The line between
continents blurs up here, lost in the madness of these mountains—great, hulking
beasts with snow-drenched peaks, their ridges twisting like the spine of some
prehistoric leviathan sprawled between the Black and Caspian seas. Less a
boundary between East and West than a stone-fisted barricade between the East
and the even more bewildering East.
For centuries, they’ve
loomed like bouncers at one of history’s rowdier saloons, keeping the
Indo-Europeans and the rough-and-tumble Caucasian and Turkic tribes apart. The
Russians and Persians have played tug-of-war over this place for generations,
and yet, in one of history’s great absurdities, these crags somehow manage to
carve Orthodox Christian Georgia and Armenia away from the Muslim-majority
north—except for Azerbaijan, which juts into the Caspian like a defiant middle
finger.
We had left the sleepy
village of İlisu in Azerbaijan and were hiking toward Russia, following the
glacial Kurmukh-chai River as it cut deeper into the mountains, pushing forward
with the simple plan of going as far as we could until someone in a furry official-looking
hat stopped us.
Along the way, we met a
shepherd who greeted us in a singsong Azeri. When it became clear we understood
nothing, his wizened, weathered face darkened with suspicion before he switched
to the language of the empire, the tongue of the Tsars. Still, nothing. Our
blank stares unsettled him.
How could we not speak
Russian? To unravel this mystery, or perhaps to confirm we weren’t
extraterrestrials, he pulled out an old bottle of homemade honey vodka, still
stamped with the fading letters CCCP and poured us each a stiff drink. Through
wild gestures and, eventually, song, we pieced together his bewilderment: that
someone might not speak Russian simply did not compute. It was as if we had
told him the sky was not, in fact, blue. This did not fit in with his
worldview.
I was reminded of this the
other day while out for cañas. I don’t even remember how the conversation
started, but at some point, one of the older parishioners of the bar looked
over and said, “What kind of name is that? Troy? I mean, what’s it short for?”
I wasn’t sure where this
was going, but I told him it wasn’t short for anything, it was just Troy.
“Impossible! That’s no
name. There’s no San Troy. It must be short for something, like… Troncio.”
In no mood to argue, I
explained that it came from the tragic city of Priam and turned back to my
drink. But he wasn’t finished.
“Impossible! Troya would
be female, and you have a beard!”
I tried to steer the
conversation toward football or jamón, safe topics, national pillars, but no.
He was deep in the trenches now, determined to restore order to a world where
all proper names must have a saintly origin or at least a good Catholic ring to
them.
Finally, he delivered his
verdict. “You need a real proper name.” He thought for a moment, then grinned
over his half empty glass of Veterano. “Something like… Manolo.”
“Sí, Manolo!” A name as
sturdy as a pair of alpargatas, as dependable as a midday siesta. The matter
was settled and he ordered another drink.
I nodded and accepted my
fate. After all, at least he didn’t suggest Jesús.
Imagine if I had told him
my surname?
"For a moment, it felt like we had won. The bad guys were relics. Fascism was a lesson Spanish schools didn't teach, and liberal de...
