The Treasures of Khndzoresk

Story by Artavazd Yeghiazaryan
Translated by Nazareth Seferian
Illustration by William Karapetyan
In cooperation with the European Union Delegation to Armenia

After the unlikely accident that had occurred on the overpass at Barekamutyun Square, many people thought that the beloved 2004 Suzuki Zaven called the “yellow submarine” would end up in the pages of history and the garbage dump at Sovetashen — not many vehicles would survive a landing following a jump off the overpass onto a trolleybus on the street below. But Zaven demonstrated unparalleled stubbornness and demanded that his car should be revived. His father said, “Here, see if you can rebuild it yourself, and then you can keep it for yourself. As for me, I’ll take the insurance money and get myself a new car.” And so it was, four months later, that the “submarine” was once again racing along the roads of Armenia. Zaven’s cousin Lilith had asked to borrow the veteran vehicle for a new project. In Lilith’s own words, it was “both a fun job and a great way to get to know Armenia better.” The work consisted of the following — supported by a special European Union programme, specialists and volunteers were to study the road from Goris to Kapan and gather information of interest to tourists, mapping all the sights worth seeing and providing that wonderful part of the country with exposure to the world.

Lilith, naturally, could not be a part of this simply because it was “awesome” — she had found her first real job a few months ago, after she had taken a loan with her father to cover energy-efficient renovations on their house in Charbakh and this was part of that real job. The task was split between two people — Lilith and Karen, a guide with twelve years of experience. Karen was a seasoned professional when it came to inbound tourism — he knew everyone and had been in every nook and cranny of Armenia. He simply adored his work because “could there really be anything better than showing people from outside your home, enjoying the whole experience with them, and making a living out of it?” as he said to Lilith on the first day that they had met. He also knew the owner of the small bed and breakfast in the village of Tatev where they had booked two rooms the previous evening.

“If we had more people like Mrs. Susan, nobody would beat Armenia in tourism,” Karen had said when they had just walked in.

There were four rooms in the house that had been converted into a bed and breakfast, and it had already been successfully hosting tourists from various countries for several years.

Karen would also bring his customers here regularly if the programme required spending the night in the Syunik region. Naturally, this neat little bed and breakfast could not be left out of the guidebook they were preparing.

The previous days had been very full — Lilith and Karen had managed to go to Karahunj and hear the locals’ stories about the mysterious stones, they had naturally tried the mulberry vodka (and set aside a special column for it in the future guidebook), they had examined every centimetre of Tatev Monastery with students from Goris University, spent some time at every privately-owned bed and breakfast in the area, and collected stories about the town of Goris. Lilith had taken photographs in all these cases, and Karen had used his map to mark all the sights in the area that needed electronic screens — even elements of augmented reality — instead of illegible and rusty display boards. “This is the 21st century, after all,” he kept saying, well versed in his profession and passionate about it.

And so, today, they had arrived in Khndzoresk. Or rather, in Old Khndzoresk — the mysterious cave town, the outline of which awaits its visitors in an impassable but simultaneously hospitable gorge. They needed to study this area as well, note everything down and then use the latest technology to get that information to the tourists.

In the morning, they had exchanged a few thoughts on that over a cup of coffee with Mrs. Susan, who had been excited to hear that Lilith and Karen would be leaving for Khndzoresk that day.

“I’m crazy about Old Khndzoresk,” she said and recalled her childhood, “When I was little, Old Khndzoresk had already been vacated, and we children would run down into the gorge almost every day. Some of the kids even said that there was gold hidden in those parts, but that was all a lie, of course. Ah but the natural beauty there is simply wonderful…”

“The tourists will like it, won’t they?” Lilith asked.

“Oh, of course, they will! Is there a place like that anywhere else in the world? Houses carved into a cliff, where people have lived for centuries? Ask Karen. The tourists wet themselves with joy when they get there, don’t they?”

Mrs. Susan was a grey-haired but bright woman past fifty, and she laughed heartily, probably at the image of a group of tourists wetting themselves with joy.

“Of course they do,” Karen confirmed, “But what we’re doing now is preparing a guidebook that anyone can use as they wish — irrespective of whether I’m guiding them or not — without missing any important sights. They’ll check the app on their phone, and they’ll see the such-and-such place, such-and-such legend, such-and-such hotel. It’s the 21st century, after all.”

