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Picture the street in Jericho. It is noisy, dusty, packed. Zacchaeus
is somewhere in that crowd, a tax collector, a collaborator, a man the
religious establishment wrote off long ago. He is short. He is not able
see the one he yearns to see. And the crowd has closed in front of him.
Not a crowd of Pharisees and priests. Ordinary people, the kind of people
who fill any street in any town, people who had their own struggles and
their own sins and their own distance from God. But they had decided,
without much reflection, that whatever was happening around Jesus was not
for someone like Zacchaeus. They were closer to respectable than he was.
They deserved to be nearer to Jesus than he did. And so, without anyone
making a formal decision, he ended up at the back.

This is not a peculiarly ancient failure. It is recognisable in any
gathering of religious people in any century. The human instinct to
protect proximity to the sacred, to form a queue and guard one’s place in
it, to ensure that the spiritual goods on offer flow first to those who
already consider themselves deserving, is not a failure of the obviously
wicked. It is a failure of ordinary people who have become, quietly and
without noticing, more interested in their own religious experience than
in whether others can get through.

So Zacchaeus runs ahead and climbs a tree. And Jesus stops beneath it,
looks up, and says: come down, for I must stay at your house today (Luke
19:5). Not at the house of the serious ones. Not at the house of those who
had jostled their way to the front. At the house of the man the crowd
had, without malice and without much thought, simply blocked. The crowd is
appalled. He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. They had it exactly
backwards, and the reason they had it backwards was not simply
self-righteousness. It was something deeper. The image of God available to
them had been quietly and thoroughly distorted. The shepherds of Israel
had for generations been muddying the water people depended on to know who
God actually is.

Ezekiel had named this centuries before. In chapter 34, God delivers
one of the most devastating indictments in all of Scripture, not against
foreign enemies, but against Israel’s own leaders: Is it not enough for
you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?
Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have
muddied? (Ezekiel 34:1819). The shepherds had made the water undrinkable.
They had made the pasture inaccessible. And in doing so they had made God
himself seem like someone he is not, distant, discriminating, available
only to those with position and standing. The flock drank the muddy
version and mistook it for the real thing. By the time Jesus walked into
Jericho, most people in that crowd had absorbed, without knowing it, a
picture of God that bore more resemblance to their own hierarchies than to
anything the prophets had actually said.

And so when Jesus stopped beneath a sycamore tree and invited himself
to dinner with a tax collector, he was not simply being kind to an
outcast. He was showing everyone watching exactly who God is and who he
seeks. The scene is a living correction of the distorted image. Clear
water, running again, and the crowd standing around it, still not sure
they want to drink.

To understand why that correction required such careful preparation,
you have to understand what four hundred years of silence had done to the
religious world of Israel. Four centuries without a prophetic voice. The
scrolls studied, the rituals maintained, the institutions carefully
managed. And then something began to stir at the Jordan. A man in camel
hair, quoting Isaiah, speaking with an authority no one had heard in
living memory. The effect on the religious establishment was immediate.
They came. If something new was descending from heaven, they intended to
be the ones who received it, named it and controlled it. That was their
function. That was what centuries of institutional authority had prepared
them for.

What they did not understand was that their eagerness was itself part
of the plan. God did not send Jesus directly into that charged atmosphere.
He sent John first, and the precision of that choice is breathtaking.
John spoke the language the establishment recognised. He moved in
categories they understood. He was, from their perspective, exactly the
figure they had been waiting for. So they came to the Jordan, certain they
were about to be confirmed in everything they already believed about
themselves.

John turned on them instead. You brood of vipers. Who warned you to
flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance
(Matthew 3:7–8). He drew them in and refused to give them what they came
for. And while the religious establishment stood at the Jordan arguing and
demanding, the tax collectors and soldiers and ordinary people of the
land received simple and dignified answers. Share your food. Do not
extort. Be content with your pay (Luke 3:10–14). No gatekeeping. No
credentials required. God had used the establishment’s own hunger for the
supernatural as a lightning rod, holding them at the Jordan, and clearing
the path for everyone else to find their way to Jesus. This is a
demonstration of a divine intelligence that works not against human nature
but through it, bending even pride and self-certainty into instruments of
grace.

