The "Memory Cartography" of Azerbaijani emigrants
Emigration from Azerbaijan is a subtle phenomenon, yet far from uninteresting, given both its scale and particularities.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, in 2020 the total number of Azerbaijani citizens living abroad was 1,164,000. This represents more than 10% of the country’s total population.
A closer look reveals these numbers break down into a wide range of categories: from genuine and nominal political refugees to students who do not return, from laborers and traders to highly skilled engineers and doctors, and from LGBTQ individuals to traditional families.
There is no more recent migration data from Azerbaijan, but it can be said with certainty that, over the past four years, emigration has increased significantly amid various external and internal political events.
At a glance, one could say that the current emigration from Azerbaijan is the most intense in its history, surpassing even the period of the First Republic (1918-1920), Sovietization, and so on. It is even greater than the scale of the 1990s, when only a few could afford to move further than neighboring Russia. Now, there are more opportunities, and people are more desperate (or despairing).
However, this is not about why people leave Azerbaijan or how they live in their “adopted homeland.” It is about what remains in their memory of their former life, how they remember their “biological” homeland, particularly its capital, Baku.
Memory is not the same as nostalgia
In a review of Lithuanian historian Laimonas Briedis’s book Vilnius: A City of Wanderers, Alexander Ivanov, the editor-in-chief of Ad Marginem publishing house, writes:
“A city only acquires its own identity when a temporal distance emerges between its perception and its doubling through apperception, that is, when it transforms from a living experience into an act of memory.”
And memory is not the same as nostalgia. Many Azerbaijani emigrants lose their emotional connection with Baku even before they fully become emigrants. In fact, this loss of emotional connection often becomes an additional reason for their departure.
This, of course, does not mean they forget Baku. But the image of the city (even if they occasionally visit) gradually becomes more blurred and erased over time, and slowly, on their mental map, only a few places remain—those associated with something personal. A few backdrops where various events in their lives unfolded.
Memory is not the same as nostalgia… This is not a story about nostalgia, but about memory. About what remains in it after that “temporal distance between perception and apperception” has emerged.
The storytellers are people aged 35-45, born in Baku or having lived there for a significant time, who left more than five years ago for various reasons: due to political beliefs and issues with the authorities, in search of emotional comfort, for the well-being of their children, or simply to follow a loved one…
All of them, from time to time—several times a year or once every few years—come back to visit relatives or friends. But the map of Baku in their memory is “dated” to the period before their emigration. The time when they still felt like part of the city, when it still served as the backdrop to their lives. And when they speak of the city of those years, they are, in fact, speaking about themselves.
Aytan, journalist, Georgia
Most often, my journalist friends and I would meet in front of the Serious Crimes Court building. “In front,” because we were never allowed inside.
We stood outside, waiting for yet another hearing of yet another opposition figure or activist… Starting in 2012-2013, this became a sort of tradition.
To get to that spot, I had to walk down the former Basina Street. I don’t remember what it’s called now. There used to be old neighborhoods there, which were demolished to make way for a park. I always walked along the sidewalk that ran next to it, not through the park itself, where I felt uncomfortable. After all, I saw firsthand the scandal surrounding the eviction of the residents from those neighborhoods, with them being paid mere pennies.
In a smaller circle, with close friends, we often gathered at the “Khazar” café. I have no idea why we went there specifically. It was a basement-type café, completely devoid of any glamour. But for us, it was a kind of safe space… And they also made hingal there.
Jamil, programmer, Lithuania
Although I visit Baku occasionally, I don’t know any of the new places that have emerged since I left. Baku remains exactly as I left it over ten years ago. And now, when I come back, I can only manage to walk along the familiar route from point A to point B. Though, to be honest, I didn’t really know the city well even when I lived there.
Of the entire city, the places that remain in my memory are mostly those tied to some romantic moments—my first date, my first kiss…
There’s one spot not far above the “Baksovet” metro station**—where the city starts to climb upward. There’s this little hidden courtyard with a children’s slide and Soviet mosaics. I remember sitting there with my first girlfriend, not knowing what to do. I didn’t even realize she would be my girlfriend. We probably didn’t even kiss that day. It was nice and exciting. For the first time—like that… Though I was already quite old, maybe 19 or 20. Well, I was a bit late to try everything in life.
