Operation Sippacik/The Secret Woman/Christiaan Barnard-One Life/The Song of Bernadette/The Shattered Dream [antikvár]

c V^h>pac3K—sip-ah-jick—means "very smal! young donkey" in Turkish and that is what she was. One burningly hot afternoon in Cyprus, in the island's hilly countryside, Rifat, grandson of the old Turkish Cypriot farmer, Arif Ali, came out into the field where Siyergar, the family donkey, had been grazing alone and there, beside her, under an olive tree, was another donkey, newborn. It was standing on trembling legs, its fur still damp where Siyergar was licking it clean while its eyes turned inquiringly, looking at this big world into which it had suddenly been dropped. For a moment Rifat stood still in astonishment, but he was only seven and could not contain his joy; he ran and leaped toward them, shouting with excitement, and Siyergar, their own Siyergar, bared her teeth at him and turned her back which, Rifat knew, meant she was going to kick. He stopped shouting. Quietly he picked a tuft of grass and fresh leaves. Cajoling, talking, he went to Siyergar, to pat and praise her; this time she accepted him and presently she allowed him to stroke the baby donkey, a jenny. "Sippacik," he whispered. Sippacik was not white like her mother; she was black—"Black as mischief," Bombardier Garnett, of the British Twenty-seventh Battery Royal Artillery, was to say—but she had a white nose and