Going to Azerbaijan !

2007-08-03T05:08:00.001-07:00

I wrote a new article about Azerbaijan, please read it here.

Baku Spring 2007

2007-06-26T16:54:00.001-07:00

Baku...Baku...Azerbaijan...truly one of the world's great cities...here's a few photo snaps I took on a short trip there earlier this year. I urge you, if you get a chance to pop over there, don't miss it.

Roya - article about singing sensation

2007-01-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

In case you might've missed it, I wrote a nice piece on the Azeri singing sensation Roya for a British publication called The First Post. Have a look at it here.

Baku City - a great place

2007-01-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Canadian Jewish News Article

2006-12-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

The current edition of the Canadian Jewish News contains an article I wrote about Azerbaijan. It is not on their website, but it's prominent in the print edition. Here it is.

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Predominantly Shiite Muslim Azerbaijan cultivates its Jewish connections

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

For those following the recent conflicts in Israel, it might come as a surprise that some of Israel’s best friends are Shiite Muslims.

Since it split from the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan – where about three of four are Shiites - has developed a rich friendship with Israel.

The relationship was born in 1992 when Israel supported Azerbaijan against Armenia in the Karabakh War, a territorial conflict following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The war killed an estimated 20,000 and Armenia currently occupies about 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories.

Israel has since continued to provide intelligence, security and military training to Azerbaijan, as part of a Israel-Turkey-Azerbaijan alliance roughly pitted against an Armenia-Russia-Iran axis.

The Jews and the Shiites also do much business. Israel’s Backcell is the second-largest cell-phone operator in the country of eight million and just one of many Israeli businesses doing brisk trade in the nation at the foot of the Caucasus. The recent opening of the BTC pipeline allows Azerbaijani oil to flow from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, a supply that helps secure Israel’s vulnerable energy supply from political interruption.

Although its citizens are Muslim, Azerbaijan might be the most secular Muslim country, likely a result of 70 years of Soviet atheism. The main streets of Baku are full of women sporting trendy skintight western fashions and nowhere can be seen a veil or any other religious clothing. Those who climb atop Baku’s famous ancient Maiden Tower might be hard-pressed to find more than a couple of minarets on the skyline.

On a recent visit to the country, I found myself at a picnic table overlooking the Caspian discussing Azerbaijan’s politics with a half dozen Azerbaijani professionals. The men proceeded with their customary lunchtime ritual - unscrewing a large bottle of Azeri vodka and proceeding with the first of countless salutary toasts.

We drank to Canada and Phil Esposito’s performance in the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series. We feast on a sumptuous spread of fresh fruits, fried sturgeon and fatty mutton kebab.

While such Azerbaijanis consider themselves a solid member of the Muslim brotherhood of nations, they are thoroughly committed to having a fully western state.

None seem tempted by the overtures of their co-religionists in neighbouring Iran, a country that has long wooed Azerbaijan into the orthodox fold. Many Azerbaijanis remain mistrustful of Iran, a country, which has forbidden its own Azeri minority to attend school in their own Turkish-like language. Iranian support for Armenia during the Karabakh war was also seen as a stinging insult.

Iran continues to attempt to dissuade Azerbaijan’s from the Israeli orbit. In August 2004 Iran offered Azerbaijan major concessions in a dispute over oil rights. In return it requested that Azerbaijan cut military ties with Israel.

Iran’s efforts to cultivate Azerbaijan’s bitter rival, Armenia, have been more successful. In 2002 the US State Department accused the Armenia of helping Iran develop its nuclear program.

Azerbaijan’s link with its Jewish community goes beyond modern diplomatic necessity. Just 25 kilometers from the seaside picnic table where we raised too many glasses sits Krasnaya Sloboda, home to an estimated 4,000 Mountain Jews, or Tats as they’re known. The history of the Jewish hill town is debated, but it’s believed to have sprung up over 15-centuries ago. Iranian Jews settled there in the 17 th century.

The area was once a stronghold in the Khazar Empire, the only Jewish state in history outside of Israel. The Khazars originated when a nomadic tribal leader named Khagan converted to Judaism in order to avoid having to choose between the Byzantine Greek Christians in the southwest and the Kievan Rus barbarians in the North.

In a recent visit to the Mountain Jews of Krasnaya Sloboda, best-selling Jewish-American author Gary Shteyngart, whose roots are in the region, described “the incredible prosperity of the place.” Meanwhile French historian Marek Halter’s historical novel The Winds of the Khazars, offers a spellbinding historical conjecture about the roots of the Jewish past in the region.

Some religious historians suggest that Zoroastrianism inspired many key elements of Judaism, which is one of the world’s first monotheistic faiths. Zoroastrianism originated in Azerbaijan and was inspired by the fires that shoot from the soil in the country, a phenomena that the Zoroastrians consider a divine symbol.

Another connection between the Azeris and Jews was explored in one of last year’s hottest titles. Tom Reiss’s The Orientalist explores the rich traditions of Jewish-Azeri relations through the tale of Baku novelist Lev Nussinbaum who became a literary hero in Azerbaijan in the 1930s.

Israel has an Embassy in Azerbaijan (although Canada does not) and the two frequently declare friendship and cooperation deals. Yet Azerbaijan also lines up among other Muslim countries to speak up for the Palestinians.

The complex diplomatic web might seem impossible to other nations but Azerbaijan has faced such demands for centuries. This country at the crossroads of Asia and Europe has seen just about every civilization pass through. Even Vikings hung their horned helmets in Azerbaijan, as proven by Gobustan’s ancient petroglyphs. The popular petroglyphs, perhaps only eclipsed as a tourist site by the nearby and highly bizarre mud volcanoes, depicts ancient drawings scratched into rock by onetime Viking residents.

Some say that the Vikings have returned in the form of rowdy British Petroleum oil workers whose pubs are now a fixture in Baku, a booming-yet-picturesque hilly city full of winding streets, classical mansion, discos, museums and leafy parks.

Azerbaijan’s geography and precious petroleum resources has led it to suffer much political manipulation, as regional superpowers such as Iran and Russia have played diplomatic chess in the oil-rich region.

Even Hitler hungered for control of the country. In a famous newsreel, Hitler is shown eating from a cake baked in the shape of the country, lustily swallowing the piece marked Baku. Alas, the Nazis would never gain control of the area to the delight of the many Jews who moved there to flee the Holocaust.

