Description
Each year the wind brings the news to old Halil’s keen senses that the cotton is ripe for picking in the plain, and at his word the entire population of his remote village in the Taurus Mountains set out on the arduous trek to earn by their toil enough to pay their debts and buy the necessities of life for the bitter highland winter. But this year old Halil finds himself too old to go on foot; so does Long Ali’s aging mother Meryemdje, and both clamour for a place on the back of Long Ali’s broken-down nag, once a pure-breed Arab steed stolen by Ali’s brigand father, now scarcely capable of bearing either of the two old people. Halil’s determination to stay on and Meryemdje’s to get him off lead to a war of words and cunning which lights with delicious comedy the sombre drama of the march. But when the decrepit animal finally dies, and the group falls behind the rest of the villagers, it is the unfortunate Ali who has to show piety towards his mother and compassion to old Halil, while pressing on with dogged resolution to reach the cotton fields before they are picked bare.
