Brother of missing man searches for Noah’s Ark hunter

In September 2010, the 47-year-old vanished on Mount Ararat, the 16,854ft peak near the Turkey-Iran border where, according to Genesis, the ark came to rest. In a message to his family he said bad weather was approaching. It was the last they heard from him.

Now, on the second anniversary of Donald’s disappearance, his brother Derick is  retracing his footsteps, accompanied by filmmakers from the Edinburgh-based production company Plainview Films who are making a documentary about his quest for answers.

“We just want to find out what happened,” said Derick Mackenzie from the family home in Stornoway. “There  are a number of possibilities: the most obvious one is that  he had an accident on the mountain, or was targeted by religious extremists, or was robbed.”

Mount Ararat is dangerous terrain, with snow cover on the top 400 metres all year. Climbers need a government permit and a Turkish guide. Jonathan Carr, of Plainview Films, who has been to the area, said: “The most likely theory is that he got into  some kind of difficulty on the mountain, potentially with the weather.

“Donald was a ducker and diver, an Indiana Jones figure. He got frustrated with regulations. He played his own rules. He avoided filling in forms and applying for permits. It’s possible that he got into a situation where people were trying to stop him doing what he was doing. He could have taken off at speed and had an accident or a fall.”

Donald Mackenzie, a born-again Christian, had been combining ark hunting with missionary work in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Israel since 2004.

“He was a self-appointed missionary, not backed by any organisation – he did it off his own bat. He would spend months away, and just be on the mountain for a week.”

This, his brother thinks, could have made him a target. Before his last trip, there was an article in the Turkish national press about his missionary work: “It talked about him giving out Bibles. For a Muslim extremist, killing an infidel is a ticket to heaven.”

If he was robbed, it would not be surprising in an underdeveloped area of rural Turkey where the main industries are Ararat-based tourism and ark hunting. There are rivalries among mountain guides. Derick knows of one who “hadn’t liked Donald and had him thrown into jail”. Donald described this guide as “a thug and a crook”.

Ark hunters are easy prey: before his last trip, Donald had been intrigued by a Chinese news report showing wooden panels in a cave it claimed were from the ark. Derick later discovered through contacts that these were fakes. “Individuals in Turkey had paid others to fabricate this; they had taken old wood up the mountain.”

“This is a fairly poor town,” said Carr. “People are out to make as much money as they can.”

Since word has got out about Derick’s arrival next month, another mountain guide has claimed to have found some of Donald’s belongings: a jacket, a backpack and cooking utensils. Promised e-mailed photographs have yet to materialise.

Derick, who is also an evangelical Christian and converted his brother in 1991, hopes that his presence in Dogubayazit, the town at the bottom of Mount Ararat, will answer some questions. “It will be the first time any member of the family has focused  attention on locals.”

He does not think his brother is alive. “I’m not definite, but I’m being realistic. It’s the most likely scenario, but I’m keeping an open mind. At the moment I’m sitting over here in the dark. Time and money have been wasted before.”

His mother, Maggie Jean Mackenzie, spent £1,500 of her savings on a local search which came to nothing. “It’s useless to do it by proxy. People will only take an interest, people who knew Donald, with me on the scene.”

A widower with five children aged between 13 and 18 months, Derick does not think the trip should be dangerous. He does not plan to go further up Ararat than the base camp and does not share his brother’s need to find the ark’s  remains. “I wasn’t for the ark hunting,” he said. “I thought it was a pointless exercise.”

“I can’t guarantee we will find Donald,” said Carr. “We are unlikely to find the ark. But we are going to follow  his journey as he tries to  come to terms with whatever happened to his brother.”

n The film, My Brother The Ark Hunter, will be shown at festivals and on BBC Alba next year. Follow its progress at http://ararathunt.blogspot.co.uk/, on Facebook at www. facebook.com/MyBrother TheArkHunter and on Twitter @arkhunterdoc