I have never fallen down a rabbit hole, as Alice in Wonderland once did, but I have been to some peculiar and topsy-turvy places. I was brought up in Great Britain – and I use this term deliberately. In the primary schoolroom of my childhood, the main feature I can recall is a large antiquated map of the world. When this particular edition of the map had been printed, in the 1920’s, the British Empire ruled over a quarter of earth’s total land area. Vast tracts were coloured pink – representing all the dominions, colonies, protectorates and other territories ruled over by the Queen, her father and grandfather. On a book shelf, next to the map were paperback copies of various volumes Winston Churchill’s A History of The English-Speaking Peoples, and various tales by Rudyard Kipling or H. Rider Haggard or Arthur Conan Doyle. We were children of mostly Polish or Irish descent, in a school run by The Sisters of Mercy, and our stern-faced teacher was a Mr. Gavin, who came from Galway and who always wore a dark green worsted wool suit. He had the stern demeanour of Éamon de Valera, the President of the Republic of Ireland. Catholicism rather than Empire seemed to be our common denominator, though in the mid-1960’s a quarter of the class emigrated to Canada and South Africa, leaving the football team depleted and vacancies for centre forward and centre-back to be filled by mediocre players. I stayed safely in goal. Even in the bright light of that decade, decolonisation and decline blurred the edges of our world.
Mr. Gavin was a keeper of books – his favourite volumes were Treasure Island, The Hobbit and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There – and he often quoted from them. The map of the Empire was another teaching aid, or an encouragement to be inquisitive, to be curious about the world beyond these walls. He would point and ask, Where is Tulsa? If you were 24 hours away, where would you be? At the time, we rarely understood these references, but perhaps they were planted as seeds to be activated at a later time.
Azerbaijan, on this map in this provincial classroom, would have been one of the most southerly parts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of which it became a part in 1922, and remained a part until independence in 1991. Iran is to the south, Georgia, Dagestan and Chechnya to the north, Armenia to the west, the Caspian Sea to the east. Now Mr. Gavin may well have pointed out this place, given that it had some prominence. Tofik Bakhramov from Baku was the linesman who helped to award the crucial goal for England in extra time the 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany. The Azerbaijan national stadium in Baku is named in his honour. Back then, people referred to him simply as ‘The Russian Linesman.’ Baku is the capital and the largest city with (in 2005) 2,036,000 inhabitants, of which 153,400 are listed as ‘internally displaced persons’ and 93,400 refugees.
Forty years ago Baku was a desert city; in many respects it has remained so until today. In the earlier time, however, there was not a single street that might be considered European. Not a single tree sheltered the inhabitants from the burning heat. The whole city consisted only of clay huts and a few barbaric palaces, which were built on the desert sand and surrounded by a single wall; the thick walls of the palaces afforded but slight shelter from the sun. There was no water in the city; there were no rippling fountains such as every other house in the Orient possesses; water had to be brought in sacks from the distance and hardly sufficed for drinking and washing. When the heat became unbearable, the wealthy people left their houses and went to the seashore, where they could pretend or imagine that it was cooler.
- Essad Bey, writing in 1931
Built on the arid shore of the sea, the growth of the city has been fuelled by petroleum exploitation. A century ago, when this was the largest oil field in the world, the Nobels and the Rothschilds and other foreign investors were making their fortunes here, building large elaborate mansions near the sea front, their ornate facades a hotpotch of architectural styles. Oil meant work and workers flocked here from many countries, the hard working conditions attracting agitators and radicals, and a growing Bolshevik presence. The symbols of Bolshevism have all but disappeared, though perhaps not the cult of personality. Many billboards feature Heydar Aliyev, ‘Father of the Nation’. Streets, new buildings, even the airport, are named after him. Aliyev was leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, and then President of the Republic from 1993 to 2003. His son is now President, and the reshaping of Baku continues to grow at a remarkable pace. At times, a yellow pall hangs over the city, reminiscent of smog in Delhi or Los Angeles, and this is a windy place. It gets unbearable in the summer, we are told, You know, the name itself comes from the old Persian name, Bād-kube, meaning wind-pounded city.
On the outskirts of the Old Town, we looked at some beautiful old houses with overhanging wooden balconies. They were in a state of disrepair and decay. We want to knock them down, one young man told me, We want new modern buildings! And new modern buildings there are, seemingly hundreds, the city in a state of permanent fabrication. There are grand new parks and fountains, a miniature waterfall, wide boulevards being dug up and stones relaid, high rises rising high amidst clouds of cement dust and the petrol fumes in the air.
We walk along a long promenade reclaimed from the sea, the sweep of the bay before you, with the old docks and Turkmenistan ferry on one side, and the Yasamal slopes rising on the other, and I am reminded of Barcelona before regeneration. Though Baku may be modelling itself more on Abu Dhabi, with the development of luxury off-shore housing complexes. We’re told that one of the islands out in the bay was once part of the Soviet Gulag, and will become a Disneyland. It seems far-fetched, but maybe not. We pass a large metal tower, near a new conference and business centre under construction. Here my Father used to come as a young man and jump off to practice parachuting, says our friend, Just for fun. This was entertainment in Communism times. But he preferred mountain climbing.
It’s a strange place indeed. This was the common refrain of the engineers from Essex and Scotland we shared a cigarette with in Moscow airport, who had travelled back and forth for several years, working on the South Caucasus Pipeline – which pumps energy to our hungry markets in the west. Here is a terra incognita, a fantastical land where everything is reversed.
(image: Found object in a street in Baku, near Fountain Square)
And, in turn, how must we be viewed? We are asked, What do you think about the death of Darwinism in England? Or we are told that both our country and Europe is doomed due to the combination of two calamitous factors – the falling birthrates, and the dissolute life of our young people, wholly preoccupied with drugs and sex and alcohol. (Ah, The Hacienda has a lot to answer for.)
There is an absence of what is familiar and known, then I am finally reminded of the writings of Essad Bey: ‘Often. All too often, Azerbaijan is visited by strangers. Writers, journalists, scientists, of all kinds come by train to the capital, view the oil-derricks, gaze in wonder at the eternal fire and the old ruins, find out there is “nothing doing” in the interior, and go on to Russia, to Georgia, or to Persia, with the sincere conviction that they have learned to know Azerbaijan.’
Note: Bey wrote a famous novel, Ali and Nino (published in Germany in 1937), which tells of the love between an Azeri and a Georgian, and set against the backdrop of the First World War. He used the pen name Kurban Said, and was a Jew born in Baku who converted to Islam and led a life which itself reads like adventure fiction. Much of his fascinating story has been uncovered by writer Tom Reiss, and you can explore this on his really great web site – www.tomreiss.info (And you’ll find a gallery of Baku images posted on the intercultural dialogue web site.)
