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The Pleasure of Good Neighbors
I think almost a miracle must have happened to get me this flat: good price, great location, and, as I have discovered, really nice neighbors, including my landlord and landlady. I must admit, when we first drove up to this place that first Friday, I thought it looked a bit like a shanty town (actually, I still kind of do, but the inside of my room is nice, and there are children around, which I take as fun and a good sign). Several evenings, my landlady has popped by, and she’s always friendly. The neighborhood children run around and play like scamps. The odd board blocking the path to my flat and two others functions as a playpen, and I’ve concluded that the random series of knocks on doors is probably that impish girl who looks about four. :-) I’m definitely the quietest one in the neighborhood, but it’s nice to hear people (although as an introvert, I do keep my door closed, not just screened).
I have to apologize in advance that I don’t have many names for people. I’m having a really hard time remembering and pronouncing them because the language is so different from the other ones I’ve studied. I’m working on it, and I have a plan: asking my landlady’s daughter, whose name I kind of know but cannot pronounce (I think it involves a “no English equivalent” sound) questions in English as practice.
Bulvar at Night
On Wednesday, my landlady knocked on the door with what I think were chicken kofta (this part of the world’s meatball–yum–and not too different from the Russian kotlet) and some vegetables. (I’m happy to ignore the implicit concerns about my cooking abilities and just eat the yummy food.) She asked if when I was finished I’d like to go walk to Bulvar, the nice pedestrian area that buffers the sea from the street filled with honking cars. It was after 8:30 and I was a bit concerned about being out late, but since I had a local companion (and dinner!), and I’d only seen it during daylight, I went. (I think also she is concerned that I don’t go out enough... but I don’t think my Russian is up to explaining journal competition grading.)
So, after I ate, graded some more journal competition packets, and waited for the rain to subside, we went. Her whole family came, husband, daughter and son, as well as a family friend. So we went walking. I’m including some pictures because it’s quite lovely (plus you can’t see the oil slick in the water at night).
Bulvar was full of families and groups of friends out. We walked around, my landlady and I speaking a mix of English and Russian (mostly Russian by the end I think), and her translating for the others (with occasional English from her daughter). We also stopped at what I would call a beer garden and had tea (of course) served in beautiful Turkish-style lotus glasses before walking some more. Baku, I have heard, is trying very hard to be the Dubai of its region. Nowhere was it more evident than the flame-shaped buildings that dominate the skyline lit up in the night. Inside, they’re hotels (with apparently very, very good blinds), but at night, the outsides are lit - not just colors, but images, a flickering flame, or a waving flag, or even a person waving the flag. It’s beautiful and incredible. All in all, it was quite a nice night (although as we got in at midnight on a weeknight and I begged off early at that time, and I just got asked on another walk - at 9:30 on a Sunday night, I’ve decided that “Baku is an up-late city” is confirmed).
Mr. Geography
I’m in a little corner of my section of the courtyard-within-the-courtyard created by the one and two levels of flats here, and in my same corner is Rasim. He speaks a few words of English (I think his understanding probably isn’t bad), and he was kind enough to let me know the water would be off for a few hours during repairs on a couple of occasions. He’s probably in his sixties, and seems to have a lot of refridgerator parts to repair (plastic shelves, which I find really impressive–I had always thought of broken plastic as something to replace, not repair). I’ve had now two long conversations with him.
The first thing to know about Rasim is that he knows his geography. When I arrived home the other day, he was working outside. He said hello and asked me what state I’m from. We ended up in Russian pretty fast (most Azerbaijanis speak it), and, while I didn’t catch everything, it was nice to kind of tune my ear in again and have a conversation. He can name all fifty U.S. states: he told me he could, and he went through them all, counting them off on each finger five times. I don’t think most Americans can do that, and told him so. (I can reliably get to about 46 and then have to hunt around for the last few.) I think he said he could name all the Soviet republics as well (which isn’t just the countries that broke up, but semi-autonomous regions within Russia). He brought out an old Soviet-era atlas and we took a look. He has, I think, quite a few of these.
