Photograph by Noémi Kiss
Just getting here was no mean feat. From securing an Azerbaijani visa to arranging transport overland, across the rocky steppe, towards the easternmost outcrop of the Caucasus, among olive trees and oil wells, was itself quite an odyssey. The eyes of the Azerbaijani head of state are all-seeing, his is the Evil Eye: we have to take care, it tries to thwart us every step of the way. Once the drops of administrative sweat have evaporated, the spectacular mountain range of the Caucasus soon comes into view, the gorges lined by—well—gorgeous mountain peaks. In this country, there is no way to avoid oriental haggling and making discreet phone calls in order to reach our destination. There are few tourists roaming around Azerbaijan, and that is the best thing about it. There are no ingrained responses to foreigners and we are met with nothing but kindness from everyone; only when something has been agreed on in advance does all hell break loose. I continually had the feeling that apart from us there was no one here truly interested in this astonishingly rich and mysterious country, in its remote, thousand-year-old villages, the daily grind of the families living high up in the mountains, in this affecting land of shepherds and seraglios.
No one, that is, apart from the men in the oil business, those who happen to find themselves here solely because of the oil wells and political “dark money.” They are generally Germans, who come here on business trips and quickly move on: wheelie-bagged capitalists in black suits, just passing through, their swishing and gliding filling the airports of Europe. German capital is as all-conquering here as elsewhere in the Caucasus. It is easy to make deals with dictators. Well, so what if it is a dictatorship, or that there is in these lands no vestige of human rights: the top priorities in their deals are the greasing of politicians' palms, calculating the profit, cheap labor costs by those who are quick and whip-smart, the ever-enthusiastic market, and the oil. The only country in the region to which the capitalist suits now give a wide berth is Armenia, and the sole reason for not yet introducing that country’s citizens to the joys of capitalism is to keep in the good graces of the Azerbaijani government. The suits might, at best, look around the state museum’s beguiling displays, or head for the nightlife in Baku, the country’s capital—prostitution being at its safest in a dictatorship. They tend to have little interest in anything else.
In Baku, there are opulent shop windows, with high-end stores and luxury hotels being built at the feet of the skyscrapers. At first it is quite surprising how deserted they are. Once we leave the capital, however, we quickly reach the mountains, just a few kilometers away. For me, the real Azerbaijan opened up only beyond Baku, making me realize that this country does, after all, have a distinctive face. It is a world that is cut off, yet full of life. In just one week, our group managed to get everywhere, with the sole exception of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was out of bounds because of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war. It was the most beautiful trip of my life.
Baku
It will all work out fine in the end, if only we can manage to survive the hairpin bends on Baku’s roads and, well, the weird sheep at the petrol stations, whose bleeding corpses are hung up so that the blood drains into a ditch, after which the carcasses are swathed in gauze and tagged. The precondition of entry into the country is an expensive visa, but that is not the only reason for Azerbaijan’s ambitiousness and miraculous development being tinged with a sour, post-Soviet feeling. We are subjected to serious police surveillance at the airport. Though our driver and the bus are waiting beside us, the identity and security checks take an inordinate length of time. It seems that, today, we are the only passengers for Baku, and as I look around the parking garage in front of the curious glass sculpture that is the airport, everyone seems to be a taxi driver and offering American cigarettes. The air is humid, a slight breeze blows off the Caspian Sea; you can taste the stinging yet sweetish smell of the salt.
The ride from the airport to Baku is long and monotonous. The seashore is cut off from the road by a double wall and barbed wire, there to protect those two most precious assets: water and oil. The Azeris get top marks for razzle-dazzle. Then comes the capital, which is really a ghost city. It seems to be affluent and luxurious, but in fact it isn’t. It is artificial and not in the least admirable; rather, it is cold and so a little heartless as well, yet the kindness of the shopkeepers and the bakers is some compensation, and especially the smiles of the car mechanics. Ah, the joy that a damaged exhaust manifold can bring to their faces! The front yard of every suburban house is a garage: the country is becoming one vast parking lot.