All this occurred as before modern offshore oil extraction has allowed one million tonnes of crude to be sucked daily from the Caspian, sent north to Tbilisi, Georgia and finally to tankers on the Mediterranean at Ceyhan Turkey, where the crude is loaded on tankers and shipped onwards to Israel and other countries beyond.

The pipeline is fast turning Azerbaijan into a Kuwait of the Caspian, as an estimated $150 billion will flow to Azerbaijan over the next two decades, big money to a country where many war refugees have been living in train cars and pensioners exist on paltry pensions of $30 (US) a month.

The BTC is good news for Israel, which like most of Europe, has faced serious energy supply vulnerabilities. In May, visiting Israel MP Joseph Shagal even suggested that the BTC be extended from Turkey to Ashegelon City in Israel. The fuel that courses through the giant underground vein should offer a chance for Israel to survive any threat of politically-inspired oil blockade

After chatting about the complex politics at the Caspian-side picnic, our van headed south along the main highway to Baku, home to 11,000 of the country’s 16,000 Jews. We passed Five Finger Mountain. Myth has it that it’s the hand of a hero who conquered a monster that had blocked the water supply. Our driver stopped at a mosque to give alms for the needy, undoubtedly asking Allah for a bit of safety on the trip down the two lane two-direction road.

In Baku, construction cranes dot every horizon but Muslim traditions and tendencies are well-hidden. After days of people watching on the bustling streets, I didn’t spot a single burka.

I drop into a language school where thousands of young Azeris learn English. Under the Soviets, all Azerbaijanis were conversant in their language as well as Russian; many are now also learning English.

The school’s principal Senan Huseynov, who also serves in a variety of foreign relations government posts, expresses optimism about Azerbaijan’s ability to get along with all sides. “We have very good relations with Israel, we are also proud to have normal relations with Iran. All this is impossible for other countries,” he says, adding that “many of the Azerbaijani Jews who moved to Israel following independence have been moving back. They missed it too much here.”

Huseynov dreams of seeing Azerbaijan become a new Switzerland – a country of comparable geographic size and population – and eventually join the European Union. In its efforts to impress the EU, Azerbaijan has appointed many opposition party members to government committees and it has agreed to place its oil profits into a transparent fund.

Although I don’t manage to track down a Jew in Baku, the words of my Toronto-based friend Fema Gelman rings in my ears throughout my trip. Gelman, a bear-like Jewish jazz bassist from Baku – a country produces poets and jazz musicians the way Toronto produces stockbrokers and accountants – often speaks with a melancholy tone that only disappears when talking about Azerbaijan. “The Seaside! The food! Delicious! The beaches! The women! Beautiful! You go! You will love it!”

He was right. I have a hunch that he might be one of the Jews that eventually returns, too.

How to speak Azeri

2006-12-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

Here's your first lesson on speaking Azeri, it will come in handy on your next visit to beautiful Azerbiajan.

My visit to Azerbaijan

2006-11-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a movie I made describing my impressions of Azerbaijan, turn up the sound so you can hear my narrative.

My fabulous trip to Azerbaijan on Vimeo

Azerbaijani refugees forced from homes by Armenian aggression

2006-11-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the faces of the people who have been forced to live in refugee camps since they lost their homes to Armenian military aggression in the early 1990s. The saddest part might be the photo of the nine year old boy living in the train car since birth, he looks particularly undernourished. Please contact your elected rep to urge him or her to pressure Armenia to withdraw its troops from Azerbaijani soil, so these people can return to their normal lives in their homes.

Beauties salute Azerbaijan

2006-10-30T12:42:00.000-08:00

I did my best to promote cultural ties between Canada and Azerbaijan. Thanks to the wonderful people at the Miss Exotika pageant who modeled here in an effort promote ties between two great countries.

New Azerbaijan Tourism Video

2006-10-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have been told that this new Azerbaijan tourism video will be played on CNN. I find it pretty good, although I only wish there were a few more shots of Baku, ie: Fountain Square, the Maiden Tower and Shirvanshah's Palace, but then I'm a city boy. Take a peek, it's pretty good.

Hands off my car!

2006-10-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

The reality TV show craze has hit Azerbaijan hard and it could be ruining the country's work ethic. For some unknown reason the Mashin Show (translated: The Car) runs for an hour every night starting at 1 a.m. but it has no shortage of viewers and audience members, leading much of the country's exhausted workforce to spend their days discussing the program at the water cooler. Host Murad Dadashov watches over 13 young people - including some celebrities - among which is the irrepressible Roya. The rules are simple. You have to keep their hands on a car all day long. They return to a hotel at night and start anew in the morning. No bathroom breaks, nothing. Every episode one person gets voted off. The winner gets to keep the Nissan Sunny, worth about $15 k. Our fave, Roya managed to to make it to the final three before simply tossing it in, she said matter of factly, "I miss home. I have a car, so I'm leaving." Roya seemed relatively sane but the producers had to bleep out a lot of her cusswords and her sudden voluntary departure was seen as unfair to those who had tried to stay on, including rising star Ilhama Guliyeva.

The final two contestants were a comedian named Joshgun from Sumgait and a TV host named Turan. We were hoping Joshgun will walk away with the keys. But alas Turan won. Happy motoring big guy!

The same producers already have produced two seasons of another reality show called Gafas, ie: The Cage in which a dozen contestants between 18 and 30 live in a house together and the winner bags 50 million manat (about $11,000 US). There was a lot of people screaming at each other, so it was not as good as Mashin. Roya hosted the first season, but she was away in Turkey for the second, so it wasn't as good. They're hoping to make a third season but it's still not sure whether it'll be back.

More Steph Ly

2006-10-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a little more Stephanie Ly for you because ...well...when was the last time you saw a supermodel in a Baku T-shirt?

Superstar Stephanie Ly's Baku T-shirt

2006-10-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Canadian supermodel Stephanie Ly visited Montreal over the weekend and I dropped by to meet her with my excellent brother JD who snapped some fantastic photo snaps.

We took a shine to Steph
for a whole bunch of reasons 1-She's one of the sweetest, most level-headed people you'll ever meet. 2-She completed studies as an accountant and has a sharp mind and an excellent profession. 3-She has deftly managed a career that is exploding like Kim Il's nuclear hobby, her website is huge and she's got 70,000 friends (ask her for an add). Steph tells us that she's planning on possibly getting into television and we'd love to see her on our TVs.

