APRIL

Yesterday we had another run-in, but his time it was with the army. We were taking a walk up to a place called "Martyr's Grave." On our way up Jack decided to take a picture of the funicular. This broken-down funicular has probably been out of service since the Soviet times. Jack walked the 15 feet to the tracks and took the picture, as he was coming back I noticed two men in camouflage running toward us, carrying machine guns (not in a "stop or we'll shoot" way, but in an "it's probably not loaded and slung over my shoulder" way). "No photo, no photo!" they were yelling. The boy on our side of the tracks told us that he wanted our film. Jack and I both understood how ridiculous this was, we'd seen these guys before and often wondered what they were guarding. Now, I think they must be the official guards of the outskirts of the presidential offices, where nothing remotely interesting or dangerous could possibly happen. When military duty is required, and the country is not at war, there is often a surplus of kids in need of something to guard.

Jack explained that he was just a tourist taking photos of Baku and that there were no signs indicating that photos were not allowed. The boy pointed to the bleak landscape to our left and said, "Photo here, yes" Then he turned to the tracks and said, "Photo here, no." Then the boy - who looked like he only needed to shave once a week, at most - called someone on his radio. Meanwhile, Jack was threatening to take his picture, which is what you are supposed to do if someone is trying to get a bribe from you or wrong you in some way. The gun toting boy told us to come with him to see a man of more importance than he had. (He conveyed this by saying "go" and pointing up the hill and then tapping his shoulder to indicate a higher rank.) "It's no problem," he said. "Five minutes." It probably wouldn't have been a problem but we flatly refused to go into any building, room, or nook with with anyone. He then asked for our papers, which we didn't have with us. We tried to explain that our passports were in our apartment and that we still didn't understand the problem. He asked were we were from, "Americanski?" After he radioed for someone with more authority to come to us, he tried to engage us in small talk. "America is good...russianrussianrussian...Florida, Miami, Texas?" He was trying to find out where we were from in the U.S., but we pretended not to understand. Another camo guy arrived on the scene, this guy looked like Sadam Hussein in a Saturday Night Live skit; fake camo and all. He also tried to get the film, and to get us to go with him to see the "tap on the shoulder" guy. But once he realized that we really weren't going to give them the film or go anywhere with them, and that we weren't very afraid of them either, he waved us off. It was pretty obvious at that point that there was no real reason to even stop us if it was only a matter of time before they let us go.

I have to admit that I was a little more willing than Jack (he wasn't willing at all) to hand over the film when they first asked. I suppose it was the gun that hung from that boys shoulder that made me weak. Jack didn't back down though. We both knew that there was no good reason for them to bother us in the first place, aside from sheer boredom. If we were spies we would have had fake Canadian passports and 007 camera sunglasses, right? We later joked that our grand plan, in their eyes, might have been to take photos of the funicular so we could fix it, then to ride to the top and throw stuff down at people, and, consequently, take over Baku.

- S

Living in Baku has helped me expand my cooking repertoire into the more far-flung international arena. Before I pretty much stuck to Mexican, Italian, and the occasional French dish, and whatever else my notably American-bound cookbooks could offer, while now, in closer proximity to the exotic East (if not actually downright in a certain polluted corner of the East itself), I've branched out to include Thai and Indian food. Apparently there are quite a lot of Indians in Baku - pull out that atlas again and see that it's not that far, relatively speaking. Many of the non-Commiemart grocery stores are run by Indians, which not only makes the ingredients for Indian food widely and easily accessible, it also means that the store owners speak English. For a while, until we were well-known regular customers, the owner or some relative-surrogate would hound us to see if our every grocery need was being met by their store and reminding us that whatever we needed that wasn't available could easily be ordered for our purchasing pleasure. That kind of thing rarely if ever happens at Safeway, though they also generally have far more than I could ever dream of wanting to buy (or so it seems to me now, in my ecstatic daydreams of strolling unfollowed and unwatched through a huge grocery store whirling with colors and bursting with a crippling product- and brand-diversity). There are also a couple of really good Indian restaurants for ideas and inspirations. We eat Indian food once a week or so, as we did tonight. As Shanon put it, it was sort of bitter-sweet taking the first few bites, because we knew we'd get full eventually and how depressing.

It's not all cooking and writing for me these days, though it sometimes seems like it. I am still nominally employed by a university, and while there have been many hidden-holiday days off in recent weeks (as well as my one-time episode of terminal tardiness), I have had to venture out past the blasted industrial ruins known appropriately as the Black City and attend to my class. This week I gave a midterm exam, an experience I had somewhat dreaded. My students last semester were so terrible and pampered that my one attempt to grade them was a miserable failure for us all. I was prepared for a similar situation, though I did get early hints that all was not the same. Many of the students began worrying about the exam over a week before it was scheduled to take place, some of them even remaining after class to obsessively ask me questions about the material that would be covered. When it came to test time, yesterday, I was to receive a pleasant shock. Not only did the students carefully avoid sitting two to a desk, a form of non-cheating diligence I didn't even think to try to impose, but they were completely silent throughout the entire exam, just like students are supposed to be. For a fantasy-like hour-and-twenty-minutes it felt like a normal university setting. I sounds terrible to say it, but the educational system here, along with most systems, is so screwed up that pulling off a something as simple as an exam with total ease and success is an inspiring mini-victory. I haven't graded the exams yet, so we'll see how long my sense of accomplishment lasts, but an early perusal of the papers indicates that at least most students have legible handwriting, which is more than I ever usually hope for from any given set of students, native-English-speakers or not.

- Jack

Today we took our first day-trip outside Baku. We went to Gobustan, a town with a prison and petroglyphs (we visited the petroglyphs), and then to some mud volcanoes nearby.

Check out the photos.

Check out the latest batch of photos.