The Blog

But wait! 23-15=8; 1.2*8=9.6; 9.6/1.5=6.4

Fuck it!

Or else 45-41=4; 1.2*4=4.8; 4.8/6=0.8

But still and again, exactly one third survived.

So funny they are, the snowflakes. Fluffy cuties. Every fifth boy and every fifth girl are exactly this same way. The poorer the section, the higher the percentage. Mommy could not afford a foster-mother, the sweet thing kept on the wonder powder ever since its birth. The conveyor-production fruits of global civilization. God save Johnson & Johnson!

He rubbed the wrinkles in his forehead ever so deeper, wearily. The unforgiving gaze bore the plate before him on the table.

Eat all of it! If not, I'll pass it to the boogeyman! The cleaner the plate, the fairer your would-be bride!

The snow outside the windows of the bar Make Or Mar sticks to thick trunks of the pines, adorns their long, southern-type needles with clinging white, white caps rise noiselessly up from the roofs of the parked cars. The light of day out there grew dimmer, wrapped in the sticky twilight. It can't be that late yet, huh?

Here, in the bar, the light shines brightly to show off the items in the collection stuck about in any suitable nook. Each exhibit's an irrefutable proof of the designer's nostalgia for the days of yore, when you could simply live your simple life, without giving it too much of thought. Simply live it.

TV-set “Record” in its plywood box. The sewing machine “Zinger”, those unaware it was produced in Chicago were reading ‘singer’ in the accustomed, German, way. The only foreign language in the then curricular for the compulsory secondary…

Disgustedly, crunched he a chip over-fried to dryness.

"Hey, Chris. You, like, reformed your habits or what? I'm right from You'll Get It. They say never put an eye on you for more than a week or so. Boycotting the establishment? What for?"

The side of the thick square tabletop opposite the window glass (but again why so too close to it? So that never use that side of the table?) got leaned onto by the elbows of a young man in a tight-knitted hat wearing a tiny glob of moisture atop each of the villi in the wool's down. The disappearing vestige of the former snowflakes brought inside from the street.

Along the dark hair hem beetling from under the tight cuff evenly upturned around the hat, there remained not a trace of moisture, all swept off with the artificial fur in the jacket's collar, spurned to fall and imbue the black-and-yellow tartan over the wide shoulders.

"Nobodya?” never taking his look up from the fork detaching the yellowish belly from the next chip. "Why trying to act stupider than you are blessed by loving nature? You know that I know that both of us know that you can't visit that place ‘cause of the migraines in your father's-in-law head. Ever since that rough landing down the steps you made water upon to facilitate his smooth slip, the guy's developed a habit of keeping a hammer under the counter to welcome you on the sight. So, how is all-good missus Maya?”

The fork is dropped on the tabletop, the plate irreconcilably pushed off.

"She left that supermarket and got a job in the big bookshop in the square. An expert on sales of post-purism paintings from the aggravatedly modernistic period, that's her position now, whatever it means. It's only that her employer presses her into learning to write. And I've asked you a zillion times already not to call me “Nobodya”.”

"Even so? Don't be over-picky. That's the most fitting handle for you. Or have I missed something? You recollected your Mom's maiden name? Amnesia is a heavenly gift for the likes of you, and stop digging any deeper, Nobodya Lazarievich. What if before your memory loss you'd been a career serial killer? Enjoy your current freedom. Stop any needless straining of your mind. A click of bitchy recollection and – back to the mill, to the same dreary toil. Do you really need it? By the bye, I would easily slap together a family name for you too. With a friendly discount, you know. You'll feel an incomparable bliss, cash back if you could ever take us over.”

"Slow down, old man, you're the second to none nor any second to you in sight. Hey, I always felt kinda curious, how come you remained without a handle in the street?."

"Chris is my handle.”

" Jeez, Chris, no kidding?”

"Stuck at school yet, like a shirt to ass. The burp of Good Queen Bess."

"Compromised by a gay classmate?”

"The Queen Virgin, you ignoramus! Our literature teacher, Lizavet Vasilievna, to visualize the point, explained that Shakespeare kept copying his early masterpieces from another playwright, some Christopher Marlowe, 'the way our Ekibastuzenko copies his homework from Marlov', which her lecture set the ball rolling."

