A stubborn bus makes its way along a barely visible road, through flanking snowflakes and snow-white haze. Like dolphins following another ship, the wind glides playfully along the roadsides. And trees stand as hermits in the local fields; there is nothing hundreds of meters around their bristled crowns to attract attention.
An inhospitable and alienated land that has long since come to terms with its own seclusion. She does not know the rush of big cities, the rebellious ambitions and the culture bubbling in the vents of people's souls. Simple truths rule here, which, as one, boil down to the desire to survive. And the silent giant Ararat is watching this leisurely parade of destinies.
Four years ago, Samet invaded this timelessness inside a similar bus or metal boat born of the myths about Odyssey. The hustle and bustle of Istanbul, art school and numerous friends are left behind. They were swallowed up by the obligation to work as a teacher in a rural school for several years and touch the silent grandeur of Eastern Anatolia.
Up to World War I events these lands were inhabited by Armenians, but by the time Samet arrived, Kurds had taken their place. However, this did not change the essence of the region: like a couple of centuries ago, it remains the domain of peasants who live in a “foreign” country. After all, as a national minority locked in a Niflheim style, the Kurds exist at the will of the Turks.
Therefore, Samet's arrival resembled an exile to the wild lands inhabited by savages — bloodthirsty and worthy to witness the events of Cormack McCarthy's Bloody Meridian firsthand (cf. our text). But at the same time, the young teacher seemed to be bringing enlightenment to naked and uneducated natives, personifying the power of an empire that had already collapsed or not yet proclaimed.
As a missionary, Samet found himself in a dark realm where reading and writing cost less than milking cows, shooting wolves, or herding sheep. According to cultural Turkey, ignorance, unemployment and religious cults. No one will voluntarily leave Ankara, let alone Istanbul, for the local landscapes and crumbling huts.
So Samet dreamed of returning to the Bosphorus from day one. Proud Anatolia bound him with a crust of ice through which he watched the locals and their kingdom, which was covered by wet snow for half the year. And at night, between the houses, radiating comfort and flashes of light, you could see the lifeless body of a huge creature.
At first, Samet sincerely believed that this region was doomed. He saw him as a world that wasn't destined to blossom, as tiny sprouts of hope had covered the snow and buried spring and summer beneath it. Hundreds of years of solitude. But after a few years of teaching and by the beginning of the film “About dry grass” the man's attitude has changed, at least towards his own students.
A century and a half before the events described, another young traveler fell into the arms of the wild. At that time, the Catholic Church sent a Danish pastor to Iceland to start a new parish. To his misfortune, “God's Land” (cf. our text) turned out to be not just an unfriendly place, but a frenzied siren hungry for human flesh, who loves the faint-hearted.
But Samet was luckier: in the midst of wild nature and hopelessness, there was a place for light. The children he teaches drawing can absorb his culture, free mind and rebellious disposition, thereby becoming the basis for transforming the entire region. And Ararat, like the lonely steel bird that pumps flammable humus all day long, must witness this revolution.
Self-sacrifice for a bright future becomes the main character's obsession. Although his life is devoid of bright colors at the moment, he will help children who grow up amidst a stifling patriarchy and in the lack of culture of loved ones. Perhaps it is thanks to Samet's efforts Kurdistan Workers' Party will cease to be the peak of a career for many boys.
Hopes have been passing in warm waters for almost four years; soon the idealist will complete his due date and return to the coveted streets of Istanbul. But first he will have to face the disarming truth: neither local children nor Anatolia need other people's victims. All the teacher's aspirations turn into a huge Leviathan, whose rotting body has been hidden behind the walls of nighthouses from the very beginning.
“A person of the Middle Ages would disgust the whole way of our life today; he would find him not only cruel, but terrible and barbaric! Every era, every culture [...] has its own way of life, [...] its own beauty and its own cruelty, some suffering seems natural to it...”
— Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
A presumptuous and still young man faces his own ignorance. With the same ignorance he blamed on his compatriots living under the sleepy eyes of Ararat. After all, true limitations lie not in the inability to read or write, but from the reluctance to accept someone else's point of view. A way of life that distinguishes a teacher from a shepherd and an unbelieving Turk from a religious Kurd.
The violent serpent, representing selfishness and disbelief in others, must die, because rejection of others' weaknesses has no place in a pure heart. One day, Leviathan's swollen belly will burst, and not stinking flesh will come out of the hole, but green stems. The winter of anxiety and doubt will be replaced by a summer of acceptance and humility, and the snow-white peak of Ararat will be decorated with brocade made from the skin of a dead celestial.
