As the story progressed, they found Roskovitsky’s vessel, took samples and photographs of it, and sketched the layout. Everything was provided to the czar. Unfortunately, the revolution occurred soon afterward and the documentation went missing. It has never been recovered.
Roskovitsky’s story wound its way through several embellishers, including the Russian troops and officialdom. Various versions of the event drifted into public mention and became regarded as fact. The Cummingses, not indifferent to religion, took up the challenge to verify Roskovitsky’s tale. As word of their mission became widely known, the informational floodgates opened and amazing stories poured in about all things Ark. They amassed a previously unthought-of repository. Thirty years later, in 1972, they were the published collaborators on the aforementioned book, followed by an updated edition ten years later.
Scarf’s Comparison of Oceangoing Vessels and Arks
There have been various “ark” descriptions in historical documents, including shapes that are square/cube-like, round, or oblong. All are of modest size in comparison to more modern vessels. Noah’s Ark, traditionally regarded as oblong, here reflects the dimensions found in Hebrew texts and therefore in Biblical references. The Ark described in the Epic of Gilgamesh is in some renditions cube-shaped, less than half the “length” and a few stories higher than the specifications for Noah’s boat, yet providing similar capacity. The Ark Tablet includes instructions for a circular craft. The Qur’an does not specify measurements for Nûh’s Ark. Illustration © Simon Carr.
The Cummingses’ far-reaching catalogue, which a more academically trained John Montgomery expanded with primary research of his own, was stuffed with documented mentions of Mount Ararat’s hidden treasure, much of it bolstering their belief that the ark undoubtedly once existed and indeed landed on Ararat itself. Montgomery’s book, The Quest for Noah’s Ark, included an academic approach to exploration accounts, reviewing each case, indicative of the author’s discipline. Cummings and Montgomery traveled to Ararat together, along with other researchers, and their exchange of information appeared harmonious rather than competitive. They both sought proof of an ancient oceangoing vessel, the size, shape, and purpose of which they were confident.
We had headed further east into the mountains for some time when Zafer pulled to a stop. Ahead of us, we saw the rolling climb of a road entering north to south mountains that dropped to barren lands. “That is Iran,” he said.
It seemed touchable. Although we could not take that road, traders did; much of their trade was legitimate, some of it not. We drove into a border town where an abandoned lookout tower flying a Turkish flag was surrounded by low-lying buildings. Zafer greeted a muscular youngster in a dark doorway. The boy carried a five-gallon plastic container. He handed Zafer a line of hose with a vacuum pump, one that, when squeezed, created the suction to draw fluid from the can through the hose. The kid placed one cut end of the hose in the container and the other in the fuel intake of Zafer’s vehicle. Zafer compressed the pump several times to begin siphoning.
“Young men,” he told us, “they bring this gas from Iran on horse. They shouldn’t but they do. Very cheap here to buy.”
“It’s okay?” I asked, not sure why the petrol station was so rudimentary.
“OK, unless they get caught. They carry over mountains. But heavy nighttime work is good for young, strong bodies. If no work for young people, is no good. Young men have too much time. Mornings are sleep, shower. Then sleep, jihad. Work is better.”
The boy brought another five-gallon container to where we stood. “It’s only pennies,” Zafer said.
Nico asked in jest, “And everyone pays taxes?”
“No!” Zafer replied, deriding the concept.
“Then who pays for the road building?”
“The West sends money!” Zafer was enjoying this conversation, as he directed us back into the minibus.
Shifting gears as the vehicle rolled away refueled, he said, “We must go back to Van now to pick up summit team member. Ian got in on ferry.”
Entering Van, we drove by a large plaster statue of two cats, one sitting tall, and the other curled at its paws. This was a monument to the city’s famous mascot, the Turkish Vankedisi. The white-haired “Van cat” has one eye the color of Lake Van’s blue waters, the other soft amber, like buttered toast.
Curious to see whether the myth matched the reality, I asked, “Zafer, can we see a Van cat?”
