You Will See (In Times Past)

The hot summer days of 2050 will come—very likely the hottest not only of the last thirty years but of the years that follow. Then, little by little, the weather will cool. Scientists will claim that, at this rate, global cooling will reach a highly dangerous point: animals in Africa will freeze to death; glaciers will supplant the oceans; and if nothing is done, the entire surface of the Earth will ice over, wiping out most living beings of that time as the dinosaurs were wiped out. The proposed way out will be to move to another planet—namely the nearest and most attainable one, Mars, where human colonies will be multiplying apace—but most people will not agree. 'If people have wrecked the Earth, a planet with everything needed for life, and made it unliveable, imagine what they would do to Mars,' they will say. Perhaps, centuries on, Naimi's words will be denied a second time: 'The perfected human creates; the ignorant human destroys.' They will edit the saying to read simply: 'Human beings destroy.' Three teenagers born in 2035, 2036 and 2038 will most likely ask a middle-aged man born in 2004:

'You're from the beginning of the century, Uncle; perhaps you know—how will the world end?'

And our man will reply: 'Children, the world will not end. At most, humanity might. The Earth will rid itself of this foolish creature and breathe again.' Then he will add: 'In fact, children, when humans suffocate, the Earth breathes. I saw it when I was your age, during the corona period. Thanks to the disease that choked people to death, nature finally freed itself from factories and plants and drew breath'—and he will begin to speak about what we lived through in those days—or rather, calling it “life” would be a coarse misuse of words; let us say: what befell us.

First he will say that, at a time when the world had problems greater and graver than today's, a virus called 'corona', all of fifty or sixty nanometres across, began to spread and made everyone forget the rest. He will try to explain to the children what a nanometre measures, and they will say they know. One of them will chip in: 'My chip is two thousand five hundred nanometres—so it's much smaller than that…' Our man will break off mid-sentence to add: 'Bless the dead (Translator's note: colloquial exclamation “ay ölənlərin rəhmət” not translated), the business with chips started right after that as well.' The children will be astonished.

'Wow. You've known life without a chip?' they'll say. 'How on earth did you live?'

'Ah, that's a long story,' he'll say. 'My father used to tell me there was a time when there wasn't even the internet.'

The children will laugh.

'This unknown virus…' our man will try to continue, but the children will cut him off.

'Since when were coronaviruses unknown? We covered that last year in class,' the smallest will say.

'Well, in any case… back then it was unknown. Or rather, unknown to us until then; at that time it became known to everyone. As the disease spread, all workplaces closed: shops, restaurants, entertainment centres… everything… everywhere shut. Everywhere emptied; hospitals filled.'

'Why did everything close? To curb over-consumption?' one child will ask, very naively.

'No, lad. The virus was spreading. Didn't I say corona was everywhere?'

'It's everywhere now too. You put in an air purifier and it kills all the viruses in the air. Why shut everything down? What a primitive response,' one will say, turning to the others, who will nod with a look that says 'honestly, yes'.

'You're talking as if for fun,' our man will grumble. 'We didn't have such things then. Those purifiers were invented during the war with corona. Speaking of war—there was a war as well, I'll come to that. Anyway, everywhere closed. My father worked for a daily wage then. He was a waiter at a restaurant. If there was a wedding, he earned; if there wasn't, nothing. Imagine: weddings were banned in the country for months. May you never see it—those were very hard times. If people hadn't helped one another, the nation would have been decimated. Folks collected money, bought food and so on, and delivered it to poor families. For instance, the poet Elshen Mehdi suffered greatly in that period, going door to door to carry meals to people, delivering groceries.'

'Wow… Elshen Mehdi? The irony!' the children will exclaim. 'You've no bread to eat, and Elshen Mehdi himself knocks at your door. Classy! The poor must have been happy then.' Then one of them will ask: 'Uncle, was there no social insurance back then? Or have you dreamt up a nice fairy-tale to keep us entertained?'

They will laugh.

'Eh, children,' our man will sigh deeply, 'you've grown up in a developed country; what would you know? In our time there were three kinds of countries: developed, developing, and underdeveloped. But Azerbaijan then didn't fit any of these three: we were a country determined not to develop. Russia was strong then too; that made our lot harder. But that's another story. Let me tell you the comedy of the pandemic—have a laugh. For example: everywhere the pandemic was declared—in normal countries, I mean—people were told to stay at home. Health ministers gave frequent briefings on radio and television, addressed the public, pleaded: stay home, mind hygiene, keep social distance… In that same period, we had people who'd become popular simply for talking too much—passing themselves off as learned. They were put on TV to say the disease caused by coronaviruses was not serious, not frightening; they set songs to corona, wrote poems, mocked the virus that had come mowing from China to Europe; then, when things turned grave, people couldn't be gathered together for anything. Afterwards all the blame was laid on the public's irresponsibility.'