A short while later, Karen was driving the car and telling Lilith about how he was managing to arrange activities for his tourists during the days of the Velvet Revolution. He had reached a point in his story when the excited tourists had asked their guide to find them several vuvuzelas so that they could join the protesters, preferably to help block the roads. As he told the story, a tall individual appeared in the distance, standing alone on the otherwise empty and quiet road. When the “yellow submarine” approached him, the man bent his head slightly and raised his hand. Karen braked a few meters past him, and soon the tall man with hair that grew past his shoulders and a long beard ran up to the car. Based on his walking shoes and backpack, one could assume that the hippy-like man was an avid hitchhiker. Lilith even thought that he was a foreigner — hitchhikers were not a common sight in Armenia. But he wasn’t.

“Hi there, do you mind giving me a ride?” the traveller said with a smile and in fluent Armenian.

“With pleasure,” Karen responded, “But where are you going?”

“I’m going to Khndzoresk actually, but my handy’s got no charge left and there are either no signs, or the ones that exist aren’t accurate, so I have no idea where I am right now. If you’re headed somewhere else, maybe you could point me in the right direction…”

Lilith analysed the way in the which the strange bearded man spoke. He was speaking fluent Eastern Armenian, but there was a noticeable accent, as if he knew the language since childhood, but had not had much practice speaking it. And then there was that unusual word, ‘handy,’ as in handheld phone.

“It doesn’t matter where you are, what matters is that we’re going to Khndzoresk too!”

“Wow,” the new passenger exclaimed, opening the rear passenger door.

“I’m Karen and this wonderful girl here, hiding behind the camera lens, is Lilith,” Karen introduced himself, once the car had already started racing ahead. “We’re helping put together a new guidebook for tourists about this area.”

“Mkho. Pleased to meet you.”

“What has brought you to the Syunik region?” Lilith asked.

“It’s difficult to say,” Mkho replied mysteriously, “I was sitting in my office in Hamburg one day, and I suddenly had this strong desire to leave that boring place and start walking down a road. And to finally lead a normal life. There’s nothing better than the road. So I came to Armenia and started learning more, talking to people. And I’m finally going to make it to Khndzoresk now.”

“What do you mean ‘finally’?”

“You could say I’m looking for treasure there,” Mkho said with a smile, then he sensed the surprise his travelling companions felt, so he added, “In reality, my grandmother would tell us about Armenia when we were little, and she would always say that there was a place like this in our country that was unlike any other. So I had decided to leave it for the final part of my trip.”

This explanation seemed closer to reality, but Lilith noticed later in the trip when she glanced in the rearview mirror that Mkho had taken out and unfolded a worn out and yellowed piece of paper, closely examined it, then quickly folded it and put it back in his pocket. The photographer could not shake the feeling that this was in fact what someone on a treasure hunt would do and that looked like a treasure map. She could not tell Karen at that moment, but thought that it would make great material for the guidebook if Mkho managed to find something valuable in Khndzoresk today using his old map…

Here they were, standing at the edge of the gorge — the yellow car, the experienced Karen, Lilith with her all-seeing camera, and the taciturn and mysterious Mkho. They were looked with awe at the steep cliff that rose up from the emerald forest of the gorge. Karen opened his notebook and produced facts gathered from various sources for his companions.

“So these seemingly impassable territories had actually been inhabited for almost a millennium, all the way up to the 1960s,” Lilith took a picture of Karen, his hand stretching out towards the gorge, “And 1800 families lived in Old Khndzoresk before it was vacated.”

“I wonder why they suddenly decided to leave this place if they’d been living her so long?” asked Lilith and she noticed how Mkho had tensed and was watching Karen closely, as if his future depended on his response to the question.

“Well, if my understanding of the situation is correct,” Karen once again gazed deeply into his notebook, “The gorge was a suitable place to live, safe from bandits and the enemy. Fortunately, there were also a large number of springs there. But, at some point, there was no longer a need to live here. People had started to live with modern facilities. So they left this place and moved to New Khndzoresk… Every time I see it, I feel the same sense of wonder.”