The same troll that lives in all of us, the instinct to get there
first, to secure the best position, to think of ourselves before we think
of anyone else, appears again on the hillside where Jesus feeds the crowd.
These are not Pharisees and priests. They are ordinary hungry people, and
the human logic of scarcity is pressing in on all of them. Two fish and
five loaves between thousands, and every instinct says: move forward, get
yours while there is still some left, do not trust that there will be
enough. Jesus does something entirely unexpected. He tells them to sit
down in groups. He takes the bread, gives thanks, and breaks it. And it is
enough. More than enough. Everyone eats. Everyone is satisfied. The
kingdom of God does not run on the logic of scarcity. There is no need to
be clever or calculating or ruthless about getting to the front of the
line, because the one at the front of the line is not hoarding what is
his. He is breaking it open and sending it out to the edges.

In Matthew 20, Jesus makes the principle explicit in a parable.
Workers hired at dawn and workers hired at the eleventh hour receive the
same wage. The all-day workers are furious. They have done the accounting.
The kingdom of God does not run on their accounting. The last will be
first, and the first will be last (Matthew 20:16). The rich young man of
Matthew 19, serious and observant and genuinely seeking, cannot release
his grip on what his position has given him, and he goes away sad. The
disciples ask the only honest question available: who then can be saved?
(Matthew 19:25). The answer is the answer Pentecost will make visible:
with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matthew
19:26).

Joel had seen this door being built centuries before. I will pour out
my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old
men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my
servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days
(Joel 2:28–29, Acts 2:17–18). Not the priests. Not the scholars. The
servants, the ones at the very bottom of every hierarchy, the ones the
distorted image of God had taught to wait at the back. God names them not
as an afterthought but as a central promise. The Spirit will reach
precisely those the system placed furthest from the front.

And so it did. The Spirit fell on the upper room without checking
credentials. Paul states the consequence with radical clarity. There is
neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). In Colossians:
Christ is all, and is in all (Colossians 3:11). Every axis of
stratification, ethnic, legal, gendered, cultural, is named and dissolved.
Not because the distinctions do not exist, but because none of them
determine your access to God.

This is what the crowd in Jericho could not see. They were not
malicious. But their seriousness had produced a god in their own image,
one who shared their priorities and kept their kind of people at the
front. The real God was already in the tree, waiting for the one who had
given up on the queue and found another way to see.

He is not contained by the institutions built in his name. He is not
put off by the muddy water the shepherds have made of what was clear. He
works through history and around history, finding routes to those who seek
him with an honest heart. There is enough. There has always been enough.
The bread breaks, and keeps breaking, and reaches all the way to the
edges.

The first shall be last. The last shall be first.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Imagine a place where two ancient villages, separated by mere miles,
speak languages so distinct they seem worlds apart. Now, expand this
imaginary landscape to the size of Switzerland — a region teeming with
thousands of villages, each contributing to a mosaic of 35 languages. This
is no stretch for a modern literature lover steeped in the magical
realism of Borges and Marquez. Yet, strangely, this place isn’t nestled
between Narnia and Asgarda. It’s real, it’s tangible, and it exists on our
planetary mothership called Earth.

In the vertical fortress of the Caucasus, where mountains do not roll
but shatter the sky into jagged peaks and isolated gorges, a human
experiment of stunning complexity has endured for millennia. This is
Dagestan, a republic the size of Switzerland that is not a nation of one
people, but a living museum, a breathing archive, and a startlingly
successful blueprint for a society built not on uniformity, but on
orchestrated difference.

