volunteer, move well, write.: A Huge Thank You

Illustration by Arif Huseynov

This is a thank you post. Its long because there is a story to be told with it, and aside from telling it like this it seems the only other appropriate way would be to type 'THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!' a thousand times.

A while back, unbeknownst to me, Emily and Mercedes collected a bit of money from each of you to buy me the best souvenir ever. A couple weeks ago it was given to me. Mercedes (especially) likes to tease me about presents and say things like 'You're gonna love it' and 'You're gonna be so excited'. This is all pretty standard stuff and I'm game to play along, because who doesn't like presents? But its when she said 'You might even cry' that I couldn't help getting a bit skeptical.

I'm not really liberal with shedding my tears. Mercedes knows me pretty well, this is a bold statement to make.

So I turn towards Emily looking for a supportive eye roll. And Emily says 'Actually...you might cry'.

Well, that does it. I'm now officially clueless. My mind is racing to think of any gift, let alone one that could be given to me in Azerbaijan, that could make me cry.

Alright, lemme give some background

A while back I was with my friend Glendene at an Ex-pats house who was telling us about an art event she went to. It was for an artist who had created paintings for various Azerbaijani Fairy Tales. In fact at this showing she had also purchased a book of the translated fairy tales and corresponding paintings. Now, I collect fairy tales and myths from around the world (#randomfact), and even before hearing about this specific book I had been trying, with little luck, to find a book of tales from Azerbaijan, in English, as a souvenir.

But this book, this was beyond a simple souvenir. It is probably the most beautiful book I had ever seen. Soft leather bound, with gold embossed pages, each page ornately bordered and the illustrations for the tales were truly works of art, unlike any illustration I have ever seen. In fact, it was so extensive in its detail work that the Azerbaijani government couldn't even find a book binder in Azerbaijan capable to do this-they had to go to Turkey.

I desperately wanted a copy, but I knew from first look I was doomed from the start. Bookshops around Baku had never heard of this book, it was obviously limited edition, and obviously never, ever intended for mass production. But little did I know, Glendene had spoken with Emily and Mercedes telling them that if they were looking for an idea for a 'thanks for planning this boat trip stupid!' gift she had a great one. And apparently they collected money from each of you on the boat. Alright. I'll now cut to Emily:

...[T]rying to get our hands on a copy, we realized we did not exactly know how to go about tracking it down. Mercedes finally got the number of a “guy” in Baku that we could call. We only knew his name, but didn’t know who he was, if he spoke English, if he sold the book or knew someone who knew someone, etc. So after arguing a bit about who would have to navigate the phone call, I gave it a shot. The conversation went something like this:

Emily: “Hello, Is this Arif?”
Man: “Allo? Yes?”
Emily: “Hi. Do you speak English?”
Man: “Inglis? Okay.”
Emily: (In her head… “Obviously not.”) Switching to Azeri..
“Hi, I got your number from a friend who said you know that… you can find a book about…. Well I am looking for this book and it is about…. Somebody else is going to call you.”

Luckily, Mercedes and I did this in the Peace Corps office in Baku with endless sources of the best translators I have had the pleasure of meeting in Azerbaijan. We approached our language coordinator, Afet, explained the whole situation, and she called him back for us. Listening to her end of the conversation, we already knew it wasn’t promising. It turns out, the man we called is actually the illustrator of the fairy tales himself. We figured he was just a bookseller or something. In reality, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to illustrate pictures for this book and has his own gallery in Baku. What he relayed to Afet Xanim was that this book was originally sold but now has been taken off the shelves completely. No one is able to buy it and the only way to obtain a copy is to be an International humanitarian aid organization and send a letter on behalf of the agency to the Ministry to request a book. They would review the letter and determine if they would send a copy or two to the organization. Afet Xanim asked maybe four or five times if there was any way at all to buy a copy from the Ministry but the answer remained ‘no.’
Hanging our heads after hearing the news, Mercedes and I had some thinking to do. The good news is that Peace Corps qualifies for the humanitarian organization. The bad news is, it wasn’t guaranteed that Ministry would grant it, and we still had all this money from Josh’s friends. If we didn’t get the book, what were we going to do with the money? Take him out on a night on the town? PayPal seven dollars back to everyone in the States? We decided to see if we could find a replacement on the internet first.

Then the best news in the world came. While sitting at our Close-of-Service conference on the outskirts of Baku the next day, I received a call from Afet saying the illustrator had called her back. He was touched that we were so intent on getting the book for our friend that he made a few calls out to people, got his hands on the one and only copy available for sale, and would be in Baku the next day if we still wanted to buy it from him. And boy, did we. The problem was, we were at this conference and couldn’t leave, and he was only going to be in the city for one day (because he had to return to his Villa). Afet, who like almost all of our Peace Corps staff is amazingly kind, offered to use her entire lunch break the next day to go to the illustrator and buy the book for us. We sent our money along with a Peace Corps driver who brought it to Afet, who gave up her lunch hour to go on this goose chase for us. She even called to confirm with us that is was okay that we didn’t get a receipt because it was sort of an under-the-table kind of deal.

The next day when I saw Afet and received the book, I was in shock. It is, by far, the most beautiful book I have ever seen and touched. The illustrations are breath-taking, gorgeous. It is ineffable. It even included a CD-ROM audio recording. Once we actually had it in our own hands, Mercedes and I kept hinting to Josh about his present. We told him he’d love it and he wasn’t going to believe it, but when we told him he might cry when we gave it to him, he started to get skeptical and couldn’t handle the wait any longer. The look on his face was priceless. He didn’t cry, but I think it was the amount of air he sucked in from shock that prevented him from shedding any tears.

What I love so much about this story is the effort. I love that this book took effort on behalf of both American and Azeris to acquire; that really adds a layer of meaning to this gift as a souvenir of my Peace Corps Service. A main goal of Peace Corps is to promote cross-cultural cooperation and understanding and this story of events involved in obtaining this book so perfectly embodies it. The artist even gave me a book of his work just from that exhibition and invited us to his gallery when we were in Baku.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. No gift was necessary, the opportunity to see each and all of you together, in the midst of a long two years, was by far the motivating factor to planning this trip. I couldn't believe my luck that I had 15 amazing friends and family members who committed to doing this. But I so greatly appreciate the gift you helped get for me and can't wait to show it to you all.