They walked up to a symmetrically dug archway in the rock and ended up in an “apartment” with several rooms. A door, garret, smooth walls, long benches sculpted into the walls — the locals who lived here had everything they needed for several centuries. All three of them examined the space with great interest, even though Karen had already been here on several occasions. Lilith watched Mkho from the corner of her eye. She noticed that he was looking around him as if he was searching for something, and not simply exploring the area. “You’ve lost your mind, Lilith, what treasure could there be?” she scolded herself in her thoughts.

“If I could get online here, I would probably move away from the noise and craziness,” Lilith confessed, basking in the amazing quiet. She had said this to distract herself from her own thoughts, not to start a new conversation.

“Oh, it’s worth moving here even without the internet, Lilith jan,” Karen sighed, sitting down on a bench, “Just the natural scenery here is worth everything.”

They moved from cave apartment to cave apartment, and the group slowly descended to the lower part of the gorge, where they found themselves in a jungle of wild fruit-bearing trees and shrubs — wild pears, blackberries, anything the heart desired. The lunch that they had in their bags (Mrs. Susan’s delicious sandwiches) remained where it was; the gorge fed the travellers.

A rustling was heard from behind the shrubs, and a little later, an old man on horseback appeared, looking like the ghost of Khndzoresk. He looked like he was past seventy — his face was wrinkled and sunburnt, his eyes had a serenity and depth about them.

“Welcome,” his hoarse voice said.

“Hello, old sir,” Karen responded.

“How are you, what can I do to help you?” he asked, stopped his horse. Lilith was capturing the moment with her camera.

“We’re exploring the area — both for future guests here and for ourselves.”

“Good for you,” the man voiced his approval, “If that’s what you’re doing, let me show you Mkhitar Sparapet’s grave. But only his body is buried here, not his head.”

They walked up to a mossy but grand rectangular gravestone. On one side, it depicted armed horsemen — the comrades-in-arms of that General, Mkhitar Sparapet. Under the rock, as the old man who had now dismounted insisted, lay the decapitated remains of the General.

“The Persians captured him and killed him. They had his head cut off so that the Armenians would not find out and rebel. And that was how they buried him.”

“Stand next to the grave, Mkho, so I can take a picture of you with your namesake,” Lilith suggested.

“Sure, I was named for him in particular. But I ended up not becoming a soldier.”

“Well, a soldier isn’t just someone who stands against the enemy with a gun, son. We’re all soldiers, each in our own way,” the wise old man said as consolation.

“What do you do in these parts?” Karen asked, “The village is on the upper side now, isn’t it?”

“The village is in the upper parts, but my garden’s in the lower parts. I’d come down here to water it and to relax in the peace of this area. I’ve lived in Old Khndzoresk. I was little when our village moved out, but I still remember it.”

“Who were the last people who remained, do you remember?” Karen asked, sitting down on a rock as Lilith examined the gravestones next to the General’s which, in contrast to the soldier’s, depicted men who were feasting. “It was probably the old people who hadn’t wanted to leave their homes, right?”

“No, it was the opposite.”

“How come?”

“It’s a very interesting story — remember it so you can tell your tourists. People were gradually moving out, and only twenty or thirty homes remained. They were waiting for a house to be allocated to them in the upper part. We were among those families. And when we were supposed to move out, it turned out that our neighbour Taguhi had fallen in love with Torgom Ghazarents. The two of them would meet in secret…”

“Right over here near this grave, right?” Mkho suddenly asked.

“Why, yes!” the old man said surprised, “How did you know?”

“My grandmother was from this village. I’ve heard this story.”

“So he must know something about a treasure here!” Lilith’s adventurous mind continued in the same direction.

“Well,” the old man grew excited, “Your grandmother probably remembers then that both sets of parents were again the union. Those two families did not like each other, they had had some problems in the past and did not want their children to live together. Moreover, they’d already arranged for a girl from Tatev to marry Torgom. So the whole village moved out, but those two lovebirds eloped at night and came back here, living alone in the caves. The village was empty, but the two of them were happy. But when the girl got pregnant, the parents finally got their acts together, and they said fine, come to live a normal life with us if you love each other so much. And that was how the final residents left this village.”

“Could they perhaps have left gold or other valuable items here before they moved out?” Lilith asked with the gravity of someone investigating a case, “Have you heard a story like that?”

The old man laughed and replied with a smile,

“Ah, young lady, if you believe what the villagers say then there is a tonne of gold in each part of the valley. But there were stories like that about Khndzoresk as well. They said that Torgom had found gold in the ruins of the church and that was supposedly why he had stayed here for so long with his wife. When he left, he had taken part of it with him and left the other part in the caves. But if that were true, the villagers would have found it over the past fifty years for sure.”

