Old and New Meet in Baku

We had finally made it into the city after a wide detour and our little school bus got the chance to drive on the same roads the race cars had been speeding on scarcely a few hours ago. It was so smooth on the recently paved roads for the event that it didn't feel like we were in Baku.

For several weeks, all people had talked about was the Formula 1 race. Ads selling exorbitant tickets came up every time a website was accessed; there were speed-blurred, mauve posters all over the city advertising the upcoming event, roads had been blocked indiscriminately on and off for paving for several months, people had been saving for one or several of the coveted seats, and I taught my lessons as usual, observing the on-goings from a distance.

The twenty year 7 students were lost in the gadgets they had brought with them as I reveled in the excitement of what it must have felt like to be flying at high speed within the city, where more often than not, even fifty kilometers an hour is hardly manageable, as we were doing, with traffic chock-a-block. My excitement and reverie didn't last long; in no time we had reached our stop and it was now time to walk through the old city to our destination - Shirvanshahs Palace.

Our trip to Shirvanshahs Palace in the Old City of Baku had had to be postponed twice as even the metro had been predicted to be unbearably crowded with the whole city cordoned off for the races. The cloudy day turned out to be in our favor, saving us from the scorching heat of the previous days' temperatures in the high 30s Celsius. There was a slight breeze blowing in the mild temperature which I was thankful for in a stone and concrete, medieval, cobblestone city with hardly any vegetation for shade as we walked along. However, these favorable circumstances were not enough to save me from hearing, 'Where can we get some water?' "Are we going to stop for water?' 'How much longer till we eat?' 'I'm parched.'

We virtually had the city to ourselves to walk around at our leisure - being a weekday in the day time, except for a handful of tourists, there was not much else going on. Our first stop was for a group picture at Maiden Tower (Qiz Qalasi) - a prominent, cylindrical, 28-meter, inaccessible, stone structure erected in the southeastern part of the fortress city; a symbol of Baku before it was usurped by the three shiny, also prominent, Flame Towers. The history of the tower does not seem to be clear as many hypotheses are said to have been made regarding it. The only possibility academicians seem to concur on is that it was a part of the defense system for the State of the Shirvan rulers. We were on our way to see their palace.

The recently restored monuments in the city vied for the cameras aimed at immortalizing them through lenses of various capacities. The city was clean and the steep alleyways, reminiscent of kasbahs in ancient Arab cities, extended invitations to walk through and be admired. The ornate protruding balconies, ubiquitous in Malta, which could challenge Baku to a wind gust competition, added special charm and beauty to this city with the glistening, ultra-modern Flame Towers looming in the horizon. The only audible sounds were the voices of twenty children chattering away and an occasional call to order by one of the monitors if they got out of line.

Once at the palace, we gathered under the welcoming apricot tree laden with fruit as we waited for the tour arrangements. For a modicum fee of 2 Manat we were promised a very informative, interesting and eye-opening tour of Shirvanshahs Palace - a gem in Baku, I found out. Built between the 12th and 15th centuries, as we were informed by our guide, it consisted of three inner courtyards, a mosque, tombs, a bathhouse all within the fortress walls. This architectural complex has been conferred the title of UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered 'Baku Acropolis' we were further informed.

The tour started in the courtyard where a well in disuse is located; covered by a grate which more than one of the students had tried to slip a hand through. They paid little attention to the guide's presentation or the arch structures all around the courtyard in perfect symmetry. We then went through a plain, wooden door with brass handles under intricate inscriptions in relief in stone. This led us to a small courtyard and to the Throne Room, devoid of a throne, exhibiting period coffee pots, incense burners and traditional musical instruments.

As we admired the objects on display, my students diligently took selfies with the swords and vases, in the midst of which Seyfaddin called out to me in the dimly-lit hall, 'Miss, Miss, come and see! 'I wondered what I needed to go and see in such haste.

'My name is here! My name is written here!' he exclaimed in more excitement than I've ever heard him muster about anything in the year he's spent in my English lessons.

'Look Miss, Gandil is written here.' That was his last name.

'I guess that makes you royalty, Seyfaddin,' I said. He firmly agreed with me, nodding his head repeatedly to confirm his new-found realization. He was speechless.

