Baku, First Night

Azerbaijan lets you in by air these days and no other way, so my Niva stayed home in its courtyard and I flew the two hours across the Caspian I have otherwise only circled. At the airport a friend of a friend handed me the keys to a borrowed Niva, red, older than mine, which felt less like coincidence than like the country checking my references. I met Baku at night from the park terraces, because arrival deserves altitude. Below: the whole bay switched on, towers doing their light choreography, the promenade a golden thread sewn along the water.

I leaned on the parapet a long time, arms folded, letting the city introduce itself at its own volume. After a spring of steppe light and one small loud airplane, that much electricity reads as slightly theatrical, like being hugged by someone wearing all their jewelry. But the sea wind was honest and the marble still held the day's heat, and tiredness makes a fine lens.

The borrowed Niva sleeps in a courtyard tonight, my boarding pass folded into a notebook. Tomorrow the strange ground south of the city, mud that breathes. That is, after all, what I flew over a sea for.