Karen asked everyone to stand still, and he held his phone high above his head, then began to rotate in place. The old man arched his eyebrows, probably assuming that this city-dwelling youngster had slightly lost his mind.

“I was taking a 360-degree photo,” Karen said when he had completed one rotation, “I’m adding it to Google Maps — there are very few pictures of Armenia there. Technology should help us tell everyone about the wonders we have here.”

The old man’s eyes fell upon Mkho, who was sitting a slight distance away from them on a rock. Lilith spotted the suspected map in his hands once again. The bearded traveller was looking at the paper, then the dwellings carved into the caves, and then back at the paper. Lilith tried to walk up to Mkho from behind quietly, pretending to look for a good position to take a photograph.

“Do those young people,” Karen walked up to the old man, “Still live in the new village? Did they lead a happy life? It would be fun to talk to them…”

That was when Lilith saw the map. The crumbling piece of paper had a sketch of the cliff — the scene that lay before them from the depths of the gorge. One of the archways on the paper had a cross on it. “Oh God, it’s just like Treasure Island,” Lilith said, barely suppressing a sigh, “But why didn’t he enter that cave on our way down… Ah, because he first needed to get a view from down here to compare the scene with the map and find the right cave. That’s why…”

“No, they left the village a long time ago,” the old man said, “I don’t even know where they went and what they did. Torgom got an official position of some kind back in Soviet times, and they went to Europe somewhere — Germany, I think — then they got divorced…”

“They had a child and got divorced. They never spoke to each other again and took turns seeing their only grandson to avoid seeing each other,” Mkho suddenly continued, his eyes staring at a round box, “And then Torgom died, and for the rest of her life Taguhi would recall the happiest weeks she spent in Old Khndzoresk, when it was just the two of them and the old village. And she told the whole story to her grandson, who was born and brought up in Hamburg. She would tell him, ‘Go there one day and see what a wonderful place it was, and bury me there in the old graveyard, liebe.”

Mkho had slowly taken out a round, plastic box from his backpack, around the size of a three-litre jar. He put it on his knees and then held it tightly to his chest. After being quiet for a while, the old man asked Mkho with suspicion,

“What was the name of your grandmother who lived here?”

Lilith was interested in something else.

“Mkho, are you really here to get treasure? Did your grandmother and grandfather leave gold here?” She asked, confused.

Mkho smirked and promised to tell them the whole story.

The sun was setting. Before leaving, the old man warned them against staying in the gorge for too long, going back would be more difficult. So they went back up the same way they had come down. Before getting to the top, they stopped at one of the caves in the “upper floors” of the cliff. They had reached the cave that was marked with a cross. That was where Mkho told them that he had drawn the map when he was little, based on the what his grandmother narrated. And that was the cave in which his grandmother and grandfather had lived when they were young, escaping the wrath of their parents.

“There really were treasures. At least, for a while. The happy days that Torgom and Taguhi lived here. They never lived as happily afterward, but the days they spent in this cave was their biggest treasure. Taguhi would always dream of coming here one more time at the end of her life. As it turned out, it happened after her life was over.”

As Mkho was casting his grandmother’s remains into the wind so that she would find eternal peace in this abandoned and mysterious cave village where she spent the happiest days of her life, Lilith and Karen whispered to each other about the day they had had.

“Do you think this will be an interesting story for the tourists?” Lilith asked.

“Of course it will! It’s like a movie screenplay — how the last resident of Old Khndzoresk returns to her village after several decades and finds eternal peace there, reclaiming her invaluable treasure in the mountains… They can’t relive the emotions that we experienced today, but it’s stories like this one that makes traveling come to life. And, of course, smart use of new technology.”

At the top, they stopped on a large signboard that had a declaration of friendship between the European Union and Armenia. Karen noticed that it would be quite symbolic if another board would soon be added next to it mentioning how the European Union helped people easily walk across these wonderful and treasure-rich paths.

“We still have a lot to do together,” the tourism professional said with a sigh.

Karen took another 360-degree photograph and uploaded it to Google Maps right away. The beauty of Armenia must be well represented. And then the three of them reluctantly got back into the “yellow submarine.”