At this point, our man will see that these teenagers are not really grasping what he says. He will also realise they do not believe him; they are merely amused, as by an anecdote. So he will ask:

'Does it all seem strange to you? Yet I saw it. My father was out of work for months. They supposedly allocated social aid; we applied, but as we had a small plot in the village we didn't have the strength to till, they refused us. Yet we had moved to Baku to make ends meet—for even to farm the land you needed a certain amount of money.'

'What about farms?'

'There were no farms then. Now it's fine—everywhere is planted and harvested. Back then it was altogether different. I can see this all sounds odd to you.'

'Nooo,' one of the children will say, winking at the others. 'Those were the ancient times when there were still televisions and radios—anything could have happened.'

'How did the pandemic end?' another will ask.

'It didn't end in any special way. The virus basically said: either you or me. Whatever they tried, they couldn't beat it. They saw it was impossible and were forced to lift the lockdowns; the virus took whom it could and spared whom it couldn't. A bit later a vaccine was found; at times they made people get it, at times they didn't; at times they said it didn't work; at times they said, I don't know, new variants were arising—anyway, that didn't quite do the trick either. A few years on, 6G was invented; they found it could kill viruses in the air; then those filters you mentioned came along—now they're everywhere. I'm telling you, back then everything in our country went backwards. Imagine: when the world ended quarantine, ours woke up and said, “No, that's not good; let's stay home a bit too; let's take the virus seriously,” and just as the world lifted restrictions, ours tightened them.'

The children will burst out laughing.

'Laugh, laugh. This is nothing yet! The best is to come. Imagine: at the height of the pandemic's carnage, not once did the health minister come out and say even a single “May God grant you healing” to the people. The chief epidemiologist, for his part, hadn't the faintest notion what was going on.'

The children will guffaw again; one of them, tears in his eyes from laughing, may say: 'Uncle, I swear, I love this. You embellish it wonderfully.'

When they have calmed a little, one will look to the others for assent and say: 'Uncle, we've done all this in school. We have videos about the Tovuz events and the pandemic in our history books. It didn't happen as you say.' The child will issue a voice command to the device on his wrist—which can also display the time—to pull up the events of summer 2020; beams of light in the air will play a video showing the images of that date. Handsomely produced, it will serve as lesson material, and after a brief introduction the narrator will say: '… yet thanks to the right steps taken, Azerbaijan emerged from the pandemic with the fewest losses in the region…'

'Stop, stop,' our man will say. 'He said “the region's most—something or other”…'

'The fewest losses,' one child will helpfully supply.

'Right, thank you. Let me say something—remember it. Wherever you hear the phrase “the region's most…”, know there's a problem. It's a very dubious expression. Back then our ears were calloused by that phrase. Go on.'

'The video will continue and say as well,' the child will read on: '”… for always being at the people's side, for invaluable service in managing the pandemic and averting inevitable disaster, and for the advanced, far-sighted steps taken to minimise losses, the Health Minister, the head of the Operational Headquarters and the leadership of the Territorial Medical Units Management Association (TABIB) were decorated with orders and medals…”' No doubt the child will skip to the supplementary section of the video paragraph and play this as well: '”The opening of the region's largest medical facility…”'

'Stop,' our man will say. 'You see? Again: “the region's most—something”.'

The children will look at one another, purse their lips, raise their eyebrows.

'All right, Uncle,' one will smirk. 'It's a book—my textbook—I'm showing you, and you're still telling tall tales?'

'I don't blame you—you've no idea about server overloads. I've just remembered. You've never heard of “DataBum”?'

'We've heard of DataBum,' the oldest will say. 'Because the world's media servers couldn't bear the weight of information, there was a decision to purge what was deemed unnecessary or false. Meaningless, empty posts were erased; what was needed was kept.'

'Exactly,' our man will say. 'That's the point. Nineteen years ago, in 2031, just as you say, the servers had to be cleansed of information. But it wasn't what was needed that was kept—it was what suited certain people. The rest was deleted. In a single night. So many videos, so many texts, so much material vanished. That's why you now believe that whatever you see must be the truth. Children, don't look for the truth in such videos. If you're interested, read the stories and novels of that time. It's a good thing books don't load the media down, or they'd have burned them too. The truth remained in books—look at what was written then. In these textbooks and the like, it's only someone's interest that's served.'

Our man will pause, fall briefly into thought, then continue regretfully: 'When I was your age and read to my father from my “Newest History” textbook about the events of the 1990s, he said it was all a fairy-tale, written however someone pleased. He said it had all happened before his very eyes. He told me what he remembered—and I didn't believe him. Anyway—off you go, children. Read books. Analyse, think. The world will grow cold. See how it might be warmed.'

As the children mount their flying, wheel-less scooters and set off, one of them will say: 'Don't worry, Uncle. It's the scientists from your era who say there'll be cooling. They're not to be trusted. Who shuts everything down because of a virus? What kind of decision is that?' And laughing, they will speed away on their scooters.