From the balcony, I could see the kittens were awake and The Flame Towers cold and silent. Sara had flu symptoms, (had she come down with The Flov?), so she stayed in while I went out to explore for a few hours. At 7am, the day was already bright and hot. I took the opposite way from the previous day, just to see what would happen to me.
Nice little walk over clean streets and through well-tended parks. Every few blocks there's another public space and seven people sweeping it with a branch broom or hosing patches of grass. This city sure employs a lot of maintenance workers. It was Monday, so back to work for everyone. Men and women dressed in their office clothes began to turn up on the corners or spill out of buses.
Their leather shoes gliding on marble sidewalks, their sunglasses reflecting the high stone walls of the proud old buildings. Past fountains and plazas, under bell towers and into the cool of the underpass, I was at the gates of the Old City. The signs call it the Icherisheher, which looks to me like a pronoun soup or a German expressing gender confusion.
High walls and turrets, it's picturesque as all hell. I stopped for breakfast in an adjacent square, just in the shadow of the giant guitar of the Hard Rock - Baku. The only one there, I was treated to exaggerated service, but the meal was served in an almost sarcastic order. Ah, you must be thirsty. Here is nothing for a while, but now here is dry bread. Still thirsty? Your cares are at an end, I have brought you withered black olives; their flesh is quite dry. Ah, I hear by the click in your voice your thirst has yet to be slaked. Perhaps some aged and crumbling cheese will do the trick.
Eventually, there were cucumbers from which I could extract some moisture. Sucking from them, I felt like a moth fluttering on a wet towel. Then the tea arrived. I sat and read for a spell, a journalist's diary about Azerbaijan in the 90s. They fought a pretty hot war with Armenia. I was oblivious to it at the time. The atrocities in Bosnia during those same years stole all the headlines.
Gist was, when the Soviets left, they stirred up ethnic unrest and old border disputes, then dumped their abandoned military equipment on top of it. It's kind of like an unwanted guest leaving your home after a very long dinner and him saying, "By the way, your neighbor is sleeping with your wife. Good night. Oh, I seem to have dropped my rifle on your lawn. No time to pick it up. I'm sure someone will find a use for it. Well, good bye."
Long walk around the perimeter of the Icherisheher on a boulevard lined with expensive boutiques. Normally one would have to be in an airport to see such brands, but here they were! Salvatore Ferrogamo! Chalumet! To my left was a busy avenue and beyond that, a manicured boardwalk, and beyond that... the hungry sturgeon-stoked waves of the Caspian Sea!
Further still, until at last I returned to the fountain of St. George the Dentist. Happy little square ringed with benches, but all had direct exposure to the sun. With one exception. I made my way over to behold a hardy little street cat had found it first. The darling thing was all a'curl and all a'stretch in the one cool spot in the whole plaza. Finders Keepers. I sat next to him, my skull in the sun, and read some more. The pages were blinding white.
I had chosen this area, because it was one Sara knew, and we had agreed if she were well enough, she would meet me here shortly before noon. So I breathed in the lake breeze and adjusted my eyes and read very peacefully. Bench Kitty lolled and flexed and unflexed his little paws. Eventually, a toothless old woman came up to join us.
I wished her "Salaam," and she salaamed back. She made noises and gestures I interpreted to mean, "Is this your sweet cat?" I said no, and she started hitting Bench Kitty with her beaded purse, trying to scrape and slap him off the bench. I was, of course, startled and... disregulated by this.
But Bench Kitty held his own. He was like, "Bitch, you better bring more than this tired old clutch if you want to dislodge my streetwise ass. Why don't you turn your nonageneric rump around, hobble on over to Salvatore Ferragamo, and buy yourself a briefcase. You want to fuck with Bench Kitty, you're going to need a real bag, honey. And, bitch? Bitch? It better be leather."
I had stood up by this point and she took my spot, content with the half-shade and accepting of her defeat. I sat in the full sun and crisped up and waited. Sure enough, not long after, down the stairs came Sara. Still a little sniffly but game for action. We took the underpass to the seaside and found ourselves a little tea house.