“You mean Cat of Van. Maybe you are lucky, as they are about here. Maybe …” He held a thought before rejigging his own day. “Maybe … how important is this to you?”
Looking to Nico and Patricia for support, I said, “It would be good to do this. It will impress my cat-loving wife.”
“OK, we will do,” Zafer said. “First find Ian. Then Akdamar Island is place you go. Ian will come. I will get Charles to meet us at carpet dealer. He has Van cats.” He corrected himself. “The carpet dealer has Van cats, not Charles. Charles is flying in this afternoon.”
We fought midday traffic in a downtown area riddled with side streets and lacking both traffic signals and directional signs. After long minutes of slow going, Zafer slipped into a side road to stop at a hotel one grade up from a youth hostel, or so it looked from the outside.
Out of the hotel’s doorway stepped a middle-aged man wearing a white T-shirt that proclaimed “Mount Rinjani.” His sunglasses gave way to a mop of brownish-red hair. He wore an outsized watch with dials that, we were to learn, marked altitude, barometric pressure, and temperatures. His long black pants bulged at the pockets with whatever else he anticipated needing that day. He was self-contained.
“Ian,” said Zafer, no doubt in his voice.
With a nod, the man walked around the van with a loner’s sense of discipline. No fuss.
In the minibus, Nico’s respect showed when he asked Ian, “You’ve actually been to Rinjani?” This stunning volcano is known outside climbing circles, as its summit is attainable to fit hikers with a penchant for tough treks.
“Last year,” Ian replied with some satisfaction.
“Indonesia, right?” Nico asked.
“Yes. Hell of an ascent. Steep volcanic scree. Physically and mentally difficult.”
“I envy you that summit,” said Nico. “Where else?”
“Fujiyama, in Japan. Beautiful. Year before that, I climbed Kilimanjaro. This year, Ararat—if everything goes well.”
“Nico was on Kilimanjaro,” Patricia said. “Two years ago too.”
“Ararat will be tougher,” Ian confided.
His candor was welcome. I liked his sense of self in that it did not show outwardly, as though he knew he could best the coming mountain but did not want to say so, just in case …
Nico agreed. “Climbing to the roof of Africa is longer and higher, but climbers say it’s the steepness and the weather that make Ararat more dangerous.”
“Kilimanjaro is nineteen thousand feet, Ararat seventeen,” said Ian. “We need to remember the advice I got trekking on Kili: ‘Go slow.’”
Nico asked, “Why Ararat?”
“The highest peaks interest me,” Ian said. “I don’t want it to sound like a checklist, but Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey. Where next for you?”
“I follow my reading,” Nico replied. “Right now I’m reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, so maybe I’ll go where atheists travel—a place without the religious connotations of Ararat.”
South of Van, back the way I’d come in by the taxi ride, our vehicle drifted over to the roadside near a shanty and a concrete pier leading into Lake Van. The dock was for passengers boarding the boat for Akdamar Island, where the church is another relic of national definition lost by Armenia to Turkey, but not forgotten. It was here, on our ride from Tatvan to Van two days before, that Naim had suggested I visit. Zafer passed coins to the custodian, who pointed us toward a small motorized passenger boat. As we boarded, Zafer said he’d stay behind. “You must walk t
he island. Be peaceful there. Think lots. It is important. You can hear the stones cry.”
After nearly half an hour of breathing the boat’s diesel fumes, we hopped onto a wooden dock into fresh air and the island’s monuments. Ian lit out on his own and went up past the church; I walked along a path to the island’s outer rim, but halfway around we ran into each other and sat down in the heat.
“I hear you took the train to get here,” I said. “Did you have to get off at the Elazig track repairs and come by bus?”
He looked perplexed. “There were no repairs. No disruption. I was on the train to Tatvan. We were put straight onto the ferry. It arrived this morning.”
“I was told there were construction crews along the tracks, and we had to take a bus.”
He asked the date my train was canceled. “Ah, I heard about that,” he said when I told him. “It was not for repairs, Rick. It was the anniversary date of the Kurdish movement’s uprising. There were threats of violence to the train.”