Gaib, psychiatrist, Germany
In my youth—during my student years and after—my friends and I were always involved in some kind of creative activity: KVN, a rap group, something else… We were constantly coming up with projects and gathering at someone’s apartment to work on them. Writing scripts, rehearsing. Attaching a microphone to a mop to record a new rap… All night long. It all felt very important back then.
I don’t think I ever knew the addresses of these apartments, but I remember the routes to get there. Take the metro to the “Nariman Narimanov” station, walk a hundred meters, turn left into the courtyard of a five-story building… And I remember how these apartments were furnished. What I remember most clearly are the refrigerators. They had a special symbolic meaning for us. Because “Friendship is when you can open the fridge in someone else’s house and take whatever you want without asking for permission.” That’s how we joked back then.
I remember this, but I never think about it. Now, to talk about it, I had to strain my memory. And these memories didn’t evoke any emotions in me.
Once again, I was reminded that I don’t remember places, but people. People are the most important thing in our lives, the only thing that has real meaning.
Masuma, pianist, Germany
My memory of Baku is forever frozen at the intersection of Istiglaliyyat Avenue and Ahmed Javad Street. Probably because for many years I passed this route on my way to music school. And I often encountered one person there.
He was a wanderer, about fifty years old, with a pleasant face, always wearing a long dark coat and a hat. Many knew him, even knew that he came from an intellectual family, but no one knew his name.
He wandered constantly through that area, as if searching for something lost or something that had never belonged to him. I felt that by simply existing, he gave a certain meaning, a sense, to those streets… He seemed so lonely… but there was no sense of hopelessness in him.
It was as though, hidden in the collar of his old coat, he always carried with him the comforting thought that he “EXISTED.” And one day, I suddenly realized that he was no longer there…
I remember walking down those streets. And I remember how I eventually ran away from them. I broke with them, and the flow of time carried me into a new life, far from those places… I am terrified that one day I will completely forget them. And that means I will forget the version of myself who walked those streets to music school…
Nidjat, lawyer, Czech Republic
The deputy director of the Young Viewer’s Theater was a friend of my father’s, and as a child, I explored every corner of the place. But what I loved most was visiting the dressing room of the now-deceased actress Gyulshan Gurbanova. A pile of bright costumes, jars and bottles with unknown purposes—everything was so impressive and enchanting. And Gyulshan Gurbanova would kiss me every time, and I would blush with embarrassment.
Then, as a teenager, my friends and I were really impressed by the first unisex restroom in Baku, at the “Firuza” café in the city center. Well, at least it was the first unisex restroom we’d ever seen.
Not far from that café, we would rollerblade on the marble stairs leading down from the monument to the poet Nizami Ganjavi. In our group was a girl named Ayka. A “star” in every sense. The coolest rollerblader and also the host of the most popular teenage show at the time, Chardak.
But the real freedom was at the motocross track, where we drove training cars. I was about 14 then.
Since then, I’ve never gotten behind the wheel, and I never learned how to drive.
P.S.
In photography, there is a term “multiple exposure”—the layering of several frames. Similarly, memories of different cities gradually overlap, with the past and present blending together, united by a shared feeling, similar situations, and the same characters.
And in your memory, peering out of someone’s apartment window in central Baku in 2006, you see chestnuts blooming in a European province ten years later.
Or, stepping into the smoky half-darkness of a Berlin bar, you find yourself in a Baku establishment “for outsiders,” closed many years ago because both the owner and all the regulars had scattered to various places.
From time to time, they meet again—in other cities and other venues. They invariably ask each other when they last visited Baku. And over the years, it increasingly turns out that for some, it is unsafe to go there, while for others, it’s simply uninteresting, because the city that once existed on the map of their memories no longer exists on the real map.
*Hingal — a dish made from dough and minced meat.
** In 2007, the “Baksovet” metro station was renamed to “Icheri Sheher,” but in everyday speech, many still use the old name.
This article was written as part of the CISR e.V. Berlin project No Border Space, supported by The German Federal Foreign Office’s Eastern Partnership Program.
