Greetings from Georgia -- Part 4 (unsent email from October 2006)

So this is an email update that I never actually sent out because it was in bits and pieces and I never got around to editing it-- I just fixed it up a bit so it might still be a bit clunky but here it is anyway...

Busy following the elections on the ground and the mass deportations of Georgians from Russia in the news, I’ve gotten fairly far behind in the recounting of my own adventures in Georgia. I think I left off last right before leaving for a weekend in Chargali with my Lithuanian friend Svirga. A friend of Svirga’s from Vilnius had put her in touch with a friend of hers from Georgia named Sergo, a film director, who called Svirga and insisted that she come up to the small mountain town of Chargali 2 hours north of Tbilisi for a folk festival celebrating the 145th anniversary of the death of a renowned Georgian poet. Up until this point I had been bemoaning this new experience of Georgia which seemed bleak and degraded in comparison to my vivid, absurd memories from 1999. Sure, sometimes the Industry Will Save Georgia party would break out a cake and a casket of fresh wine and insist on toasting to my future motherhood in the middle of a meeting that would then go on for two hours. And sometimes the district election chairman would force us to ride up into the mountains on a rusted Soviet funicular with her (Direct quote from my partner Sven to our interpreter Eka in said funicular: “Well, if we don’t make it, won’t it at least be a consolation to die with ‘Daddy’?”). But these for the most part were the exceptions to an otherwise dull life in Georgia which involved living and working in too close quarters with uninspiring people and the occasional drink with Svirga to complain about it all in the evenings.

And even though you would expect the bulk of my complaints to be directed at Sven and Eka and their “special relationship,” it was in fact our driver Shota who was driving me insane. I feel like I have met a million Shotas and still have not figured out the optimal strategy for dealing with them. Shota is the nice guy who is overly nice to you only because he wants to sleep with you but since you can’t prove this fact or act on it until he actually crosses some physical line of impropriety you are required to reciprocate niceness even though you think he’s a slimeball.  And he’s not a real slimeball he’s just a lonely, bored 38 year old man with visibly rotting front teeth and prematurely grey hair, who’s been married since he was 17, who chain smokes and drinks heavily, who drives a beat up car with a state of the art alarm system, who in his suffusion of pride thinks that he is very young and attractive. In the house in the evenings, he sits too close to you on the sofa and when you move he makes weird sighs and grunts that alert you to his physical presence, he’s always around when you’re coming out of the shower, he’s always offering you some form of alcohol. And he goes out of his way to “help” you, constantly tending to you, walking with you if you just want to walk to the shop to buy a bottle of water, acting as if you are some fragile princess that needs constant tending. But all of this doting gives him some feeling of entitlement as your protector and guardian, giving him the right to stand and stare suspiciously as you have conversations with other men. Somehow you are “his” even though you have never consented to this arrangement and unless you are willing to throw a huge fit that alienates him entirely there is very little you can do to stave off the day to day nuisances like his tilting of the rearview mirror so that he can stare at you in the back seat. And eventually this “nice” “helpful” guy becomes an oppressive presence in your life that you spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to dodge and avoid in subtle ways.

Thus, it is no surprise that Shota offered to drive Svirga and I to Chargali when we announced that we would be going on a weekend trip, claiming that it would allow him to spend time with his family in Tbilisi. Of course Shota was so motivated to go see his family that he took every detour off the main road imaginable to show us pretty views, significant monuments, as if the days activity was sightseeing with Shota rather than getting to Chargali.  It was however a lovely trip in many senses: a bright sky, cool breeze through the open windows and I’d managed to convince Shota to cede control of the stereo system so that rather than having to listen to the Beatles greatest hits on repeat as we did every day to the point of true Beatles madness, I hooked up my iPod and the tunes of the Russian Futurists and Postal Service were made all the more sublime by the scenery as we left the dreary landscape Kutaisi behind for thick forested mountains.

