Ballerina among the boxcars
The environment is oppressively brown, the brown of the rusting rail cars, the brown of the dry earth and the brown of the fetid pools of water in which children play and draw water for washing.
Aynura is visible from several hundred meters away, a beacon of childish delight in a bright pink and absurdly frilly ballerina’s dress. A closer look and questions reveal a sweet and unaffected girl who does household chores without protest and loves to play house. She likes telling the other children to behave and she likes to serve guests tea, to pretend she has a firm grip on her world and everything is in order.
Her innocence is a miracle.
All around her the world seems used up, exhausted. The living environment is harsh. Four adults and five children live in a rail car (boxcar) and two small shacks made of scrounged bricks, corrugated iron sheeting and bamboo mats. Their compound and living quarters are clean. It has to be a constant struggle to keep them so given the ground around them which is either dusty or muddy, nothing in between.
Aynura\'s widowed mother, Kifayat, 37, is a mere shadow of a woman these days. She seems to live out on the edge of life, a place something like the edge of the pre-Columbian world where one was in danger of falling off into dark regions.
Kifayat has obviously been psycologically affected by her experience. It takes gentle but persistent coaxing by her mother and sister in law before she will join visitors. Seated at a shaded bench and table in the compound, she fixes her eyes on the table\'s rough surface throughout an afternoon of conversation. Aynura is always beside her. Aynura is sweet and gentle with her mother but protective, looking out for her mother\'s welfare, monitoring her moods.
Kifayat explains that she lost her husband in a cruel fire in a tented IDP camp seven years ago when Aynura was just one. Kifayat\'s husband was a teacher. Kifayat was from a nearby village but known to his mother and sister who both liked her. His mother recommended Kifayat to the man who would become her husband. They had been married for only a few years when they were displaced and moved to a tented camp in Imishli.
It was there that electrical wiring, cut and recut by IDPs to light ever more tents, sparked a fire that ignited the small family\'s tent. It was at night and they were all asleep. The fire was enormous by the time it woke them up. Kifayat escaped the flames with her baby daughter in her arms. Her husband did not. He survived for 10 days and then succumbed to his burns.
"It was the worst thing that could have happened, the death of my husband, because my child must now grow up without a father," she says. Life has obviously bled Kifayat of joy and passion. The only thing that gets her out of bed each morning, she says, is the knowledge her daughter is depending on her.
"When I wake up I feel I need to feed the chickens, go get water. I just do these things. It\'s a habit. I want my child to be joyful, to grow up happy. My daughter likes to read, to paint and she wants to study. She likes to play and she has a lot of friends at school. She is intelligent like her father. I tell her to study hard and be a teacher. She\'s happy at school... " Kifayat says before her voices lowers, pauses and then resumes, "...but not here."
Aynura\'s demeanor doesn\'t support Kifayat\'s self chastisement. Asked if she wants to be a teacher, Aynura nods energetically. She definitely wants to be a teacher and, it goes without saying, to please her mother.
"What do you like most about your mother?" a guest asks. "Everything," the child answers.
The child obviously deeply loves her mother and there is no hint of condemnation in her sweet face. What makes her happy? a guest asks Kifayat. Nothing makes her happy and she can\'t find ways to make her child happy, she responds. It is Kifayat who is her own harshest critic. She needs professional help but there is no such thing in this place. The issues here are base line survival.
"There is never enough food," says Kifayat, driving the point home.
Aynura disappears for awhile and returns in another pretty dress. It is a deep red, frilly and flattering to this beautiful child with dark brown eyes and black hair. "She\'s just a child but I want her to look like a nice girl," explains Kifayat.
Aynura\'s 73-year-old grandmother, Imarat Agayeva, adds that Kifayat pays special attention to what she buys for Aynura but neglects herself. Imarat says Aynura is good natured and though small she works hard doing chores around the compound.
"She knows a lot of poems but she is too shy to tell you," Kifayat interjects.
Aynura does agree to recite a poem after some coaxing. It is called "Our Nation". She starts to recite but her mother interrupts and instructs her to stand for the guests. Aynura obeys and delivers a plea to the president of Azerbaijan, referred to as Grandfather, to help her people return to their homeland.
Asked if she has any dreams for the future, Kifayat \'s response is all about her daughter: "My wish is that my child continues to study and that some day she will have a good house." What does she want most? the visitor persists with Kifayat.
