Photo by Cristiano Proia

Baku-Saturday, July 17, 2010 - Here is the Baku which I expected. The Baku that made me reborn. The city was discovered, she believed. It was finally opened to the truth. The skyline at night of this city was waiting before giving us the true Baku. It was first baptized the water of the Caspian Sea, because later on today, the roads were opened and Baku gives us its inhabitants. Looking out from the balconies, lined up on sidewalks, faces and lines of men marked differently by a single sun.  All at the streets to watch us. The "journey of friendship": it is only today that this title fully reveals its full meaning. It’s only now that this delegation traces the happiness in Baku.
Long rows of clothes lie between the dilapidated houses and trees. Watermelons and hawkers, so discreet, almost invisible. This is entirely their Baku, Baku of the people with their stories.
The refugee camp is the most exciting and hidden corner of this city. They invite you to visit their homes. Maybe we were not well prepared for this. Perhaps you have not ever. It took a while, though, but why do I take back that intimidated look. The self-awareness and the dignity of these people do not deserve pity eyes. Instead it deserves the smile of these foreigners who come from Italy, playing and joking with them. Because of this, I discovered, they are more capable than us. In fact, Franco Vaccari was the victim of a toy gun of a belligerent child who understands that every President who is respected has immediately suffered an assassination attempt. They let us move around their corridors, their shoes. The younger, feel naked and powerless. The children hide behind the curtains and watch through the eyes of those who already understood very deeply the distress: our being and our actions can not be adjusted in front of their story.  For the older ones no, for them it is different. This is their home. One single room for a family of four members, but the space for pottery, aligned at the window shop to pass to their daughters who is the altar of their lives. A young university student girl was asked, what would be your dream? She replied: “to go back to my real home in village where I was born.”  Franco was about to say if she has a second personal dream, when you have such a hard and strong story which scores deeply their lives and occupies much space in your future, has also asked here to give another possible wish. I want to study in Italy, in Rondine. I hope we always keep in her fist the right to have a second dream, but this time forever.
A little girl has the funniest pigtails that I've ever seen, straight forehead, coughing and a little blood from her nose. It’s the most beautiful little devil of this place. Running out in droves from their homes. The boys with plastic Kalashnikovs in search of an alien to hang out and a photo in order to make a smile. Young people would like to talk, they want to get to know these people coming from outside for a visit that will stay forever in the stories of their families. For the first time we really know what the Caucasus is about, and who are our students. Maga plays with children and guns. He is 'the God of children in Baku, looks like a Chechen warrior of peace.
Aleko, Magomed, Dato, in their Caucasus among the people are the ones that made it happen. Is there something different for them – here in Baku? They are the ones that know it, the ones that really recognize it profoundly. Those who have a talent, those who have a blaze; unable to change everything, right now, for everybody, for all of them. You had to see them: Guy, Rouba, Anna, Mago and Maga, Aleko, Tanja and Dato, when they handed the 14- Points to a Little Boy - President of Azerbaijan, on the bench in a suburb of Azerbaijan.
AZ.

Photos by Angela Zurzolo