For about 20 years, the sewage water from our street has been continuously flowing over the asphalt, but no authority comes to fix it. Interestingly, sewage fees are collected from everyone periodically, but where that money goes is unknown. Probably, we are funding NASA.
The local population has now come to terms with their fate and finds ways to live together with the sewage water. For example, a shopkeeper lays down wooden pallets (let's call them cargo pallets, to protect our mother tongue) in front of his establishment and sets up small concrete barriers. While watching his engineering creativity, I always think about what a great talent he has, wasting his life on petty activities like selling village yogurt, radish, and lavash. Meanwhile, he could have been tasked with building the Taxtakörpü water reservoir. That's how things are with us... A person with the mind of an engineer sells yogurt, while for the reservoir project, we call in specialists from abroad.
We hop and jump around so that the cuffs of our trousers don’t get soaked with the foul, dirty water, practically doing sport. As a result, the local charity house is left without work and is heartbroken. One neighbor has filled his entire balcony with perfume in the hope of drowning out the "smell of the waters." When the flowers bloom, many tourists flock to our street, taking pictures and sharing them on the internet.
There is only one neighbor who has, so far, not come to terms with the situation. About 3-4 days ago, he filmed the sewage flows and sent me the video with the comment "The flood in Dagestan has reached Baku," saying, make sure to publish it in the newspaper or somewhere, so our great nation can see. But on the very day it started raining, the video of our "perpetual sewage" turned into a joke. Like in Fuzuli’s poem, where heroes fight and children practice wrestling, supposedly it has some kind of bravado. The beloved streams of our street fell from our sight.
In Keşlə, they demolished the house built on top of the sewage collector, but why is no one looking for and punishing the person who gave the "municipality document" for it? Almost all municipality heads live like oligarchs here, and most of them are members of YAP. It would be better if those who cause such problems, including municipality heads, pay compensation to the victims when such issues arise.
There is an ancient aphorism of unknown exact authorship: "When the water falls, ants eat the fish; when the water rises, fish eat the ants." But somehow, here, it is always the orphan ants — the hardworking worker-peasant class — that get eaten. Sharks — the officials — always come out "dry" from the floods — with profit. They say the flood blocked the Quba road because when the road was built, no flood passage was installed underneath. In ancient times, such disasters would at least conclude with a certain meeting and consultation, and the skin of some official would be taken off his throat, and the people would watch the spectacle and enjoy. We ask the relevant authorities to show us some spectacle; factory bread is not enough.
This time, the rise of waters manifested exotically in our national football as well. In cup games, the owner of the losing team called the unfair referee "someone who drinks water sitting down." Perhaps our dear readers are not deeply familiar with this theme, but the hadith saying that drinking water while standing is considered a sin can be found in the ancient Muslim religious book called "Sahih Muslim." Supposedly, the Prophet strictly instructed to drink water while sitting. Interestingly, there is also a contradictory hadith in Islam, in the collection called "Sahih Bukhari," hadith number 1933, which says: "Ali ibn Abu Talib drank water standing up and said, people consider drinking water standing up as an undesirable act, but I have seen the Prophet drink water standing."
Of course, there is also a hadith about the benefits of drinking camel urine; there are many such fabricated topics in religion (Mirza Jalil called these "fabricated hadiths"). However, the hadith that "living near a mountain is disliked" can be considered appropriate now for comrades whose homes were destroyed in the landslide zone on the Bayil slope.
There is a hadith about the impurity of sewage water, but it also offers a remedy, saying if you rub your foot on the ground, you are cleansed of impurity and purified. Since there is no open ground left in Baku, I do not know if rubbing on granite is permissible.
Zamin HACI