ararat
What this black and white snapshot of Armenia's capital city, Yerevan, and the legendary Mount Ararat in the background fails to evoke is the glorious purple haze 1 that separates the two and at time it feels as if all one needs to do is walk outside the citylimits and find oneself in the foothills of the mountain. Of course, that is impossible. Ararat is in Turkey and the boarder is closed.
To illustrate just how ignorant I was of the country I was to spend two years in, I was unaware you could see the mountain from almost every street in the city. My Peace Corps group landed one dark May night in 1995. The city was under a blackout and we were shuttled from the tarmac to our hotel without being able to see anything besides the nebulous forms of the buildings as we passed by in the autobus. The next morning, after breakfast, I went out to the ex-Republic Square to look about. I nearly fell over in amazement when my brain registered there was a giant mountain filling up the skyline. Perhaps this is what glaciers look like right before they roll over you; a vast wall of rock going straight up into snow and mist. Even now I get a dim thrill of recalling just how shocking that first meeting of that mountain was.
What Mount Ararat is famous for and what makes it a national treasure for the Armenians is that in the Bible myth it is where Noah lands his Ark after the destruction of the world by flood. Thus the Armenians claim direct kinship with Noah, his family and all the generations that followed. The mountain is an image on all their money, sung about in their songs and probably the favorite still-life of painters attempting to capture that certain Armenian-ness one feels but cannot put into words. I certainly have a hard time putting it into words.
The summer of 1995 I spent in the capital city, learning the language (somewhat) and trying to ease out of culture shock. About half way through the summer thin clouds of smoke could be seen coming from the foot of the mountain. A friend told me that was smoke from burning Kurdish rebel villages. The Turkish government was pushing the nomadic Kurds out with a slash and burn program. It reminded me that even though the Armenians claim the mountain as their own many different people live and die in its shadows. What a common story that runs through so many people's mythologies — this destruction of a culture by an oppressive government — a heritage stolen — a destiny robbed — a great sacrifice by ancestors for the current generation. I do not know anyone Kurdish, I do not know anyone who escaped from that massacre in 1995, but I wonder if they told their stories whether it would be the same?
the view from this apartment, these stanzas,
includes this: all this yerevan skyline
with its satellite dishes, antennas,
then that outlandish moisture, all alpine
purple, that causes the great mountain, shrine
to the ark, to loom over everything.
the old man next to me says how divine
it is. what? the dead, praise god, returning
to mount ararat. i'm not sure. smoking
purple rises up, a myth, from the peak's
base. all day turkish troops looting, burning
kurdish camps and so much of this myth speaks
of ghosts trying to return to fortune
denied; a land, a people, a mountain.
- I didn't want to use this term because the opening guitar riffs of Jimi Hendrix song of the same name immediately drift into my mind … but why let that stop me? It certainly is a purple-like haze that separates the city and mountain, rock and roll be damned! [back]