COVER N. 268 - AZERBAIJAN

Postmark: Azerbeijan - Baki A71000 - ?-05.2023

Posted somewhere between 14 and 19 May; Received on the 19th June 2023

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Who would have thought? How could I forget to include the country name while addressing this cover to my own self? 

The great thing is that, in spite of it all, it did find its way home, probably because on the back there is also my own full address, this time not forgetting to end it with a capitalised PORTUGAL.

My wife attended a conference in Baku and I couldn't let go the opportunity, so I prepared a couple of addressed envelopes and gave them to her, asking if she wouldn't mind, if the opportunity arrived, to pass by the Post Office and mail them.

This she kindly did, but the lady at the counter, to whom she gave the envelopes to affix the stamps and postmark them, made sure I'd not only get two quite imperfect stamps with missing corners, but she also managed to glue them juxtaposed (what is understandable because there was little available space in the envelope 😀).

My wife also told me that in spite of the sender's address being written on the back of the envelope, she asked her to write her name and address on the front of the envelope, since it seems to be mandatory... pretty unusual, If I may say so, but if those are the rules...

 

Huseyn Javid or Hüseyn Cavid in Azerbaijani, (1882-1941) was a prominent Azerbaijani Romantic poet and playwright who was also a victim of Stalin's purges, being labelled as a counterrevolutionary, in spite of him being a well known and beloved man of arts, and sent to exile in Siberia, where he would eventually die on December 5, 1941, in the village of Shevchenko, province of Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal.

As a matter of curiosity, Javid was the first Azerbaijani poet to introduce the sonnet form in Azerbaijani poetry.

On 16DEC2022, Azerpost issued a single 0,50 manat stamp, commemorative of the 140 years of the birth of the poet, illustrated with his portrait, based on a photograph that is also easily found on internet.