Karkaz of Keurkune

Today, among my pictures, I came across the picture of the famed Kalajek of Keurkune where the lion's dens was located and its far edge karkaz nestled. I included the picture in the attached story I had previously blogged.

Google-ի Հայերէն թարգմանութիւնը կարդալ սեղմելով Armenian տարբերակը 

The famed Kalajek of Keurkune, where the Karkaz nestled at the far edge

Symmes Park is one of the many public parts that graces greater Cincinnati and was situated a walking distance from our house and its where David spent countless hours fishing. 

Some years ago the park experienced an unusual happening. An owl nested on the decapitated trunk of what once must have been a large tree. The park rangers placed signs in the vicinity of the tree trunk alerting the attendants to respect the privacy of the nestled owl. The respect they did. Pretty soon the news of the nestling owl spread all over the city. The curiosity it generated would have stirred the envy of any celebrity. In the evening a multitude of onlookers, armed with binoculars, telescopes mounted on tripods, movie and picture cameras with huge lenses attentively watched the nest from a safe distance. The curiosity of the bird watchers mounted as the hatchling with a voracious appetite started to grow and flip its winds in preparation of the day when it too would fly away from its nest. The growing chick rewarded the vigil of a few diehards when it finally, in their plain view, took off and flew from the nest.

The summer-long vigil of the nestling owl reminded me of the lone pair of blackbirds that nested on the rocky hilltop overlooking the only spring that sustained Keurkune and of our rite of passage.

Growing up in Keurkune, our rite of passage as boys, was in the shoes we wore. Two types of shoes essentially made up our footwear. Each one of us boys started wearing brick red-colored leather sho e we called Yemeni. This type of shoe essentially consisted of two types of leather. The sole was made of hard leather on which a brick-colored softer leather was shaped with a single knob on an ankle strap for buckling. The first thing my uncle Joseph did when I went there for my summer-long stays, was to take me to Kessab, the main village, and have my foot sized for the Yemeni I was to wear that summer.

LtoR:Albert Apelian, Varoujan Konyalian, Dzeron Apelian.
Seated: Vahe H. Apelian,  Stepan Apelian

I had not stepped in my teens when I qualified for my rite of passage and started wearing the shoes that essentially all men wore. These type of shoes consisted of rubber sole made by shaping tire rubber onto which a black colored leather was shaped with a silver buckle on one or on each two ankle straps. We called this type of shoes sandals. They gave us the liberty we did not have before for exploring the further reaches of the village and started hunting and grazing the animals on our own.

We were barely in our sandals when we visited the nest of the lone pair of the black big birds. The villagers called them Karkaz. For all appearances, it was the same pair that nested there year after year during the summers from my childhood well into my teens. Rumor had it that the older boys had visited the nest and has seen the bony remains of the snakes and rabbits the birds had brought to feed their voracious offsprings.

One summer, and after the birds had left, we managed to call upon the nest over the far end of that dangerous precipitation. Each one of us took a turn and crawled down the rock aided by another person who laid on his belly over the rock and held the other person’s arm and helped him descend onto the nest that barely had room for standing at the far end of the precipice. Surely, it was a foolish and dangerous thing to do. After viewing the nest the same person on his belly over the rock, helped him ascend. I also descended onto the nest in this manner. Other than a few feathers I do not recall seeing anything else in the nest. 

LtoR: Vatche Apelian, Missak Apelian, Papken Apelian Bedirian, Dzeron Apelian, 
Albert Apelian and Vartkes Hovsepian

The following summer, or the summer after, the Karkaz did not return to their nest. We had become so accustomed seeing them year after year. They never showed up henceforth. I never knew if the were the last surviving pairs of a vanishing species, much like the few surviving California condors. I also don't know if the black impressive looking bird was called Karkaz only in Kessab and no where else. The flight of these two majestic birds high above in the skies, hovering every  summer gracefully and effortlessly over the village and beyond in search of prey has remained vividly etched into my memory to this very day.

Much like the Karkaz and in the span of a few more years, nearing the end of our teens, all of us moved away from Keurkune as well. The seemingly boundless, vast expense of the village of our childhood now became not so boundless and somewhat confining. There came upon us the allure of a world far beyond that took better hold of our youthful imagination and one by one we moved away and left Keurkune behind.