As always, in the former Soviet Union, a girl shows up with an American passport and a “Russian” name (not only Russian, thankyouverymuch), and she gets a question about how she came by that combination. Fortunately, I had had enough practice that it wasn’t hard to explain that my great-great-grandparents had come to America from Slovenia, and most of my siblings have, as I do, Slavic names because of it. Naturally, Rasim knew exactly where Slovenia is (it was the northwest corner of Yugoslavia), so we named all the former Yugoslav capitals (checking against another atlas of his), and then he told me that there had been some Azerbaijanis helping partisans in Yugoslavia during the war. I had never heard of it and, to be honest, would never have suspected it, first of all because the Soviet Union had enough to be getting on with at the time, and secondly because, while they’re all caucasian, Azerbaijanis tend to be rather darker complected than your average southern Slav. The fact that there apparently was at least one was really cool.
I later googled and I think Rasim was talking about Mehdi Huseynzade. He fought at Stalingrad, was wounded and captured at another battle, escaped and joined the resistance in Slovenia, doing some serious damage. He killed himself rather than be taken capture after stumbling upon a patrol in 1944, less than two months shy of his 26th birthday. I wonder what would have happened if he had not killed himself. Considering how much trouble he caused the Axis powers, I’d guess he probably would have been executed. If by some miracle he had been imprisoned instead, he may have suffered that fate or been sent to the gulag upon returning home, as Stalin generally distrusted prisoners of war.
Even more incredible, however, was the story of Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov. Rasim told me he was Charles de Gaulle’s right hand man; Wikipedia didn’t confirm that (not that it’s a better source) but it did say he knew de Gaulle. Rasim explained that Jabrayilov had been born albino, and also that his parents had encouraged him to learn German, which he became fluent in. Between his fair coloring and his language skills, he became an amazingly effective resistance agent. He too had been captured in battle, but was instead sent to a concentration camp further west, from which he escaped. I looked him up further and there’s a truly incredible story that he was wounded in an operation to save 500 children, but because he had German military I.D. was taken to a German military hospital and treated as an officer before being put in command of a town, which position he used to free people. What a hero!
He did survive the war, and received French honors and citizenship–both of which caused problems for him when he returned to the Soviet Union a couple years later. As Rasim told it, he was considered suspect and no one knew who he was until de Gaulle visited in the ‘60s and asked to see his old friend. Jabrayilov was living in obscurity, and they had to get him new clothes and clean him up to be presentable. He was later allowed to visit his comrades as well as given honors. I enjoy history quite a bit so this was a fascinating story and one I wish I’d heard before. Rasim also explained that there was a Nazi plan to take over this area because of the plentiful oil. It’s an interesting lesson in what and how history is taught.
The next time we talked he got out the atlas of America again (north and south, thankyouverymuch, with Soviets reminding U.S. it’s not all about us), and asked what town I’m from–specifically, not just “a suburb of Boston.” Lo and behold, the map had it–a town of about 30,000 on a Soviet map from a few decades ago (who knows how many people lived there then). They also had the tiny town my sister lives in. No Williamsburg, but Newport News I think, and definitely Norfolk. It made me think of that class I took on the history of the KGB, so impressed was I with the level of detail.
We did have to get past a little conspiracy theorism (I’m not sure where identifying famous Americans as Jews (including the Kennedys, haha) was heading, but thankfully we didn’t go far down that path, although I was impressed that he knew Marilyn Monroe’s birth name). Then I got an incredible history of Azerbaijan. I wish I’d caught more of it, but when you’re listening for about an hour in a foreign langauge you don’t speak fluently, at a certain point you do hit overload and it goes from getting most of it to getting the idea of it.