Its name translates simply to “Land of the Mountains.” But this is a
profound understatement. The mountains are not just a backdrop; they are
the original architects, the great isolators and protectors. They carved
the land into a labyrinth of remote valleys where distinct languages,
laws, and lifeways crystallized in profound solitude. This is a place
where driving twenty miles can mean crossing a border into a different
linguistic universe, where over 30 ethnic groups speaking languages from
three completely unrelated linguistic families Caucasian, Turkic, and
Indo-European have not only coexisted but woven themselves into a
cohesive social fabric.

For a world relentlessly smoothing edges into a bland global sameness,
or fracturing into polarized identities, Dagestan presents a powerful,
living counter-narrative. It is a testament to the “Mosaic Principle”: the
idea that true strength and unity are found not in erasing distinction,
but in arranging unique pieces into a shared, magnificent whole. This is
the story of how geography wrote the first draft of diversity, how history
tested it with fire and sword, and how an unlikely, subtle force — the
Russian language and culture — became the non-destructive glue that holds
this unparalleled human mosaic together.

A Vertical World

To understand the ‘how’ of Dagestan, one must first feel the ‘where.’
This is a vertical world.

Its villages are not hamlets on a plain but auls — fortified stone
settlements clinging to cliffsides like swallows’ nests, reachable only by
serpentine paths. The air in the high plateaus is thin, the soil
stubborn, the winters long. Life here demanded not just community, but
autarky and extreme resilience. In the gorge of the Avar Koysu River, an
Avar blacksmith developed a style of weaponry unknown to the Dargin weaver
in the next valley over, separated by a seemingly insurmountable ridge.
Each group became its own master of survival, developing a unique material
culture: the filigree silver of Kubachi, the indomitable wool carpets of
the Tabasarans, the distinctive felt cloaks of the highland shepherds.

This rugged geography made conquest logistically nightmarish but also
turned Dagestan into a crossroads of empires. For centuries, it lay in the
path of the world’s great expansionist forces: the Persians brought
Zoroastrian fire temples, the Arabs introduced Islam which took deep root,
the Mongol hordes swept through, the Ottoman Turks extended their
influence, and finally, the Russian Empire pushed south. Each wave left a
layer — a faith, a loanword, an architectural detail in the ancient city
of Derbent, which boasts a Persian fortress, Arab mosques, and Russian
baths. Yet, crucially, none succeeded in washing away the deep bedrock of
indigenous identity. The mountains provided refuge; the very difficulty of
life forged an unbreakable spirit and a sacred, non-negotiable code of
hospitality (mehman-dostlu) and honour (namus).

A Constellation of Nations

To speak of Dagestani diversity in the abstract is to miss its
profound human texture. The republic is a constellation of nations, each a
world unto itself.

The Avars, the largest group, are the historical anchor of the
highlands. Their territory is the most formidable, their stone
tower-houses symbols of endurance. For centuries, their language served as
a regional lingua franca, and their epic poetry, the Nart sagas, echoes
with the values of courage and communal justice.

The Dargins are the master craftsmen and builders. Their ancient
village of Kubachi has been synonymous with peerless silversmithing since
the Middle Ages, while nearby Kala-Koreish stands as a haunting, abandoned
fortress-village, a spiritual and architectural relic.

The Kumyks, Turkic-speaking people of the fertile Caspian plains, were
historically the horsemen and diplomats. Their culture is more open,
influenced by the steppe, and for centuries their language was a primary
language of trade across the north Caucasus.

The Lezgins of the southeastern ridges are known for their explosive,
athletic folk dances and a culture shaped by the rugged Samur River
canyon. Their art is as vibrant and dynamic as their landscape.

The Laks, from the windswept Kumukh plateau, have a dual reputation as
both scholars, teachers and exquisite metalworkers. They provided a
disproportionate number of Islamic scholars and judges to the region.

The Tabasarans are the undisputed poets of the loom. For them, carpet
weaving is a sacred, hereditary language. Each family possesses secret dye
recipes and patterns, making every carpet a unique repository of history
and identity.

