Roya is a slut. I don't like her." So says a dark-haired Azerbaijani girl nestled on a barstool of the Universal Bar in downtown Baku, a spot where foreign oil workers can meet eligible young women for the right price.
Roya, a provocative young singing sexpot, is a tornado in Azerbaijan, a country of eight million mostly Shia Muslims who live in a thoroughly secular system.
Now freed of Soviet tanks, Azerbaijan stands at the crossroads; in one direction western materialism (they enjoy solid ties with the US and Israel), in the other a return to Muslim Shia orthodoxy, encouraged by neighbouring Iran.
Roya's face stares down from the billboards (those not taken by images of President Aliev), her confidence and sensuality in stark contrast with the grey-eyed souls walking the streets. With her sultry
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looks and sizzling antics, she may be the perfect embodiment of a new Azerbaijan, long known as the Land of Fire because of the blazes that have burst from the soil since pre-history, leading fire-worshippers to create Zoroastrianism.
More recently, the country has been worshipping oil. Since July 2006, Azerbaijan has been exporting oil through the new BTC pipeline which sucks liquid gold from the Caspian and transports it to ships on the Mediterranean. They hope to hit a million barrels a day soon.
The wealth has flowed in: Lycra and denim-clad young strut around leafy Fountain Square chatting on phones, while war veterans in threadbare blazers stare suspiciously.
Outside the hilly capital, many are less enthusiastic about the gaudy consumerism personified in its extreme by Roya. In spite of the booming economy, many  |
