RELOCATIONS

RELOCATIONS is a platonic love story of Yusuf Ali, a Canadian POW in World War I and his Armenian sweetheart Tamara from Bayburt, Anatolia. The Great War destroys their lives. Tamara keeps a diary, recounting her experience and survival on the long trek through the killing fields of Eastern Anatolia, finally becoming a Muslim, Ülmühan. Yusuf is paroled from Kapuskasing Camp and is reborn in St. Catherine's, Ont., in his heart always remembering his sweetheart back home. The climax of their story is their meeting, in old age, in Urfa, southern Turkey, to reflect and undergo their own truth and reconciliation. The central message of RELOCATIONS is that in the end, the human spirit triumphs over war and atrocity. Unconditional goodness through service to the needy is the path to personal liberation.

RELOCATIONS is the final fiction in the Uzun Ali trilogy: UZUN ALI, SHAME & SALVATION (2011), ANGELINA'S TREASURE, CYPRUS 1570+ (2013), published by Wisdom House, England.

Ozay Mehmet is a retired Canadian academic, originally from Cyprus, living in Ottawa, Canada.