As we get closer to the center of town, we pass ever more modern, hundred-meter-long stone walls, a brand-new airport, a multilane highway with German cars, Mercedes and BMWs, as well as Volvos. Rundown, middle-class houses in narrow, heartrending, once-Secessionist streets still survive: not for much longer, we are told, as the president intends to have them demolished. Here, beyond the paving stones, there is a higher power at work wherever we look. Newer, Western-style housing estates are coming, for the labor force that is moving in from the countryside. New denizens of the capital are to be seen in the baker’s, the barber’s, and with the car mechanics at the entrances. They come from villages with no sewerage where, even today, electricity is a big deal, and, in the wretched, bitter cold, the houses still use manure in their stoves for heating. A motionless Ferris wheel in a deserted amusement park, thuyas and turf, and not least—of course—the signs of personal dictatorship: the monumental statues and images of the Aliyev family.
I am more interested in the other, isolated Azerbaijan. The silent passage of the mountain herders and their sheep is more exciting for me than the fake window displays of the capital. I can hardly wait for us to clamber off its map. I want to get to Xinaliq, that village in the mountains of which I first saw images on a blog called “On the mountains of the river Wang.” I want to be welcomed into the houses of the village folk, or to mooch around some small town—anywhere is better than the dictator’s ghost city.
If you know Russian, you can easily find your way round Azerbaijan, except in the few settlements tucked away in the gorges of the Caucasus where the inhabitants don’t even speak Azeri—though some do, in fact, speak Russian. Indeed, one of the destinations we are keenest to see is the settlement of Xinaliq, lying at an altitude of 2350 meters, where daily life has continued without interruption to the culture for the past 5,000 years. And then Five Finger Mountain, a place of pilgrimage for barren Muslim women. As well as Quba, a town of the Mountain Jews.
Permanent Teeth—Children from the Village in the Mountains
He’s barefoot, chewing gum. His incisors are black. Beside him is another boy, licking a lollypop, and they’re both laughing: tinkling laughter. They are standing by the highway, holding bags of tea between their fingers. They are standing on the road to Xinaliq, selling tea. Their bodies line the snaking road. I suspect they are the future, these boys with the flashing ankles. They quickly run off every which way, running uphill, it’s second nature to them and their limbs, even though they don’t do any jogging. They are amazingly fast, slender, and charming; their feet flash in the air.
We are in one of the countries that has been sloughed off from the former Soviet Union, yet so high that there is nothing here now—nor was there ever anything—that was truly, thoroughly Soviet. The tires kick up a cloud of dust, our UAZ can barely navigate the steep crags. Here, it seems as if Azerbaijan is the end of the world. And this end of the world is full of hope and life, despite the people who live here amidst traditions that have cut them off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. The women, with hands of gold and shrouded in shawls, are homebound day in, day out, they beat and spin wool, pour hot water in the kitchen from hundred-year-old Russian samovars, weave rugs; the men, reeking of strong tobacco and playing backgammon, are shepherds and traders in animals. They have a nomadic tent, where they graze their animals. There is nothing nearby to help pass the time, other than tea and conversations punctuated by laughter.
Photograph by Noémi Kiss
Droves of children keep dashing in front of us as we enter the village. Their milk teeth are black from their lollypops, and when they play football, those teeth are sent flying, willy-nilly. And once they have lost their milk teeth they can go to school. Those who do well at school will get to work in Europe. The entire family hopes and prays that the child won’t have to do his military service in Nagorno-Karabakh: the endless war against the Armenians is front-page news every day. It’s just that while the news trumpets the triumphs of battle, the people are retching.
Allah will sustain him who is able to leave this place.
We’ve just arrived—I’d gladly stay for years.
On the journey from Baku, all we have seen so far for hundreds of kilometers are olive trees; lilac and blue Caucasian thistles; springs; and yellow, scorching rocks, which freeze and shatter at night, tumbling down into the valley in huge chunks, a clattering cascade of rock. But now the children’s shadows stretch along the asphalt. They kick off the knitted mules and sandals on their feet and run around between the cars that trundle past. They kick a ball about, they do the packing, they work, they fill the shop. They offer us tea with sugar and won’t accept a reward of any kind. They laugh good-heartedly as they keep handing the tea leaves through the side windows to the truckers climbing uphill. Behind them, a graveyard, with graves scattered throughout the mountainside. Not even in Bukovina, the land of the strangest graveyards, have I seen anything like this. There are graves at the entrance to the village and they do not end, they embrace the settlement like pinheads scattered across the hillsides. There are no designated graves, so there is no graveyard as such. As we set off for the houses, the gravestones lie randomly by the wayside. Every family tries to find somewhere on the mountain to bury their loved ones. Those who went off to the war, or died elsewhere, or simply defected, because there are 20,000 people from Xinaliq living in the outside world. Here in the village only 2,000 remain.
