 Anatolia donkey in the village  Cyprus donkey in Cyprus, photo courtesy of CJ |
Nuri was the sole keeper of "Cyprus" donkeys. Approximately the size of mules, these hard-to-find donkeys are able to carry twice as much as the more common "Anatolia" donkeys. He had two of them, one right after the other, and probably went out of his way to obtain them in order to make his weekend work in the village more productive. Among the handful of villagers who had shops in town, Nuri alone was without a full-grown son. He was therefore forced to rely on himself to complete, in two days, a week's worth of the farm work for which men are responsible. Women work exclusively in the vicinity of the village, leaving the more distant fields and gardens to their husbands and sons. The first Cyprus donkey had been with the family a couple of years when it was accidentally killed by a neighbor's young son. Saddened by the loss, Nuri set out to look for a replacement; the one he found was named, appropriately, "Big Donkey." |