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by Anar Farajov

Before and After: Baku's ancient City Walls being destroyed and built anew for Eurovision

Icheri Sheher - the Inner City or Old City - is the oldest part of Baku. The exact age of it is not known for sure. Some historians mention the third century BC, others - the first one. In any case, it goes back to the age of antiquity. Locals also call it “The Fortress”: Baku, like every other ancient city, was surrounded by the wall and a deep ditch for protection against enemies. Ruthless and countless riders of Genghis Khan stuck under these walls for a long time. City of Baku was the last to tumble under the strike of Great Mongol hordes and only after that the whole country fell under his rule. The walls were carefully rebuilt and expanded later by Sassanids and Shirvan Shahs.

For centuries, our ancestors carefully placed stone after stone, strengthened, repaired, raised these walls with the hope of protecting their city and their land from those who would come to destroy it and take away their freedom. Many generations of Baku children, with me among them, climbed these walls, got their knees sore on the old bricks and somehow felt themselves a part of the city’s history.

Today these walls fell. But the enemies did not come from far away foreign lands. The whole city is being prepared to host a popular music festival, Eurovision song contest, and someone decided to polish and smooth it. So that the scantily clad blond starlets and sweet-voiced boys with heavily make up, God forbid, would not think we are not modern enough. The government would not modernize schools and hospitals, and large families would not get better housing -the foreign visitors will not see them, so why bother. Instead, the city council is busy paving the central boulevards and installing couple of huge screens in the squares. And they are also destroying the ancient City Walls that for so long kept the memory of the hands of our grandfathers who built them.

No, of course they will put it back, quickly, using modern technologies. That ancient bricks are broken and crumbled to dust is not a big deal .They will use new silicon ones: they look better anyways. The Wall will be like all new.

And, indeed, that will be a different wall. Not the one full of memories, not the one built with love of one’s country and a hope to protect the native land. This will be another Wall. The one meant to impress the loud tourists who will take their photos, drop their empty Coca-Cola cans and never remember it again. A brand new, sparklingly clean Wall. Like a stuffed animal or a wax figure which looks totally like a live person, except that it’s dead. It does not have any memories. It does not have a soul.

These walls, which stood for centuries and were so quickly destroyed, now became a symbol of everything which is wrong with our society. Why could not city officials just repair the wall? Shirvan Shahs did it. And so did the troops of Russian tsar and every other force who happened to rule over Baku. Why our little modern tsars first let the ancient monument fall apart and then decided to start a major reconstruction project? Maybe someone close to the government needed couple of truckloads of old bricks for his country house? And for that they would ruin the living piece of their country’s history?

Yes, they will build a new wall. It will be fake, like their patriotism. They will pose in front of the Wall for Eurovision and smile in the cameras in their Euro suits, polished and smooth like wax statues. And like those statues, they too don’t have souls.