I was born in Baku on March 13, 1978 and have spent most of my life here. I do not consider myself a native though, since my parents moved here from Shamakhi, 100 kilometres or so to the east. As a child, I lived in the capital’s Khutor region, which at the time was mainly home to Armenians. Most of my friends were Armenians until I turned 10, when they fled the inter-ethnic violence that heralded the Karabakh war.

I can still remember saying goodbye to Kristina, my closest friend, and promising never to forget her. I never have, and I hope she still remembers me.

My parents were trained as teachers – my father in mathematics while my mother was a nursery teacher – but were unable to find jobs in the capital. My father ended up as a carpenter, which he was good at, and my mother got a job as a trader. I have two brothers and a sister and despite their troubles, our parents brought us up well.

I always loved telling stories, and even wrote poems. I was determined to become a philologist but in the last class of middle school, I had a teacher who changed my life. I showed him a satirical tale I had written about our school, and he thought it was funny and had it published in one of the biggest newspapers.

In a day, I became the most popular student among my fellow pupils. It was then that I decided to become a journalist because I wanted to draw people’s attentions to the problems around us and to help change them.

In 1995, I enrolled at Baku state university, in the bibliography faculty, since I did not have the grades for the journalism faculty. I worked as a journalist in various popular newspapers from my second year onwards. In August 2004, I started working in the Azerbaijan office of IWPR.

My first spell there lasted only until April 2005, since my husband and I moved to Moscow for a year to work on a newspaper for the Azeri diaspora in Russia.

In 2006, I returned to IWPR and a year later received a prize for my investigative work from the International Center for Journalists, which was just the first of several prizes I have won for my work at IWPR.

In one recent story Azeri Alarm at Abortion of Female Foetuses I wrote about how Azeri women were sometimes being forced to have abortions by families determined to have male children.

IWPR has significantly changed my life, and my approach to journalism. I had never remained with a single organisation for more than a year before. This was for different reasons, but mainly because even the most respected local journalists struggled to be genuinely independent. 

To be a true journalist in this country is very difficult, and often is only possible for people who work in international organisations.

IWPR gave me the chance to gain self-confidence as a professional journalist, and to be objective, independent and balanced. I owe a lot to those who taught me and when I go to interview someone, I am proud to say I represent IWPR, and am proud of my articles that IWPR has published.