{"id":181768,"date":"2017-01-10T15:01:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meydan.tv\/article\/the-azerbaijan-i-miss\/"},"modified":"2017-01-10T15:01:30","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T15:01:30","slug":"the-azerbaijan-i-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meydan.tv\/en\/article\/the-azerbaijan-i-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"The Azerbaijan I Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meydan.tv\/az\/gunel-movlud-3\/\" alt=\"G\u00fcnel M\u00f6vlud\" class=\"wp-image-67667\"\/><figcaption>\n    G\u00fcnel M\u00f6vlud<br \/>\n  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meydan.tv\/az\/gunel-movlud-banner\/\" alt=\"G\u00fcnel M\u00f6vlud &#8211; Banner\" class=\"wp-image-65612\"\/><figcaption>\n    G\u00fcnel M\u00f6vlud &#8211; Banner<br \/>\n  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\n  Do I miss my country?\u00a0A lot of people ask me this question.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  My mother, my brothers, relatives, friends, colleagues, readers and local people of the country where I currently live.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cDo you miss your homeland?\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Usually I answer \u2018no\u2019, and I don\u2019t feel that I\u2019m being dishonest. I really do not miss Azerbaijan. It\u2019s the opposite, actually &#8211; I\u2019m scared of Azerbaijan. Images of Azerbaijan give me the same feeling of when I see videos about North Korea.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  They give me goosebumps.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  However, I can\u2019t entirely break myself away from my country, in the same way that one cannot break one\u2019s self away from the five senses. I can not tear myself away from the tastes of my country &#8211; its flavors, sounds, colors, its texture.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I open my fridge and see grape leaves sent by 3 people from 3 different countries that were delivered by the German post.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  There is always thyme in my tea closet, I can\u2019t drink tea without it. There is a box of \u201cAzerchay\u201d hidden behind my can of thyme.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I\u2019ve got saffron, dried plumbs, dried mint, sumach and other spices that made it into my spice cabinet in Norway all the way from Bilasuvar. Whenever I cook, I think &#8211; I\u2019m not putting spices into my food, I\u2019m putting Azerbaijan. Without feeling sad or missing it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I cook meals from Azerbaijani cuisine, I watch Azerbaijani movies, listen to Azerbaijani music. I speak Azerbaijani with my son who stubbornly responds to me in Russian.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I look at my way of life, at my interests and think &#8211; am I not missing my homeland? Don\u2019t I want to go back to the culture and the people to which I belong? I think about it and go back to Azerbaijan in my mind. I take a walk on the streets of Baku.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  But I meet neither Seymur Baijan nor Ali Akbar. One of them is in Georgia, the other in Switzerland. I want to have dinner with someone, but I can\u2019t give a call to Elmir Mirzoyev, Emin Aslan, Nurlana or Khalisa. They have all either left the country or were forced to do so. When I want to listen to music, I remember that both Jamal Ali and Azer Cirtdan have also left.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  And my journalist friends Afghan Mukhtarli and Abbas Atilay have also departed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Who\u2019s left?\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  80 percent of the cultural and social circles I belong to are no longer in Azerbaijan. The remaining 20 percent are there only in body, not in spirit. Their spirits left for the West a long time ago.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  And aside from people &#8211; even the trees I used to know are gone. As if the whole country has gone somewhere together with its buildings, trees, people and another city has been plopped down on top of it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The city that I\u2019m not connect to, that I no longer belong to, is alien to me. The sea of that country is closed, the trees felled; it is full of stone fences, and the worst is that the gems of the country have left, scattered themselves about the world. . .\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  . . . where they spread Azerbaijani music, literature and their minds.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Those unable to leave are in a constant state of fear and anxiety, irrespective of their being imprisoned or not.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  ***\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I remember old Azerbaijani songs. And when I listen to them, I realize that they no longer belong to today\u2019s Azerbaijan.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  I remember a song of Elmira Rehimova:\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The sun rises; afternoon, afternoon.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Dawn wears flat the world\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  ***\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Gunel Movlud was born on October 9 of 1981 in Mehdili village of Jabrayil. She graduated from Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do I miss my country? A lot of people ask me this question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":67667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Azerbaijan I Miss - MEYDAN.TV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meydan.tv\/en\/article\/the-azerbaijan-i-miss\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Azerbaijan I Miss - MEYDAN.TV\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do I miss my country? 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