"I still can't see where you enter in.”

"My family name is Marlov.”

"Ah-ha! Let me guess: Marlov – Christopher – Chris…”

"You certainly improve when seated next to an intelligent person. Now, ‘cause of this handle I dropped patronizing You'll Get It.”

"How come?”

"Christopher got stabbed in a London pub of the period. Poor devil. So young and stuff. Leaving a temporarily disconsolate widow and seven brats.”

"Well, you are past that dangerous age and until having seven kids you're safe. Seriously, Chris, marry someone! We'll get drunk at your wedding.

Still one thing escapes me, both here and there is a bar – does it really matter at which of the two they stab you?”

"Here and there are different by the probability estimate. Chris Gugensian from Second Parallel Street had made up a theory on that matter while doing his third stretch for improper use of a lever in a burglary case falling under the Article 158, aggravated by the involvement of a juvenile kid, Jack Bernullin. This here establishment is under a Don's man supervision and, therefore, the probability estimate is more favorable because the crowd keep their emotions under much better self-control, which even excludes the need for keeping a bouncer around. But why d'you keep the beard when cutting your hair, I wonder?"

"Maya does not allow cutting the beard, she likes it this way… And what kind of a bird that Don is?"

"A quadruped.”

"Well, I'm serious, man. Do you need to horse around every frigging thing? Take my advice and get yourself a PC with video games, it'll make a normal man of you. Whenever feeling you're lost, just hit Escape Button in the left upper corner of the keyboard instead of straying helplessly…"

"How can YOU know?”

"Dunno. It's blurted out just of its own accord.”

"Don is natal in the street. Attended the same school as I, only way later. Too underweight for bullying anyone, just a smart getter for a reasonable price and wide assortment of anything, he was. In his late teens they nabbed him for some trifle, stealing a car or sitting in a car while it was being stolen. A leniently short stretch of absence, for about a year or something. While up the river, he acquired the experience and proper connections, and when out, first off, cut his handle in two.

From the school years his handle was 'Donkey', and now he retained just the first half. Whoever used it unabridged, be it a slip of tongue or in the way of jesting, in a day or two was collected DOA, well-stuffed and the control shot in between the brows, and his ear sliced so as to flap out longer. Like in a certain quadruped.

To put it short, the street began to show circumspection, even talking to a bro they were reluctant to add '…key' to 'don…', follow me? You can't be over-cautious among the bros, you know, today's bro will turn you in tomorrow. They even bypassed the use of “ass” word, just in case, the two animals being from the same family in the classification. Saying “kiss my ass!” they looked back to check who could've heard. One generation later, the street got used and forgotten that Don was titled otherwise way back. Except for a couple of old wind-brokers not good at amnesia.”

"And why d'you tell me all this?”

"Dunno. Blurted out just of its own accord…

This area previously was under another tough's control, Otter by his handle, until one morning they came after his body in his big time apartment, and to collect his bodyguards there, all in the irreversible nirvana. No sliced ears though, yet everyone knew who grilled the water-loving critter and—lo!—Don is the heir.

And this here bar is his turf, so the visitors filter their ejaculations and keep to balanced manners in their interpersonal communication. That's why I may stay sure, to some extent, that no random blade will pierce my bile sack and turn clockwise like a big padlock key, albeit I'm Chris Marlov."

A waitress neared their table, all in black and no libertine flashes, a loose sportswear, in fact, – to take away the rejected food and to present her shining smile to Nobodya who was 'no, thanks, just fine'. Then she walked off pumping up the standard pomp of a juicy floozy.

"So why d'you look for me in You'll Get It, dare-devil Nobodya?”

"No idea, Chris, but that Maya wants to have a talk with you. It was on her commission.”

"What talk?”

"Wish I knew. She's too stubborn, 'I need to talk to Chris, can you arrange?'”

"A quiet nook, nice and cozy, what else would buddies need?"

They both looked up to watch a middle-sized man sporting a black fitted coat in retro style. Glistening black hair stretched tightly from his forehead to the back of his head sticking closely to the skull like by a swimmer slowly emerging from under water with their face up.

