Ararat Read online

  In winter, however, the climb became complicated. The snow and wind whipped across the face of the mountain, the cold cutting through heavy clothing, sinking into your bones. In the dark or in the midst of a storm, temperatures could plummet to thirty below zero. Even so, neither of them had any interest in climbing Ararat in the summertime. The whole point of the climb had been to have a few thrilling chapters for their second book, Adam and Eve at the Top of the World. The series chronicled their exploits as a couple, the things they dared together that most people wouldn’t dare alone, never mind have a mate to attempt with them. Which meant that climbing Mount Ararat in the summer would be boring as hell to their readers.

  They weren’t idiots, though. They’d made the climb in late October, not in February. Avalanches were not uncommon on Ararat in the winter months, and they only needed to make the climb seem slightly more challenging than the teacup-monkey version.

  Of course they’d picked the mountain in the first place because of the ark.

  Not that Meryam believed in the ark. She thought Adam might, but he had never outright admitted it to her. The story of the great flood had too much historical prevalence in disparate ancient cultures to be pure invention, but the biblical story could not possibly be true. To jump-start the human race—never mind all life on Earth—with only whatever animals you could fit on a single boat … the idea that anyone could accept that concept made her want to bang her head against a wall.

  So she thought the idea of the ark was hilarious.

  But an ark? A guy who might have been named something like Noah, who’d built a huge, crude ship and loaded up his family and whatever animals he’d owned—donkeys and sheep, that sort of thing—she could wrap her brain around that. She had studied enough folklore, history, and theology to know most of the ancient stories were either crafted to teach a lesson or passed down through generations because they had a kernel of truth in them that scared the shit out of people. The lesson of the biblical tale of Noah’s ark was a simple one, a refrain that echoed throughout the Old Testament: behave, or God will fuck you up.

  Adam, for instance. She could see in his eyes that a part of him still believed the things he’d been taught growing up, the things he’d memorized before his bar mitzvah. His mother had died when he was young and his father had worked too many hours, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother Evie, whose grim mysticism had left him scarred by faith. The old woman had insisted that her father had been possessed by a dybbuk toward the end of his life. Adam claimed not to have believed her, but she still remembered the first time he had told her the story and the shadow that had fallen across his eyes. Adam didn’t want to believe, but she knew he did.

  For her part, Meryam didn’t believe in dybbuks or spirits or angels, but then she didn’t believe in much. She had been raised a Muslim and long ago decided that the main difference between their religions was the name of the god they were all afraid would punish them if they broke the rules the faith set out for them. Meryam still obeyed some of those fundamental rules out of reflex and caution, but it wasn’t God whom she feared would punish her for breaking them. Allah wouldn’t spit on her in the street, imprison her, gang rape, or murder her.

  Only men would do that.

  Men like Hakan Ceven.

  “How long before the government gives us authorization to climb?” she asked him.

  Hakan sat directly across the table from her, spine rigid against the back of his wooden chair. He turned to his left, addressing his response to Adam.

  “It could be hours or it could be weeks.” His voice rasped like stone on stone, thick with the accent of the region, but he spoke better English than she’d expected.

  Meryam glanced at Feyiz, the fourth person at their table. Like his uncle, who had become the new head of the family in the wake of deaths the clan had incurred in the avalanche, Feyiz would not meet her gaze. But Meryam knew Feyiz avoided her eyes out of embarrassment rather than disdain. Kurds were not typically as antagonistic toward women as many other followers of Islam in the Middle East, but judging by Hakan’s behavior, he was an exception.

  “Is there anything we can do to speed this process?” Meryam asked.

  Hakan stiffened further, chin raised and nostrils flared. His thick, graying beard could not hide the scowl on his lips. He let his gaze linger on Adam’s, trying harder to get the message across.

  “My cousin is there now, speaking to a friend in the minister’s office. If bribes will help, we will offer them and simply add the cost to your bill. Until then—”

  “Hakan,” Adam interrupted, not hiding his irritation.

  Feyiz gave a brisk shake of his head.

  “—all we can do is wait with the rest of them,” Hakan finished.

  Meryam gritted her teeth and glanced around the massive, rustic dining room. Three other climbing teams were already assembled there but more would be on the way. Feyiz had spoken to the other guides and learned that all of them were larger parties, most awaiting reinforcements, and all three were financed or led by Arkologists—the people who believed the biblical version of the story of Noah’s ark and had dedicated their lives to finding its resting place. Two of the groups had small documentary crews with them and the third had a crew on the way. Meryam had her fiancé.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said, lowering his voice to be sure only the four of them—the little circle of distrust at their table—could hear. “But this is not going to work if you insist upon—”

  Meryam tapped her fingers lightly on the table, drawing the attention of the three men. Anxiety spilled out of Feyiz’s every pore. Adam clamped his mouth shut in frustration. Hakan kept his gaze averted.

  “Firstly,” she said quietly, “don’t speak for me, Adam. Don’t be the knight who takes up sword and shield to defend his love. That’s not who we are and you know that.”

  Later, he might argue that the circumstances demanded he intervene, but that was for when they were alone together, not a conversation he would venture to have in front of others.

