Where the character was born
The Yard
A Bakuvian's main university is the courtyard. Here people learned to be friends, to share, to argue and make up, to live beside the unlike and consider it normal.
Where the character was born
A Bakuvian's main university is the courtyard. Here people learned to be friends, to share, to argue and make up, to live beside the unlike and consider it normal.
The Baku courtyard is not just the space between buildings but a whole social institution: a shared kitchen of smells, a news exchange, a playground and a hall for weddings and wakes all at once.
The Yard
Families of different peoples and faiths lived in the yard, but the line ran not between them but between "ours" and "strangers" — and all the neighbours were ours. Illness, a wedding or a misfortune for one became the business of the whole yard.
Keys were left with neighbours, children were fed in any flat, and the eldest in the yard carried more authority than any boss. That is how the famous Baku sense of solidarity was born.
The code of the yard
A guest is fed to bursting, even if the hosts are not rich — there is no other way.
The word of the eldest in the yard weighs more than any rulebook.
A neighbour's trouble is everyone's trouble; people stand up for their own.
A table, a board and a glass of armudu tea — the whole of yard diplomacy rests on them.
The Yard
All the yard's important matters were settled over a glass of tea and a game of backgammon: the quarrelling were reconciled, matches were made, deals were struck. It was its own very warm form of diplomacy.
Many yards are gone, many have changed — but Bakuvians carry the spirit of neighbourliness within them and recreate it wherever they go.
The image of the yard here is composite and warm. It describes the spirit of Baku neighbourliness, not a specific address.