My Life in Azerbaijan - I am not a prostitute!

January 7, 2011
New Year Eve, I went up to Ganja to meet Vivian and Carol. We planned to spend our New Year away from Azerbaijan. Our destination is Tbilisi, the Capital of Georgia. This is my 2nd time visit to this ancient and charming city. I was really looking forward to it.

New Year morning, Vivian and I were waiting for a bus to a bus terminal. It was a brisk early morning. Because of the holiday, there was hardly anyone around, only a bread store was open and the entire area was deserted. After 10 minutes waiting, a taxi stopped in front of us. A typical middle aged over weighted Azeri man got out of the cab. We assumed he wanted our business, so both Vivian and I just ignored him. He approached us and particularly stared at me.

“Massage? Massage?” He asked with a hand gesture.

I confronted this kind of situation before, a few times in Sumgayit and one time in Baku. We have a massage center in Sumgayit, and the massagers are all Chinese. (but I never met any of them) At first, I thought the massage center was really for massage, until later, my PC friends told me it was more than just massage. Since I am fully intergraded in my community, and everyone knows that I am American and work for a bank. Therefore, no Azeri men in Sumgayit bothered me anymore after the initial encounters. Another time, I was on my way to Peace Corps office in Baku, I was approached by a young man with the same question. He even did the sexual hand gesture to emphasis his real request for “Massage”, I was very angry, and told him off. Today in Ganja, it happened again!

Vivian was more alert than I was. As soon as the man came near us, she immediately said “No, No”. I was glad Vivian was with me. (That morning, my phone was out of order and I could not even call Jeyhun, PC security officer, for help) The man did not give up, he continued to stare at me and wait for my answer. Of course, I said “NO, NO”. He then went in to the bread store across from us pretending to buy bread. Few seconds later, he came out of the store without any bread, still watched me and reluctantly got back to his car. Vivian gave me a sympathetic look and said “poor little Chi!”

I was not going to let the incident to ruin my holiday. We joined Carol at the bus terminal and went on our short version of Tbilisi odyssey. We had a great time traveling together! I even saw a waterfall. Stay tuned for my next blog entry.