Sheep cling on for dear life amidst the graves, as do mountain goats, and donkeys and dogs, too, can be seen, though dogs rarely, as the houses have neither courtyards nor fences, so there is nowhere to tie them up. Even for hens and cockerels there is little room. The roofs of the houses in Xinaliq make up the street and the fencing is made of dried manure, which they use to heat the houses in winter temperatures of minus 20. What the village amounts to is a community of houses. No one comes here, and so the mountain road ends in the village—and with it the world. The end of the world is a gloriously bleak, mountainous region, studded with rocks. It is earth and fire itself, an integral part of their beliefs. Their God took this special, amazing bit of land away with one hand and gave it back to them with the other.
The children of Xinaliq, when they grow up, head for Europe. A couple of years working in a factory in Germany amounts to a serious career. Or on a building site in America. The family gives every penny it makes, whether from tea, carpet-making, wool-spinning, or selling lamb and mutton, to whoever is the best student. Xinaliq has an excellent school and in the nearby town of Quba the youngsters can study English. They then leave their country, returning only when they have made their fortune. They set down the plasma TV by the Persian divan covered in twenty layers of blankets and hang their first smartphone by the framed photo of the uncle who fell in Karabakh. In this way is their ancient, thousand-year-old house of stone made idyllically modern. The plasma TV in the carpeted lounge shows us, during lunch, news of the war: oil, oil, oil. Nothing matters but who owns the wells. A basin in the yard, fine-smelling rooms, a lounge. Exemplary order.
The Stones and Poets of Xinaliq
Even in Soviet times, Xinaliq was inaccessible during winter, while in other seasons it took several weeks to reach – on horseback. The new asphalt road we had just come on was built by the state not long ago, simply because during his 2006 visit head of state Aliyev had been profoundly impressed by the rich, age-old culture of Xinaliq, the beauty of the landscape—and, not least, their “backwardness.” This is the land of ancient fire-worshippers, Christians and Muslims of old. What we see takes our breath away, as we stand and stare open-mouthed: an astonishing mountain range with crags, yellow and brown, jagged mountain terraces, ridges trailing off into infinity, and deserted terraces many hundreds of years old meet our gaze when we reach the top of the village. At times the bus can barely manage, even though it has four-wheel drive. A hazy yellow light, brownish meadows. The rocky mountain range is crisscrossed by the nomadic herdsmen’s footpaths leading to the mountain peaks.
Flocks of sheep on the mountainsides, or gallows for the slaughtered sheep’s blood to drip into the dugout ditch and the fresh flesh is covered in woven blankets. Ladas, KAMAZ trucks, donkeys. Walking along the terraced houses’ roofs made of rocks and, in places, dried manure, we reach the oldest mosque in the village. There’s a museum here, too, where books of Xinaliq poetry are on sale—in Russian translation. I read a few of the poems, moving and rich in metaphorical imagery about their natural surroundings, radiating a pure optimism, feelings measured out with great judiciousness. Late romanticism, nothing kitschy, no trace of folksiness. Rather, they are written according to some unconventional principle; they have nothing in common with European poetry, and that’s the best thing about them.
The Pillow-Filling Woman
I peel off from the group, because, all of a sudden, my eyes are drawn to a slim woman in a shawl on one of the terraces. She is hunkered down, a switch in hand, swishing repeatedly with her arm, concentrating so hard that her eyes are almost closed, nothing disturbs her, every blow must be accurate; at the very least she is pretending I am not there. She has selected the sheepskins, and then, using a switch to flatten the hairs, separates them out and makes them ever thinner. I settle down beside her and ask if I can take a picture of her at work. She nods her assent.
