Translated material
“Obama, let’s go have tea.”
A double of the American president has appeared in Azerbaijan
There lives a man in Azerbaijan whose striking resemblance to US President 47-year-old Barack Obama made him famous throughout the republic. The double's name is Asif Mustafayev, he is an artist by profession and lives in the mountainous Gabala region. It is in this area that there is a military base leased by Russia with a radar station, which keeps the entire Middle Eastern region under control and from time to time becomes the subject of discussions between Moscow and Washington.A sizzling brunette with very dark skin and a curly head, he is now a local landmark. His fellow countrymen call him nothing less than “our Obama” and often bring their guests from the capital to see him. Until recently, the local 31-year-old artist painted billboards, visual aids for schools, and designed tourist centers, of which there are many in his small homeland. But today you often have to leave the workshop not for official (or creative) business, but to take pictures with fellow villagers and curious people who come from neighboring towns and villages. To do this, he even exchanged the artist’s blouse for a stylish suit. He really likes these moments of posing in front of the camera: it’s as if he’s really transforming into the President of the United States.
The first to notice his resemblance to the new owner of the White House were the village elders, who do not miss a single information program on local and Russian TV channels (Russian TV is watched here via satellite dish). They then discuss what they see on television - from big politics to lower food prices in the country - in a local teahouse. They very quickly realized that they had “Obama on board.”
Because of his very dark skin, everyone called Asif “garabala” (dark-haired) from childhood, and after the presidential elections in the United States they began to call him Obama. The young artist is impressed by this: not everyone is lucky enough to be a double of the number one person in the whole world. Constantly being in the spotlight fueled his interest in world politics. His cherished dream, which he told television crews who had specially arrived from Baku, was to meet with Obama, talk about Azerbaijan and convey to him the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Will this dream come true? Asif Mustafayev says he knew nothing about Barack Obama before the US presidential election. Now his neighbors often tear him away from household chores with the following phrase: “Obama, let’s go have some tea, let’s have a heart-to-heart talk.”