After months of hanging around Istanbul, waiting in endless lines and worrying about having to return to Iraq, our friends, musicians and stars of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad have left the building. All four members of Acrassicauda, Baghdad's only heavy metal band, have arrived in metal heaven -- Elizabeth, New Jersey. They received refugee status from the US and will be eligible to apply for green cards in a few years. Here's how we met the band and although we haven't provided many updates lately, this is where they were a year ago.
Since arriving in the US, they've
attended their second heavy metal show (the first was Testament, in Turkey) and met Metallica's guitarist backstage (in the photo), who gave them one of his guitars. That's already a big improvement over playing to Turkish biker gangs and unappreciative drunk yabancis in Kemanci.
There were lots of times when the bureaucratic obstacles seemed insurmountable and the money impossible to find. It's also easy to imagine the problems that lie ahead. But these boys have balls the size of cantaloupes, proven perseverance, charm, wit and despite everything, phenomenal luck. They're gonna do just fine and we admire them tremendously.
Marwan, Faisal, Tony and Firas -- maşallah from İstanbul! We wish you the best and expect you to play Meadowlands someday.
Our friend Yigal Schleifer, who writes about the region regularly for CSM, Eurasianet and other publications, has started a blog at Istanbul Calling. An Istanbul resident for a number of years, Yigal has the ability to cut through the usual bullshit to write with clarity about energy and political issues in Turkey and the Caucasus. We always learn something new when we read his stuff.
We met Yigal in Baku when he was there covering the parliamentary election and we were marching and jollying at the head of the opposition rallies. Good times. He became the only person we knew when we moved to Istanbul almost two years ago.
HELP SAVE OUR HEAVY METAL FRIENDS FROM AN UNCERTAIN FATE IN BAGHDAD
In
November 2007, the Iraqi metal band
Acrassicauda was able to get to Turkey through the help of friends who
donated money for them to leave Syria. Their visas in Syria were
expiring and the government of Syria was threatening to force all
Iraqis to return to Iraq.
Now they are in Turkey and their money and options are running out.
Life in Turkey is very expensive and very difficult for people waiting
to find out if they can officially be resettled by the UNHCR in another
country (Turkey does not accept refugees from anywhere other than the
West). As it stands now, they may have to return to Baghdad, simply
because they can't afford to stay in Turkey much longer. It's
impossible to stress just how dangerous this will be
for them. It could very likely be a death sentence, and the time in
which we can help them is quickly running out.
You can help by making a donation to assist Acrassicauda in surviving while they are stuck waiting in Istanbul.
The band has no bank accounts, and Paypal doesn't function in Turkey so the makers of the documentary about them (HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD) setup a Paypal account on their behalf. No donation is too small.
By giving as little as ten dollars, you can be a part of keeping the
heavy metal dreams of four young Iraqi men alive.
Born
out of a basement rehearsal space in Baghdad, Acrassicauda (Latin for
"black scorpion") is Iraq's only heavy metal band. Inspired by western
bands like Metallica,
Slayer and Slipknot, they began writing and
playing metal in 2001. Their dream of performing live in Iraq soon
became the struggle of their lives.
Due to increased
security precautions throughout Iraq, it became difficult to
practice-much less get through a show-without literally risking their
lives. As the situation worsened in Baghdad they began receiving death
threats from insurgents and religious fundamentalists accusing them of
Satanism.
The war has now all but destroyed their dream of
living in peace, growing their hair long, banging their heads and
shredding as loud as they want. The members of Acrassicauda are
currently seeking asylum in Istanbul, Turkey. All of their visa applications
to foreign countries have been denied.
Coordinating Thanksgiving in Istanbul for 35 people requires a surprising amount of planning. Fortunately, the Planning Committee was up to the task and over the last three months, delegated tasks to other dependable committees, including the Menu Committee, the Entertainment Committee, the Decorating Committee, and the most vital committee, the Interfering Committee which was ably staffed by The Producer, Sammy and Mo.
Below, I will describe the activities of the different committees:
The Interfering Committee:
The Invitation Committee: The original intent of the evening was to reunite far flung members of the Baku Diaspora. Members came from Honduras, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and even America. The original guest list was capped at 20, but the quota was abandoned early on with the addition of some random Canadians, Brits, Turks and other Istanbullus. When the list hit 30, we said absolutely not one more person, since there were no more chairs.