  “Secondly … Hakan, you can go on pretending I’m invisible, that the voice you hear comes from the Jew I’m going to marry, whom I guess you like only a little more than you like me. I imagine the concept of our marriage is an abomination in the eyes of a creature as ignorant and full of hatred as you are—”

  Hakan snapped his head around to glare at her. His upper lip twitched and she could see the fury burning inside him that she would dare speak to him that way. He huffed several shaking breaths and then slowly turned to stare anew at Adam. A razor-thin smile parted his lips.

  Meryam leaned over the table. “You’re torn, I know. Lash out at me and you have to accept that I exist and that I am giving the orders here.”

  To Adam—always to Adam—Hakan replied, “And if I just quit? I could lead one of the Arkology groups. I could forbid my family and the other guides from helping you.”

  Night had brought a cold breeze and it slid along the floor like rising water. Laughter erupted at a corner table where a German climbing party was opening more bottles of wine. The crisp, dry air pulled all of the moisture from visitors’ mouths, but there was always more wine to quench their thirst. Always more stories of the mountain, more dark-eyed guides with weather-lined faces, more prayers to a god who seemed so much closer here in the shadow of the mountains, and so much more callous in his disregard of those prayers.

  “You could do any of those things,” Meryam agreed.

  Tired, she rubbed her eyes and cracked her neck. It had been a rush to get here, to gather supplies and ensconce themselves in this hotel carved out of a rocky hillside, each of its rooms practically a luxury cave. A fairy chimney, according to the Swiss hotel chain that had built it. Seen from the outside, in the dark, the golden lamplight illuminating the caves of its rooms in the face of the rocky hill, the place did have a bit of magic in it.

  Hakan slid his chair back and stood. Meryam had let the argument hang in the air, a clou
d of discontent that only grew heavier, and Hakan had chosen to flee. The forty-year-old guide had unexpectedly inherited his family’s business without wanting the role or being suited for the compromises that naturally came along with it.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Adam told him.

  “If I am, this mistake is not the first of the evening,” Hakan replied.

  “You have your own ambitions,” Adam said. “All due respect, Hakan, you’re a mountain guide and your family—for all of their honored traditions—lives a life one step away from being nomads.”

  Hakan’s fists clenched. “As it has always been.”

  “You’re proud of the traditions,” Adam said. “And you should be. But that doesn’t mean you want to do this till you die, or that you want your sons to do it, or your daughters to marry men who may die in the next avalanche. You already supply the horses—or your cousins do—so why not own the hotels? Why not own the shops?”

  “This isn’t the life you want, Uncle,” Feyiz said.

  Hakan spoke to him in Kurmanji. Meryam understood the single word he said. Silence.

  “We’re paying you a great deal of money,” Adam went on, his tone all business. Reasonable, where Meryam knew she would have been incapable of reason. “And you know damn well that once the climbing ban is lifted, we’ll be the first ones up that mountain. It’s just us. I’ve got my own camera and we’re not waiting for anyone. The producer I’m working with is already talking to officials here who’ve checked our credentials and agreed that if we get there first and there’s something to find—and we follow all established rules for an archaeological site in this country—the dig is ours.”

  Hakan rolled his eyes. “Without a monitor from the government? Never.”

  “If we find anything, they’ll send someone.”

  The guide stroked his thick beard, lip still curled in distaste. “Without a guide, good luck to you.”

  This time he did look at Meryam, as if only now, putting the last nail in the coffin of her plans, would he acknowledge her.

  “They have a guide,” Feyiz said quietly.

  Hakan shot him a withering glare. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Now it was Hakan’s turn to be ignored. Feyiz refused to look at him.

  Adam pushed Hakan’s chair out a bit farther, a suggestion that he should return to his seat.

  “We’re going to climb,” Adam said. “If there’s nothing there, we’ll have wasted a lot of time and money. But if there’s anything worth finding, it’ll be our dig and our documentary film. We’ll need a project foreman who knows the mountain intimately and who doesn’t mind being on camera, part of the film. Our backers will be funding the whole thing. If this is the ark, the interest level will be so high that money will rain from the sky.”

  Hakan held onto the back of the chair, the muscles in his shoulders relaxing, but he did not sit down. The wrinkle in his brow had turned from one of vexation to one of contemplation.

  “There are many ‘ifs,’” Hakan said.

  Meryam exhaled. “You don’t have to look at me when I speak to you. If your religious beliefs mean you must condemn me—and my relationship with Adam—in your heart, that’s between you and God. But we are doing this, and it will be much easier for us and much more rewarding for you if we have the cooperation of the Ceven family.”

  Hakan glanced at her, locked eyes for a three count, then slipped back into his chair. He turned to his nephew, spoke in a low voice and in the language of their birth.

  “Do you believe in the ark?” Hakan asked.

  Adam frowned—he didn’t know the language—but Meryam gave the tiniest shake of her head to indicate he should say nothing.

  “If it’s there, I’ll believe in it,” Feyiz replied.

  “The cave seems too small to hold it,” Hakan said.

  Feyiz shrugged, but Meryam leaned over and spoke to the younger man, as if his uncle were not there. She could pretend as well as anyone, could play this game if it would ease their way.

