The silence of the lambs, Azeri style

Shifting from one foot to the other, her hair uncombed, her eyes red, wide open and focused on a piece of plastic in her stretched out hand – that's how 33-year-old Eric found his 35 year old wife Ryan when he finally unlocked the door of the bathroom.

"I’m not" was all she managed to whisper before falling into his arms and bursting into tears.

Eric, a financial reporter for a local newspaper in Maryland, and Ryan, a clerk at an NGO downtown DC,  a couple with 80K of annual household income, have been trying to conceive a child ever since they got married six years ago.

"I come from a big family, so a house full of little kids was always my vision of happiness", Ryan explained. But neither the kids, nor the house were soon to appear in Eric and Ryan's life. Ryan's health problems have made her chances of becoming pregnant close to zero, and as for buying a house – car and college loans, healthcare and all the other daily costs brought possible monthly savings also close to zero. Eric and Ryan looked into adoption, but it included a home study, which, the couple says, they were going to fail, should the case worker show up at the door of their one bedroom rental apartment.

"Hey, maybe you should write a letter to Barack Obama, tell him you're a poor journalist who is in need of housing", I tell Eric as we sip icy diet Coke on my rooftop. "Ha, sure, sounds about right", he says with a smirk and adds "What a joke". For him, as probably for any American journalist, and most American citizens, this doesn't sound right.

"In some countries it's not", I start thinking, but don't tell him anything, as even when I said it out loud, it sounded somewhat ridiculous and humiliating – ask the president for housing. Yet in my home country Azerbaijan this is no joke, but a true story: a whole bunch of journalists asked the government for housing, a few years later a new building was inaugurated, the President and "lucky" new homeowners got together for the official opening, journalists foaming at the mouth, not finding enough words for their eulogy to the president…

The journalists said they have been renting for far too long and didn't have any money to purchase their own place to live, so they asked the president. Some later wrote on social media and in newspapers, expressing gratitude to the government. The very same government that took every possible step to silence them, stole from their country's citizens and ruled as they pleased. Sadly that didn't stop my colleagues from accepting the housing. Instead of demanding the government create such conditions that every citizen, including journalists, is able to purchase housing, they begged and bowed and let their mouths and eyes be closed by the "generous" gift. I don't blame them, because at this point blaming isn't going to change anything, but the fact that this happened is apocalyptic for Azerbaijani media. Same as if one dropped a nuclear bomb at the sinking Titanic.

About a year ago I was conducting research on Kyrgyzstan's squatters who had occupied land outside the capital Bishkek and demanded that the government allocated housing for them. Those people have mostly migrated from the country's rural areas to the capital in search of luck and have ended up on Bishkek's outskirts, angrily demanding accommodation.

I got a hold of one of them – a woman in her 30s, who said she had a child and needed housing which she was asking the government for. While we talked on the phone, I could hear her gasp for air in between the words of accusation to the President and the rest of the government that she was fiercely spitting out. I’m sure she would gasp for air the very same, had she received the apartment from the government, in order to thank and praise his majesty Almazbek  Atambayev.

This woman and the rest of the squatters were protesting and demanding free housing. None of them thought of the reasons which brought all of them to Bishkek: unemployment in rural areas, complete absence of an industrial sector, corruption, lack of infrastructure, healthcare and schools. Yet, instead of demanding improvement in these areas they demanded free housing – each for themselves. None managed to stop for a second and think that no government is obliged to provide its citizens with free housing (except very extreme situations), but every government is obliged to maintain economic stability, develop the job market and support anti-corruption measures, etc.

Now, when one is just a regular naïve citizen begging for an apartment from the government and not thinking about the root of the problem, this is bad enough. When the beggar is a journalist – somebody whose obligation is to highlight these problems – bends and bows to the tyrant and the root of the problem – this is worse. But when this all happens a few months ahead of the election which would enable that "root of the problem" to be seated on the throne for a few more years, despite any common sense – this is the worst case scenario.