A Borderlands Quatrain

Position: 39°33’19″N 44°03’57″E

An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: for loving a true love.
Legs: to run after. – Rumi

Ani

There are ghosts out here on these borders. Once you leave the sea and climb high up past the tree line and reach the plateau, the wide barren landscape sweeps away before you. The dust of time burying the footprints of the past. The arid land cradled cities and civilizations for centuries, until the earth shook off the people and sent them scattering in other directions. Ravines carved deep borders, and armies separated friends and families, making enemies of them. Spirits here wander lost and in search of rest. You can feel their presence. And their pain.

This is the border of Turkey and Armenia at Ani, an ancient city abandoned a thousand years ago. Churches on the west side of the river became mosques as the vanquished retreated. This despite sharing a common belief in one God. The foundation blocks of prosperity are all that remain. A few sharp angles jutting from the brilliant snowfield, tramped down by young and curious women in hijabs and styled men in black leather jackets and beards.

A hundred miles south, the border joins Iran’s and briefly Azerbaijan’s. Fiercely guarded on all sides by miles of fencing with razor wire, remote sensors and infra-red cameras keep watch mounted high up on towers. Four miles from the border the military will stop you and turn you away if you aren’t planning to cross. And forget about going into Armenia from Turkey over land. You can only get there via Georgia or Iran.

Mount Ararat dominates the skyline and looms over the wide flat valley along its southern edge. The tattered mountains form a natural barrier that kept sultans and princes safe for centuries. Stretching across the ridgeline, the fences lift the mountains another three metres with the flourish of an illustrator’s pen.

Ark

Doğubayazıt is the last stopping point in Europe before truckers cross into the middle of the Middle East. You can get anything you want here, I read in an online guide. Outwardly a dry, gritty place, it looks like deals are made for all kinds of cargo heading to and from Iran. Including, no doubt, people. Like most eastern cities in Turkey, there is no shortage of older men hanging around tea shops and young men getting their hair cut. Women appear to do all the work.

We stayed at the comfortable Tehran Boutique Hotel, whose very name might inspire tomfoolery at the expense of the xenophobic. While not the first foreigners that week, we drew the stares of curiosity at breakfast which remind us how rare Americans are out here, particularly arriving in a car in the middle of the worst winter in 10 years.

A local Kurdish restaurant proved a good choice for our one night on the town. In the morning we explored the Pasha’s palace and drove within five miles of the Iranian border. Losing our nerve, we hung a right in search of Noah’s Ark. Supposedly buried here in one of at least a half dozen places, every shepherd worth his salt has applied for a brown sign to draw in fans of the Old Testament. Ours was buried under two metres of snow and firmly closed.