Steph is not going to be marching the streets of Azerbaijan quite yet...her schedule is jammed for the next little while, but she's keen on one day visiting the legendary and mysterious Maiden Tower, leafy Fountain Square, the hilly, twisting streets of Old Baku as well as some of the famous mountain towns and Caspian seasides of Azerbaijan, which all combine to make Azerbaijan the most mysterious and captivating adventure for travellers anywhere. Until she can visit in person, Steph sends her love and greetings to Azeris everywhere.

Azeris in Iran

2006-10-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

Nice article published here today in Montreal about Saleh Ildirim, an Azeri TV host on Gunaz TV. Good work by the writer, if I do say so myself.
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Agitator on the airwaves
A Montrealer is one of Iran's most controversial figures, inspiring protests from afar

KRISTIAN GRAVENOR, Freelance
Published: Sunday, October 15, 2006

In downtown Montreal, there lives a refugee who has sewn leather, driven cabs and managed restaurants since fleeing Iran in 1985. But no employment prepared Saleh Ildirim for his current vocation as one of Iran's most controversial TV personalities.

Appearing on Gunaz TV, Ildirim pushes for the rights of Iran's Azeri population to be allowed to study in the Azeri language and to enjoy an open Azeri media. Ultimately, he wants Azeri independence.

In May, he helped organize a series of political demonstrations that saw thousands of Azeris take to the streets in Iran to protest against the Tehran regime. Anywhere from zero to 50 protesters were killed, depending on whether you believe Iranian authorities or Azeri nationalists. Many others were imprisoned or injured.

And Ildirim played a key role in the events - from a comfortable television studio in Chicago.

That's where the nationalistic Gunaz TV is based, entering Iranian homes on a European satellite uplink that the government in Tehran is powerless to block. Ildirim, 47, travels to Chicago for a few days at a time, where he'll sit broadcasting for hours. He also participates by phone from Montreal.

Ildirim, a wiry, clean-shaven atheist who talks in the staccato speech common in northwest Iran, admits to some misgivings about leading ethnic unrest from afar.

"It's hard. I feel pressure. My friends are dying over there and I'm just talking."

He said he recently found himself listed on a website of people targeted for assassination by Hezbollah's military wing.

"All this gives me more responsibility and it makes me more dedicated. But everything has a price and I'm ready to pay."

Ildirim said he would give up his life for the cause. "If I went to Iran, I would be executed on the first day," he said. "But if my political party asks me to go, I will go."

His plan is to return during an Azeri revolution. "Until then, I will go into Iran every day but through the TV."

At least one in four Iranians is an Azeri. The community numbers between 17 million and 30 million. Azeris share the Shiite Muslim faith with the predominant Persians, but speak a language similar to Turkish, identical to that spoken in the neighbouring republic of Azerbaijan.

As a youth, Ildirim fought for the overthrow of the shah, but renounced the Islamic revolution when the new regime refused to grant more autonomy to the Azeri north. When his opposition forced him into hiding, his penniless mother pawned her jewellery to buy him a counterfeit passport. Ildirim travelled to Turkey, where he was recognized as a UN refugee.

Ildirim has never returned to Iran, neither to attend his parents' funeral, nor that of his two younger brothers who died under mysterious circumstances in the 1990s.

He said Iranian police have recently been provided DVDs of his Gunaz TV appearances. "They are looking for me. I can't even approach Iran. Even here in Montreal, I have no security."

Ildirim dreams of Iran's northernmost eight provinces gaining independence or joining with Azerbaijan, a secular, oil-rich democracy of 8 million with close ties to the West. He is a spokesperson for the South Azerbaijan Independence Party.
"We've seen Vietnam reunite and Germany reunite. Now it's time for North and South Azerbaijan to reunite as well," he said.

Gunaz TV was launched in Chicago by fellow Azeri Iranian Ahmad Obali in April 2005. Iran allows no Azeri-language television, but any Azeri there with a satellite dish can hear Gunaz's political and cultural programming 24 hours a day.

"We have no way of knowing how many are watching Gunaz, but every home in northern Iran with a dish can watch it," Ildirim said. "And just about everybody there has one."

Telephone calls to the station from within Iran are blocked, so those calling the many Gunaz TV call-in shows must first dial a number in Europe, which then forwards calls to the station in Chicago.

On May 7, Ildirim and Gunaz TV decided to organize a rare demonstration critical of the Iranian government, a regime that does not smile on public protests.

The protest was set for May 22 at the Tabriz Bazaar, where the justice minister of a short-lived Tabriz-based independent Azeri government was hanged 60 years earlier.

Ildirim appeared on Gunaz TV for up to six hours at a time, urging Azeris to attend the protest and chant slogans such as: "Azerbaijan is awake and assuming its identity," "Hooray, hooray, we are Turks" and "Free the Azeri national prisoners."

Events took an unexpected turn on May 12, when a political cartoon appeared in the government-run newspaper Iran, portraying a cockroach repeating the word "namana?" - which means "what?" in Azeri. The cartoon seemed proof of the anti-Azeri prejudice that Ildirim decried. Gunaz hosts discussed the outrage relentlessly.

"Originally, we thought we might get a few thousand people at our protest. We were targeting ethnic activists, but then the cartoon gave us a boost," Ildirim said. "By May 20, I was predicting we'd have hundreds of thousands in the streets. I was criticized by others for raising unrealistic expectations."

But he was right. On May 22, the streets of Tabriz filled with protesters, many chanting Ildirim's slogans. Authorities eventually ended the protest, but not before it became big news around the world.

Gunaz TV also helped plan and promote a dozen other popular protests around that time in Azeri-Iranian cities like Urumiyeh, Ardabil, Zanjan and Khvoy.

Ildirim even helped with tactics.

"We heard of protesters caught behind a police barricade, so we went on TV and said: 'Don't stay at home! They're taking your brothers and sisters to prison! Don't let the Persian chauvinists do this!' Soon others came out and broke down the barricades and rescued the protesters," Ildirim said.

If his fiery rhetoric might seem designed to incite ethnic resentment, it's a style Ildirim justifies as an attempt to counterbalance what he claims is a longstanding tradition of demeaning the Azeri community in mainstream Iranian culture.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blamed foreign meddling for the protest.

Station founder Obali, who operates from a studio above his Turkish restaurant in Chicago, said the comments were directed at his station. "They didn't even call them demonstrations, instead they called it foreign interference. Our station concentrates on minority ethnic issues and those issues are Tehran's biggest fear."

