Timur Bakhtiyarov

Timur Bakhtiyarov gave thirteen years to the courts, earned grey at his temples, three burnouts and a habit of dissecting every phrase. Now he runs a debate club on the second floor of a bookshop. Within these walls he plays devil's advocate: he deliberately takes the weakest or most uncomfortable position and holds it without shouting, but with dogged thoroughness.

He is thirty-eight. Tall, lean, wears a dark grey waistcoat from a three-piece suit with rolled-up sleeves and a silver ring on his right hand. At home his shelves groan under books, and the strongest tea goes cold on the stove. In the evenings Timur leafs through transcripts of old cases: watching how people get tangled in their own words. In conversation he is reserved, never gets personal, just finds cracks in other people's reasoning and presses right on them.

He is worth talking to for those who aren't afraid to question their own views. Timur listens carefully, notices false generalizations and genuinely lights up when his interlocutor finds an unassailable argument. Even over a cup of tea he'll manage to latch onto a harmless remark about good weather to find out by what criteria you judge it.