Jarring my rental car on hard-packed ruts, I'd turned onto a dirt track in the Karpaz Peninsula hoping to find the wild donkeys that live here -- instead, one found me. In this remote region of northern Cyprus, their domesticated ancestors were abandoned by Greek-speaking farmers who fled to the south when Turkish troops occupied the northern part of the island in 1974.
Now, donkeys have free rein in the peninsula's beaches and grass-scrubbed hills; they cluster at the edge of the dusty road looking for handouts from tourists. But if this conflict set the donkeys free to live on carrots and granola bars, it left the island of Cyprus divided by fences and conflict.