But let's say you were in a smoky club the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, rocking out to Baghdad's only heavy metal band. You learn that not only are the young dudes in the band extremely nice and cute and English-speaking, they are also refugees. Wouldn't you invite them too? Of course you would, and you would find the extra chairs.
Acrassicauda, which is the Latin for a black scorpion that lives in the Iraqi desert, is subject of a recent documentary called Heavy Metal in Baghdad. The four dudes started the band after the fall of Saddam, but due to a variety of, uh, logistical obstacles including but not limited to a violent insurgency, had trouble finding venues to play and uh, places to live without getting killed. They joined the millions of Iraqi seeking refuge in Syria. Having failed, they are now in Istanbul, with no resources, trying to figure out where to go next. They were gracious and entertaining guests, and they got a lot of good advice about managing their band, producing videos, procuring groupies and touring America from people who may or may not have any experience in these areas.
The Decorating Committee: The Decorating Committee approached the Grand Bazaar with no preconceived notions about what appropriate Thanksgiving table decor looks like. After a marathon bargaining session, the stall owner relented on the price of 30 feet of table cloth material, largely to put an end to the acrimonious creative disputes that were driving other customers away from his shop. Additionally, Turkish tea glasses make excellent candle holders.
Our American meat products traveled Turkey via Incirlik AFB in eastern
Turkey, then were trucked all the way back across the country to
Istanbul. Our yams, turnips, cranberries and pumpkin pie mix came from
various Safeways. Other than our Georgian and Lebanese wines, Azeri
caviar and Iraqi refugees, our Thanksgiving dinner was
indistinguishable from yours.
Three noted devushka bloggers -- Carpetblogger, Little Miss Moi and Mind the Gap (who wore her devuskha heels) -- met for mojitos last night at Decadence House, one of the most oligarch-tastic joints in town. The mojitos were top-notch, but did we need that many? Of course we did.
As I've said before, it's odd to sit and talk to people you've never met before but who already know all your stories. Information was shared about the unreliability of masters, devushkas and husbands, humiliations suffered at the gym and in language classes, the pros and cons of locally produced champagnes and gossip about other bloggers we don't actually know.
Of course, we poured one out for our missing homie, Enidd.
It's a good thing that we're already used to hard, slow travel in difficult conditions. It took eight and a half hours to travel 150 miles from Heathrow to Shropshire (near the Welsh border) on flooded roads, just like Africa! The upside was, by escaping the flooded, jammed freeway and taking our chances on the country roads, we saw much more of the English countryside than we imagined we would on this short trip. And we got to drive the rental car through rivers!
The heaviest rains in history hardly slowed down the wedding, though. A tractor was dispatched to bring the groom's grandmother and the organist to the ceremony. People like us who came from places that were 45 degrees warmer and brought completely inappropriate clothes felt dumb for failing to check Accu-weather. No one, apparently, plans to do anything outside in July in England.
A number of former colonists were quite impressed with merry old England. In fact, some of us wanted to become English so chances would increase that we could have a house like this, where the reception was held. LOVED the hedgerows.
The place is called Lorton Park. It isn't that old (1873 I think), but it is still lived in by the family whose ancestors' photos and portraits hang on the walls of the library. They rent it out now to cover its substantial maintenance costs. Set among wheat and cornfields, it was once 16,000 acres. Now, due to divorces and taxes, it's only 2000 acres. The manager gave me and the producer a tour of its cobwebby old kitchen, billiard and gun rooms in the lower level, which looked like they had never been remodeled, with all the old fixtures (labeled bells used to ring the servants from different areas of the house) and furniture. It made me nostalgic for someone else's past.
It wouldn't be Carpetblog if we didn't take issue with a few things, however. The points are minor, but important:
Someone forgot to bring the confetti cannons! Heads should roll.
The toasts. They were nice, for sure. But a lot of important entities were not acknowledged and that has been worrying me a little. Mothers, check. Fathers, check. Those are very important. But what about the beautiful women? Lost territories? The martyrs?
Gin was the only liquor available at the bar (from which the beer and wine flowed admirably). But Sto Gram of gin? When we asked the bar tender why there was only gin, she answered "because this is an English wedding," as if that explained anything.
The Baku diaspora reacts to the news of no vodka
The ceremony took place in the chapel of the groom's boarding school (English boarding schools - where head boy is a command as well as a position) and was performed by a vicar (a word that always makes me giggle). And, there were lots of brilliant feathered and beribboned hats. Really, it couldn't have been more English.
