Khor VirapThe past few days have offered a litany of cultural surprises. While many of these are fascinating experiences that further open my eyes to a foreign place and people, others are nothing more than downright irritants. Iíll restrict this email to the former, more pleasant category, and save my recollection of cultural and situational intolerances for a later entry.
On Thursday I had the pleasure of dining at a highly reputed Yerevan resto. Sitting on top of the hill that rings the city, Amrots overlooks downtown Yerevan and offers an unobstructed view of Mt. Ararat, giving the establishment its appropriate English pseudonym, ìWindows to Araratî. The food was authentically Armenian, as was the long table of twenty or so older Armenian men who stood every quarter hour to toast each other with endless shots of thick domestic vodka. By the end of the evening, the men were dancing to the live band cranking out Armenian and Russian hits on their synthesizers, while one enthusiastic elder, lacking any shred of sobriety, smashed a half-dozen plates on the floor and pranced about in the shards of his work.
This weekís other highlight was accompanying an American doctor whose acquaintance I have recently made on a Saturday morning trip to Khor Virap, a monastery overlooking the Turkish border and the military outposts that dot its entire length. The site is a place of pilgrimage for many Armenians, as this is supposedly the location where St. Gregory the Illuminatoróa religious radical and a central figure in Armeniaís religious heritageówas imprisoned by King Trdat. Hereís how the story goes, courtesy of www.newadvent.org :
(Gregory) refused to take part in a great sacrifice to the national gods ordered by King Trdat, and declared himself a ChristianÖAfter being subjected to a variety of tortures (they scourged him, and put his head in a bag of ashes, poured molten lead over him, etc.) he was thrown into a pit full of dead bodies, poisonous filth, and serpents. He spent fifteen years in this pit, being fed by bread that a pious widow brought him daily.
Eventually, the wicked king is ìturned into a board and possessed by a devilî as punishment for his evil ways, and after Gregory ìexorcizes the evil spirt and restores the kingî, he is freed and converts the king, and the rest of the land, to Christianity.
Wheter or not this sacrosanct story is true, the monastery is quite fascinating, and you are able to climb down into the foul pit in which Gregory was imprisoned. This is no simple affair, as the only way into the pit is down a slick, steel ladder through a totally dark and narrow tunnel. Thirty or so rungs will bring you to the floor of the dank pit, which is dimly lit by a few candles left behind by worshippers. One such worshipper came down literally on top of us. Upon reaching the bottom the elderly women turned to face the ornate stone cross that served as dÈcor for the macabre tomb, dropped to her hands and knees and began to kiss the cold, damp ground. For us, Gregoryís prison provided a unique photo op; for her, it was a solemn opportunity for appreciation and prayer.
Khor Virap has much more to see than pits of darkness, however: we also played witness to a traditional baptism, a chicken sacrifice, the blessing of a young boy with fresh lambís blood, and a morning meal of grapes for a platoon of army ants. And the view aloneóthe monastery is the closest point in modern day Armenia to Mt. Araratóis worth the 30 minute trip outside Yerevan.
Coming soon: Turkish toilets, tricky taps, and troublesome teething terriers.