The light from the nearest lamp under the certainly too high ceiling coalesced in slick blurry spots in his shoe noses stuck out from under his black wide trouser cuffs. Dazzling white scuff shielded his throat like a hals-tuch in the parade portraits of the baroque period.

"Hi, Don”, said Chris.

* * *

Bottle #13: ~ Not Humans' Fault ~

Humans and war do not go together. You won’t find man there, in war. Battling, man goes beyond oneself, becomes another entity, possessed, non compos, both I and you and any other one are fused into a new, unprecedented, unclassified organism chained together by one and the same aim – to kill. To kill and survive by dint of it, and only after that to fall apart into separate individuals, which a moment back were not humans but spare parts of a… machine? a beast?. Well… of something beyond classification. Something which had been running, shooting, hollering, not feeling oneself, being impersonal ueber-individuum…

“…we ran to attack, shooting, in a united rush, but they shot back real hard and then I got it I’m somewhat overmuch ahead and where are ours? why falling back? forward we go! attacking! and I looked back and saw myself, my body dropped behind, on the ground over there, that’s when I lost consciousness…”

They pulled him out, he stayed alive, became a human…

“…it was a leave for two days, I came home, our apartment on the third floor, not destroyed, my wife was there, our two-month-old son, but all the same I couldn't just relax, too uptight all the time, the baby start squealing and I hardly keep myself back not to grab and smash it against something, anything, and drop from the balcony…”

He did manage to keep himself under control, it’s his baby after all. And were it not his?.

Alexander Matrosov, Unan Avetisian and many others, who repeated their deed, posthumous Heroes of the Soviet Union, they did not plug with their bodies the bullet spitting embrasures of bunkers to save their attacking buddies from being mowed down by the machine gun fire. No. They were thrown into the hole by the mutual need of the rushing machine-beast to survive, used by the collective subconscious they were.

There is no individual human in war but components in the war composition.

There are no atheists in the trenches where every one is at god’s disposal and knows it too well. It’s not the god they teach about at madrasah or seminaries, who they kindle smelly substances for, offer prayers to, sing up in their hymns. This god is bigger than any of religions. This god is mightier, more merciless and senseless than them all. There is no use to pray to him, no way to understand, even less to avoid. This god is Chance.

Were I asked if Armenians had perpetrated beastly atrocities, my answer is: but they were not Armenians then!.

Were I asked if Azerbaijanis had perpetrated beastly atrocities, my answer is: but not Azerbaijanis were they then!.

Non-humans from both sides, just war-components.

Azerbaijanis were the passengers burning inside the petrol torch of a bus, Armenians were whose torn-out hearts were stuck into the spirits-filled three-liter jugs and put by the tombstones in Baku cemeteries.

And lots of other things I know of, which I have no wish to ever know yet still know and this knowledge chokes me. Mercy please! Finish me off! I know too much, much more than I am capable of carrying on!.

I disseminate this here ethnic strife? It was disseminated and fanned up long before me and go on and on and on because war-components are not only those carrying assault rifles.

I don't care for knowing who was to start the fire. I am for the Zero Option canvassed for by Popkov who came in summer 1992 to Baku and later, over Yerevan, to Stepanakert to wander about the elitist offices, pleading: let’s start from zero, let’s try at being humans.

 Who did hark him, that god’s fool, unshaven, uncombed, in a bum’s raincoat and no necktie?

There are no sacred wars, any war is dirty and when it is over (that’s a lie, it is never over but withdraws for tactical considerations, regrouping its components), and when there comes a seeming respite, the dirt and shit get varnished over, some or other spare parts get dangling flops and are proclaimed Heroes of Nation, they get inserted into History textbooks so that the secondary education would have tools for preproccessing the next portion of cannon fodder with…

And those who lost the war are announced war criminals and passed over to some or other Hague to be sentenced, even though they also were fighting for their Homeland and saving the world at large, and if in the process there happened some crimes against humanity then you just can't have one without the other, there is no medal of just one side, ask any order awarded warrior if in doubt…

People! Be vigilant! I love you! People! Hey!

