Seen from the water, Aghtamar promises nothing at all: a lone sandstone rock adrift in the boundless blue of the lake. The kind of place, one assumes, where a few gulls conduct their business and nothing else happens.
Then you step ashore, and you are in an orchard.
A fortnight ago the branches here were pink—the almond in full flower, extravagant as a waltz. Now it is the pear’s turn: white petals, light as a bridal veil, and about as substantial.
And how well the white sets off the island’s weathered complexion—that warm, bread-coloured stone of the old country of Urartu.
The same stone was used, eleven centuries ago, to build what stands at the centre of the orchard: the Church of the Holy Cross, raised between 915 and 921 for Gagik, king of Vaspurakan, by an architect named Manuel. Its outer walls carry a whole population in relief—David squaring up to Goliath, Jonah going into the fish and coming out again, Adam and Eve looking as though they know exactly what is about to happen—all of it running round the building beneath a frieze of vines.
Which makes the orchard, in a sense, a late arrival. The vines and pomegranates were carved into the walls long before anyone thought to plant almonds outside them. The masons put the garden on the church first; the island only caught up later.