Photograph by Noémi Kiss
I can sense that—unlike the seller of the knitted slippers or the shawl-maker—she doesn't want to talk. She is beating the wool hairs, and as she lifts the switch, it flicks back, grazing her cheek or lips, there are wounds and streaks of blood on her face where it does so. Even the skin below her earlobes is bleeding. As if ashamed, though she isn’t really, she turns away completely, and while I don’t want to disturb her, she seems—I feel—to enjoy the fact that someone is interested in her work, the monotonous task of making bedclothes for hours on end on the village street, squatting, or on all fours, exposed to all and sundry.
The pillow-filling woman, that’s what I call her; the skin on her face is very beautiful, not even the wounds make any difference, they will heal, she pays them no heed. Now I see that she is quite young, as slim as the long, flattened-out hairs that she proceeds to pull out with her hands to fill the colorful pillows. It’s a big job, it takes all day. Movements many thousands of years old. Silent work, woman’s work, unseen by all. The pillow-filling woman smiles when I say goodbye. Never has anyone allowed me to look at them in this way; never have I conversed with anyone in such sympathetic silence.
Lagging far behind the others, I ask the kids where the mosque is, they gladly point the way. The mosque is a spacious, new building; religion has once again become important, but they don’t indulge to excess, there aren’t that many worshippers. After this we enter the home of one of the more affluent herdsmen. We are given lunch here, and not just any old lunch either, but several courses, the main one being roast lamb. As a rule, a house is shared by four generations. The rooms smell nice. The two-story building has a kitchen.
A modern plasma TV in the carpeted lounges, a bed in the corner, although they tend to sit and sleep on the carpet. During the day they put away the blankets and duvets—ten stories of duvets lie piled high in the corner. We eat in the lounge, sitting comfortably on the carpet. On the wall, behind the TV, the picture of the brother killed in the Armenian war. The washbasin and toilet are outside in the courtyard, by the wall, next to the drying manure that forms the fence around the house. As always in Azerbaijan, lunch begins with lamb soup. And cucumber, paprika, tomato and pitta bread. Some have diarrhea the next day, but we were prepared, with vodka as a disinfectant.
The Fire Sanctum in the Meadow
I have never seen a village like Xinaliq, nor could I have, as it is one of the highest, most isolated and mysticism-shrouded settlements in the world. The culture is some five millennia old, though the details can only be guessed. Situated within its fortress-like walls are both a mosque and a shrine to fire-worship. But there is also a shrine of some sort visible in the meadow up above. The shrines are maintained by an ancient devotion to folk religion, the official church being more like window-dressing, at least that’s how I felt in the Muslim mosque.
There are currently 2,000 people living in this village, in the 380 houses that remain; that’s the number of families living on the mountain. The houses cling spectacularly to the mountain and to each other. They must be some two to three hundred years old and are constantly being renovated. At the moment they are being converted into garages, as the recently completed road is bringing more and more cars this way and the families can indeed allow themselves the luxury of buying one, as at present they can still park on the roofs that comprise the road, or in the chicken yard, by the walls of dried manure.
The inhabitants address us either in Azeri or in Russian, many are elderly, former Soviet soldiers sitting in front of their houses, glad if we are prepared to pass the time of day with them. I take pictures of them and they let us move on only reluctantly—as if such a photograph was a much sought-after event, bringing to life their faded glory. Where are we from, they inquire. Hungary, we reply. They immediately ask about Budapest. Oh, what a wonderful city, they exclaim. And point skyward. I lower my eyes. Why not, actually; I like Budapest, it’s just that Budapest doesn’t always like me.
