A tale of dark passion amidst a fierce existential struggle.
My name is Garip, my surname is Toz; I, too, am a character in a novel. If fate allows, I will be the one to tell you this story. My father told it to me, as his father told it to him. It has been passed down for three generations, and we hope it will be told to many more.
This is the tale of a struggle lived between life and death, existence and nothingness, light and darkness—a story of dark passion.
This is the story of the beautiful Gulsum the Sightless, her tale of unyielding love.
In 1918, after emerging defeated from the First World War and signing the Mondros Armistice, the Ottoman Dynasty surrendered Anatolia to the victorious states. Meanwhile, the scattered Turkish Army reorganized under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal, preparing for guerrilla warfare in the region under the banner of the Kuvâ-yi Milliye.
As armies composed of soldiers from various nations landed at Mersin Port on Anatolia’s Mediterranean coast, soldiers, teachers, workers, nomads who knew the mountains well, and villagers in the Taurus Mountains gathered weapons left from the Ottoman era, organizing into small units to resist the occupying forces.The only pass on the western side of the Taurus Mountains, Sertavul, was completely covered in snow. Amid harsh winter conditions, while gangs transported crates of weapons on camelback, bandits who refused to join the resistance roamed the mountains in defiance.
In Sertavul, amidst all this, Gulsum the Sightless tracked her own path. The beautiful Gulsum had no concern for the chaos around her; with the love of her fiancé Halil—who left for the Gallipoli War and never returned—burning in her heart, she pursued a deer through the mountains.
Garıp Toz 