Word: dovecotes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Born in 1894, in an era of sanctioned pogroms, Babel did not need to see his father in the mud to have a firsthand knowledge of the ordeal of a Russian Jew. In The Story of My Dovecot, Babel tells how his dearest childhood dream was to own some pigeons. One day the excited ten-year-old is racing home with his first set of birds, when a pogrom erupts. A crippled dealer in stolen Jewish goods grabs the boy's sack, and, opening it in disgust, smashes one of the pigeons against the boy's face...
...rather steep comedown-in the end he jumps off a cliff. John, a much wiser young squire, gets home to England, where all ends with a nice, bucolic chirrup: "The kingcups and the wild daffodils were out in the water meadows; from the dovecot came the sudden passion and stir of wings." And Elfrida, the girl John left behind him, "had grown tall; under the sun she showed satin-fair...