I first glimpsed Armenia from the train, early in the morning: greenish-gray rock–not mountains or crags but scree, flat deposits of stone, fields of stone. A mountain had died, its skeleton had been scattered over the ground. Time had age the mountain; time had killed the mountain–and here lay the mountain’s bones.
To one side of the railway stretched endless barbed wire, several lines deep. It took me a while to realize that we were following the Turkish border. I saw a little white house, and beside it, a little donkey–not one of our own donkeys but a Turkish donkey. There were no people anywhere. The Turkish soldiers must have all been asleep.
–Vasily Grossman
[amazon asin=1590176189&template=book-link]
