Mystics and Warriors

Flor Benavides, whose Sephardic Jewish family had to flee Baghdad in the late 1940's, grew up in Chicago. When she was 10 years old, her older brother Idris returned to Chicago from an extended buying trip with four Persian friends throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. As a girl, Flor had loved Idris's stories of that trip, especially his description of the group's encounter in Malta with a mysterious, almost wizardly, man known as Shamsuddin. Fifty years later, Flor learned that Shamsuddin had joined forces with an underground Turkish political group known as Konrul. Turgut Evren, a Colonel in the Turkish Army, was a member of the group. Their sociopolitical aims were to undermine the Turkish government and to defeat the growing Kurdish separatist movement. When the Colonel learned of a sophisticated software program used to facilitate communication among satellite phones, he tried to have the software stolen. He hoped to use the software to break into the communication network used by Kurdish separatist groups. However, Shamsuddin had other planns for that software, and stole the software before Evren could get his hands on it. It was only a matter of time before Evren learned of Shamsuddin's ulterior motive. And when he did, you can be sure the outcome was bound to be deadly.

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