Obali, like Ildirim, dreams of returning to an independent South Azerbaijan, the homeland he fled 21 years ago after being imprisoned for promoting Azeri nationalism.

Not everyone, however, agrees with the Gunaz TV agenda. The Republic of Azerbaijan, for one, wants no part of the breakup of Iran.

Masoud Aliev, who heads the Association of Azerbaijanis of Quebec, endorses only part of Ildirim's agenda. "Azeris living in Iran should have all the right to education in their own language and to develop in their own culture," he said. "But the breakup of Iran would destabilize the entire region. It would lead to a humanitarian crisis, civil war and millions of refugees."

Some Iranian Azeris such as Potkin Azarmehr, a London-based blogger who writes about Iranian politics, actively oppose Azeri nationalism. "Azeris enjoy influence in Iran's economy and politics. The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic is an Azeri and Azeri merchants in Tabriz and Tehran are very wealthy and influential," he wrote in an email. "Okay, Azeri is not taught at schools, but nor is Spanish in American schools, and that is hardly good enough reason to secede."

Meanwhile, Ildirim keeps agitating for revolution via satellite.

He helped organize protests in four cities on Sept. 23, against the lack of Azeri-language education. He's hoping for a big turnout for protests on Dec. 12 marking the 61st anniversary of the fall of the Tabriz-based Azeri government.

"There's no way to know if it will be a success," Ildirim said. "But television is a very powerful thing."

Press release

2006-10-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

I follow the news from Azerbaijan quite closely and enjoy the writing styles of those who put it online, but this one is so blunt it makes Hemingway look like Ellen Degneris. You'll note the absence of "allegedly" and other such terminology, and the word "whoredom"... I had to check to see if that was even a word. Azeri media might be setting new trends here.

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Teenagers detained in night clubs and bars in Baku

[ 02 Oct. 2006 12:43 ]

Baku Main Police Department’s Public Security Office conducted raids in several night clubs and bars in the capital.

APA’s correspondent said during the raids in “Atlant”, “Life”, “Filtr” and several other night clubs, 17 teenagers (12 teenage girls and five boys) have been detained. The detained are schoolchildren from different schools of Baku. They were involved in whoredom. The teenagers were taken to Sabayil district police office for interrogation. Their parents have been called to the police station for that.
Necessary actions will be taken about “Atlant”, “Life”, “Filtr” and several other night clubs. /APA/

Bow down to the five fingers!

2006-10-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

For a thousand years, fire worshipping Zoroastrians had a great reverence for the Five Finger Mountain, known as Beshbarmag, a half hour drive north of Baku, at Sumgayit. (aka Sumqayit/Sumgait), the country's third largest city, which is essentially a suburb of Baku, built in the 1950s, with a population of around 300,000.

(Hopefully somebody will eventually explain how Azerbaijan has a population of 8 million. Baku has 2 million, Ganja 300,000, Sumgayit 300,000, Nakhchivan 300,000, which leaves about 5 million others - where exactly are they?)

The mountain is right on the highway and it's quite breathtaking when you drive by. I was seriously tempted to climb it, but I had a people to meet, places to see. There's a bunch of stores at the bottom that sell ice creams and other stuff with various cattle wandering about as well.

The name Sumgayit, means "Sum! Come back!" Who is Sum, you ask? He's the lover of Jeyran. When the river ran dry Sum had to go up to the top of the hill and fight a monster who had lodged a huge boulder, stopping the water from flowing into town.

Sum went up and kicked that beast down, strangling him in the process, but when he moved the boulder, he was swept away and drowned and to this day his five fingers stick out of the ground in rock form.

Jeyran drowned in her tears. The town's water reservoir is called Jeyran Batan, which means, The Place Where Jayran Drowned.

Shirali Muslimov turns 201

2006-09-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was Shirali Muslimov's birthday on September 4. Yeah, I know, I forgot too. But if you didn't send a present it's ok, he died in 1973. And while it's too bad the old codger is dead, he was causing a birthday candle shortage, plus that darn cake was a fire hazard.

For a while in the 1970s, many old timers from Azerbaijan were going around claiming that they were very old. Like, really, really, ancient. This might seem strange in our youth-obsessed culture, but these people would routinely tell others that they were well over 120. I don't know why they did this. I can just imagine their conversations,
"You're 129? Well I happen to be 136 years old."
"Oh yeah? Well I am in fact am 142 and used to be Napoleon's valet."
And this sort of thing would go on for hours.

The king of these old timers was Shirali Muslimov who died on September 4, 1973 at the purported age of 168 years, allegedly making him the oldest man that ever lived, aka, the world's oldest man. His birth certificate read 1805, which made him 168 at the time of his death. He claimed to have fathered a child at the age of 136, which of course provokes some interesting questions of the who would be mating with a man of that age.

Muslimov spend his incredibly long life in the village of Barzava, 150 miles south of Baku, in the hilly Shiral region near the Iranian border. He didn't leave his village much, so you can assume that he got to see the whole town before he died.

Experts consider that the longest a human can live is 115 years old give or take a few shakes of the hourglass. But many Azeris insist that their grandmother lived to 136 or 141. The proper reply to these claims is to boast that your granny lived even older.

But Muslimov (aka Mislimov) put Azerbaijan on the map as a place where people live to a ripe old age and there is some evidence that certain people in the hills live to an extreme old age and interantional experts are still getting grants to poke around into the reason behind this.

But Muslimov caught everybody's imagination. The Soviets loved this old Talish shephard for representing their claims of superiority. Danone yogourt also loved him as he inspired a successful advertising campaign attributing extreme longevity in the Caucasus to the comsumption of yogourt. National Geographic wrote about his great age, although they later recanted and suggested that he might not be as old as he claimed. The Azeri government put him on a stamp in 1994. So if all these people loved the old coot, who are you not to?

I hereby suggest that September 4 be hereafter marked by the United Nations and celebrated as the Shiraz Muslimov International Day of Longevity and Celebration of Centenarians and I think you should listen to me, as I am a wizened old man of 143 years of age.

New RÖYA update

2006-09-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

The Great Röya Riots of 2006 - Baku's controversial singing sensation has once again provoked general outrage. During a recent outdoor performance in Baku, rain started falling, electrical devices short circuited and things generally went awry and lo-and-behold the Caspian chanteuse had soon taken flight from her own performance. When the crowd realized that Röya had am-scrayed, a general melee ensued as angry patrons decided to take their Röya rage out in an aggressive manner. Details at 11.