Photograph by Noémi Kiss
It is indeed easy to chat with these folk, worth all the gesturing and almost standing on one’s head to communicate. For there are many in the village who speak neither Russian nor Azeri, while no one else in the world speaks Xinaliq and that is their greatest treasure: their language. It is no accident that when, during World War II, the Germans wanted a secret language in which to transmit their messages, their choice fell on Xinaliq. The veterans sit around in the café in Xinaliq (which also serves as the local theatre), playing backgammon. They too ask where we are from and when we explain, break into howls of laughter, they can barely stop, there is nothing natural about the movement of their jaws, the pained laughter is a political outburst, this place’s way of mocking. “We are big friends with the Hungarians now. Aliyev is just putting up all the decorations he got from the Hungarian prime minister on his wall. But the wall is about to fall down.” The Caucasus is a tearoom where a thousand different languages can be collected. The people in this isolated village in the mountains speak languages just as unusual as those of the Jews of Quba. But the latter would address us in Juhuri. Salaam and shalom.
Among the Mountain Jews of Quba
The town of Quba in the north of Azerbaijan is bisected by the Kudyal River. On one bank of the Kudyal lies the famous quarter of the Mountain Jews. Still living here is one of the biggest Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union. We are in the seat of the former khans of Quba, which lies on a rich commercial route that had its heyday in the eighteenth century, before it came under Russian dominion.
Groups of Jews are thought to have arrived here from Persia in pre-Islamic times (their arrival is dated to the fifth century, but some sources suggest a time as early as the Babylonian captivity). They first settled in Dagestan, then wandered further south, establishing trading posts. Their way of life and their distinctive language, Juhuri is still vital to their culture and customs as ancient, orthodox Mountain Jews. The Nazi occupiers were initially unsure whether to regard this curious Caucasian people as Jews, then in 1943 they too fell victim to the Holocaust. The German army sent several thousand Caucasian Jews to Mozdok, Bogdanovka, and Menzhinskoye, and many of them died. Recently, a memorial was built in Quba, financed by merchant families from the Jewish quarter, to honor the memory of those who were deported. Though several thousand families emigrated to Israel in the 1970s, the Jewish quarter of Quba remains to this day a flourishing, cohesive community and important cultural center, with houses of prayer, shops, mikvahs, tea houses, baths, and schools. More merchant’s houses are being restored every year, and new ones, too, are being built, some looking like enormous oriental palazzos: the Caucasian Jews’ houses cast a dark shadow over the narrow, winding streets. Palazzos of stone alternate with Soviet model houses; oriental ornaments, Azerbaijani and Russian figures look down on us from the stone walls.
Arriving on Friday evening, we set off for evening prayers in the newly refurbished synagogue. It’s still early: on the way we stop off in the tea house and are made very welcome. There are only men sitting at the tables, just as only men go to synagogue. Men and boys: on Friday night and all-day Saturday we see not a single girl; only on the hospital terraces are there a few women sitting around as staff join the patients in the former maternity hospital and enjoy a cigarette. The older men playing backgammon in the tea house have excellent Russian and tell stories as they play. One even knows German, having spent twelve years working in a social home in Frankfurt. He is called Mr Hanuka, and answers our every question patiently. In Quba today, there are two active synagogues. The next day, on the road leading out of the town, we come across an enormous Jewish cemetery on the mountainside. Thick vegetation covers the cemetery’s gravestones, and dogs keep guard, but we venture inside, nonetheless. The graves decorated with photographs from the beginning of the century are clearly visible, with Hebrew inscriptions, some with Soviet symbols, just like in the well-known cemetery at Czernowitz. Red stars and yellow stars of David.
We crisscross the Jewish quarter. The houses are as varied as the formal variety of the Jewish images, some trimmed with tin, others with gold. There are rich merchant’s houses in the quarter’s main street, many of whose owners have gone away and they stand empty. Empty, but waiting for their owners to return and when they do come back, from Israel, the houses fill with life. It’s just that there are now some houses whose owners will never return.
Our local guide tells us that the Jews of Quba today are still well-off merchants, and building houses remains important to them even if they no longer live in them. They have always lived in impressive palazzos that preserve characteristic features of local Jewish architecture. There are numerous Persian elements, decorative motifs of the former khans’ palaces and seraglios. We wander off the main street.
To me the single-story, middle-class buildings here are of greater interest, because it is easier to make out the geological strata of the buildings, Jewish motifs mixing with Soviet ones, as well as Soviet ones with Azerbaijani and Turkic ones, the various additions to the buildings thus illustrating with sharp clarity the history of their inhabitants. In virtually all the smaller flats I can see both children and great-grandmothers: several generations live together. On Friday nights they fill the synagogues and even those in kindergarten can pray fluently in the language of the Torah.