The Azerbaijanis, concentrated in Derbent, represent a deep Persianate
and Shi’a layer in Dagestan’s history. For a long period, their language
was a major literary and commercial tongue in the south, connecting
Dagestan to the wider Islamic world.

This list is merely a glimpse; the Nogai of the arid north, the
Rutuls, the Aguls, the Tsakhurs—each adds another indispensable tile to
the picture. For centuries, this mind-boggling diversity was managed
through a pragmatic system of “neighbour multilingualism.” An Avar
merchant might speak his native tongue, use Dargin at the market over the
ridge, and switch to Kumyk for dealings on the plains. It was a complex,
organic dance of communication.

Dagestan Today: Between Tradition and Modernity

The incorporation of Dagestan into the Russian Empire, and later the
Soviet Union, is often framed solely through the lens of conquest and
resistance. Yet, this complex history yielded a paradoxical and
transformative result: the creation of a shared space for diversity.

The mechanism was the Russian language and Soviet cultural policy.
This was not a simple story of erasure. In a pivotal move, Soviet
linguists in the 1920s and 30s created written scripts for many of
Dagestan’s oral languages, fostering publishing and education in native
tongues. Simultaneously, Russian was introduced as the compulsory language
of state administration, higher education, and technological progress.

The effect was revolutionary. For the first time, a single, neutral
tongue sat above the patchwork of local lingua francas.

Russian became the bridging language, the common ground. Through it, a
Lak poet could read the works of an Avar writer like Rasul Gamzatov and
see his own mountain soul reflected. A Lezgin engineer and a Tabasaran
artist could debate in a Makhachkala café, discovering a shared Dagestani
identity that transcended, but did not replace, their ethnic roots.
Russian culture provided a common framework of reference — from the
literary canon of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the rigors of Soviet science
that allowed each group to engage with the modern world without passing
through the filter of a rival neighbouring ethnicity.

This was the application of the Mosaic Principle at a societal scale.
The unique, colourful tiles of each nation were given a structured,
respected place within the larger frame of the Union. The frame itself —
the Russian language—provided stability and connectivity, but it did not
dictate the colour or shape of the pieces within it. It was the ultimate
non-destructive glue.

Today, the cozy cities of Dagestan vibrate with this layered reality.
The call to prayer from a mosque echoes near a constructivist Soviet
theater. A woman in a traditional chokhto headdress negotiates the price
of a smartphone. The air carries the scent of chudu’ and the sound of car
horns mixed with the rhythmic beat of lezginka music from a nearby
wedding. The tensions of the 21st century — globalization, economic
anxiety, the pull of transnational ideologies are palpably present.

Yet, the foundational ethic persists. The mountain code of hospitality
remains fierce and genuine; a stranger is still a guest sent by God. The
attachment to native language and custom is powerful, even as fluency in
Russian is universal. The republic functions, often turbulently but
ultimately coherently, on the understanding that your strength in your
unique identity, but your future is inextricably linked to that of your
neighbour in the next valley.

The Way of the Mosaic

To seek a single, simplistic “secret” to Dagestan is to miss the
point. Its resilience is a practice, not a theory. It is the daily, lived
experience of navigating multiple belongings: to one’s tukhum (clan), to
one’s ethnic nation, to the republic of Dagestan, and to the wider Russian
world.

This brings us back to the powerful metaphor of the mosaic, so
eloquently articulated by thinker and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. He
contrasted a society of “cobblestones” — where individuals are uniform,
functional, and interchangeable with a society of “mosaic tiles.” In a
mosaic, each piece is unique in colour, shape, and texture. Its value
derives not from its isolated utility, but from its irreplaceable
contribution to the grand, collective picture. The loss of even the
smallest, most modest tile diminishes the entire image.

Dagestan is that mosaic. It is a living rebuke to the cobblestone
model of humanity. Its history whispers that empires may rise and fall,
but identity, when rooted in deep soil and respected, is perennial. Its
present demonstrates that a common language need not be a weapon of
assimilation, but can be a tool for mutual discovery. Its very existence
argues that our greatest human project is not to become the same, but to
learn the art of fitting our magnificent differences together into a
pattern that holds.