'Yes,' he eventually managed to utter and agree with me again. I'm not quite sure he knew what I meant but if seeing his name on a trip for an English class can get him that excited, I'm more than happy not to dig any further, not getting an initial answer to what his name meant and why it was under a vase.

It was concluded that Seyfaddin was royalty and had just found out his status though he couldn't tell us the lineage or the connection to the beautiful, metal vase with his name for a label. The guide was nowhere to be found to help us with the clarification so we continued our tour with no guidance.

The dome which in the past had been covered in beautiful mosaics was destroyed, we were told, when Peter the Great bombarded the city. I had no idea he had gone that far all the way from Saint Petersburg.

In proper museum style, the palace was equipped with carpets, period clothes, jewelry, portraits, unusual footwear and weapons which we admired as we shuffled from room to room. The final exhibit was a model of the city presided over by a portrait in laser technology of the current head of state with information about his life and achievements.

A peculiarity not to be missed and pointed out by the guide is the women's door to the mosque, where they were only allowed on Fridays, placed strategically so as not to be seen by men when they came to pray - one of the only two places they could go outside their home. The other was the bath house where they would take their finest jewelry and clothes to dress up and show off. It is hard to imagine that life today in Baku where women walk around dressed in casual clothes.

So much art, beauty, culture and knowledge seemed overwhelming for my eleven-year old
companions who were finally happy to be able to crawl underground to the tomb built by the order of Shirvanshah Khalilullah for his son and his sons' teacher, we were informed, although the guide book said son and mother.

Little did that matter to the kids whose main interest was the spookiness of going down the steep uncomfortable steps underground and coming back up to lock themselves in the chamber above. They took little or no notice of the Bayil Stones, remnants of Bayil Castle (bayil meaning outside) excavated and brought to Baku from an island in the Caspian Sea.

Whether they took in anything the guide had said or not is yet to be seen. What they did take seriously was a fish pond which was also a wishing well they could throw coins in for luck, probably due to concerns about the grades in the report cards they would be receiving imminently, which would determine their lives this summer, or maybe not.

After several further inquiries of,  'When do we get to eat?' 'Where do we get to eat?' 'Are we going to eat?' and many such more, we thanked the guide who led us to the way out and made no effort to hide her glee at seeing the back of our heads as she closed the gate firmly behind us, possibly letting out a loud sigh of relief which I did not bear witness to.

If I hadn't heard those same questions about fifty times, I hadn't heard it once. And yet, now that we were on our way to eat, they had to stop to buy souvenirs at which I exclaimed, 'Obviously, you are not that hungry or thirsty, are you? See how you survived just like I said? Because if you had died as you incessantly reminded me that you would, due to your parched throat, your groaning tummy, your dehydration because you had sweated so much and needed replenishing, you wouldn't be standing there buying that souvenir, would you?'


And what was the souvenir?

A bullet.

A sword.

At Fountain Square, the group split into those who wanted the colonel's chicken and those who preferred the golden arches. The ratio was 7:13. The colonel was apparently not very popular, or his chicken may not have been. I went to the nearby coffee shop in the hope of being served a soy latte, but it just remained a hope. I got sparkling water instead.

At the agreed time, the archers seemed to be rolling out of the restaurant, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to conquer the route to the bus stop. We met the privates who had been waiting for a while up the road and made it to the bus which picked us up punctually. As we made our way to the meeting point, we saw all the facilities of the recently ended great event being pulled down. In a few hours, there would be no signs in the city of the highly-acclaimed three-day celebration, but the sign in town inviting us back next year will hopefully stay as a reminder.

We bounced along on the bus with its out-of-whack suspension from what may have been the starting point of the race. It was quite a treat to follow the same route as the race car drivers, albeit in a rickety school bus past the empty seats along the road previously filled with spectators, the rails behind which onlookers may have been pushing one another out of the front row for a better view, or simply lurking and getting a high on the adrenaline the noise produced.

We went past the major sights in the city on the Boulevard; the Fours Seasons, the Hilton, the Marriot and the major malls to our left with the sea to our right, the breeze blowing through the open windows till we hit Nefchilar Street and I came back to reality. I don't think the race car drivers went that way. We were now off the race track in the city heading towards the industrial area through the furniture shop road. I have been told you can buy any piece of furniture there.

We had left the vibrant city behind, with its touristy, medieval area and soon after alighted from our ride which had returned us to the daily routine of books and breaks.