Baku, the capital, a city of approximately two million people, is a brash glam cesspit of new construction newly stalled since the global banking crisis and again, since oil and gas have plummeted surrounded by ruined farmland. To pass from Baku to the countryside is to pass from the twenty-first century to the nineteenth, skipping the twentieth entirely, which was such a downer anyway, everyone pretends not to notice. Throughout the country there isn t a dominant culture, but an only-culture. Azerbaijani state power, though notionally secular, has the force of Islam and the same vertical structure: bow and scrape. The country s best criminals are treated like businessmen, and the country s best businessmen happen to be members of the ruling family. To get a good job, you have to have good connections. To get good connections you have to be born to a good family. To be born to a good family you have to be blessed by a good God. If you find yourself like, say, the 7.4 million people in Azerbaijan who don t live in Baku unlucky enough to be excluded from this system of patronage, or nepotistic oligarchy, you re fucked. All you can do, in your fuckedness, is put on a fake face and submit. Spend all your money on your car, or your clothes, so that you seem wealthier. Name your firstborn male child after the president or the president s father so that he seems more employable. Have more female children, because only women can marry up. Take pride in the new pedestrian promenade, along the waterfront. In the skyscrapers you don t work in. The malls you can t afford to shop in. Embrace the falsehoods and lead a double life.
Don't quit, Joshua.