The mass grave (Guba, Azerbaijan)

Playing Baseball On The Chessboard

Thoughts About Genocide

  By Vahid Qazi

My 10-year-old son congratulated me on 23 February, what’s known as ‘Men’s Day’, and gave me a ‘cruise missile’ he had made out of paper in school. The side of the missile was decorated with an Azerbaijani flag, and had a long staircase at the bottom. It resembled the Soviet long-range missile SS-20. When uranium is added to it, the missile can become a nuclear bomb.

Although I accepted the present, I told my son that 23 February marked the establishment of the Soviet Army which put an end to Azerbaijan’s independence in 1920, committed a massacre in Baku in January 1990, and helped the Armenians occupy Karabakh. In other words, the day marks the establishment of an army that was alien and hostile towards Azerbaijan. I asked my son to object to his teacher on my behalf over this long forgotten ‘holiday’.

Then I asked why had he decided to make a missile. Here is our conversation verbatim. Oxumağa davam et →