On Azerbaijan
I have a sister in Russia whom I have never met. Less than a year apart in age, we are very similar — brimming with curiosity about the world, yet tempered by an introverted shell that makes us crave the comfort of living alone. We both want to move abroad: she to Turkey, I to Germany.
Naturally, I want to impress her. To my dismay, we don't stay in touch very often. But when we do, the conversation often lasts for months. I try to make the most of those times.
At the end of 2023 I saw an Azerbaijani film, Banu. Some of the movie was in Azerbaijani, the other parts in Russian. I was so moved by it that I had to tell my sister about it. And Azerbaijani is a lot like Turkish, so maybe she'd find it interesting.
What ensued inspired me to look for flights to Azerbaijan as if my life depended on it.
My husband is Azerbaijani, she told me. I was shocked. In hindsight maybe I shouldn't have been given our own Turkic roots. She had never shared such information with me before though. What's more is that our half-brother happens to be half Azerbaijani, something that had not been clear to me until this conversation.
The goal of the trip was not for me to meet any of my family members. They all live in Russia. Still, I clung to this hint of a connection like no other. Even though I barely knew anything about Azerbaijan, it all suddenly became so personal. Within a span of only months I went from falling prey to Western media that Azerbaijan is a propagandistic oil dictatorship unworthy of visiting to arriving by myself in Baku, exhausted from a long journey that started in the US and featured a stop in Istanbul.
I was a different person in Azerbaijan. I arrived in Baku with a Russian passport in my hand and an American one in my pocket. Somehow the explanation for my arrival that I uttered in Russian to the customs officer came across as authentic, and then I was on my way.
It felt like I was in some kind of dream. Not in a good or a bad way. I wasn't in shock; I knew that I signed up for this. But I think I meandered around Baku's airport for at least an hour for seemingly no reason. What had I done?
Soon enough I snapped back to reality as I tried to hop onto a bus to the city center. My trusty Charles Schwab debit card that reimburses foreign ATM fees had expired a few months prior, and I didn't notice it until it was declined at the ticket dispenser. I brought no cash with me. Nice going. Unfortunately, this turned out to be an omen for the distressing financial issues I had in Azerbaijan and also later in Georgia. Somehow I got one of my credit cards to work, which was only sometimes the case in Azerbaijan.
The eSIM I had purchased proved partially unreliable when I arrived in the city center. I wasted even more time trying to find my hotel in the Old City. I took myself out for dinner, explored the Old City, spent more time than I expected navigating myself through an Azerbaijani supermarket only to then find comfort in a different store that sold German products, and then came back to sleep for fourteen hours.
My first "real" day in Azerbaijan sucked. It was pouring rain, and entering any establishment filled me with anxiety knowing there was maybe only a 50-50 chance of my credit card being accepted. I had wasted the entire day without a photo taken nor a sight seen. At least I managed to get an Azerbaijani SIM card?
Deflated, I returned to the neighborhood where I was staying and wrote it off as a day wasted. Thankfully, I figured out that I could survive in Azerbaijan by withdrawing cash advances from one of my credit cards that wasn't very restrictive about this. Still, I wasn't in a great mood.
Wandering into yet another grocery store to find something I could eat in my hotel room, I didn't expect my spirits to be lifted. But they were. I'll always remember a young woman around my age who called out to me from behind, asking me something in Azerbaijani. Probably if I needed any help. After having to painfully admit that I didn't understand her in a language that she probably didn't understand, I awkwardly tried to avoid the situation. Instead, she insisted on helping me and handed me a basket.
As I continued browsing a sea of products that appeared only a little less foreign to me than they were yesterday, she emerged again seemingly out of nowhere: Do you speak Russian? I know a little bit. I nodded. This resulted in a pleasant little exchange: I explained my circumstances and why I didn't like to walk around there assuming everyone speaks Russian, she shook her head while also apologizing for her Russian skills, I reassured her that she speaks it well, and she then asked what I needed.
Oh, I'm just looking, I said. And that's really why I was here, both in this supermarket and in Azerbaijan. Just looking.
She and her coworkers were overly polite to me, and then I was on my way.
And from then on everything got so much better.
I spent about half of my three-week trip to the Caucasus in Azerbaijan, a country that many Westerners would suggest skipping in favor of more time in Georgia and Armenia. And I'll be honest, the cult of personality of Heydar Aliyev, the third president of Azerbaijan after whom seemingly everything in the country is named, is interesting to say the least. My own political views aside, the conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia call for visiting both countries to appreciate and understand their histories and circumstances.
I was fortunate to get out of Baku and take a bus packed with locals on a trip up north to Quba, a town considered the last surviving shtetl, home of the country's finest carpet weaving, and a gateway to the rest of northern Azerbaijan.
On a two-day hiking tour, I savored the jaw-dropping landscapes before me as well as the near solitude in which I experienced them, just my guide and I. Those who hosted us in various guesthouses throughout the region often spoke their own language in addition to Azerbaijani. It seemed like demographic and geographic diversity went hand in hand.
I also visited Shaki, whose famous palace is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architecture and role in the Silk Road. Even more memorable in Shaki, however, were my hosts. Without exaggeration, they are the nicest people I have ever met in my life, and they were delighted that I could gossip with them in Russian while also helping translate for them and other guests who spoke English as a foreign language. I video chatted with their son who lives in Baku and was beaming as he showed off his English skills to me. His mother took me by my arm around Shaki as if I were her own daughter.
They insisted that their friend drive to take me to the village where my half-brother's father's grew up. Although we didn't find anything there, I was taken aback by how kind everyone I met was to me, and they showed genuine interest in what led me to their country in the first place. I was able to explain myself and feel somewhat understood not because my Russian was perfect but because they knew what I was talking about.
The same driver would eventually go out of his way to help me exchange money on our way to the border, where I would cross by foot into Georgia. I'll never forget our conversations and that he is a big fan of Juventus.
While I'd like to write later about what it was like to visit the Caucasus in general, I still find myself thinking about Azerbaijan a bit differently. After the trip I wanted to get more in touch with locals, so I hired an iTalki teacher not really because I needed to pay someone to speak with me in Russian but rather to feel more connected to the country. I arrived in Azerbaijan curious about the language and started learning Turkish when I returned to the US.
I wonder if my sister ever made it there that summer a few months after I did, like she said she would. I often fantasize about what it would be like someday for us — she, her husband, our half-brother, and me — to meet there someday.