THIS WAS KHOJALY

March 31 is the Day of the Khojaly Massacre, day of sorrow for millions of Azerbaijanis, day of tears and heart-breaking memories. The story of yet another genocide dates back to 11pm, February 25, 1992, when the shelling of Khojaly began and the use of scorched-earth tactics left not a single Azerbaijani in the village. Those who survived became refugees in their own country. The tragic event has eventually become a theme for theatrical performance staged by Bakhtiyar Khanizadeh, production director of the Theatre of Pantomime. It is a tough but honest story with no speculative techniques to make tears or to excite even the hardest people to pity. It is well known that similar themes have always provoked excesses on stage. But not in this case! Rigid consistency with the sequence of events presents a true story of extermination of one nation by another one. It is a story that the Honoured Artists of Azerbaijan Elman Rafiyev, Nargila Garibova, Bahruz Ahmedli, Sabina Hajiyeva and actors Nurlan Rustamov, Solmaz Badalova, Leyla Atayeva, Nurida Musabeyli, Elkhan Shakhaliyev, and Javad Nuriyev will tell you for exactly 41 minutes without uttering a single word. Production designer of the performance is Sanubar Samedova, composer is Bahrukh Ahmedli, and choreographer is Bakhtiyar Khanizadeh.

Genocide is a long-standing phenomenon, which Azerbaijanis have suffered from repeatedly. This theatrical performance will leave no one in the audience indifferent to the plight of characters depicted on stage.

The premiere performance, which took place on the stage of a two-thousand-year-old theatre in Sofia on February 25 and was attended by Bulgarian dignitaries and representatives of diplomatic missions, was a joint initiative of the Ministries of Culture of Azerbaijan and Bulgaria supported by the Embassy of Azerbaijan to Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Prologue

A strong wolf howl tears the cacophony of sounds in a creepy night. A beam of light and a silhouette of a man in camouflage. He is sharpening a knife… slowly, orderly, ominously. Sometimes he casts an unfriendly look into the hall. This is the Enemy. He is preparing to make an unexpected and treacherous attack to catch everyone by surprise. Meanwhile...

Wedding

Residents of Khojaly celebrate a wedding. They are happy to see the birth of a new family in their village. The Married Couple accepts congratulations. It seems that nothing can change the flow of events. Everyone is happy. So many bright moments await the new family ahead! And no one can even imagine that everything will disappear just in a few hours; even when a deadly wounded Young Man appears from nowhere among the dancing guests. Moving by inertia, he does not even understand that he is already dead. Then we can hear the whistling sound of an approaching shell as the Young Man falls down in front of the amazed hosts and guests of the ceremony. It is the end of their world. Everything plunges into chaos, confusion, and hopelessness. From this moment on, each of the citizens becomes a target of the Enemy.

Ravens

Meanwhile, the Enemy, who was sharpening his knife earlier, has made up a team of militants. The author presents them as a faceless crowd. Like ravens, they all are dressed in black. It is just an amorphous group of individuals controlled by the person (?) in camouflage. A mass united for a single mission—to kill! The Enemy will then order them to trace the refugees along their way to salvation.

Cleansing

Disclaimer: this particular scene can make pseudo art critics and cautiously moderate patriots feel uncomfortable due to its rather blatant expression of the facts. It's not because the author intended to hide the truth. Not at all! Being visually temperate and aesthetic, actors are still able to recreate through the artistic means of expression the way the girls and women of Khojaly were exterminated—by raping them to death... That is why the director put all women under a black shroud, whence the ruthless militants take them out to rape and kill! One by one. Black Shroud is both a scenic symbol and a metaphor, an expressive detail to enhance the quality of artistic interpretation.

Sacrifice

They were under fire from three sides. Not only their houses, but also the ground under their feet were burning. The only way out was through the impassable mountains, where the people peacefully enjoying a life of seemingly endless bliss a few hours before rushed to without water and food, freezing along the way to apparent salvation. Here we can see the Father, Bride and Groom, their friends, relatives and bridesmaids. They are all exhausted and depressed. Recreation of the scene is so amazingly convincing and psychologically authentic that the audience has no doubts—that is how it happened that night! Director has skilfully expressed the fate of each and every character on the stage. For example, the scene where the Mother strangles her crying child is a requiem for a mother who sacrifices her most precious being to save the lives of fellow compatriots hiding from Armenian villains. This is a confirmed fact, by the way. Poor child! Poor mother! She then lost her mind. She carried her dead child with her unwilling to admit his death! When the Armenian vulture attacks her, the only survivor, she fights like a wounded panther hitting him with all the power of her frail body until she falls down struck by his knife. But before she dies, Mother tries to protect her child by extending her arms holding the baby to the Almighty. She prays for the protection of her only child! Leaving this cruel and terrible world, she asks for salvation! But then… the heartless Beast, pissed off by the rebellious character and resistance of the Mother, begins killing the dead child. He throws away his knife and begins smashing the head of the baby against the ground, as if it was not a human body but something extremely dangerous. After taking out all his anger, rage, and hatred on the baby, he throws the body aside. That is it! He killed the last owner of this land. Now he is the boss here. He has become the sole owner of the land. And lo, the baby began to cry! He could not accept this monstrous injustice! His loud lament is the cry of all the murdered, tortured, stabbed, burned and unborn children of Khojaly!

Finale

All victims of that tragic night rise from the ashes under the light of spotlights. Facing the rising sun, they cast a heavenward glance, as their ancient ancestors of Oghuz origin would do. Then they turn their heads towards us, those who witnessed the painful drama from the deepness of the hall, as if asking WHEN? This sorrowful sight brings back to memory the following lines from Robert Rozhdestvensky's poem:

We forgot the smell of flowers

And the whispering of poplars.

We forgot the soil beneath,

Which seems so far with every breath.

We wonder if the birds still sing

The tunes once charming in the spring.

Are cherries, apples still as sweet

And ripe as Eva loved to eat?

This seemingly dumb question expresses everything that the director wanted to convey to the audience: a reproach, a faith and a hope. Rozhdestvensky comes to mind again:

Let's recall the names that passed...

The dead don't need them, it's for us!

Then the actors came out for a traditional bow before the audience. Their stern and sad faces underlined once again the main idea of the performance—to remember the Khojaly Genocide and the victims of massacres in 1905, 1918 and in 1992.

It felt somewhat weird to applaud the actors who had brilliantly retold the story of the destruction of Khojaly on February 25-26, 1992. They expressed the sacredness of the moment so convincingly and tactfully that any external sound could unexpectedly destroy that fragile flow of emotions lingering between the stage and the hall.

Describe them to your children — they must remember!

And to your grandchildren — they must remember too!

What a joy when both actors and audience share the same thoughts and emotions! What a success when a director can express his thoughts very clearly and precisely! This Was Khojaly is a true example of such expressiveness. That's why I hope that this hard-boiled yet honest and humanistic performance becomes a popular theatrical event not only in Azerbaijan…