Pen pals await....

2006-09-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

I've been to Azerbaijan and yes yes yes yes! what they say is true. What is it that they say again? Oh yes ..now I remember... they say that it boasts the most beautiful women on the planet. Of course there's good and bad within any population, but I didn't see much of the bad over there when it comes to the female population. And the coolest thing is that you can meet them simply by clicking a few buttons on your computer, here are a few looking for pen pals that I found on one site. So let me introduce you to Samira, Yuliya, Afag, and Sabina. Azerbaijanis can speak Azeri, Turkish and Russian and many can speak English as well. Their English might be a bit wobbly, but yours isn't likely all that great either. I'd suggest you get some pen pals and get to know some Azerbaijanis so once you go to visit, you'll have a great place to visit and some pretty cool people to hang out with.

Azeri crooner Oqtay Agayev suggests other singers be shot

2006-09-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Oqtay Agayev, an old time big-band type singer, was quoted this week by the Azeri press suggesting that singers who reveal too much skin should be "shot."

Azerbaijan show-business takes the culture to abyss. Famous artists do nothing but showing strange culture in the stage by undressing. They should perform culture and tradition but not do a strip-tease. In our period there was a serious censorship on music. Law quality music was not allowed to air. I hope Art Council will remove this disgrace. If it can not, we can do nothing but ‘shooting’ them,”

"Agayev said he had health problems some times ago."

I assume they mean he has mental health problems, as this lunar crooner is obviously crackers.

Now I like a splashy story as much as the next wanker but I question this particular paper for running such an insane, violence-promoting rant, particularly during a week where somebody went and shot up a college a few blocks from my house here in Montreal.

This seems to be a good time to share my thoughts on Azerbaijan's artistic generation gap. It's a painful time for some old school Azeri artsies because of the esteem that Soviets once laid on artists has largely disappeared as a demographically-weighty generation has come along hauling an entirely new cultural freight but I'll spare you such pontification and go right to the fleshy Azeri pop stars that seem to have troubled him so.

Yanardagh - Quebec play salutes Azerbaijan's refugees

2006-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf is an accomplished Montreal playwright who wrote Rock ("Bascule"), one of five separate scenes in a 2001 French Quebec play Yanardagh, which dramatizes the plight of Azerbaijan's refugees forced from their homes by Armenians during the Karabakh conflict. This play, which was performed as recently as May 2004 in Quebec City, also includes scenes written by other top-notch Quebec dramatists, including My Grandmother's Diaries by Evelyne de la Chenlière, The Dream by Anne-Marie Provencher, The Marriage of Arif and Gulnara by Jean-Pierre Ronfard and Soviet by Robert Claing, who also directed the play. The work was inspired by photographs of Azeri IDPs (internally displaced people) forced from their ancestral homeland into dreadful conditions in makeshift Azerbaijan refugee camps, often old railway cars.

Az's tourist billboard - a work in progress

2006-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Azerbaijan is an incredibly photogenic place. The two shots above are just a couple of hundreds of amazing pics I took and I'm a bad photographer with a cheap camera, imagine what you could do. So when I saw this tourism billboard poster
aiming to bedazzle and allure you to visit the country, I suffered a sudden and acute case of underwhelmeditis. I suppose there's an entire strategy behind it. I wish I knew it, but I wasn't there to hear the discussion that led the tourist authorities to choose this image and slogan. I guess the slogan "there's more than a few oil wells" is supposed to be a catchy double entendre, but it doesn't even hint at what those other things are. Water? Hills? Women? I guess I should suggest something here. How about : "Istanbul + Moscow + Adventure = Azerbaijan." or, "Azerbaijan - the ancient land of the future." Or "Azerbaijan: the Soviets have left, but they left some vodka."
Okay, I know, I know. Can you do better?

Interview with Azerbaijan Diary author Thomas Goltz

2006-09-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled to offer readers the following exclusive interview with Azerbaijan Diary author Thomas Goltz. Goltz was an American living in Turkey when he moved to Azerbaijan in 1991 to become a unique outside witness to the transformation of the country, from the bloody Black January massacre of Azeris committed by Russians, to the Karabakh War, to the dealmaking which set the Azeri oil wealth into full flow. This true story makes for a spellbinding action adventure, packed with intrigue, passion and politics, it's a must-read for anybody who wants to lay peepers on a crackling good yarn.

Now Azerbaijan Diary has been translated and will be on the shelves in Azerbaijan in early 2007. It will surely become the major buzz of the year in Azerbaijan, as the book offers unique depth of detail and description of the events in this country during a crucial time in independent Azerbaijan's short history.

Here are my questions and his answers:

Q: Azerbaijan Diary tells the story of a time and place that no other book tells, how was it received in Azerbaijan?

There’s been a project floating around for four or five years now, trying to get Azerbaijan Diary translated and published in Azeri. It’s finally going forward thanks to a series of happy chances and coincidences. The book doesn’t pull any punches and it’s certainly not a propaganda piece for anybody atop of the Azerbaijan leadership so there’s a very healthy ambivalence about the book there.

Q: Your book deals with a lot of incredibly charged issues and some have come right out and challenged some of your accounts, such as the dreadful Khojaly Massacre where Azerbaijani civilians were killed in big numbers by the Armenians.

Nobody challenged my description of Khojaly in public but they did it behind the scenes in nasty ways. So if you were to punch my name or book on Amazon where readers and buyers get to post their own reviews, there are about 44 of them and some of them get very, very brittle and nasty. The nastiest one that I recall was one that - in addition to accusing me of being paid by Turkish MIT or state intelligence, CIA, Mossad, KGB and maybe even the Chinese thrown in for a change, as well as big oil - that I was the mastermind of the Khojaly non-event. It’s ridiculous but I have had that sort of stuff as a result of the book and death threats as well. How serious were they? One doesn’t really know. As well, there was a general bunch of nastiness from the usual suspects but it goes with the territory if you’re going to be writing about these kinds of subjects, you have to expect such results.

Q: There are some pretty naked descriptions in Azerbaijan Diary, and I’m thinking of, for example, your account of Azerbaijani-Karabakh residents in Imaret Kervat having their homes burnt down by the same neighbouring Armenians they had long lived near and went to school with. And yet I’ve seen you praised by some Armenians for your honest account of the Karabakh War. Have such vivid descriptions made you public enemy number one in Armenia?

