We last heard from the three young adventurers as they descended Five Fingers Mountain, after being charmed by a young shepherd with a million-dollar gold smile. The good times continue in…

Son of Baku. Long live Azerbaijan!

Laura (my cousin), Mathilde (our French friend visiting from San Francisco) and I retreated to the thriving metropolis of Baku, dazzled by the quaintness of the grey post-Soviet, post-oil boom, post-conflict countryside and unable to live any longer without the comforts of foreign cuisine (Turkish, Georgian or Russian) and the haute couture of Baku’s fashionistas. We spent our remaining time together sampling the tasty treats of the city, haggling over kilim, and ignoring the disdain of the women who prided themselves on their level of vogue (lime-green stretch mini, stiletto black heels with black ankle socks, frilly black-and-white polka-dot extremely V-necked frilly blouse with a hot-pink fur jacket to top it all off….. shall I mention the coiffure? Nah. I’m sure your imaginations are doing the hairstyles justice.) Somehow I was the freakshow by virtue of wearing muddy hiking books, cargo pants, a wool sweater and a down vest in 30-degree weather. Not to mention that I was apparently viewed as a loose woman because I smoked while walking down the street, while eighteen-year-old girls without enough clothing to cover their chotches were strutting their stuff and not getting so much as a sidelong glance, because, of course, they were fine upstanding chaste ladies. Hmmmmm.

Us girls did make a couple of daytrips out of the city. A relatively short taxi ride away, one could stroll amongst big rocks and caves, looking at petroglyphs reputed to be somewhere between 7,000 and 40,000 years old. Our tour guide couldn’t keep his numbers straight, even in reference to the same drawing. In any case, the experience was full of trivia, insight, and hernias caused by the strain of not laughing. The guide, a middle-aged Azeri who had clearly spent most of his formative years under a very strict form of education, relied heavily on his pointer. We clambered over stones, many of which were clearly labelled with paint saying “Do not step here”, from petroglyph to petroglyph. In front of some vague form of a cow or goat or stick-man with bulging calves and holding a spear (both useful in hunting aforementioned cows and goats), the pointer came in to play. Mr. Tour Guide would position himself a few steps to the side of the drawing, wave his pointer at whatever we were supposed to be looking at, and bring order to his classroom (only us three) by bellowing “Pay attention! You see here (waving pointer at an amorphous blob)… buffalo. Here legs (pointer traces legs). Here head (pointer circles around head). And here… big horns (pointer flicks upwards twice from head). Big horns. Big buffalo. Very dangerous.” Yes. Thank God for bulging calves and spears. Otherwise stick men become trampled by big horny buffalo-blob.

Mr. Tour Guide appeared to be a specialist in gender studies as well as hunter-gatherer behaviors of the prehistoric locals. In addition to being adept at pointing out the male figures – due to their bulging calves and spears – he was particularly good with the ladies. One petroglyph stood out from the rest. We arrived in front of a curving wall which formed the side of a cave entrance. After positioning us for viewing (“You. Stand there. You, there. And you. Up there. No, no. Stand on stone. Sign means nothing. What else to do but stand on stone?”) So, standing atop a gazillion-year-old rock carving, we craned our necks to see how he would translate the squiggles for us.

“Pay attention! You see here a fertility drawing.” He pauses. We squint. “No? It is woman. Definitely fertility woman. You know fertility? Good. Here you see (pointer circles key areas of fertility woman’s anatomy)… Big bum… Big breasts... Small head. See? Representation of fertility. Very important.” Yes. Glad to see that the image of women has changed so drastically in the past 50 billion years. Or however long ago it was. I kept poking Laura in the back for the rest of the tour, whispering “Pay attention! Big breasts!” She was good enough to point out as Mr. Guide walked ahead a certain stick-figure with bubble-like hands, proving, in fact, that these ancient artists had invented gloves to keep their emaciated stick-fingers warm. Shame she didn’t share her discovery with the anthropological world. She could have won international acclaim. Or something.

After the petroglyphs, our taxi driver took us to see a field of mud volcanoes, which bore uncanny resemblance to giant puckered anuses (anii?) bubbling and plopping and steaming away. Not that I’ve closely examined a bubbling plopping steaming anus. Indeed, I would flee from any such encounter with an *actual* bubbling plopping steaming anus. But the metaphor seems to work nonetheless. (Does anyone else realize how funny it is to type bubbling plopping steaming anus over and over and over again? I almost can’t see the computer screen I’m laughing so hard. Maybe I do need to go home, reground myself in normal things. But for now BUBBLING PLOPPING STEAMING ANUS is pretty damn funny. Especially when it’s giant and puckered.)

After farting around the GIANT PUCKERED BUBBLING PLOPPING STEAMING ANII, our next big adventure was BIG NIGHT OUT. We started off with dinner at the Russian restaurant across the street from Laura’s apartment building, clearly run by the Russian mafia. The restaurant never opens, and the few occasions that it does, it’s usually closed for a “private function”. We lucked out one night, and they let us eat there. Next to us sat a table of fantastically pickled middle-aged businessmen who, by the end of the night, were dancing with the stout woman who was singing songs from the Old World, and throwing their glasses on the floor.

Here my entry must end, as my ride back to the quaint village of Saint Ferriol awaits. More later, mes amis!