“Violence …” I let it drift off, the tenor becoming clearer to me with every day.
“I glided through.” He’d even met the ferry on time! “I live in Beijing,” he explained. “Flew out of Hong Kong to Istanbul, then Ankara by plane. That’s where I got on the train. Not a problem. Well, except I haven’t had much sleep.”
We walked uphill toward the center of the island and saw Patricia and Nico coming toward us. Nico was enthusiastic: “Go into the church and see the frescoes!”
Surp Haç, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, was an Armenian church built in 915 CE. This is reason enough for restoration, though the Turkish flag fluttering over the island seemed much more like revisionism. Bas-reliefs on the outside walls portray religious occasions in which some scholars identify Islamic influences. Others say the friezes present a Christian artist’s work. The church’s inside walls and its ceiling of faded frescoes have been embellished through refurbishment and retell Biblical stories.
Zafer had told us that the island’s name came from a lover’s dying words, “Ach Tamar,” distorted to Aght’amar and eventually to Akdamar. “A man had love of a beautiful woman, her name Tamar,” he said. “She waited for her lover’s boat on the island. Storms come. He shouts of his love, ‘Ach Tamar,’ from the waters after boat capsizes. He drowns.”
Back on the mainland, Zafer was determined to take us to the Muradiye waterfalls. “You will not have time to do this tomorrow when we go to Doğubeyazit, so I think we should go now.” With the pride that locals know, he announced, “It is see-must.
“First, though,” he said, “carpets, cats, and Charles.”
Reentering Van, we veered into an industrial area and drove through the half-open chain-link gate into an empty lot. Well, not quite vacant: a man in his fifties was waiting for us, relaxing in a chair, his legs out, one foot lodged loosely over the other. He wore a woven straw cowboy hat above a face that looked happy to be exactly where he was. He stood as we stepped out of the minibus.
In Lake Van, Turkey, Akdamar Island is home to Holy Cross Cathedral, now a museum, built in the tenth century CE, when the island and surrounding territory was part of Greater Armenia. Controversy continues over the decision in 2006 not to allow a cross atop the renovated structure.
“Charlie,” he said with an Irish lilt. “Just flew in. Zafer’s friend dropped me here.” There was an easy tension in his stance. “I’m ready.”
“Do you climb mountains?” Patricia asked, and I detected skepticism in her voice.
“Hike often. Walking about is what I like. Not mountains. Least not Ararat’s size. Never done anything like this. Wondered if I could.”
“Don’t die wondering,” said Nico.
Motivations are complex. Why here? Why now? Nico had said that morning that climbing Ararat was a “once in a lifetime possibility” for him. Patricia was candid; Mount Ararat had “popped up” in her life because of Nico. “I’m not a mountain climber. Never was. I came for Nico. But now I climb for myself.” Determination colored her cheeks. “It might be my only mountain. Once my mind’s set, I’m set.” She embodied the conviction needed to conquer the seventeen-thousand-foot level of an unwelcoming climb.
I wondered what my own motivation was, beyond reading Forbidden Mountain as a boy. I began to think it might be: “Climb this to prove to myself that I can climb this …”
Zafer distracted us. “Carpets in Van are art form.” He led us toward the building. “Crafters are Kurdish nomads—women not educated. They put expressions into design. You will see that. Now.”
There are worlds of people who are “not educated” yet are brilliantly creative, intuitive, and majestic, I thought. He glowed with pride and I realized he did not mean his phrasing to sound pejorative.
Half a dozen white-haired cats slumbered beside the wooden posts that propped up the shade roof. Two of them rolled up as we neared, paying us the type of feline attention they reserve for a source of treats.
“Rick, your cats,” Zafer announced. Then, “There is inside tea and Turkish baking. It is time.” With that he left us.
I hadn’t quite believed that I would actually find white furred cats with one blue eye and a contrasting almond one, yet each cat I saw sported exactly that pairing, a duality that captivated me with each eye’s separate stare. As a woman served us tea, the cats followed her, knowing there might be spilled milk or a visitor who could be meowed into sharing.
