A mother's terrifying premonition... and the riddle of the Bible-obsessed Scots adventurer who went in search of Noah's Ark and was never seen again

Daily Mail​

a day ago

When she stares out of her living room window, frail pensioner Maggie Jean Mackenzie rarely takes in the old, weathered landscape and low-rise townscape beyond her Hebridean home.
Her mind's eye drifts instead, as it has for so long, to a far-off place of eternal wonder – a mythical mountain picked out in tourist brochures against skies of purest blue or sunsets of sherbet orange.
When Mrs Mackenzie returns day after day to the snow-capped slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey, however, it is not to cherish treasured holiday memories but to pick through her troubled thoughts in search of answers.
It is here, 15 years ago, that her beloved son Donald vanished as he pursued an obsessive search to identify the last resting place of Noah's Ark. Alongside the allure of the Holy Grail, the quest for Noah's Ark ranks as the great chimera in the history of religion.
The Genesis story, shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, has it that God, angry at human wickedness, flooded the earth. He saved just Noah and his family, along with all living species, by advising him to build a survival ark.
According to the story, when the waters subsided, Noah's ark came to rest somewhere on the vast expanse of Mount Ararat.
It has long been assumed by scriptural literalists that its remains really are to be found somewhere on the rubble-strewn mountainside.
One such was Donald Mackenzie. Each summer, this self-styled Scots missionary would set off alone to the same hazardous region on the fringes of Iran to track down the final resting place of the fabled vessel.
Each autumn, he would beat a reluctant retreat before the first snowfalls brought a temporary halt to his efforts to prove the truth of the great Bible story.
Except, in 2010, he failed to return home to his native Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis. Like the object of his obsession, he simply disappeared into the heavy mists that swirled around the summit of Turkey's most famous peak.
The only tangible evidence that he had even been in the area was his white Vauxhall Combo van, parked in a village at the bottom of the mountain.
Of its owner, there has been no sign and the silence surrounding this most perplexing of mysteries has pushed Mrs Mackenzie beyond despair.
In the absence of news, her thoughts churn with the scant theories of what may have befallen her son, none particularly cheering – murder, kidnap or a climbing accident seem to be the unpleasant choices.
With the passage of time, the picture has been complicated by layers of intrigue – suggestions of army corruption, unlikely hoaxes, bitter religious politics, civil war, and toothless international diplomacy.
For the Mackenzie family, trapped between hope and grief, only one question really matters – the truth. Privately, Mrs Mackenzie fears that her son will be forgotten about long before they find it.
'In the last 15 years, we have heard absolutely nothing – it's as if Donald never existed,' she told the Mail. 'That is what I find so difficult. But he did exist and we have to make sure to remind people of that.
Keeping his memory alive is made all the harder, because we still don't know what happened. We don't know if anyone is to blame for his disappearance or if it was an accident. We need answers. And if Donald is forgotten, we may never find out what happened to him.'
In order to fill the void and revive awareness in Donald's story, the Mackenzies plan to hold a church service this autumn for their missing relative. Meantime, they fall back on their font of stories about a man as tough and complex as Lewisian gneiss.
They recall a boyhood full of mischief, a headstrong child drawn to danger who never backed away from confrontation. Yet, they also describe a youngster left bereft by an absent father, who only found a purpose as a born-again Christian.
Despite being brought up in the cradle of Free Presbyterianism in the Western Isles, Donald Mackenzie had resisted any real interest in religion until he found God much later in life.
Once converted, however, the 47-year-old seized his new faith with alacrity – it drew this newly-evangelised missionary back time and again on his pilgrimage to a politically unstable corner of the Muslim world. It now seems increasingly likely it led him directly to his doom.
It was only due to the catastrophic break-up of his mother's marriage to Fleet Street journalist, Ken Mackenzie, that Donald and his three brothers, Ross, Derick and Kenneth, grew up in a council house in Stornoway rather than a large family house in a well-to-do suburb of Glasgow.
'My father had a really good, well-paid job and he got sucked into gambling,' said Kenneth. 'We had a big house in a nice part of Glasgow but my mother told me stories later about people telling her how they saw him put a £25 bet down on the turn of a card and lost. Now £25 in those days was like £1,000 now; it was a ridiculous amount.
'He was so addicted he lost everything; his job, the house, everything. He was even pinching stuff from my mother and selling it for gambling. He never even owned up, he just kind of disappeared.'
Mrs Mackenzie, a noted Gaelic singer, returned to her native Stornoway to stay with her mother for two years until they got back on their feet. Single-handedly raising four pre-school age sons was always going to be hard work, but Derick and Donald soon earned a reputation as tearaways.
'They were pretty wild, into drink and women and getting involved in fights and riding motorcycles,' said Kenneth. 'Donald would never back down from a fight. In a way, I think he quite enjoyed the element of danger. He ran to danger when others, like me, run a mile from it.'
