LAHIC, NORWEGIANS AND RANDOM JAM

We took a trip outside of Baku to the village of Lahic (“LaHeesh”).  A 3 hour drive from Baku, it sits at the almost end of a long road that hugs a mountainside. It was only 35 years ago that the foot/cow path that led to the village was made into an actual road. The thin horizontal line that runs along the lower part of the mountain is a photo looking back at the road we just traveled with eyes almost shut...

It’s the end of the summer season so the town was quiet which suited us just fine. Most days were bright, sunny and cool. Suffering with colds, Ruby and I hung out at the guesthouse while Paul took hikes to waterfalls and apple orchards. Reading, lounging and walking through town was not a bad way to spend our time in Lahic. 

At breakfast the first morning I tasted something new, intense, and transformative - Gizil Gul Murabba -  rose petal jam. Jagged bits of flower parts, sticky, sweet, overpowering... almost. Concocted with roses gathered in the spring, parts are layered with sugar and distilled in the dark. I am intrigued with the craggy bits of flower parts and how they turn my head and taste bud.  Pistils and stamens, filaments and pollen anthers, rose buds and hips, bud eyes and unions, ovules and ovaries. Ovaries? How could I live this long without knowing that roses have ovaries? Fixated on mammals for quite some time, I have totally disregarded the depth and breadth and height the flower can reach. I am looking forward to exploring this ancient innovation. I have always tried to stop and smell the flowers. But now, because of some random jam, I will do it with new eyes. 

We shared the main road with cows and kids. We bought syrup and sox. We ran into some rabid cats and raccoons, and bought pomegranates from the trunk of a car.

Every time I see these shaggy sheep hair hats I have a strange desire to possess one! I see them in Baku in the Old City shops and my eyes follow them long after my feet have passed them by. I think I might finally know the reason why. While in Lahic I learned of the Azerbaijan - Norwegian connection. Some believe, including Thor Hyderdahl of Kon Kiki fame, that we came from common stock. That Azerbaijan and not Europe was the spreading center of the Caucasian people. So could it be, that on some primal level I am home again…yearning for my hat?

Every time we turned around Haciyev seemed to come out of the woodwork with his tattered copy of Lonely Planet. His guesthouse was featured in the book and he wanted to make sure we knew we had options in Lahic, and that his wife makes good cabbage soup and to please come take a look. Next time we will look him up – in addition to soup, his wife also makes some pretty cool sox!

Known for its copper smiths and working shops, some 900 Azeris call Lahic home. Craftsmen line the narrow main street and you can hear them hammering away during the daylight hours. 

One of them was Nazir, who seemed to be working all the time, hammer hitting metal every time we walked by his shop. Nazir stopped me from getting too attached to an old copper bowl. Azerbaijan has a law that you cannot take antiquities out of the country. Seems a good plan to keep treasures in a country and I didn’t know about the law. I could tell he really wanted to sell me the bowl, but steered me to the new copper pitcher he was working on. 

I admire Nazir for his honesty - the day before this smiley shopkeeper made no such confessions when I purchased this cup from him...

This region is known for earthquakes, so the houses are built with wooden beams between the rocks to lessen the shock. Looks pretty cool too!

On Monday the clouds rolled in and umbrellas came out. 

We heard about the local museum and climbed the stairs off the main road to take a look. 

The one room museum sits in a former mosque and is run by just one man, a veteran of the Nagoro-Karabakh War who showed us the scar on his skull. This was his job now and he knows what he was talking about – every object within and every portrait was explained with pride.