No, although I hasten to say that I’ve got a fan club – a very small one - but a fan club nonetheless in Yerevan, Armenia. The book is not completely unknown there and I’ve received some very curiously favorable reviews and comments and things like that. Sadly, I’d say that those are in the extreme minority.

Q: I’ve read recently that the Armenian settlers have largely abandoned the occupied territories adjacent to Karabakh. Some suggest that this is a sign that Armenia is ready to hand this area back over to Azerbaijan. Have you got a sense of what’s going on behind the diplomatic curtain in Karabakh now?

I haven’t been to the occupied territories in a very long time, nor mountainous Karabakh itself but I try to keep my finger on the pulse there. I try to talk to people who have traveled there legally or illegally and my impression is that the occupied territories have been looted and abandoned. Whether it’s in anticipation of a deal or not, I don’t know. Then there’s the mysterious forest fires in western Azerbaijan in the Fizuli region which have been raging all this summer. The question is: were they set or are they natural? I’ve seen some satellite photos of these areas and it would appear that the burns are on remarkably straight lines. Maybe it’s because these lines are roads, and fires don’t jump roads. Is it that the conditions have been so dry that suddenly a lightning strike has ignited a fire in the general area? Then why are they only burning in side the occupied territories and not on the immediate other side of the engagement? These are rhetorical questions. I can’t answer them. And nobody can until they get boots on the ground to take a look to see if they’re man-made. Let’s make an assumption then. We have to ask why, if they’re man-made, then why are the Armenians burning down the forests and fields in this area? Fields come back after the first rain, but forests are more serious, they take a generation or two to regenerate.

Q: Azerbaijan seems insistent on the issues of the fires, they brought it up in the United Nations Security Council this week and seem strongly convinced that the Armenians are behind this. Do you think that they have intelligence suggesting Armenians set the fire?

It’s the satellite photography that has keyed them off. They paid up and hired a satellite photographer to take a look. It’s quite clever of them. But the problem is that Azerbaijan has its hands tied, because in order to determine what the source was, you have to get in on the ground. At the same time they’re raising the level of rhetoric and debate at the UN and elsewhere. From my perspective is a rather clever thing to do.

Q: In Azerbaijan Diary, you repeatedly mention how the international media was disinterested in even the biggest war stories out of Azerbaijan. Do you think that the world is still overlooking Azerbaijan, or are things different now?

Has it changed? I would say yes, although the dynamic is different because right now we’re not in a hot war situation and we have other wars, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan. But given the hand of cards that Azerbaijan has been dealt recently they’re playing it cleverly. They’re keeping Karabakh on the international agenda through the fires, etcetera and they’re in a general outreach mode of thought that they were not in before. For example, they invited certain artists to perform for in the Baku Jazz Festival, which was originally funded by British Petroleum, now it’s funded by local companies. They’re cottoning onto the idea of promoting themselves in the world at large and in the region as well as Azerbaijan and I applaud that. It’s a little bit late but they’re catching up quick and in the best possible way because it’s not just nastiness, and starving people anymore. They still may rely on showing refugees to journalists; but now there are also these other aspects: music, culture, and architecture, and fun things that deserve to be known to the larger world.

Q: Azerbaijan can’t really permanently resettle its refugees because that would make it look like they’ve accepted the loss of land, but having them live in bad conditions seems inhumane. Is there a solution to that dilemma?

Any country that has a refugee problem will be stuck with the same dynamic and it’s sad, because the moment you settle your refugees you admit that you have lost forever. So keeping some refugees in some photo-op nastiness is just one of the things that happens to refugees. It still pertains to Armenia and Georgia as well, although the Georgians are a bit more proud and don’t show it off as much. So they’re sort of obligated to show their wounds, at the same time there are programs for more permanent housing even though it’ll never be called that. We’re talking building blocks made with low quality mortar. The idea being that when the occupied territories are liberated they can deconstruct these homes, put them on blocks and onto trucks and move them within 24 hours into well into the occupied territories.

Q: Near the end of Azerbaijan Diary you bemoan a speech Heydar Aliyev gives upon ascending to the presidency for vowing to win back the territories lost to Armenia. You suggest that it will doom another generation to bloodshed. Do you believe this now?

I remain really ambivalent about that and it comes from hating this thing called war on a profound, visceral level. I’ve just seen way too much of it. At the same time I can understand my Azerbaijani friends and their frustrations with the negotiating process. And whether that means they’ve got to include the threat of renewed violence in order to get back the occupied territories and maybe Karabakh. I’m not going to second guess them. It’s just that if it does go bang, it’ll be really nasty as both sides are determined and entrenched. If Azerbaijan were to go forward, they’d be going forward against an entrenched opposition that has been there for 10 years waiting for an attack and they’ll be attacking uphill which isn’t ideal.

Q: Journalists tend to dwell on the same themes when addressing Azerbaijan– rigged elections, the possibility of religious resurgence, corruption and yet they don't tend to mention the obvious good things happening in the country, the increased prosperity, the opening of the BTC pipeline this summer, which was a pretty big deal but got virtually no coverage here in Canada?

No, the opening of the pipeline was huge on TV everywhere else. The government trotted it out as a grand event. If anything, they were exaggerating the importance of it, but it was an important event. It was a political victory, an example of when politics trumps economics, which is not supposed to happen. And oil is also at $70 a barrel as opposed to $30 or $13 a barrel. That means there’s going to be a ton of money coming into Azerbaijan, a so-called wall of money. Whether that can be used successfully is, of course, a huge question. They have an oil fund. Will it be used or abused? We really don’t know. There’s even the perception of the country being phenomenally wealthy and if the guy on the street keeps on hearing in the news that the annual average income of the Azerbaijan citize is, eight million people divided into some huge number, he will then look and see that he doesn’t have that Rolls Royce. He's going to start asking why he's not benefiting from this prosperity. And what happens after that It is impossible to predict.

Q: Do you see that crisis of rising expectations as a serious potential problem? Do you have some intuition of the future of Azerbaijan, whether the future holds many curveballs for the country?

It’s not just Azerbaijan, it’s the entire South Caucasusian mindset, as in many ways there’s not a lot of difference between Georgians and Azerbaijanis, who are both coming out of the so-called Seventy Year Experiment. The difference in Azerbaijan is that suddenly they are going to be getting all this money without having worked for it. It is going to be dwarf whatever cash can be given the Armenian diaspora, which is what Armenia survives on. You add oil money into that sort of environment and it’s potentially explosive, it could be a real firecracker or perhaps something lovelier. I hate to be vague but it can go either way. Is the glass half empty or half full?