Five Fingers
On our third day we again set off from Baku, again heading for the mountains. Breakfast is splendid: muesli and toast, but also dates, figs, olives, even though the staff don’t really have time to make us omelets: the waitress is also just having her breakfast, reading the newspaper the while, afterwards doing the crossword, until her chess partner arrives. A view of the sea from the breakfast room, patches of oil visible on the shore of the Caspian, reeking of salty vapor. The dictatorial eyes of President Ilham Aliyev have us in their sights once again. I can hardly wait to get off the government radar.
While Baku is ghost city and Disneyland rolled into one, it is the countryside, the foothills of the mountains and the steppes that provide the more wrinkled face of the country. Ultimately the face also has attached to it a neck, a body, arms, and fingers. And, of course, guns and goats. War with the Armenians. The 2015 European Games in Baku, a militant passion for sport. Rangy men, in a few places still the Soviet vehicles of old, followed by the latest Mercedes SUVs. Women sturdily built but tucked away. Beshawled, at home, washing and ironing. Or working in a factory. In Azerbaijan, religion does not shape personalities, nor does the harmless presence of Islam interfere with daily life, although here, too, there are visible attempts, with (Qatari) mosques, as once in atheist-communist Albania. For the moment, the mosques lie empty.
We make our way across yellow, dried-out, rocky desert. Olive trees, thorny thistles amid the sea of rock, and with the diminishing of the plant cover more and more birds of prey circle above us as we approach the local place of pilgrimage in the mountains. With the end of summer here comes a severe drought. Merchants, grocers, and sellers of honey cakes, lamb, and mutton follow in our wake. Everyone is offering something to sell, you can buy silk and carpets in the coffeehouse, even if there is nothing in the middle of the floor but a bathtub.
Our destination is Five Finger Mountain, otherwise called the Beşbarmaq. This is where the mountains of the Caucasus meet the sea. Five Finger Mountain is the Azerbaijani Muslims’ place of pilgrimage. Barren women climb the barren cliffs of the holy mountain to beseech a blessing. In the house of religion hidden among the rocks they touch the five fingers, the symbols of fertility. Then they pray, on their knees. Meanwhile, they also receive blessings from a woman mediator. We can leave renewed in body and soul, because the aura of this place is so powerful and it is located at such a great height that climbing the cliffs is in itself a considerable ordeal: teetering on the steps of the gorge we slither upwards, as it were, to the holy hall perched on the mountain top.
Climbing the cliffs and holy rocks is a serious test of our mettle, and to cap it all, amidst the rocks there, wait prophetesses and beggars who bombard us with either curses or blessings, depending on our attitude towards them. I immediately give them money, fearing their moustaches and bent backs, their dark, threatening eyes. By way of exchange they have a feel of me, smoothing my arms down with a piece of stone, summoning Allah to succor me. I have to turn around, several times, on the spot, and they rub the stone against my stomach. One prophetess rakes her fingers through my hair. Their palms are warm; it feels good. I distribute the Azeri manat notes assiduously. I stop by almost every one of them.
When we get back down, they are slaughtering a sheep again, its blood is flowing into a ditch, the flies lap it up; the animal is skinned and roasted immediately. The shashlik is roasting and the water for the Azerbaijani tea is boiling. How at once idyllic and savage this image seems: chasing away the evil spirits of infertility at the foothills of the mountain with roast meat! Meanwhile, enormous birds of prey wheel around above the welter of rubbish that the pilgrims have left behind. The sheep lick melon rinds, the donkeys graze, the dwarf horses well capable of climbing the mountain are waiting for new visitors.
One group of young people is dancing an Azerbaijani jig and we clap for them enthusiastically. When he sees us, our driver gets up from his deckchair, obliged to interrupt his day spent on his smartphone at least until he starts the engine. The rocks of the Caucasus glitter brightly from the windows of the plane as we leave behind this wonder-filled land, whose marvels reside in its cliffs, high up in the mountains. The ridges of the Georgian Caucasus, too, come into view. That’s my next trip.