In the end, Dagestan offers a quiet, urgent lesson. In a century
facing the twin spectres of homogenization and division, it stands as a
testament to a third way: the way of the mosaic. It is the proof that a
symphony of humanity is only possible when a thousand different voices
agree to sing in the same key, while never, ever surrendering their own
essential and distinct song.

Armenia is widely regarded as one of the worlds oldest cultural
regions,
with roots reaching back to the very beginnings of civilization. In
the
village of Areni in southern Armenia, archaeologists have uncovered
some
of the earliest known traces of human activity, including the worlds
oldest
known wine production facility, dated to around 4000 BCE.

Today, Armenia is often associated with war, conflict, and genocide.
Yet the
country also holds a rich and layered history that offers valuable
insight
into how our civilization has developed and how the societies we live
in
today came into being.

Growing up in Norway, I knew little of this. I carry an Armenian
surname,
but for a long time I regarded it as little more than a curiosity. I
knew
very little about my Armenian family history. They had lived in
Constantinople,
today known as Istanbul, before the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

It was not until the war in Iraq in 2003, when I began trying to
understand
how the modern world had taken shape, that my interest in the region
often
referred to as the Fertile Crescent, or the cradle of civilization,
truly
awakened. With that, my interest in Armenia also grew.

Ancient History

Recent studies suggest that Armenians originate from what has
traditionally
been known as the Armenian Highlands. This region encompasses the most
central
and elevated of the three plateaus that together form the northern
part of
Southwest Asia. It lies between the Caucasus to the north, the Taurus
Mountains
to the west, the Zagros Mountains to the east, and Mesopotamia to the
south.

It was within this broader region that some of the worlds earliest
megalithic
structures were built. One notable example is Göbekli Tepe in
present-day
Turkey, which in Armenian tradition is also referred to as Portasar.
The site
is regarded as the oldest known megalithic temple in the world and is
closely
linked to the emergence of agriculture and animal domestication during
the
Neolithic Revolution.

The historical origins of the Armenian state can be traced back to the
Iron
Age kingdom of Urartu, known in the Bible as Ararat and associated
with the
story of Noahs Ark. Following its collapse in the sixth century BCE,
the
region gradually evolved into what became known as Armenia.

The Armenian Kingdom existed as a sovereign monarchy from 331 BCE to
428 CE
and reached its greatest extent under King Tigranes II. Armenia was
also the
first country in the world to adopt Christianity as a state religion,
officially in the year 301 CE.

Modern Armenia

Throughout history, Armenia has existed at the crossroads of great
empires.
Once far larger than it is today, the country has been shaped by
centuries
of war, conquest, genocide, and displacement, resulting in the Armenia
we
recognize in the present.

After becoming part of the Soviet Union, Armenia declared independence
in
1991. While much of the Armenian population lives in the diaspora,
those
within Armenia continued to develop their national and cultural
identity
throughout the Soviet period and beyond.

The Armenian Genocide

The memory of the Armenian Genocide plays a central role in Armenian
identity.
During the First World War, the Armenian people were systematically
destroyed
within the Ottoman Empire, along with much of their cultural and
historical
presence.

Each year on April 24, Armenians gather at the Tsitsernakaberd
Memorial in
Yerevan to honor the victims. The act of remembrance remains a
defining
element of Armenian collective memory.

Tourism

Despite its turbulent past and ongoing regional tensions, Armenia
today is
a peaceful country with relatively low crime rates. Visitors are drawn
to
its rich cultural heritage, dramatic landscapes, and vibrant capital
city.

Most travelers begin their journey in Yerevan before venturing to
destinations
such as Tsaghkadzor, Jermuk, and Dilijan. For some, a visit coincides
with
April 24, adding a deeper historical and emotional dimension to their
experience.