Note to reader: This story follows the fortunes of Roya Ismailov, whose father Hossein Ismailov, is the absolute dictator of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Roya is his eldest and most feared daughter with an appetite for violence and sex. She's a businesswoman, criminal, fashion model, singer and holds the office for oil and gas within the government. She holds rank within military intelligence and is privy to state secrets and has ambitions of succeeding her father upon his demise. Beautiful, sultry and exotic to some, Roya has hazel eyes, blonde hair, light skin and curvy but petite body.
The room fills up with foreign diplomats, dignitaries and journalists and I take to the stage to deliver an address wearing my black cocktail dress. "Distinguished guests, friends and soon to be friends, on behalf of the Azerbaijani people and his Excellency President and Fatherly Leader Hossein Ismailov, I would like to welcome you to the Baku exhibition, heritage and historic center and museum. I am his Excellencies daughter, Roya Ismailov, who helped fund and build this exquisite building. I got the idea to build this center after spending much of my higher education abroad. While reading Economics and Political Science at the University of Paris or doing my Economics PHD at Harvard, I would visit these wondrous building."
This may look like a dull lecture on my philanthropy and on the history of the Azerbaijani people, but don't be fooled, for this is a lesson in power. This is a lesson in my power, ask yourself why I am opening this museum and the audience consists of foreigners, elite Azeris and TV crews, who enable ordinary Azerbaijanis to view my lecture from home and who are notable by their physical absence from the room. Little exercises like this are about raising my profile and building contacts, which will become useful as time goes on. Indeed this tale is my tale and my tale is about sex, because sex is about power, my power.
"Many of you see us a simply non-Russian ex-Soviet and I had to ask myself, why is that? Azerbaijan has a long, rich and proud culture, which was temporarily subdued by Russian Imperialism and later by Soviet Imperialism. In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia or White Russia, began expanding into Central Asia and displacing the Muslim Khanites that had ruled. They began breathing down our necks too and by the 20th century they had taken Northern Azerbaijan, which is today the Republic of Azerbaijan, where all of you are now and my family leads. Southern Azerbaijan became a province in Iran, where it still is today."
I pause briefly to let the point sink in, a little trick I've learned from Western Political leaders about oratory and speech giving. Watch President Obama, he does it all the time. "The Russian imposed their culture upon us, they changed our alphabet and tried to enforce Russian Culturalization upon us. We do not want Azerbaijan to continue to suffer from the effects of Russofication and we wanted the world to know our true roots. We have our own civilisation and it's important for every civilisations to meet one another, to know one another and to have a dialogue, a dialogue of civilisations, which is essential for world peace and an important reversal of the Clash of Civilisations." I hope former Iranian President Khatami does not mind me stealing his concept of the dialogue of the civilisations, but it sounded good as a piece of rhetoric.
"Yes we are closely related to the Persians and have a long history with Iran, but we are Turks and our origins lie in the steppes of Central Asia. We are a class of warriors, very closely related to Temujin, now most of you will not have heard of the name Temujin. But in fact you have heard of him, you just know him by his title, which many of you have mistaken for his name. The first part of his title is Genghis meaning great warrior and the second part of his title is Khan, which means leader or unifier of the tribes and can also be understood as Emperor too. Genghis was a great man."
Suddenly one of the Arab delegates interjects, "How can you call the Mongol hordes and their leaders-great? They were mass murders and destroyers of our heritage and culture! In 1258 they sacked Baghdad, which was then one of the greatest cities on earth in terms of science, art, culture and learning. The Grand Library of Baghdad, which had over 400, 000 manuscripts on astronomy, science, medicine, philosophy and other disciplines- a library which persevered the knowledge of the ancients- was destroyed by the Mongol Armies lead by Hulagu Khan (grandson of Genghis). The rivers of Iraq ran black with ink and Baghdad was depopulated."
Heritage is a tricky thing, I had forgotten that the Arabs still blamed the Mongols for bringing about the decline of their civilisation. But this event is not about the Mongols, it's about me and my future leadership. "I condemn the crimes committed by the Mongols and share with you the anguish of the destruction of heritage caused by them. But they are our ancestors and we must deal with them. However, the Mongols weren't all bad and their battle skills and the fact they crushed every army they encountered, inspired military men for generations. Besides when they came to rule, they were very tolerant of the local cultures they ruled over."
The Arab interjects again, "Correction the Mongols didn't beat every army they encountered. The Egyptian Mamlukes defeated the Mongol armies in Syria. The Mongols were an advance general infantry unit, but they could not take on special and elite forces units. The Mamlukes were the greatest and most elite fighting force of their day, they were the equivalent of the U.S. Navy Seals or Delta Force or the British SAS in today's world. Their training was not too dissimilar from them and the superior fighting skills of individual Mamlukes soldiers easily outwitted the Mongols."
"Thanks for the correction." What an asshole, seriously who does that? "Moving on from the Mongols, we see clear evidence of the Central Asian origins of the Azeri people. If you look at chronicles from the 15th and 16th century, you'll notice each year written as Year of the Rat or Year of the Horse, instead of 824 or 933 of the Hijra or Islamic calendar. Chinese years instead of Islamic years, we see this reflected in the chronicles of the Iranian Safavid dynasty. The Safavids who are credited with converting Iran from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam, were Azeri Turks like us. They were aided in their conquest by Azeri warriors called Qizilbash, who were among the fiercest fighting force the world had ever seen." Sub message don't fuck with me.
"Indeed the Qizilbash were famed for their heroics in battle and less gracefully for their cannibalism after battle. Called Qizilbash because of the red turbans they use to wear. But we are not only warriors, we are a deeply spiritual people. We are Shia Muslims like Iran, but our Shi'ism is based on Sufism and spiritualism and not dogmatism. We share culture, but not politics with Iran, we do not want to be an Islamic Republic, because this goes against our culture roots." An important message aimed at the American delegations, they will read my political leanings based on these words and my speech on history.