There were a number of interesting stories. One was that, as I think I’d read somewhere, Azerbaijan was known for the “fire mountain.” The oil and gas is so plentiful in that area, and the gas in the air, that it sparked (it still may–it’s somewhere out in the countryside). I think Rasim said that people associated it with a god. But more interesting is the fact that the name “Albania” comes from this–it actually means “fire mountain” and there are connections between Albania and Azerbaijan. This is where I started losing some details, but I think he may have tied it in with his brief history of religion in Azerbaijan. It’s definitely something I’ll be looking up.
Azerbaijanis were Zoroastrians, and I think Rasim may have said that the holy book of the religion was from around here. (Don’t quote me on it, however; as interesting as Rasim is, all of his stories seemed to have a common thread of Azerbaijan’s preeminence in the region and having been responsible for all their neighbors’ greatnesses, and having claim to a good deal more land than they have today.) Today most Azerbaijanis are Muslim. However, Rasim told me that in fact there had been Christianity here before Islam came (and before the Slavs became Christian, which makes sense), and separate and distinct from the Slavic Christianity, because the missionaries came from Jerusalem, rather than Constantinople (which is where Russia became Christian through). Christianity came and was accepted peacefully. Islam came in, and originally, according to Rasim, people were given a choice whether or not to convert, but when a lot of people didn’t, conversion was forced. I think Rasim is technically Muslim, but he gave me some pork sausage, and, of course, had lived for decades under the aggressively secular Soviet regime, so I get the impression he doesn’t really practice.
He told me a couple more stories about some kings of old, and one sounded familiar (a man being served his own son for dinner). I think the idea was that the people involved may not all have been kings of Azerbaijan, but were at least related through a very, very smart princess. That’s all I got on that one, though.
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Among other things, I discovered that my washer is also a dryer. This was actually very obvious, and the information readily apparent, if I had taken a closer look at the writing, which is completely in English (so I don't even have a good excuse; in fact, most of my interactions with the machine fluctuated between joy and a comedy of errors). I had assumed it was only a washer based on the fact that it looks like one and I've never seen one machine that does both before. (U.S. - we should get on that. It wouldn't work for large families, but for small families and young professionals tight on space, sounds like a good idea to me.) I had delayed looking at it because I had no plans to use it until the weekend, when I didn't
have to be anywhere in particular until church, and I anticipated having to let things dry.
So Saturday morning, I discovered that it dried, which is quite thrilling. Then I discovered that whatever system it uses to keep the front-loading door closed hurts one's fingers a bit with some sort of electric charge (and I have no talent for avoiding it). And when I had finally washed things, I turned the machine off and then couldn't get the door open. So I tried turning it on again, only to realize that,
of course, it only turns on to the start of a cycle of some sort, which turned into fifteen minutes of drying - twice - before I finally realized it probably just needed a few minutes (at which point the latch opened without issue). Clearly, I was not wearing my thinking cap - something that became abundantly clear as I realized I'd put a little passport carrier in along with my things. On the bright side, my passport wasn't in it; on the down side, it was a reminder that when you think to yourself, "I'll have to make sure I don't throw that in with the clothes by mistake," you should just move it right then. I dried out some money, which was fine, thankfully, despite having been laundered, and had a delightful trip down memory lane as I pulled apart old tickets and travel immunizations (which no one ever checked).
My next bit of crazy (best to plan these things, since the spontaneity of the laundry experience had some hiccups) will be attempting chocolate chip cookies on the stove (because I don't have an oven). The internet says it can be done, although the internet probably has reliable burner knobs and can get them on low. I made some batter and it seemed off so I overcorrected they other way and when I cooked them they tasted a little pancake-y. So now I've re-corrected back to the original thing and am just wondering if the butter here is really different or if I can't rely on tablespoons to be the same (I have my suspicions on that one, thus laying all my careful counting out of tablespoons of things to waste, alas). I want to share some with my coworkers and neighbors in thanks for tall their generosity and kindness. I do have a decent amount of brown sugar still (the priciest ingredient) so I can re-make without too much additional cost - if only my local grocery store had eggs. Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.
Best,
~Nzie
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