How did this match ever happen? An ass for every saddle, I guess
I've posted about photog Chris Herwig here before and the damn fine time we had travelling with him through Turkmenistan. He's got two new photobooks of his work in Central Asia, and as always, they kick ass. Go look and buy.
Took place today as we hooked up the CABLE MODEM in our apartment. Welcome to the wired world! Data wants to flow freely, and this means more photos uploaded and more music downloaded. What once took 45 minutes now takes two.
So here are some photos of people and things that made my life in Baku easier, more pleasant or funnier.
My favorite sign in Baku.
Ruslan, carpetdealer to the stars, and Ramin, the guy who actually knows about the carpets.
Ruslan was the first person (well, after the Producer) I saw when I returned to Baku. Ruslan is Baku's best salesman, bar none. Coming from a distinguished line of sellers, I feel qualified to comment on this. He could sell oil to an Arab and cleans the clock of all the other dealers in the Old City. He would attribute this skill to the fact that he is Daghestani. Over the last two years he sold a number of things to me, even when I insisted I already had too many of his products and didn't want even one more. He even took some things he already sold to me to sell again. He sells to the Producer, which is very difficult, except when the Producer is in the doghouse. Then it's easy.
Samaya the housekeeper loves the Carpetdogs. She earned their slavish devotion by feeding them homemade blinis and varenkies until they burst. She said Mo is smarter than her grandchild. She wasn't that great of a cleaning lady, but she was nice to have around.
Javanjir, or John as he insisted we call him, lived in our courtyard and drove us in his battered Zhighuli all over town. Like most of Baku's taxi drivers, he is not a driver by trade; he was some kind of metallurgist and ran steel factories in Ukraine during Soviet times. He's got a lot of ideas for boosting Azerbaijan's industrial output and is always trying to get people to listen to him. Since he's an ordinary guy from Sheki who drives a Zhighuli and reads opposition newspapers, he shouldn't quit his day job.
This guy and his wife sold several-day-old fruits and veggies at inflated prices to me from right outside our apartment building. One of several people whose standard of living took a hit when we moved, he was always supportive of my feeble attempts to speak Azeri.
Baku has every kind of bar, as long as it's English, Scottish or Irish. Finnegans, arguably Baku's most popular bar, falls firmly into the latter category. I don't think it's one of these pre-fab Irish bars in a box, though it might be and serves the same purpose. The gold standard for local watering holes, it's probably the first place you go when you come to town and the last place you hit before wheels up. Many an evening begins and/or ends in its yellow-walled womb of smoke and Guinness.
Its clientele is unique Bakuvian: balding, middle aged, middle management suck-ups, snaggle-toothed rig monkeys and the women who love them for money. Personally, I don't care for the place because of the smokey haze, that men outnumber women 10 to 1 and whores outnumber non-whores by 10 to 1. These characteristics hardly distinguish Finnegans from every other bar in town, however. If smoke and whores bother you that much, you might as well stay home and swing.
Besides the excellent hamburgers and wonderfully competent waitstaff, St. Patrick's Day is by far the best excuse to wade through the masses of corporate logo'ed polo shirts and bad tattoos for the best drink in town.
Before Car Bombs
The place seemed oddly empty for any Friday, not to mention St. Paddy's day, but some (probably British, spit) company held a Ball with an open bar to celebrate the holiday which drew many barflies elsewhere. The last few years, we've sent sentries to stake out table space in the early afternoon and reinforcements by mid-afternoon to replace their fallen comrades. But this year, four foreign girls had no trouble sliding into a table at 8 pm. The thin crowd also made liquor delivery that much more efficient.
We came for the Car Bombs.
I doubt Finnegans invented the Car Bomb, but that's the first place I ever tried one and you always remember your first. It's quite a simple concoction -- a shot of Baileys Irish Cream dropped into a pint of Guinness, which is then slammed. No one believes this but it's true: it tastes like Dr. Pepper.
Car Bombs go down so smoothly and so quickly, that before you know it, those gold chains and wranglers on the guy sitting next to you start looking attractive.
Some friends got married this weekend and the celebration hit benchmarks for debauchery that haven't been reached in Baku for many months. This can be explained by the arrival of The Bentonator from Herat, Afghanistan. He's the one wearing the white dress, which provided unfair competition to the bride.
Despite not having been in training -- social outlets in Herat are not as varied as they are in Baku -- he performed admirably. Like all the best leaders, he inspired his followers to take risks and push their capabilities to the limit.
If you are developing the impression that all we do is drink in Baku, let me assure you it's absolutely false. Sometimes we dance.
