Kars or white rabbits of history

From Erzurum I took another small bus to Kars. At that point I knew nothing more than, that it used to be an important place in Armenian history.

After amazing wonderful winding roads in the valleys we entered finally the town. I was standing with my luggage on the street side and felt all but comfortable. I stick out in the crowd usually, but here I felt like being decorated with blinking neon lights.

I don’t know exactly what it is, that gives a flair to a town. This was a combination of concrete, grayness, poverty and the moon landscape all around.

It’s never a good idea to get stuck in the town when it is dark, so I decided to go out of it. On the way some children would run into me grabbing on the bags and shouting moneymoney instead of English hello, and that can drive me crazy.

In the gasoline station I realize that Ani, the ancient Armenian town is another 50 km away, next to the boarder to Armenia, and there would be no other way than to come back to Kars afterwards. The man says that is is not good idea to go there alone. I mean, I was wondering if there is anyone in the world, who could tell me that it is a good idea to travel alone generally. But, since my visa was running out, I though that I eventually enter Turkey from Armenia.

Later I found out that this was more than wrong. Armenia does not have any checkpoints to Turkey. And somehow I can understand that these countries are far away from being best friends.

How can one feel being brought up about the legends of the nation dwelling in the valleys next to mount Ararat and to admire it from the kitchen window knowing, that this mountain, the symbol of the nation surrounded by the legends of Noahs arc, which landed there after the flood, is beyond its borders?

Armenian history, like anything you pick out in Caucasus is damn complicated. You cannot tell anymore, who was the first and who was the second starting the war or building a monastery.

The sad thing about it is that this point of view protects people to look at and construct some kind of future. With Armenia it is like with these children that were told they can find the key of happiness in the backyard, but only if they don’t think about the white rabbit. If you try it yourself you realise that it is just as possible as to act spontaniously when someone tells you to. Brain focuses on the datainput, no matter what it is.

And sure, telling Armenians not to think about their history and to forget the past would not help them to think of the future. The monuments of their history are so evident and impressive that it is even more hard to do so. Own language with its own alphabet, monasteries from the 5th century, mount Ararat surrounded by myths about Noahs arc landing there – these are too big to be ignored. Just as the number of killed people – 2 mln people of Armenian origin were killed in 1912 –1915.

I was glad to tell people I come from Lithuania those days. My French friends were wondering by email, why people were so strange to them in Istanbul. As cyclists they did not read the fresh news. France was proposing to pass a law, that makes it illegal to deny the fact of the Armenian genocide.

The actual discussion proved once again that history is not that much about the facts themselves, but far more about the mental construcs around them. Concerning the Armenians it was in a tremendous clash in Turkey in October. ‘It never happened!’, people who probably have never seen a dead person at all would shout during these days in the demonstrations in Turkey on the television.

The sun was setting and was pedaling through the stony empty landscape of nowhere. Strong wind, the climate is clearly more fierce here.

I was starting to wonder if I can reach any inhabited place before the sunset. Setting up a tend would shout for murder, absolutely no place to hide. Stones too small. Finally, like from a very strange surrealist movie a lonesome concrete building appears. I come closer, gasoline station in construction, first men, I ask them how far is the next village. They looked like bandits i thought. In a good way. Whatever that means. We build a hotel here, they said. You can stay here if you want.

I appreciated and accepted the offer, since the sun was setting very quickly.

Paradise and nationalism

… or how I went to Erzurum by bus

In the bus I woke up in the middle of the night. I could see the landscape just next to the road. In the moonlight with stones lying around it looked like on some different planet. I thought once again that it was a very good idea to go by bus and slept further. Next time I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes. Cold early morning, first sunrays. In the big bus there were 8 men. I wasa the only woman. No houses around, stones, no trees, river valley. Then passing an abandoned village full of concrete bungalows of the same model. I thought, but the soviets, who liked the concrete architecture were not here? No, not soviets. These were Turkish buildings.

I wondered, who live in these places. Many kurdish. People that would not be the first that would cry out TURKIYE GUZEL, meaning Turkey is megacoolbeautiful, that so many people from small to old would tell me in the same manner and doing the same gesture of the Italian cook. Kurdistan.

Before 1912 here lived also many Armenians. And many others before them though the thousands and thousands of centuries.

Erzurum. Concrete blockhouses. Erzurum was seen by ancient Armenians as paradise. In earlier days it must have been a place in a very fruitful valley, and comparing to the harsh mountains it would make sense to see it as paradise. But it definitely changed from that time.

The 2 mln years old skull found in Dmanisi in Georgia lead the archeologists to the conclusion, that first people came from Africa to Caucasus and further spread to Europe and Asia, when the land did not provide enough food. Some time around 12 thousands years ago (10.000 B.C) this region (or rather more south from here, in the valleys of Tigris and Eurphratus) was overpopulated. The Sumer city of Uruk or later Babylon (in Irak) had more around 80.000 inhabitants in 6 square kilometers and was the first megapolis of these days. The climate changed slowly also because the wooden areas were cut and the land was used to an extreme extent. Most probably it applied also for these places. Since now Erzurum does not look like paradise at all. Very cold winters and very hot summers make this place not the easiest to live in.

There are also no Armenians left here to think it as of paradise. Except maybe Hemsinli. Muslims of Armenian origin were not killed during the Armenian genocide. And few must have survived. Since Armenian women left their babies on the streets before they were killed. And raised in Kurdish families. Many Kurdish participated in the killings, but many also raised Armenian children.

So, I was wondering once again, who is going to tell who is bad and who is good? Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish, Jews or Germans?

Nationalism can be used so easily to make people kill each other, just as it happens in so many places of the world. A perfect example of `split and rule’ is the Abhasian conflict in Georgia, or actually any other conflict here in Caucasus.

Some people in power are smart in a nasty manner. Make people believe in their national superiority, give them weapons, destabilize the region and rule! Some politicians in Russia seem to know these principle too well. This is how it goes, since people in Caucasus are proud people, very proud of their nationality.

The sad thing is that most of the people don’t realize that indirectly they are feeding these wars – by cultivating their national identity. Caucasus seems to forget, that through the ages all the kingdoms and states that might have existed here were always multicultural, and here to en extreme extent. There are more than 30 languages in Caucasus. Which is more important of them? Georgian, Svanetian, Mingrelian, or Ubykh, spoken maybe be a handful of people in a small village? Anyway, the result of the cultivated extreme national feeling could lead to a first desired state of monoculture.

In Armenia almost 98% of population is Armenian. Don’t want to make any negative predictions, but at least for biology this rule applies – monocultures have less possibilities to survive, than multicultures.

What a crazy century. Greece, Turkey, Serbia, Armenia, the places that used to be multicultural through the centuries turned or strive to turn to monocultures. The saddest thing is that most people don’t realize that all these wars are actually not national.

Wars nowadays are economical. But its very easy to cover their real nature with national flags. While singing national hymns hardly anyone pays attention to the silent omni presence of Coca Cola.

or things like this: http://candycactus.net/qdig/?Qwd=./6.%20Georgia&Qiv=thumbs&Qis=M