A meyva bonanza

It’s May and fruit season has come to Azerbaijan! Fruit is available throughout the year, really, but not all fruits and certainly not my favorites. Everything is seasonal and only certain things are imported, such as bananas and, if you’re in Baku, things like avocados. But out here in the rayons, you have to go with what’s in season. And right now that means strawberries, cherries and alchar. Alchar is something we don’t commonly eat in the States. They appear to be unripe plums; they are the right size, have the same pit inside and have the same look as a plum, but they’re eaten when they’re hard and super, duper sour. They taste an awful lot like one of the best Granny Smith apples you’ve probably ever had. But they’re tiny.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been buying strawberries and each morning smooshing some of them up, adding a little sugar, and spooning the resulting slop on buttered toast. It’s messy and delicious and I’m going to be very, very sad when strawberry season ends this month. It’s also cherry season, though. I indulged this week and bought a kilo of cherries and have been snacking on a few each day. The kilo will probably last at least ten days if I snack industrially. Then came yesterday.

Yesterday, when I was juuuuust nodding off for a nap, I get a phone call. It’s the agronomist from my garden project and he’s saying something about coming to my apartment building and something else about cherries. Then he hangs up, so I grumble a bit as I change into something more appropriate for going out in public and the phone rings again. It’s him again, basically asking where I am. I asked him when he means to do this (whatever it is) and he says, “Indi!” Now. Exasperated, I look out the window and see his car. As I go downstairs, he’s trying to give a bag of stuff to some random guy, telling him to give it to me. What he doesn’t realize is I’m not on speaking terms (let alone a first-name basis) with everyone in my entire apartment complex and this guy has no idea who I am or where I live. Luckily for him, that’s when I walk up. I thank him and thank the agronomist for the huge bag of fruit he’s apparently just harvested and brought to me and he takes off.

As I go back to my apartment I wonder what the heck I am to do with what appears to be another three kilos of cherries?! And alchar? And several semi-ripe apricots? Some of the cherries were torn from the tree, part of their branches and leaves still attached. I put the bag in the refrigerator and decided to address it when I was in a better state of mind.

So here I am, the next day, pitting and freezing a big bowlful of assorted types of cherries. I’ve never baked a cherry pie but might just attempt one. At the very worst, I’ll have frozen cherries to snack on in September. When meyva season is finished.

Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!

When I get back to the States, I’m not sure I’m going to know what to do without all of the reminders of Heydar. In Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, the country’s first President after the breakup of the Soviet Union, is everywhere. And I mean EVERYwhere. The main street in every town and village seems to be named Heydar Aliyev Prospekti. There are parks named after him. Statues of him. Billboards. Everywhere you look, it’s Heydar.

Heydar Aliyev died in 2003, but the country still celebrates his birthday. In early May each town holds a festival on a day close to May 9th. The festivals aren’t always held on Heydar’s actual birthday because everyone wants media coverage and only Baku has broadcast news, so they all kind of take turns. The festivals celebrating Heydar’s birthday remind me of the Rose Parade because everything is all about flowers. There are floral sculptures, flower contests, and entire parks are transformed for the day through the hard work of the people of Azerbaijan.

Last week I traveled to Agcabedi (Ag-juh-bed’-ee) to help my friend in her garden, and timed the visit to coincide with their Gül Bayramı (“goul buy-rah’-mih”)(Flower Holiday) celebrating Heydar Aliyev’s 91st birthday, were he still alive. We walked from her house to the Heydar Aliyev Parkı, about three or four kilometers in our black and floral outfits. We could’ve been smarter….it was really hot, even though we didn’t start walking until about 5:20. Too hot even for ice cream, if you can believe it. On the way, a man heard us talking and asked if we were Russian (because English sounds so similar?). We assured him that we were American and spoke no Russian, but did speak a little Azerbaijani. He continued to walk with us, apparently forgetting what we said, since he was talking more and more urgently in Russian about the defeat of fascism. Realizing we were in a no-win situation, we tried to ditch him, thinking we could take a side street to the park. We walked away, got to where we meant to turn and thought to ask the woman selling chickens if we could get to the park that way. No, she said, you have to go back the way you came. And wouldn’t you know it, our Russian-speaking friend had followed us. Some strategically-paced walking later, we got to the park without passing out (barely), bought some water and proceeded to check things out.

Crowds were swarming, so, keeping an eye out for my friend’s tutor (we were supposed to be meeting him and his wife), we ventured into the vast, unshaded main plaza to check out the flower exhibits. I think most of the towns and villages in Agcabedi Rayon were represented with vases of lilies and roses, as were the city’s schools. There were tributes to Heydar in floral form…photos with frames made from flowers and petals. So lovely.

My friend and I had been told by her tutor that the concert portion of the celebration would begin “after six.” We went to the concert area and every seat was taken, mostly by women and children. We wandered, looking for her tutor’s signature hat, and I made the mistake of glaring back at a young guy who was staring at me like I had three heads. Usually when I glare back, they realize they’re doing something inappropriate and look away, but oh no. This guy apparently misreads my glare and proceeds to follow us as we wander the concert area. (In the interests of precaution should anything go awry, I surreptitiously took his picture.) After about 20 long minutes, he finally got bored and split, but not before making me very, very uncomfortable in the process.

My friend and I finally decide to join other women and children sitting on the edge of the non-working fountain. It’s a great people-watching place.

I wanted so much to make a photographic study of the shoes the women and girls thought fit to wear to an event where they would be standing and walking for hours, but didn’t. I wonder sometimes about these women who wear high heels for hiking and walking; I think it’s actually pride….sort of a show of toughness, an unwillingness to admit that the shoes actually kill their feet. But I see it everywhere. I don’t know how they do it. But my friend and I had found seats and got to watch them, occasionally making small talk with the other women and girls near us. Then the peace that is people-watching was shattered.

Some men took objection to the fact that women and children were sitting on the edge of the fountain. I’m not sure if they felt it was disrespectful of us to be sitting on the edge of the fountain, if they didn’t think we were bright enough to have cleaned the dirt off before sitting down and were making our clothes unspeakably filthy, or if they just wanted to exert some authority over random women, but it was me they approached first. Naturally.

An older man came and told me I couldn’t sit there. I asked him why. He just repeated himself, saying I couldn’t sit there. Then he started gesturing to the other women and saying to them that they shouldn’t sit on this fountain. My friend and I, annoyed but unsure what to do, stood up. The other women started to get up, too. Then some younger women sat down again. Rebellion!! I looked at the men; they were talking to each other, perhaps about how women just have no sense of propriety, I don’t know. But then I felt a tap on my shoulder and one of the men kind of smiled and told me to sit. Other men were saying this wasn’t right and it went on and on, with women standing and sitting, popping up and down, all at the whim of these random men who decided they weren’t sure whether they liked what they saw or not. Finally, most of the women just kind of said, “to hell with it,” and sat. Which is about the time my friend and I decided to walk home.

We did stop for ice cream along the way. Thanks, Heydar, for another memorable gül bayramı.