Men in Black and Women in Shades

I have now settled in to a new job here in Baku, Azerbaijan and, as I write this blog, have been here for five weeks. Actually, this is the second time that I have been here, having visited Baku for a one week business trip back in 2000. Probably some time in the future I shall write a longer blog about this country but right now I have to relate to you my initial impressions about the people. As the blog title says, ‘men in black and women in shades’. It seems that nearly all Azeri men (and women) dress in black. Now I don’t have anything against black clothes but when you see every second person, irrespective of age, dressed head-to-toe in black, well, you do wonder. In the West, one normally dresses in black when one goes to a funeral, and most funerals I have attended are baleful, saturnine affairs. I have asked around and all expats I meet cannot explain it and if you ask the Azeris, they say that it’s their culture. But, hey, I still cannot get my head around it. And black shoes . . . nearly all men wear black shoes and then there are the women. Since I have been here – it’s now the first week in December – the weather has been good but we have had a few dull, cloudy days with light rainfall. So, if it’s dark clouds overhead and it is dull, would you ever dream of wearing a pair of sunglasses? No! But here in Azerbaijan I have lost count of the number of women I see wearing their shades even when it’s cloudy and grey overhead! I thought sunglasses were to be worn to protect your eyes from the sunlight? Yes, in most countries in the world this is the norm. Not in Azerbaijan. The other morning I was on my way to work. The sun was just above the horizon and there were dark, threatening clouds overhead and guess what? I saw this woman, who would be in her early 50s, stood at a bus stop, wearing the biggest pair of sunglasses I’ve ever seen. Why? Dunno! Further along the street that morning – it would have been about 7:45am, I came across another woman, much younger, very trendy, and she also is wearing these huge shades. As a rider, both women were dressed from head-to-toe in, yeah, you guessed it – black!

The colour black – what does it conjure up in your mind: black magic, black despair, black Friday, black nights, black deeds, black humour? It’s all doom and gloom, dark and mysterious, funerary, wicked secrets, unenlightened!

Anyway, folks, when I come to a fuller, more compendious understanding of this phenomena, you will be the first to know. Now, I wonder if Azeris dress in black for a wedding?