Tea done, we followed Zafer into the building and found ourselves in a showroom strewn with carpets of all sizes. Over the years, I’ve found that politeness sometimes leads travelers into situations they’d not have chosen themselves. Our deference to Zafer, I realized, had led us into the sales pitch of a carpet entrepreneur.
“Where are the pastries?” Nico asked suspiciously, and I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling tricked. To reach the pastries meant entering a zone of layered carpets on the floor. Others hung from strong metal beams so that they could be viewed with ease.
The salesman was talking quickly—one part information and one part pitch. When he paused for a moment to let two women serve the pastries, he observed: “They are very beautiful—both the women and the carpets.”
Ian, seasoned with such ploys, was fascinated by a dark red carpet with lovely gold lines streaming in it. “How would I get it home?” he wondered aloud, not at all bothered by the ruse.
The salesman was quick to respond: “We ship wherever.”
“I should have a smaller one I can take with me,” Ian countered. The salesman brought more, smaller but of the same design.
Ian was delighted and purchased one on the spot. The salesman was equally delighted: “You help hand up the economy!”
With that, Charlie saw the benefits of an unwanted carpet and purchased one. The rest of us declined, but respectfully.
Zafer drove into the parking area as we left the showroom. With him in the minibus was a man in his mid-thirties, I guessed. He had a good-humored face conveying confidence, and on his head was a baseball cap made of unusual blue cloth, displaying the entwined N and Y emblem of the New York Yankees. It had a smooth cream peak. As a kid, I’d grown up rooting for Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, two Yankees who often dueled each other for the league’s batting titles. I set my sights on owning this man’s hat before we left Turkey. But how?
“Looks like you’re Goran,” Charlie greeted him. They clasped hands.
“Actually, it’s Goran-without-luggage,” the new arrival replied. “I’ve dreamed of seeing Ararat since I was a kid and packed all the climbing gear I needed. Packed two days before leaving New York, I was so excited.” We could see his heart was sinking. “That bag didn’t make the plane out of Istanbul. It’s lost. If it doesn’t arrive, then just for starters I’m jacket-less, sweater-less, and boot-less.”
“Don’t worry,” Ian said. “We won’t leave you behind. ‘One for all, all for nothing …’” he paused.
“And every man for himself,” completed Nic
o with a laugh.
“Whatever the saying is …” retorted Ian.
“Goran, I’ve got an extra sweater you can have,” said Nico.
“Not much of mine will fit you,” Patricia said. “Though I’ve got an extra hiking pole if you need it. And a flashlight.”
“Remember, Amy said we could rent gear,” Charlie reminded us. “What’s your size?”
I’ve never been one to pass up a good opening, and I thought of my packed headwear. “I’ll trade you a knitted toque for that Yankees cap,” I offered.
“Team’s all here,” Zafer announced.
11 There were unquestionably many floods over the years, even “super floods.” Archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who focused much of his work on Sumerian Ur in today’s southern Iraq, was among the earliest scientists to propose the Genesis flood as a local rather than global occurrence. He identified 400-mile-long and 100-mile-wide layers of flood plain—for those who lived there seven thousand years ago, an area that would define their entire known world.
EIGHT
DOĞUBEYAZIT
“Mount Ararat, upon which Noah’s Ark rested after the deluge, and which the Armenians call Messina, the Persians Agri, and the Arabians Subeilah, is without comparison …”
—Adam Olearius, The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors, 1647
Morning brought the arrival of two minibuses outside our hotel. Each van could seat ten passengers. Zafer moved between the two vehicles, arranging for them to be loaded.
The night before, I’d met two American men of Armenian descent at the hotel. One had told me, “We’re part of a group visiting Mount Ararat. Some have traveled from Armenia, others—Armenian as well, but living elsewhere—have come from the United States. And Europe. There are twelve of us.” I immediately thought it a good “nation” to have on the mountain at the same time but climbing separate from us. Until he added, “We will trek with a guide named Zafer.”
Full Moon over Noah's Ark Page 11