A separate house, she replies.
Aynura is visible from several hundred meters away, a beacon of childish delight in a bright pink and absurdly frilly ballerina’s dress. A closer look and questions reveal a sweet and unaffected girl who does household chores without protest and loves to play house. She likes telling the other children to behave and she likes to serve guests tea, to pretend she has a firm grip on her world and everything is in order.
Her innocence is a miracle.
All around her the world seems used up, exhausted. The living environment is harsh. Four adults and five children live in a rail car (boxcar) and two small shacks made of scrounged bricks, corrugated iron sheeting and bamboo mats. Their compound and living quarters are clean. It has to be a constant struggle to keep them so given the ground around them which is either dusty or muddy, nothing in between.
Aynura\'s widowed mother, Kifayat, 37, is a mere shadow of a woman these days. She seems to live out on the edge of life, a place something like the edge of the pre-Columbian world where one was in danger of falling off into dark regions.
Kifayat has obviously been psycologically affected by her experience. It takes gentle but persistent coaxing by her mother and sister in law before she will join visitors. Seated at a shaded bench and table in the compound, she fixes her eyes on the table\'s rough surface throughout an afternoon of conversation. Aynura is always beside her. Aynura is sweet and gentle with her mother but protective, looking out for her mother\'s welfare, monitoring her moods.
Kifayat explains that she lost her husband in a cruel fire in a tented IDP camp seven years ago when Aynura was just one. Kifayat\'s husband was a teacher. Kifayat was from a nearby village but known to his mother and sister who both liked her. His mother recommended Kifayat to the man who would become her husband. They had been married for only a few years when they were displaced and moved to a tented camp in Imishli.
It was there that electrical wiring, cut and recut by IDPs to light ever more tents, sparked a fire that ignited the small family\'s tent. It was at night and they were all asleep. The fire was enormous by the time it woke them up. Kifayat escaped the flames with her baby daughter in her arms. Her husband did not. He survived for 10 days and then succumbed to his burns.
"It was the worst thing that could have happened, the death of my husband, because my child must now grow up without a father," she says. Life has obviously bled Kifayat of joy and passion. The only thing that gets her out of bed each morning, she says, is the knowledge her daughter is depending on her.
"When I wake up I feel I need to feed the chickens, go get water. I just do these things. It\'s a habit. I want my child to be joyful, to grow up happy. My daughter likes to read, to paint and she wants to study. She likes to play and she has a lot of friends at school. She is intelligent like her father. I tell her to study hard and be a teacher. She\'s happy at school... " Kifayat says before her voices lowers, pauses and then resumes, "...but not here."
Aynura\'s demeanor doesn\'t support Kifayat\'s self chastisement. Asked if she wants to be a teacher, Aynura nods energetically. She definitely wants to be a teacher and, it goes without saying, to please her mother.
"What do you like most about your mother?" a guest asks. "Everything," the child answers.
The child obviously deeply loves her mother and there is no hint of condemnation in her sweet face. What makes her happy? a guest asks Kifayat. Nothing makes her happy and she can\'t find ways to make her child happy, she responds. It is Kifayat who is her own harshest critic. She needs professional help but there is no such thing in this place. The issues here are base line survival.
"There is never enough food," says Kifayat, driving the point home.
Aynura disappears for awhile and returns in another pretty dress. It is a deep red, frilly and flattering to this beautiful child with dark brown eyes and black hair. "She\'s just a child but I want her to look like a nice girl," explains Kifayat.
Aynura\'s 73-year-old grandmother, Imarat Agayeva, adds that Kifayat pays special attention to what she buys for Aynura but neglects herself. Imarat says Aynura is good natured and though small she works hard doing chores around the compound.
"She knows a lot of poems but she is too shy to tell you," Kifayat interjects.
Aynura does agree to recite a poem after some coaxing. It is called "Our Nation". She starts to recite but her mother interrupts and instructs her to stand for the guests. Aynura obeys and delivers a plea to the president of Azerbaijan, referred to as Grandfather, to help her people return to their homeland.
Asked if she has any dreams for the future, Kifayat \'s response is all about her daughter: "My wish is that my child continues to study and that some day she will have a good house." What does she want most? the visitor persists with Kifayat.
A separate house, she replies.
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