Azad, from this book and/or other references, came up with two quotes: "Armenia has much history but not enough geography" and "Life that you look for you never find."
He compared the Turkish baths described in the book to those that he saw in the area when he has been there. The ones that he saw were never that clean or well set up.
Andrea liked the book, especially the author's report on the time that he spent with a friend's family in Iraq. She noted that when he traveled through Van he twice ended up in the wrong place, unable to get to where he needed to go. Each time, the same man rescued him and went out of his way to bring him to where he needed to be.
I commented on the ease with which the author got along with other people. I also noted the problems with the guides that they hired for the mountain climb. The original guide who they signed up to lead the climb passed them on to another guide, who passed them on to someone else.
Lowell also enjoyed the easy way the author set up personal relationships.
Margaret liked the various tales of Noah's Ark. She liked the way that the author seemed to be a good diplomat.
Andrea noted the Armenian that the author met at Khor Virap who was selling poor quality pictures and seemed to be almost a bum. When the author asked him if he had a picture of a full moon over Mount Ararat, he brought the author to his house and gave him a very high quality picture of exactly what he wanted. It turned out that he was a good photographer.
Tashina liked the various little stories and anecdotes in the book.
Peter noted that the Gilgamesh epics that were found on clay tablets in Mesopotamia included stories of floods like Noah's Ark. The tablets are from 1000 years or so before the Bible was written down. I noted that Abraham was from that area in Mesopotamia.
Some of us noted that the Armenians who were attempting to climb Mount Ararat at the same time as the author seemed to be less well prepared. Andrea noted that for many years Armenians were banned from climbing the mountain and are still less well treated in Turkey.
Joe pointed out that the author was Canadian and had the perspective that the Armenians weren't as well prepared. He was disappointed in the poor attitude of the Armenians in the book.
We spent quite awhile talking about the various variations on the Noah's Ark story. A few other mountains in the area are also claimed as the place where the ark landed.
I mentioned that the book starts out referencing a fairly recent theory that about 7500 years ago, after the end of the previous little ice age, global sea levels which had fallen during the ice age rose back up again and finally broke through a land bridge to flood into what had been a much smaller, fresh water Black Sea. That raised the level of the Black Sea by at least 500 to 600 feet over a relatively short period of time and could have been the original source of the flood stories.
Andrea, Azad and Francis compared their experiences in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, some good and some bad.
At this point we decided to finish our discussion.
Because of a raised interest in the stories of Gilgamesh we decided to read a recent translation of his epics as our book for next month. The book is "Gilgamesh: A New English Version" as translated by Stephen Mitchell.
Next month's meeting will be on June 17th. We are going to try to hold a real physical get-together at Mim's, with an added Zoom connection for those who can't make it. I'll let you know for sure a week or so before the meeting.
Leroy