  “These others,” she said in Turkish, with a slight nod toward the nearest table of Arkologists, “they’re looking for a legend. Any measurements ever written down are symbolic. If the ark existed, nobody knows how big it really was. If it’s up there on the mountain, we can measure it ourselves. We’ll remake the legend.”

  Feyiz smiled. He had been in from the start—committed deeply enough to defy his uncle and anger the rest of his family. He had lost three relatives in the avalanche, but all of his children still lived. Feyiz wanted to keep it that way and knew that finding the ark could change his life.

  “Are we in business or not?” Adam asked.

  “Uncle?” Feyiz said.

  Hakan hesitated and Meryam knew he would not agree. The climb would have to go on without him, which would make it much harder to get horses, to replenish their supplies, and to have the support they needed up on the mountain if they really did find something that warranted archaeological attention.

  The German Arkologists erupted with another volley of laughter. One of them reared back and nearly spilled from his chair before righting himself, knocking his wineglass to the floor in the process. The glass shattered, spilling deep red liquid onto the wooden floor.

  Hakan scowled in their direction, and then Meryam saw his brows knit, his eyes narrow. Meryam turned to find a young boy weaving through the dining room.

  “Zeki,” Feyiz muttered.

  Meryam took Adam’s hand, a flutter of excitement in her chest. She recognized the boy as Feyiz’s eldest son. Slim and handsome, not yet twelve years old, Zeki would grow up to break women’s hearts. Tonight his furtive speed suggested that he might have a very different future from his forebears.

  The boy arrived beside his father, but when he produced a folded slip of paper, Feyiz indicated that he should hand it instead to Hakan.

  Zeki obeyed. Hakan surveyed the room. Meryam knew others would be watching them, wondering about the presence of the boy, but there was nothing they could do about that now.

  “Well?” Adam prodded.

  Hakan opened the paper, scanned it quickly, and then grunted.

  He looked up, straight at Meryam for once. “We must go.”

  “Now?” Feyiz asked. “It’s an hour past dark.”

  Meryam grinned. “Which gives us all night to reach Camp One … an excellent head start.”

  As they rose from the table, Meryam paused to drain the last red bliss from her wine in victory. She and Adam were going to be first to the cave.

  First to lay eyes on whatever waited there.

  * * *

  Feyiz drove the van, their gear piled in the back, and they wended through the sleepy streets of Dogubeyazit. Adam grinned most of the way, suffused with a giddy exuberance he had rarely felt since childhood. Under starlight, they drove along badly paved roads to a tiny village called Eli, where the pavement came to an end and they arrived at a parking lot at the base of the mountain.

  Here in Turkey he felt relatively safe, and yet the presence of the Iranian border only kilometers away made the sky in that direction seem laden with menace. On one hand it seemed silly to feel as if the whole nation held a personal animosity toward him, like a cloud of malice waiting for a shift in wind direction so that it could swallow him whole. On the other hand, if he crossed the border and was caught, he would be instantly arrested and imprisoned. Stupid to think about—he had no intention of entering Iran—but such were the things that lingered in his mind.

  The trek toward Camp One was a hike rather than a climb. They spilled from the van, checked their gear one last time, and then slipped on their packs. Adam pulled on a wool hat, tugged down the earflaps, and shivered as his body began to adjust to the cold night air. This is foolish, he thought, glancing up at the mountain as the wind whipped around them. Then Meryam turned toward him and he saw the ecstatic glint in her eyes and the grin she wore, and he remembered that foolish was their stock in trade. The whole point of their books
and their online videos was to help ordinary people overcome their fear of taking risks.

  He retrieved his camera from the back of the van, sighted on Meryam, and began to record. “So, what are we going to call this one? Adam and Eve Find the Ark?”

  “Let’s actually find the ark before we start claiming we’ve done so,” Meryam said with the smile that always broke his heart. That wasn’t a smile he could ever refuse, and it was as good an opening line as he could have wished for.

  She adjusted the pack on her shoulders and turned toward the mountain. Feyiz and Hakan had already started up the path, neither waiting for them nor offering to help. Feyiz knew they didn’t need his help. Hakan simply didn’t give a shit.

  They trudged a half mile or so before Adam bothered with the camera again. The terrain looked ghostly in the starlight and he wanted to wait until they were far enough from the parking lot that none of the lights from the village or the road would interfere with the atmosphere he wanted to create. Normally they would have had horses, maybe a mule or two, but there were only four of them and their goal was to reach the cave first, establish their claim. They couldn’t spare anyone to wait behind with the animals as they made their way from Camp Two over to the part of the southeast face that had calved off. There would be no safe way to reach the new cave, but the least dangerous option would be to cut across to a place above the opening and descend to it rather than try to climb all the loose rock and earth below it. Starting another avalanche might kill them all. Adam and Meryam were making careers out of calculated risks, but neither of them wanted to die from being stupid.

  “Feyiz,” he said, catching up to the guide and rolling the camera again, “we’ve done this with you before, but for viewers who aren’t familiar, can you give us some details on what’s ahead?”