Red Town
Young boys in Qırmızı Qəsəbə, 2010. (Markus Hill, Flickr)
ֿNew wealth and old wealth, built on top of soil rich in black, gooey gold. It is quiet outside. A slim river meanders through the town and the hammers of construction workers bring a sense of dynamism to the stillness. There is a synagogue with six domes and a small congregation of Mountain Jewish (a euphemism for Jews from the Caucasus region) men inside – nobody is wearing shoes. I can still distantly recall the poignant smell of clean socks and aged carpet. I sit down and listen to the sound of prayer accompanying my inner voice.
One of the older men outside the synagogue acknowledges my existence with a light bow of his head, and I smile in return. He holds his gaze for a few seconds longer – which I interpret as a sign of his interest in having a conversation. I was right. One hour later, we are sitting together at a bench by that meandering river, and Misha tells me all about his youth (which I later realize parallels the lives of my grandparents in a plethora of ways), the stories of his parents, and the town’s history. He says,“they call this place Qırmızı Qəsəbə, I call it the last hub of co-existence.” He takes a deep breath, coughs, and goes on. “The sole place in this part of the world where Jews and non-Jews can live their own lives, entrenched with each other and with a deep respect for others’ ways.”
Qırmızı Qəsəbə (pronounced “Gyrmyzy Gasaba,” meaning “Red Town”) is indeed special – it has sometimes been called the last “shtetl” left on Earth, other times described as an “oasis of tolerance,” and a “place of cultural inclusivity.” Some records indicate that the town has a 20,000+ strong Jewish community – one of the last remaining communities left intact in a majority-Muslim state. Yet, what is even more incredible about Qırmızı Qəsəbə is the way in which the Jewish identity can so comfortably co-exist with being “Azerbaijani” in the minds of its population.
Many residents of the town comfortably self-identify both as Jews and Azerbaijanis – explicitly and publicly. There are no “buts” or “ands” – one’s Judaism is neither an asterisk nor an overpowering, de-localizing identity marker. It is contextual, and locally-bound – it is interlinked with soil, the land, and its other inhabitants. Misha speaks for the village – “we are Jewish and Azerbaijani. We are both, both 100%, both at the same time.”
How did the residents of Qırmızı Qəsəbə embrace this dual self-identification? As stories often go – it starts with peace and quiet that is born from struggle – elongated, slow, painful struggle. It seems that the town’s image as an “oasis of tolerance” is in many ways first and foremost a reaction and a rebellion to the joint struggles of the past, then a local initiative to celebrate a conscious symbiosis between Jews and non-Jews. An ode to all the other local symbioses that couldn’t become.
Misha remembers his grandparents telling him that his family had moved South from Dagestan in the early 1800s and had settled in the surroundings of Quba. His grandfather was an expert in leathercrafting who worked in an area where affluent Azeri farmers and beys would travel from all around the country to buy shoes, saddles, and other leather goods.
“That all changed with Stalin,” he reflects. One day, Russian soldiers arrived in Quba, and rounded up all locally prominent Jews and non-Jews overnight, along with their families, sending them into a long exile. “First was a months-long cargo train journey to Siberia, where half of the elderly already perished, then came 10+ years of forced labor--that took the rest of them– all four of my grandparents passed away within the first year of camp labor.”
Misha shifts his weight from one foot to another. He holds his gaze firmly locked, and then sighs.
He continues that his mother often recounted how “the camps were a reminder that all people can help each other out. Azeris, Estonians, Russians, Tatars – they were all in the camps alongside us – they shared their food with us, and we shared ours with them.” He says, “they joined Jewish celebrations, and my parents joined theirs.”
Misha’s mother often joked that Pesah was the easiest Jewish holiday to celebrate in the camps, because at least maror wasn’t a rarity. “All they had were bitter herbs anyways!” He laughs, exposing a sole shiny, gold-plated tooth.
An essential part of the Soviet identity-building project involved the erasure of many minority ethno-religious identities – their nominal, superficial, superficial celebration, but their practical erasure. Jews, like many other marginalized peoples in the Union, were pushed to deprioritize their faith and embrace the Soviet faith, Stalinist nationalism, as their main way of being in the world. “They were to be Soviet first, productive second, atheist third, and Jewish last,” Misha adds, smiling wistfully.
Yet for Misha, it was this very targeting of religion that motivated Jews, Christians, and Muslims to respect one another in Azerbaijan. Once the exiled got a chance to return to their homes, they saw clearly that their struggle was a joint one– an inability to be themselves, to speak their minds.
Misha was born in the camps, and was only a young boy when his family moved back to Azerbaijan upon Stalin’s death. They were put back on trains – “better trains these were,” – and transferred into a single bedroom in Soviet-built public housing units on the outskirts of Baku.
As with many Soviet families of the time, the acute housing shortage meant that Misha’s family shared an apartment with two other families – “one Armenian family, and another Muslim one. Their kids were my best friends – Davit, Anne, and Haydar.”
