Azerbaijan – Xinaliq

We decided that the magical two days we spent in Xinaliq needed a space of their own.

You’ve already met the gun-toting Ali Baba Schoemaker, who we met in Guba. He was a beginning, on our…

Road to Xinaliq

After tea at the family home in Guba, the screeching of tyres that announced his  arrival, and then accelerating off along the bumpy road in a way that left our cheeks behind, we began to see the scenery change. Villages sped past. The intense greenery was slowly replaced by dustings of snow in the trees. We climbed higher, the road became more windy, more bumpy. Then more icy. The snow deepened. The hills became mountains.

On we sped, hovering between fear of flying off the road, and awe at the white peaks, and deep valleys; into which we were likely to plunge at the slightest error from our confident driver.

We stopped to peer, we stopped to chat to men wisely putting chains on THEIR vehicle, we stopped to make our way over a place where an avalanche had taken the road. We waited as a heroic and triumphant Ali Baba willed the Lada through this mess, climbed back in, and soon enough, through ever deeper snow, wound into the valley where, up one steep side, Xinaliq lay, and has lain for 4000 odd years.   

   

Xinaliq Moments

The people were what really made the trip special for us. Each, especially those mentioned in the blog before, contributed to the moments we had.

Here is a sampling of what Xinaliq had to offer in moments: both strange and beautiful.

Faiq eagerly took us around the little village.

First were proudly shown their new cell tower at the top of the world,

 

and the local mosque, that’s it behind the hard working kid with the rake.

We later saw the local tea shop.

and the dung fires to be used for cooking, and heat,

and we saw the cemeteries, where people have long been buried.

We saw and met people, alive and well. People of the earth. Men who work as shepherds up the steep hills in deep, deep snow, and kill chickens or sheep for lunch in the town square or at the front door (the freshest meat we’ve eaten I’m sure), patch roofs with clay and straw, and now corrugated iron. Women who busy themselves at dawn fetching in pails of water, cook on dung fires, with babies at hip, or children under foot, make bread in mud ovens, make tea, make clothes, make every necessity conceivable. Late into the night they work, but working is living, and living is working. They seem content.

The children run and play and slide in the snow. They laugh. They work too. And go to school… sometimes. Sometimes, especially if they are girls.

They laugh, and have dirty hands.

    

We had jam, boiled down, half sugar half cherries, fit to melt your teeth out of your mouth. But good. You drink your tea though it. Your babies teeth on it. If you’re older you either have gold teeth or none. If you’re older still, you crochet warm shoes for babies, or make prized Persian rugs to hang round the house. Or - once mom has tightly swaddled baby, with strong arms, and tied this bundle with rope, the secured baby to a handmade cradle with yet more rope – if you are older still, you swiftly bang the cradle from side to side, child flying from one side to the other.

No lullaby is needed, not here. Grandma may not murmur and granddad may not sing, but bashing does the trick it seems. And if not, if baby later awakes and cries, a handful of salt from a vat, brought around to the family and guests to be blown on by each, then tossed over grandma’s shoulder… the older people here seem to know a thing or two. Baby didn’t make another sound.

We walked around some more that day and the next. We had hours on horseback, with Faiq and his staff always just ahead or to the side. All this time we were blown away by what we saw.

When all was said and done we left Xinaliq, not as easily as we’d come in, and, even after only two days, with changed hearts and minds, and not all that far from shedding a few tears.