"What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that — we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we are completely alone.” - Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe
Outside the ruins of Ani is a sign informing visitors this was once a capital city, but whose? Clearly Armenia is a word some people have trouble uttering, even when the watchtowers on the border are in plain sight. And Kars is the edge of the precipice. it used to be Armenian, it was Russian, now it is Turkish, but you can't believe any government ever really wanted it except to make a point. Its history is a litany of horror stories and those scholars who piously insist that Franz Kafka caught the psychic terror of his times need to understand something; he had no idea what was going on in Kars.
Outside the ruins of Ani is a sign informing visitors this was once a capital city, but whose? Clearly Armenia is a word some people have trouble uttering, even when the watchtowers on the border are in plain sight. And Kars is the edge of the precipice. it used to be Armenian, it was Russian, now it is Turkish, but you can't believe any government ever really wanted it except to make a point. Its history is a litany of horror stories and those scholars who piously insist that Franz Kafka caught the psychic terror of his times need to understand something; he had no idea what was going on in Kars.