Q: Since your first went to Azerbaijan in the early 90s there has been an entire new generation of young people that have come along with their own priorities, not necessarily those of their parents. What impact do you think this will have?

My impression is that with younger generation is much more profoundly Azerbaijanified, they grew up with this theoretically independent state. The older generation may be inured to the idea of Soviet Azerbaijan, the way things always worked, everybody was employed and all state artists were sufficiently respected, etcetera. But those days are gone and there will be lingering bitterness there. But the 20-to-30 year-old crowd that I run into and - being the author of my book helps because I m a hero to some of them - I meet and greet all these folks and they seem to be much more attached to the idea of an independent Azerbaijan and all that entails: language, environment, culture, return to traditional musical modes, and then you infuse that with the fat of all the oil money coming in. You also have all these individuals traveling the world. I had the pleasure to attend a couple of different meetings of the youth of Azerbaijan; one was of graduates of English language institutions. It was held by the Azerbaijan Alumni Association (AAA) they tended to be grads of US universities but other schools too. There was a panel of four guys from the ministry of foreign affairs, one was the consul general of Los Angeles, one was the ambassador to Brussels of the European Union and Council of Europe, the ambassador to Austria as well, and an OSCE rep and then finally the individual responsible for press information and intelligence at the foreign ministry and they held this open panel. The language of the evening was English and that too was an extraordinary thing. Five or 10 or 15 years ago there would be no possibility of such an exchange. It was intensive; there was a Q&A on some delicate subjects, from the evaluation of the entrance exams of the Foreign Ministry to policy in Karabakh. It was very impressive to watch these youth conducting themselves like that. Two days before I was at a soiree where all of the ambassadors of Azerbaijan were called back to reacquaint themselves with Azerbaijan. There were 48 embassies abroad represented, plus generals. Once again, it was impressive. I was thinking of my days in 1991 and 92 when they first established the foreign ministry when they had me as the one talking to the world. I was helping draft their documents. I had to assure them that they wanted recognition, that they wanted that to be the situation. Now they have the money to do all this. They’re retooling, sending their people to see the refugee camps and to see military training, as well as the oil culture, a bit of this and that. There was also this collegial solidarity. It was extraordinary. I couldn’t have imagined this happening.

Q: The state of democracy is Azerbaijan is rregularly assailed. What’s your view of its development?

I hate to go into relative-land but let me start with the concept of democracy in the USA. What is the paradigm we are looking for all other countries to strive for and achieve and in what period of time? When I hear the world democracy I think George Bush and Condoleeza Rice and that’s not a good sign at all. In terms of this thing called participatory government, you can ask: can Azerbaijan do more? And the answer to that is yes of course. But at the same thing is true for all the lands of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, as well as UK elsewhere too. Democracy has yet to be perfected anywhere that I know of and I’m not going to hold Azerbaijan up as an example of what can be achieved, although certainly that doesn’t mean that cops should be out hitting protesters with truncheons.

Q: What’s your feeling about Ilham Aliyev, have you met the president and what's your impression of him?

We met quite a few times before he became president. He was VP of Socar and periodically when I’d see his old man he’d be in the room. We’ve been aware of each other 10 years or so. I’m still withholding even partial judgment. He’s got big shoes to fill. His old man was this fascinating, interesting, contradictory guy that I had the pleasure of meeting when out of power and then back in power but Ilham is slowly but surely attempting to fill those shoes. He’s getting rid of some of his dad’s cronies and filling those positions with other individuals. What I find interesting now is - and this is speculative: what is that wall of money going to do? My sense is the last time I was in Baku meeting with a bunch of individuals, I was meeting people who might be considered corrupt, or not corrupt, but they were clearly post-Soviet. They seemed to be cleaning up their act and they were confident of living in a wealthy country so that they weren’t trying to squirrel away their money and I regard that as a good sign.

Q: How did you manage to pick up all these languages, Turkish, Azeri and Russian?

I’ve got a good ear I guess. I started Turkish as a second language in university. That obviously helped and then I ended up in Turkey and ended up married to a Turkish woman and exploited that opportunity shall.

Q: What are you doing now?

I am a visiting scholar here at the University of Montana, which has a longtime engagement with the rest of the world. There has been an East Asian connection for 20,or 30 yars, through Japanese and Korean and now there is this Central Asia component which is now expanding west to the Caspian and Caucasus which is why they brought me in, although I’ve had some connection as a visiting lecturer for 10 years. Now they’ve formalized it, so I have a course, an introduction to the post-Soviet Caucasus. It’s a bit of literature, music, culture a lot of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and Chechnya. You can’t look at these places in isolation.

Q: Are you originally from Montana?

I’m from North Dakota. We’re the butt of all Montana jokes but there’s a family connection out here from the mid 70s. I established a real residence here in 1990.

Q: You’ve also written Georgia Diary and Chechnya Diary and you’ve recently written a book about your times traveling Africa doing Shakespeare in the 70s.

It was brought out in London two months ago but I drafted it 28 years ago and it finally got picked up two years ago after being rejected by 30 publishers. It’s mainly about me wandering around Africa. Azerbaijan Diary is the longest of the three diaries. Chechnya Diary is the shortest and most intensely personal as it’s about a village, not a country. People have been saying that Georgia Diary is the most complex and comprehensive of the lot. The reason is that it reflects on 15 years of association and reflection as opposed to Azerbaijan, which is experiential and Chechnya Diary is brooding, dark and meditative. The Shakespeare in Africa book is completely different and people say that it's not my best book but it may turn out to be the most successful. I suspect it may be true, it’s a lot more approachable than the others.

Q: How well did Azerbaijan Diary sell?

The publisher is a crossover academic publishing house. They’re delighted to sell 2,000 copies. One day when I was sitting around talking about the Chechnya book with Thomas De Waal (The Black Garden) and Sebastian Smith who wrote a book called Allah’s Mountains published by NYU Press. We were sitting around and badmouthing our publishers as are writers will do and it turned out that St. Martin had published 5,000 hardbacks of my Chechnya Diary. These other two were wild with envy. That’s the context here of how many numbers of books of a relatively obscure subject matter get published. I think Sharp published 2,000 maybe more of the hard back and once it sold out it went to paperback and probably sold 15,000 to 20,000 copies of Azerbaijan Diary, which in a book of its size and price and subject matter is an insane best-seller.