Damn! The parents missed baptizing me properly, John-Desert-Crier would suit me better or at least Johnny-Who-Hoots…

(Abridged content from Link 1 at the current bottle bottom):

"Khojalu City and its two suburbs were populated by 7000 civilians, hundreds of whom were killed at the storming on the night 25 to 26 February 1992 by hands of Armenian bandits and the 366-th Motorized Infantry Regiment personnel or frozen to death fleeing over the mountains…"

Then follow graphical descriptions of mutilated bodies of Special Police Officers and simply shot and killed civilians;

– testimonies of foreign (predominantly Russian) mass-media correspondents;

– a lengthy discussion whether there was a humanitarian corridor left for the exodus of civilians before the battle;

– details of the case of an Azerbaijani journalist pledging that such a corridor existed, and 15 years later sentenced for 8 years of imprisonment for that erroneous opinion, yet after 4 years of incarceration he was granted amnesty;

– samples of the appropriate reaction by the international community to the genocide in hand;

– list of fiction and other kinds of works based on the events;

– presentation of the selected viewpoints from both sides to the conflict.)

. . . . . .

[The following is an aside commentary by me, who was not an eyewitness and construed the events on the basis of the basements’ rumors though not just on them.]

Starting 1987, I regularly passed Khojalu Village on my bus trips to Stepanakert City and back watching a village of about 400 cottages, and three 3-story apartment blocks of 2 sections each, two more same-sized buildings were underway, plus two nearby hamlets of a score of cottage-hut-barn.

The 366-th Infantry Guards Motorized Regiment was pulled out from Stepanakert a month before the storm of Khojalu, having left a handful of petty officers at the regiment quarters.

“The Regiment Commander Political Deputy called us to his office and said, 'I can’t give you a direct order but you have to stay…'”

(The statement was heard not in the basement but on the 2nd floor of the house traded by the owners of our one-room flat (located on the 1st floor) for their house in Baku in the aftermath of the Sumgait tragedy. At the dinner table was seated (among the others) a mercenary, whose armored personnel carrier had not entered Khojalu yet supported the storm with his machine gun fire from outside the village limits.)

“…about 1 am. I saw one stalking nearer with a 'stovepipe' (MPATS), he did not know I had a night vision gizmo…”

The humanitarian corridor certainly existed which practice was employed throughout that war because it allowed to exponentially decrease casualties born by the attacking force.

According to independent Azerbaijani sources (on the Net), the proposed humanitarian corridor was used 24 hours before the storm for driving to Aghdam (the nearest Azerbaijani city) herds of cattle and sheep to their owners, who had already been evacuated to Aghdam (and this is absolutely beyond any comprehension! Spies and spies everywhere! However, working for the wealthy owners only).

The official site dedicated to the Khojalu Tragedy mentions curtly the participation of petty officers of the 366th Infantry Regiment (!) in the unsuccessful advance from the Azerbaijani Aghdam City against the Armenian Askeran City.

[Aside: some ubiquitous regiment indeed, battling on all sides against all sides. Were it them shouting back over the radio from their tanks advancing to Askeran city, ‘Where are your fucking infantry men? Prod those sheep! I am not going to the MPATS burrows without your fighters!’?

Because a tank attack against a well-trenched forces is a raw suicide.]

(Abridged content of Link 2 at the current bottle bottom):

"A year before the storm of Khojalu the Soviet leadership arrived at a decision to resolve the problem of Mountainous Karabakh by means of military punitive efforts code-named 'Ring Operation'.

(Below follows a schematic description of actions pattern in day to day carrying out the operation, as presented in the wiki site dedicated to the “Ring Operation”.)

“Early in the morning a village would be surrounded by soldiers of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. Then the blockaded village was entered by Azerbaijani Troops of Special Police to start searches for weaponry and terrorists, and check the IDs of the villagers', (which actions were) accompanied by beatings, rape and robbery. At times, together with the Troops of Special Police the villages were also entered by Azerbaijani civilians for marauding. The local inhabitants were presented with the ultimatum to leave the village forever. As a rule, this actions were repeated for two or three days before the actual deportation.

