Although a cease-fire agreement has stopped the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, refugees are still uncertain about their future. The temptation of oil, a symbol of richness, still cannot warm the refugees who feel so cold without their homes.

The setting sun in June in the Republic of Azerbaijan was still hanging in the sky. Its soft light lengthened the shadows of passengers just coming out of the Baku airport.

A group of men with cigarettes in their mouths shouted "Bus!" "Taxi!" at the passengers. Their desperate shouts blended with the disarray of the airport-half-finished construction, rusty steel still hung up high, and abandoned construction materials that had been piled up on the ground for a long time. The scene showed what terrible shape this country was in.

The sunlight floating over this desolation silently told of this nation's war-torn past.

War

Destroying Homes and Tormenting People

In February 1988, Azerbaijan slowly woke up from its long, bitterly cold hibernation. However, Nagorno-Karabakh, the richest area in Azerbaijan, had been kindled with the fire of racial hatred.

Christian Armenians, who demanded to be united with the Republic of Armenia, accounted for eighty percent of residents of the area. The death of two Azerbaijanis in brawls ignited the rancor of Muslim Azerbaijanis, resulting in bloody anti-Armenian incidents in Sumgayit. After that, confrontations between these two former Soviet states escalated.

Three years after gaining independence from Soviet control, Azerbaijan had lost twenty percent of its land to Armenia. By the spring of 1994, millions of residents had been forced out of their homes and scattered in forty-nine refugee camps in Azerbaijan.

Since Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, was one of the most famous oil centers of the world, the situation immediately caught international attention. Aid for refugees was poured in by many international relief groups, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere, European Community Humanitarian Organization, United Nations Children Fund, International Red Cross, and other Muslim countries like Turkey and Arabia, and other relief organizations. They provided houses, tents, medicine, schools, food, clothing, and other daily necessities.

However, the aid was only temporary. Long-term aid required much more money, so relief to the refugees was only sporadically provided. There was an urgent need for a devoted relief organization to take over.

In 1996, Izart Rustamov, deputy prime minister of Azerbaijan, contacted the Tzu Chi Great Britain branch through the University of London. The office forwarded his request for humanitarian assistance to Tzu Chi headquarters in Taiwan. After initial study of the situation, the British branch and Tzu Chi's Department of International Affairs immediately organized a relief plan.

"One patient's legs had been hit by shotgun blasts, and his ankles were full of wounds..." According to the journal of a Tzu Chi team member, more than 300,000 people were injured in the war. Many refugees lived in makeshift shacks made of tree branches. They had fled from their homes with few clothes. It would be difficult for them to survive the subzero temperatures of the winter.

After one year of evaluation in various refugee camps, Tzu Chi chose Saatly, Sabirabad, Aghjabadi and Barda as the areas that required the most urgent help. The foundation provided 100 wheelchairs, 1,500 tents, and around 156,000 pieces of winter clothing and blankets, given with love by people in Taiwan.

Life

"Yellow Rivers" and Tree Branches

At the end of June 1997, I went with the relief team of thirty Tzu Chi members to Azerbaijan, where I saw the slowly setting sun search for traces of the refugees.

The bus driver gripped the steering wheel, trying to steady the vehicle that was bouncing over stones on the road. Outside the windows were old men and children shepherding cattle and sheep. Grape vines serenely crisscrossed people's houses.

Poverty did not appear until after some little "Yellow Rivers" showed their faces. The yellow water that came out of the taps at the place we stayed the previous night actually came from these little muddy, yellow rivers. It was impossible for us to drink, but to the refugees, it was part of their lives. They were only given two hours of water each day, so they had no choice.

Some refugees built huts with tree branches or mud mixed with cattle dung pasted onto withered reeds; others used rags or plastic sheets to build tents. Though international relief groups had donated tents or helped to build corrugated-metal shacks, there were just too many people, and many still had no shelter.

On June 27, 1996, one Tzu Chi member wrote in his diary, "The greatest hope of these refugees is not to get international aid, but to go back to their homes and farms."

Refugees firmly believed that their wandering days would soon end and they would go home. Thus, they did not plan to stay long. They just built very simple shelters out of tree branches or rags to shield them from wind and rain.

However, some of the refugees have faced reality and started to build brick homes, with the permission of local governments. The bricks are made from a mixture of clay, cattle dung, grass and water.

This type of material is also used to build brick, well-shaped ovens. The ovens are used by the refugees for making their staple food. Every morning women fetch water in metal buckets and start to rub the dough. Before they bake the dough, they first heat up the oven by burning dry leaves, branches or cattle dung. When the oven is hot enough, the fire is put out. The dough is flattened and placed inside and the opening is sealed off. The bread is baked until it smells sweet and has turned a golden color. I sometimes wonder whether the cattle dung and grass add to the aroma of the bread!

At every household, we could see fences made of tightly knitted dry reeds. Though they surrounded poor, crude living conditions, it was still each refugee's own little world. Elegant sunflowers moved up and down with the sun, like the refugees' thoughts of their homes.

Education

The Lessons Never Stop

"I have never been so popular in my whole life!" Constantly followed by a group of children, I had no idea what to do. Was I famous? No! Not in this country! I was famous simply because of the two cameras that I was carrying on me!

