“There is no summit as white as Ararat,” wrote the Armenian poet Yeghishe Charents, in his 1915 work “Blue-Eyed Homeland,” about the twin-peaked mountain that is the national symbol of all Armenia. On a clear day in Yerevan, Ararat dominates the landscape, towering over the pink stone buildings and broad avenues of the Armenian capital.
But Ararat is not close. It is impossibly far away—across the long-closed border with Turkey, in the land known to Armenians as Western Armenia. There are no Armenians left there, at least openly. The national symbol of Armenia, the touchstone for the identity of an entire people, is over a hostile neighbor’s border.