The execution of “Ring Operation” resulted in plunder and destruction of 19 Armenian villages, murder of more than 100 civilians (for the most part kids, women and senior citizens), 600 people were wounded, hundreds missing…”

No I am neither disseminating nor in search for who was to start it all and the above quotation is just to visualize the means and ways of a war-components production line process.

 . . . . .

At the end of the humanitarian corridor, about 700 meters from the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam, the crowd of refugees from Khojalu Village were hit by a volley of GRAD missiles.

 Phedais did not use that military equipment yet, all the attackers were equipped with were assault rifles and white bandage fastened over the khaki trench coat sleeve.

Those rockets burst far away from the Khojalu battle. That night the fleeing civilians from Khojalu walked 20 km, there remained just 700 m to the city of hope, security, life… It was a full discharge of missiles from a GRAD installation which did not participated in the storm of Khojalu. It was a bloody dawn.

In a couple of hours mass-media correspondents were brought to the spot of the tragedy, on a helicopter.

Some inhuman war-spare-parts did not want at all to let the conflict die out…

"When leaving Azerbaijan (another quote from the official Azerbaijani site about the Khojalu Tragedy) some servicemen from the 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment attempted at taking outside the Republic big undeclared sums in foreign currency…"

[And again, in the best traditions of the Soviet Army, the personnel got fucked up by the Commander Political Deputy! Although it’s not quite clear which side had paid the confiscated dollars. Were they ripped off the tank men who failed to capture the Armenian Askeran City? Or the money was on those who fired from their armored personnel carrier at Khojalu? Were the petty officers not smart enough to get out of the region via Yerevan? Why to come to Azerbaijan with Armenian bribes on them?

 In a nutshell, some complete lunacy in the style of post-reconstructional absurdity, where no Thomas de Vaal will ever find any ends in or out.

Although the guy was nobody’s fool in his a within-limits-red scuff, when he came to collect material for his book. I noted it back in 2002, a Holland family name and a job at the BBC, both at once. And the work was produced in so streamlined manner of statements that both sides quote him at their sites now in innocent belief he pulls for their side.]

Later on, the 366th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment was dissolved… (Which is fucking dishonesty at all! Not fair way to treat guardsmen!)

The storm was started at midnight sharp, as planned. Valyo the Phedai, when forcing the river in the western outskirts of the Khojalu Village, slipped off a boulder and fell. The end-February-mountain-river water felt dead cold but he got up and ran after his comrades-in-arms.

 As a component to the current war-machine he ran and fired and hollered although being drenched thru and thru.

At about 1.20 am, in a village lane he was lucky to come across a burning house which fire gave him an opportunity to dry up his sides. An hour later, in a deserted house at some other place in the village still echoing with stubborn shooting out, he found a casserole of hot barmy borshch. He ate it, not all but until got warmed inside.

His mother, of course, wouldn’t approve of the action. All her 4 children were born in Baku where she worked at a factory, packing baby perambulators, while her husband wandered about the USSR as a seasonal construction worker.

In 1989, so as to stay alive, they moved from Baku to Stepanakert.

Next year Valyo finished School 9 there and a year later he was already a full-fledged phedai in the group fighting in Krkjan. When in the storm of Malubalu besides the nasty mortar battery they captured also a big farm, he was awarded 4 sheep and a horse, all of which prize he brought home.

‘No’, said his mother, ’take them all back, we don’t own the animals’. If you ever try to drive 4 sheep and a horse from the School 9 neighborhood to Malubalu you would understand Valyo’s frustration, but he did it, he always was an obedient son. However, on that tragic night, he ate that borshch not cooked by his mother because he was too cold.

At 4.40 am, he caught a hostage (not a special police officer). He felt swoony and sat on a bench with his back to the hedge, and demanded of his prisoner to behave (which that promised) yet, just in case, he took the clip from his AK and shoved it in the inner pocket of his trench coat, before dozing off.

His sleep was disturbed with an AK barrel prodding at his forehead, he pushed it away and said, ‘Stop it, moron!’.

In response, the iron barrel hit hard and he awoke to see the stardust lover Gavo from Yerevan lying on the ground, and his buddy Syamo standing over Gavo whom he had just knocked out.