The hawk sits on my arm and listens to me,” she says. “Sometimes he gets mad but I make my voice very loud and he stops.”
She won’t let him eat the rabbits. She has tried to talk her parents out of eating them, too, but they don’t obey her the way the hawk does.
“Every morning, when the sun is high, I play with my bunnies. The hawk is jealous, and my parents shake their heads. And I am so happy.”
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