Baku in my mind (January, 2012)

"Life was beautiful and simple, seen from the roof of our house in Baku"

Kurban Said, "Ali and Nino"

        Having spent five months in Baku I am still not sure whether I like the city or not. It is really strange to realize that we, the internationals of the Academy, had given up our lives back home and preferred this place to many other places and schools. Some refused PhD and Master's scholarships in European universities, others did not have patience to wait for the results in other schools and came here. Most of us hate the city. Passionately. If one expects Baku to offer the western standard of urban development, then this is not the right place to go. The city is very unfriendly to pedestrians - most drivers park on pavements. Well, looks like there is no other option, especially for the owners of huge black Range Rovers and Land Cruisers. Baku people love big cars and treat them like living beings.  Today we went to 28th of May subway station pick up our books and saw a car run over a guy who was crossing the street. It sounded as if the car bumped into a plastic dummy, not a human being. The guy got up and sat on a pavement puzzled, tried to grab his belongings. The driver hesitated for a while, but when people started to gather around he got out of his car. We also got harassed by men in the street, they were yelling something racist.  My friend would often wonder in despair why it is not allowed to shoot people here. Well, I understand her, sometimes it really gets to you and makes weird things to your mind. All you wanna do is just doing to school, then back home, and maybe to a supermarket twice a week and, eventually, get your degree and leave this place forever. Public transportation, for instance subway, is quite a cultural phenomenon. It is mostly women who sit in the middle of a car, men prefer to stand at the doors. Young men always stand at the doors even if they get off at the last station. No one ever meant to block your way, they just want to make sure they do not miss their stop. So it is quite difficult to get out of a car. There are many other things that annoy foreigners here. However, entrepreneurs, diplomats, students, migrant  workers - everyone has his own reason to be here.

The Flame Towers. The modern symbol of Baku.

The territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan is four times smaller than that of the Republic of Buryatia. One can get to Tbilisi on a night train, just like going from Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude. It is such a small country. However they are about 100 million Azerbaijanis in the world (only 9 million in Azerbaijan), which is comparable to Russia's population. About 30 million live in Iran, the northern part of which used to belong to Azerbaijan until the Turkmanchaj Treaty of 1828 (I am terrible at history though). There are many Azerbaijanis around the world, even 5,000 in Mongolia. I wonder how they got and what they do there.  Last fall I was looking through statistics on migration between Russia and Azerbaijan. There were only 700 Russian citizens who got temporary citizenship in Azerbaijan by August, 2010, and dozens thousand Azerbaijanis in Russia. I guess I am also among those 700 people. I met quite a few Azerbaijanis who want to leave this country and never go back. All of them were exposed to other cultures, are fluent in foreign languages; some got degrees abroad. They say all the want is buses arriving on time, clean streets, and freedom of expression. But I also know  a lot of people in Russia who want the same. And there are many things in Russia that drive me crazy or even make me feel ashamed of being a part of it. But no one choses where to be born. I do not blame  those people in streets of Baku, who stalk, stare or yell at foreigners as if they have seen an ET.

      Azerbaijan is both close and distant to me. Unlike other places I have been to, here I do not feel like I am abroad because I can just give everything up, pack my stuff, get a ticket and get home in 8 hours. I can communicate in Russian (which might be a curse rather than a blessing, I could have learned Azeri faster). There are definitely more Russian than English speakers in this country. I like the local cuisine. My friends say I am becoming local; I eat lavash, levengi (roasted chicken stuffed with ground wallnuts, onions and spice), pomegranates and narsharab (pomegranate sauce, a good substitute for soy sauce, works even with scrambled eggs!). Instead of Mexican wraps or Russian pirozhki my fast food choice here is shaurma or gutab (lavash like bread with parsley and other greenery).

Dinner reception at pomegranate festival. Love local cuisine...

       Azerbaijan looks like a secular country. Not all women are veiled, on the contrary, very few wear hijabs. Most women apply make up and wear skinny jeans, stiletto shoes, mini skirts, etc. Some even show too much (both for a Muslim and western country) and a westerner may easily take them for prostitutes (but in fact they are decent housewives and mothers, they just look weird). Women of all ages wear heels.  Our classmates dress up every day as if they have a date, or a birthday, or model casting. I often feel under dressed here, especially after the US, where a hoodie and sweatpants are the everyday uniform of a college kid. Azerbaijan is more like Russia in this sense. Back home I also have this feeling sometimes. I do know some women who  do not go out without make up even if it is a round the corner grocery store. But here women treat their appearance even more seriously than in Russia. So eventually I got a pair of high heel shoes. I wear them one or twice a week if I know I do not have to take long walks. I got some more cosmetics as well. Recently I opened my wardrobe and realized that most of my clothes is black. I remember my English instructor Molly, an American married to a Bulgarian man, wondering why Azeri men wear black suits and black pointed shoes even if it is +30 degrees Celsius in shade. People here like black color. People back home like black color too. Nevertheless, my wardrobe disappointed me, so I got a multi-color scarf.

A typical everyday style of many local women 

      This culture is very different from the west. For centuries people wondered and argued whether Azerbaijan belonged to Asia or Europe. Lately I finished reading "Ali and Nino" by Kurban Said. My Azeri classmate Gani gave me this book as a present. It is a wonderful love story of a person who enjoyed living in Baku immensely. In fact, the author was a son of a Jewish oil baron  Abram  Nousimbaoum, who came to Baku. Essad Bey Nousimbaoum went under the pseudonym of Kurban Said and published "Ali and Nino" in German in 1937 in Vienna. The author concluded Azerbaijan was Asia conquered by the West.  I think I started to understand why Caucasus people have dislike for Russians after reading this book. So many wars, so much blood and violence foreigners brought to this country in search of oil and wealth. Baku has always been a multicultural city - trade brought Russians, Jews, Turks, Indians and many others. However, the feeling of being a foreigner here is very different from any other. Azerbaijani may be similar to Japanese, who define a foreigner with the special word "gaijin", - someone, who has a different Motherland. This word is not recommended for use on TV or radio in Japan. They refer to foreigners as gaijins even when they are abroad. Most men ask you questions like where you are from, why you are here, married or not, etc. Most women just stare at you, or laugh or start asking other people around if they know who you are. They have this very annoying habit of speaking about you in Azeri in third person truly believing you will never guess they are doing it. I guess one can never get rid of the feeling of being a gaijin here in Azerbaijan. This may be explained by the fact that foreigners always brought troubles to this country. There is also a big dislike for Soviet times here. I used to hear my parents saying that there were many good things when USSR still existed. There was violence when the Russian Empire conquered Siberia, but I have no hate to this fact. I just think every nation and country have their own dharma, like every each of us.

        People in Baku often say this country is liberal. Or maybe I mean they sound liberal with all those western gadgets, haute couture boutiques, Turkish TV channels with soap operas and music videos with half naked women (I wonder if the gay parade before the Eurovision 2012 is going to happen). One local kid from the Academy told me there is a tendency among young people to say they are very liberal and tolerant towards alcohol drinking, smoking, sex before marriage, etc. But  when it comes to their own families they turn out to be traditional hardcore people. On the other hand, they are traditional people who later turn out to be not so traditional. My friend often tells me that I should not take people's words for the truth here. But it is funny how he thinks of himself as a very liberal person  (he travels a lot) and  still does not feel comfortable wearing sandals and shorts in summertime and sleeps on the floor rather than in bed (just like Kurban Said's Ali!).