Q: So when will it be out in Azeri?

This summer I got together with a translator and noticed it had been completed. I got some money to do it. It was huge to get that albatross off my back. We then started going to various publishers in Azerbaijan and creating a team of proofreaders copyreaders, editors and that’s the process I’m in and am fairly certain we’re going to be doing this, and basically waiting for some starter cash from a benefactor. But after that I’m almost all set and ready to go so I’d like to have it by the first of the year. Whether anybody in Azerbaijan will buy it is another question.

Q: What kind of life are you living now?

I live in a one bedroom apartment not far from campus. I come in on my bicycle or on my feet to my office. I lecture to my students and will be working on a film that I started work on four years ago about he oil odyssey, an insane journey on a three wheel motorcycle along the BTC route before it was sanctioned and before they wanted us to give it any attention at all. The US government, BP, didn’t want to have anything to do with it, then President Heydar Aliyev and (Georgia President Eduard) Shevardnadze realized that his sort of insane stunt circus on wheels might be the thing that would get international attention to this project. The project is like A River Runs Through It meets Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve finally got all the original tapes. I wanted to work in Baku but had to return to teach, so I’ll arrange with the local media centre. I have an expert student cutter. He’ll get credits and hopefully after six hours a week we’ll stitch it together to get a solid rough draft form and start cutting around and see if it can get on PBS or elsewhere We shot it three times, the first time 2000 and then 2001 and 2002. It was a circus. I brought all these traditional singers from the theatre in downtown Baku along with refugee camp people and turned this motorcycle adventure into a Kafka circus, the working title is The Oil Odyssey.

Q: When you think back about your times reporting on the Karabakh conflict, standing in the middle of the war as bombs rained down all over, was it worth it?

I didn’t it give a lot of thought and then I reflected on it and I almost got mystical. I’m not a religious guy but it was one of those situations that in retrospect you were destined, selected. There was no one else there to do it. Whether I would do it again, I don’t think so. I’ve had too many of my nine lives already removed and too many friends killed. Another generation of war hacks deserve the opportunity to do it now.

Q: Are you still bitter that so few newspapers agreed to publish your articles from the frontlines of the Karabakh war, a fact you complained bitterly about throughout the text?

Not really. In retrospect it makes for a better story, a better book. Although I didn’t know I was writing a book about it at the time. It’s also a wake-up call. Let’s go into the land of imagination, let’s say that bringing in Khojaly to world attention would have landed me a staff job at the New York Times. That’s how it works. A stringer files and is on the front page and then gets a staff job, that means being transferred in and out of countries. You get sent to Moscow for two years, then Japan and Argentina two years, all that’s fine and good but it strips one of the intensity of the experience of living in one place over the larger term and being responsible to that place rather than being a parachute journalist.

Spiderman in Fountain Square

2006-09-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

If you were wondering where Spiderman is these days, he's in Baku, apparently keeping a close eye on Fountain Square.

How Azerbaijan will save your life....

2006-09-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

Only three more weeks until the season begins. No, I'm not talking about hockey season puckhead! Soon it'll be pomegranate season. That's when these luscious red fruit ripen and beckon us to open their hard-shells and lustily dig into their juicy red jewels, shamelessly tearing at the fleshy pulp, as sweet scarlet dew dribbles down and makes our chins look like painted toenails. It's a ritual that doesn't flatter our manners, but one that does astoudingly brilliant things for our health.

Pomegranate juice is your very own portrait of Dorian Gray except you need to refrigerate it and it doesn't have to go in your attic.

This stuff is God's Own Medicine, landing Mike Tyson uppercuts of antioxidants onto those nasty free radicals while it unclogs your arteries and does such fantastic health things that pomegrizzle has become the shizzle in Hollywizzle, as actors anxious to perpetuate their glorious youth have started sipping it by the gallon.

And from whence cometh the fruit of hearty trees able to survive cold weather and salty soil conditions? Glad you asked. Azerbaijan, natch. Long, long ago the Azzies passed a sapling on to the the Greeks, an act only Persephone regretted after eating seven seeds in the Underworld, dooming her chances of returning to Demeter. The plant took off from there. The Bible is full of pomegranate munchers, Jewish mythology equates the fruit with prosperity while other cultures associate our dearest fruit with fertility.

The best pomegranates on this blessed Earth are lovingly plucked off trees in Goychay, (ie: Blue River) a magical province of 56 farming villages on the tilted plains at the foothills of the Caucasus mountains. Goychay sits northwest of Baku and gets refreshingly cool even in the summer. The pomegranates aren't just delicious in that slice of heaven, they also make for such a stunning bucolic backdrop that painters such as Togrul Narimanbekov did for Azerbaijani pomegrante groves what Monet did for haystacks.

Azeri farmhands will soon start propping stepladders onto century-old greyish cracked bark. They will mount and cull the round red hard-shelled fruit from branches of the 12 foot trees, and lay them into balsawood baskets. The burgundy treasures then depart the farm in boxes, which get packed into trucks and backseats of Ladas and brought to streetside market in Lenkoran, Baku and beyond.

Thanks to this pomegraphic ritual, the next time you shimmy down to that magic section of your health food store, you'll find the best and most affordable juice is from Azerbaijan. It comes in a variety of names, Sameco, ILG, Lakewood, Crown, Seqment but just look for Azerbaijan on the label and you'll get the caviar of health tonics for a low price.

If you want to go the distance, try some wine. Azerbaijan has a long tradition of viticulture - and its Azerinar pomegranate wine contains triple the antioxidants of regular ol' red wine.

And do yourself a double favour. Google other pomegranate recipes, and you'll find ways of packing even more of this miracle anti-aging concoction into your weary corpus (ie: POMEGRANATE SHERBET Sugar – 30 gr. Pomegranate juice – 40 gr. Water – 120 gr. Food-ice – 20 gr. Boil water and dissolve sugar in it. Squeeze the juice out of a pomegranate into a separate plate, add it to sherbet and cool.)

I like my pomegranate juice in the morning. My ideal day begins as I wipe the sleep from my eyes, peer at my Tag Monaco while housemaid Nigar Talibova enters my bedroom with a big cool glass of pomegranate juice. This here pomegranate enabler is, after all, a man who likes to start his day in a certain happy mood.