At times, I find Misha’s narrative painfully nostalgic. Together, tolerant, and co-existent. Those days seem gone – in parts – especially in light of the most recent events that took place in Nagorno Karabakh, and the thousands left dead.
Misha says that his family did not want to stay in Baku for too long, that they constantly looked for ways of returning to Quba and then to Qırmızı Qəsəbə – which they ultimately did. There were others living in their old abandoned homes now – the city had changed, the town was virtually unrecognizable.
We are walking towards Misha’s house and it is beautiful – he matches his words to his steps in the dusty roads. I notice that some houses in Qırmızı Qəsəbə look like modern mansions now – this is a wealthy town.
“The Muslims (referring to Azeris) were [forced] to eat pork, the Russian Azeris were [forced] to remove the Bible from their homes, and we [the Jews] were [forced] to close down our synagogues,” he says. Across generations, religious observance did slowly fade from Misha’s and his acquaintances' lives. He never kept kosher, only participated in synagogue services during the high holidays, and married a non-Jewish woman.
“Even though many of us are not really religious, it is this shared memory of religious oppression that made us realize that we are all in this together. We should support each other in honoring our traditions, in allowing each other to be whomever we want ourselves to be.”
We arrived at his home. I truly wish we had walked slower. He invites me in to have a cup of black tea from his samovar which I have to politely turn down due to a video call with a long-lost friend. I am teary-eyed as I thank him and bid him farewell. As I prepare to part my way, he says in the fashion of the wise old man that he is:
“Don’t forget that you are Jewish my son, and that you are from these lands.”
I nod, put my hand on my chest, and bow slightly. Thank you, Misha.
My time with Misha was only a brief sliver of the four days of intense conversations, slowly emerging quasi-anthropological observations, and the joy of being surrounded by wisdom and worldviews that I hadn’t experienced before in Qırmızı Qəsəbə.
Not only Misha, but Dasha, Sergey, Iosif, Mikhail and many others that I met reminded me that it is possible to hold onto our complicated identity markers in simultaneity. As Jews living between Soviet, post-Soviet, and Islamic realities – coming to terms with and deciphering an amalgam of national, religious, and personal identity markers has been an act many Mountain Jews have been used to from an early age. As we migrate away – from East to West, North to South – our identities become even more layered – and some layers need to be left behind.
I recall a particular Mountain Jewish friend who grew up in New York – who had to negotiate his Jewishness, post-Sovietness, Americanness, and Azerbaijaniness. At the end of the day, how many adjectives could he use to describe himself? Often, when the list of markers one faces becomes so extensive, a few are bound to get dropped-- likely those that are the least advantageous to life in the new social landscape in which they find themselves. He became a self-identified “American Jew,” not a “Jew from Azerbaijan who grew up in the US,”
In many ways, my own story parallels his. I am an Azerbaijani and Jewish person who grew up in Turkey and moved into the United States when I was eighteen. But when the list of adjectives I could choose from becomes too long, I end up calling myself a Turkish Jew, which, in many ways, I am not, and will never be. In omitting certain identity markers and compartmentalizing my post-Soviet identity, I am choosing the most recent, most relevant, most easily decipherable.
What Misha and others who I met in Qırmızı Qəsəbə reminded me is that holding onto that original duality is not only possible, but necessary. The constant co-existent notion of being Jewish and being Azerbaijani - not half and half, not some premeditated percentage mark, but entirely and fully both – it is a symbol. It commemorates a shared struggle, and acts as an index of unfulfilled coexistences elsewhere. The pain of thousands before them had been baked into this duality – and this dual acknowledgement of being -ish and from acknowledges those pains and puts them out in public.
Language is limiting; it doesn’t give us ways of sufficiently delineating between being American vs. being from America, the same ways in which we do not have distinct identity markers to distinguish being Azerbaijani from being from Azerbaijan. These two should indexically communicate two different notions of belonging – one to a nation group, and one to a mass of land and everything else that comes with it. Yet too often, we mix them up, use them interchangeably, or abandon one in favor of another. What Misha and other Mountain Jews for decades have perfected doing, however, has been that exact delineation between the two – and the ownership of the latter to complement their Jewish identity.
A connection to a land, to a home.
Nixon famously said: “The Jew in America realizes he's an American first and a Jew second.” No, he doesn’t. Nor does he have to be Jewish first, and American second. He can be both, and be both equally fully, equally well.
When I found myself wandering the streets of Qırmızı Qəsəbə, I couldn’t help but wonder: what would it take for more Jews to be at peace with this duality – about being Jewish and being from place X? What would it take for more to imagine them as interlinking vectors that combine one’s heritage?
Perhaps a conscious decision could suffice.
On my last day in Qırmızı Qəsəbə – I visited the synagogue one last time. Misha is there. He gives me a slight nod and smiles with his golden tooth, acknowledging my presence. I wonder whether he remembers his parting words to me. I remember him holding something strange.
A candle. Black. Gooey. Oil.
* A euphemism for Jews from the Caucasus region.
** A pseudonym is used to honor the anonymity of the interlocutor.