Often Donald's impulsiveness landed him in serious bother. He was 19 when he was riding pillion on a friend's bike which crashed at 100mph and almost cost him his life. After months in hospital, he studied to be a draughtsman, but drifted between jobs, frequently returning to live with his mother.
A dab hand with engines, he joined the Territorial Army, where he proved a crack shot and learned the survival skills he would later rely on during his trips to Ararat.
Kenneth, now 59, who works in the pharmaceutical industry in London, believes his brother was particularly affected by the loss of a father figure. 'Donald needed that kind of stability and guidance. I think he would have turned out a more rounded, better person if our father had been around,' he said.
'I wouldn't say he was a bad person – he was what he was – but he might have had a good job, he would have had a stable career, and stable relationships.'
Years later, Donald did meet his father, who died in 2003, and Kenneth was surprised how accepting his brother was: 'It just seemed all plastic and false to me because there was only one question at the top of my head, which was: 'Why did you leave? Where did you go?'
'But Donald was happy to make small talk and I thought, 'Really? You miss him that much, you're not going to give him a row? You're just going to accept him back?' But I wasn't happy at all.' Then, in his late twenties, Donald found God. A heavenly father would give his life the purpose and direction which his earthly one could not.
Unsurprisingly, it happened when he was badly beaten up in a fight. He took it as a sign and when his Army chaplain brother Derick, another convert, visited him in hospital with a Bible, it marked a shift in outlook. If there was any doubt about his commitment, his Facebook social media page was titled 'Donald Proddy'.
Having found God, he embarked on his greatest adventure – a bid to prove the existence of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.
'I'm not sure how much he truly believed in the Ark's existence, you know, but it was his excuse to go over there and have some thrills,' said Kenneth. 'I think he pictured himself as a kind of Indiana Jones with two lives – the Turkish life was the exciting life.'
Unlike Dr Jones, Donald was also a preacher. Kenneth said that although Donald made many friends in Turkey and even started a business there buying and selling motorbikes, 'he had a thing about Islam being the wrong faith and he was pushing Christianity which did not go down well at all'.
Kenneth added: 'And I think that's where he made some real enemies. We used to have conversations about how much danger he was putting himself in. But I think he thought if he changed one person from Islam to Christianity, that's his job done.'
At four times the height of Ben Nevis, Mount Ararat's imposing bulk has always been dangerous for visitors. For decades the highly militarised frontline between Nato and the Soviet bloc, it only opened up to tourism again in 2001.
Armed militants from the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, roamed its 16,854ft peak, drawing support for their fight for an independent Kurdistan from residents of the impoverished hamlets which cling to the inhospitable slopes of this dormant volcano.
Donald's 2010 trip, his fifth, was driven by an astonishing claim the Ark had been found. A shadowy organisation called Noah's Ark Ministries International – based in Hong Kong but with links to Turkish officials – insisted it had uncovered a 'wooden construction' on Ararat's northern side.
Within months it had been denounced as a hoax, but Donald was determined to see for himself, pressing ahead despite the obvious danger and without sorting the necessary government permits and mandatory local guide required to set foot on Ararat.
'Everyone told him not to go. My mother had a premonition and pleaded with him, but he wouldn't listen and got quite angry with me when I spoke to him about it,' said Kenneth. He loaded up his van and drove to the town of Dogubayazit at the foot of Ararat.
His last contact with his family was a call that September to his brother Ross, now 64, an IT analyst living in Luxembourg, as he tried to make food at 12,000ft in a thunderstorm. He said the storm was dying down and he should get some sleep. By October 14, he had been reported overdue by a friend. Since then, nothing. No bank account or mobile phone activity. The family have accused the Turkish authorities of failing to take Donald's case seriously and of delaying their initial search.
That has made it harder to fathom the chain of events leading up to his disappearance. When Derick went over with a film crew in 2012, they were intercepted by Turkish authorities at the airport and warned off climbing Ararat. After recovering Donald's van and some of his possessions, they encountered a wall of silence.
One thing Kenneth Mackenzie is clear on, however, is that his brother will never be coming home. 'I have no doubt that Donald is dead. I believe the Turkish Army are to blame, because somebody came down the mountain the day he disappeared and said, 'I hope there's nobody else up there because the Army means business up there. Anybody else up there is in trouble.'
'They are hiding something. Why would they say to Derick at the airport, 'Don't you dare come near Mount Ararat' unless they had something to hide?'
While he accepts his brother is gone, things are harder for his mother, who struggles with failing health and crippling despair. 'She still clings to the hope that, maybe, he's in jail over there and might come home. Every so often, she just bursts into tears. It is as if time stood still from that moment for her.'
The same could be said of her son. Fifteen years on, what befell Donald Mackenzie remains every bit as mysterious as the ancient ark he searched for in vain.