In the refugee camps, adults and children all liked to be photographed. The adults were a little shy, but the kids were very outgoing! Every time I raised my camera, there would be some tiny heads moving around before the lens. Then there would be more and more little kids smiling and laughing before the camera. Facing these innocent expressions, I didn't know what to do.

It was the summer break, so these children freely chased after happiness by chasing after each other. The worries of the adults were still far beyond the grasp of these children.

Sabirabad had more than five thousand refugees, but there were already three schools. This showed their strong emphasis on education for the next generations. No wonder that among a population of eight million people, the literacy rate reached ninety-eight percent.

Schools in the refugee camps did not have any equipment. Tents or an abandoned factory were the sanctuaries of the kids' education. Next to Echo House, where we were staying, there was an elementary school for kids five to sixteen years old. There were eighty-five students and seventeen instructors.

The school building used to be an auto repair shop. The walls were still covered with oil stains. In this spacious building, the walls were bare, and a table and chair that had been created from pieces of wood and stones became the principal's office.

In two small rooms without any windows, a lamp hung from the ceiling. Its dim light shone onto three tables for ten students. There was no blackboard, but there was a map on a wall. The teacher had to lean against the door to teach because of the shape of the room. The other two rooms had windows, allowing the sun to shine in. They were larger, but still shabby.

Among the limited teaching materials, I discovered some English books donated by our British branch office. English was taught, as well as the Russian and Azerbaijani languages. It was said that if an English instructor also worked as a translator, his monthly income could reach US$50, far higher than a university professor who did not know English and whose income was merely US$7!

What was the average income of the refugees? Alex, our translator, was also a refugee. His wife's income from a collective farm for all of last year was a grand total of US$2.50, so he really appreciated the daily US$10 fee we gave him. He even donated some to Tzu Chi. He said to me, "We will forever remember what you are doing for us, and I hope to join your work!"

Hospitality

Warm, Open-Hearted, Optimistic

One rather chubby old lady who was waiting to receive relief supplies gave me the warmest embrace that I can ever remember.

When I got off the bus in Saatly and walked over to her, I smiled and said loudly to her, "Salam!" ("Peace!" the common greeting in Azerbaijan). She greeted me with the same word and then said a string of words I didn't understand. At the same time, she opened wide her strong arms, gave me a strong hug and kissed me on my cheeks. Coming from a very conservative society, I was not used to this, but I pretended to be calm and did the same thing. In Rome, do as the Romans do!

The people of Azerbaijan are always very hospitable, as explained by our translator Gamil: "We always bring out our best food to treat our guests." It might be nothing more than some homemade jam, a piece of fresh bread, or a cup of tea, but it expressed the most sincere friendship. Even when they are pushed to the farthest corners of the earth, their genetically nomadic, open character never weakens.

Historically and linguistically, the people of Azerbaijan belong to the Turkic peoples. These people were a nomadic race extending from Mongolia and the northern border of China to the Black Sea. They were powerful during some periods of the Sui and Tang Dynasties of China (581-907 a.d.), but later split into East Turkic and West Turkic groups. The East Turkic group lived in the Soviet Union and the Chinese province of Hsinchiang. The West Turkic group included the Turkic peoples of Europe and West Asia (the Asian part of Turkey and the northwestern part of Iran). Hence, the Azerbaijani people belong to the West Turkic group.

It is recorded in Chinese history that during the Tang dynasty in the seventh century, Chinese destroyed a nearby West Turkic group. This means that about 1,300 years ago, one of my ancestors was at war with the ancestors of these people before me! Though there may be a karma of pain and hatred from our past, Azerbaijan and Tzu Chi can now meet with a bond of love. So my encounter with this old lady ages later could be considered quite extraordinary. At least we could be happy together in this world.

Home

An Attractive Paradise

Salty winds curled around the harbor. The city of Baku, with its elegant historical buildings and rich oil reserves, radiated its beauty and pride in the early morning light. After the relief distributions were over, we spent a little time cruising around in Baku to get a taste of this old city.

The Citadel was the capital of ancient Azerbaijan. Several buildings still survive from the Middle Ages, especially the Maiden's Tower, which is more than eight centuries old and twenty-eight meters [92.4 ft] high. It was the watchtower of the old castle, watching for any enemy that might come across the sea. At one time, it could contain up to two hundred people, but now it is one of the most popular tourist sites.

Strolling through the narrow, maze-like walkways, one can raise one's head to see grape vines hanging from the upper floors to the ground, or stretching between two houses to form a shed. Seeing the eternal greenness, I felt that this must be a grape-loving race.

In the nineteenth century, Baku had already become the biggest oil field of the Russian empire. The Nobel family that set up the Nobel Prize became rich because of their ownership of a Baku oil field. Ninety years ago, Baku provided half the world's supply of oil. Because of the instability in the Middle East, Baku has been viewed as possessing the last available oil deposits in the twentieth century.

The Kura River and its tributary, the Aras, flow through the plains and lowlands of Azerbaijan and irrigate abundant crops of cotton, corn, wheat, fruit, tea, tobacco and vegetables. There are also herds of cattle and sheep in pastures in the Caucasus Mountains, and abundant fish are caught in the Caspian Sea. No wonder our other translator, Sevdad, said to me proudly, "We have almost anything you can imagine."

The most regrettable thing is that the land that was captured by Armenia in the war was the major source of the agricultural economy of Azerbaijan. How can the refugees, who were once so rich, forgive their enemies and forget the past?