There were some amusing attractions nearby. A deeply weird stadium shaped like.. a flower...maybe?A giant carpet museum designed to look like an enormous rolled-up carpet, and a sweet little gondola ride where you could punt along a narrow track under willows and palms.
Our tea boy was manic and amusing. He ran the whole place, sometimes literally running to a nearby kiosk for supplies, while his mother smoked at an inside table. She wore heavy eye shadow and played solitaire with the previous days receipts. The tea was very good. All the guide books made a point of saying Azerbaijan is a tea culture and not a coffee culture.
Coffee, the Azeri say, is strictly for the Turks. Goodness, darling, coffee? Oh, it's just too too Turkish, isn't it? No, darling, let's us have tea, shall we? There's a darling.
Long, leisurely tea in the cool sturgeon-stooked breeze. We talked about our careers and plans. Oil wives enjoyed lunch together next to us and a social media influencer from Tajikistan made a video of himself putting sugar in his drink. Perhaps this is a revolutionary act back in Dushanbe.
We paid, and I imagined the smoky-eyed mother adding our bill to her card game. We strolled along the seaside, admiring the yachts in the harbor and the turbaned Persians relaxing on shady boardwalk benches. A fountain with abstract swans drew a lot of attention.
Finding ourselves at the metro station, we figured out the fare-card system and got down in the thing. It was nothing compared to the cavernous Kiev Metro, but few can match its matchless depths or its balrog train conductors. We found it clean with wood-paneled cars and minimal advertising. To our great delight, each stop had its own little tune. The PA would tinkle out a unique leitmotif at each station. It was like riding in Mr. Rogers' trolley!
When we heard the notes that meant Nariman Narimanov station, we got off.
This was the closest stop to the Heydar Aliyev center, a bizarre architectural bizarreity. Named after the dude who served as president and helped Azerbaijan assert its independence in those rocky post-Soviet years. He was former KGB and kind of a tough-guy.
That diary I've been reading doesn't have kind things to say about him, but.... Heydars gonna hate! He made the musical metros run on time, and now he has a weird-ass building.
It looked to Sara like a dress discarded by a robot, and once she explained why I could totally see it. We circled it, happily snapping pictures and muttering how strange the whole thing was. A bright, clear day.
It's supposed to be equally bizarre inside, but it was closed for... Labor Day? An enterprising cab driver went up to everyone with a camera saying, "Closed, closed! Open tomorrow, 11am! Today closed! But I take you two museums! Two museums open, Heydar closed!"
He had an enormous mole in his neck, almost like one of the Frankenstein monster's bolts. I waved him away, but after a few more pictures, we decided it was time to go home, so I called Persian Karloff back and asked him to take us to the Flame Towers and home. His son was with him, so they tossed the kid's tricycle in the front and the four of us roared flameward.
The kid stood in the car the whole time, draped across the barrier between driver and passengers. He was probably four or five years old and he's going to know the Streets of Baku by the time he's six.
Home, we rested. I wrote a little and Sara napped. I showered and we went back out in the dark for dinner and cold medicine. It's been a great delight for us to see the mother and father of the kittens take turns with childcare. Equitable darlings.
Long walk with mad dashes across busy highways, sometimes to discover no sidewalk on the other side. Baku should probably fire one street sweeper and replace her with someone who can paint a fuckin' crosswalk. Spirit of Heydar Aliyev, if you can hear us.. paint a crosswalk!
Grilled meats at a restaurant in a cute urban neighborhood that was kind of like a lazy Berlin. There were a lot of people out, strolling, playing volleyball in the park. It was very nice, and the "meat on the coals" was very good. A man played a tiny saxophone to the accompaniment of a goofy pre-programmed synthesizer.
Sara wheedled some nose spray, some kind of Turkish Afrin, out of a sympathetic apothecary, and we headed home. A long day with many faces of the city on display. And just as we were getting a sense of urban life, it was time to abandon it. In the morning, we would head for the mountains.
Your cares are at an end. Salaam, bitch! Meow!
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