We were instructed by Sergo, the film director neither of us had ever met, that a white Niva (the Russian attempt at an SUV) would meet us at a certain LukOil station along the side of the highway at 14:00. However, as we approached the gas station there was no Niva to be found. Svirga called Sergo who said, “No, no. Sorry. Now you’re looking for a small Ford. It should be there shortly” We sat around the gas station for what seemed like an eternity with Shota refusing to leave us and trying to convince us that we should instead come with him to Tbilisi and stay with his family there. We sat awkwardly, fidgeting, nervous that our plans would not pan out and we would actually get stuck with Shota. And then suddenly, a speeding black hatchback zoomed into the parking lot and squealed to a stop in front of us. Two sassy twenty-something Georgian hipster girls in chunky jewelry, dark jeans and huge sunglasses jumped out of the car and without introducing themselves, put our bags in the trunk, packed us in the back and away we drove from Shota as he waved and ranted about us promising to call him like an overbearing parent. It was true liberation.

Svirga and I were perfectly glowing with our good fortune to be crammed in the back of this speeding car with stacks of stereo equipment and khatchapuri between us, an Air CD blasting at hyper-volume. In short bursts of conversation over the music we gleaned that the driver was Tamara, a petit 21 year old with a huge curly black mane tightly pulled back from her delicate face and sitting shotgun was Nadia a tall lanky 23 year old with a boy’s frame whose tank top kept effortlessly sliding off her slim shoulder as she changed the music. They chained smoked and while I had been complaining for weeks about Shota and Eka smoking in our shared house at gangster’s paradise, I couldn’t have cared less about my lungs in that moment because they were filled with freedom far more potent than air.

Immediately upon arrival the girls introduce us to Sergo who handed them a bottle of Jack Daniels for their efforts in hauling equipment and foreign nationals up into the mountains for him. He was dark haired with strong features and a solid build clad in a stylish trenchcoat. While he was in the midst of setting up the video equipment to film the next day’s festivities, he promised us a big supra (feast) of khingali and shashlik after he’d finished. Svirga and I followed the girls to a series of wooden benches set up in front of an enormous stage decorated with a blown up picture of a crazed looking man in a matted fur hat. This was Vazha-Pshavela, the famous Georgian poet who had been born in the town of Chargali, the girls explained. Sergo had been hired by his two surviving relatives to host a concert on the 145th anniversary of his birth or death, they were not quite sure which. Surrounded by soaring mountain peaks at varying heights in every direction, the sun on the brink of setting on this little mountain village, we sat on our benches and drank Jack and Coke from plastic cups the girls had procured quite pleased with our new circumstances.

The sky continued to darken and eventually the girls led Svirga and I out into the woods where tables were set up and dining areas cordoned off by tall wooden planks. They sat us at the “VIP table” where they said that the mysterious Sergo would soon be joining us for our promised feast and introduced me to Lela, the granddaughter of the poet, a serious looking woman in her mid to late 40s with a man’s haircut. “Leslie worked in the Parliament for Zhvania” they explained to her, “Lela was working there too when you were there.” And for a moment I panicked that the gig was up and everyone would realize that my days in Parliament had consisted primarily of strolling in at 10am writing emails to friends and taking impossibly long lunches while my boss was at the swimming pool or working on his application to graduates schools in the States, with the two of us writing the occasional speech in a collaborative panic in the middle of the night. Fortunately, she didn’t remember me not because of my deplorable work habits but because she had left the Parliament in 1998, the year before I arrived. We were also introduced to her husband, Dato, a funny, well-dressed beer-swilling man with a big smile who seemed far younger and of an opposite disposition to Lela.

We sat at our table drinking beer and eating khingali and slowly Sergo and his friends started to fill in the rest of the spaces. Sergo was the perfect host attempting to translate from the Georgian for us and telling us about the production company he owns. There was no electricity in the woods so the table was lit by people’s cell phones and despite the merriment it was a little eerie. I had ignored that feeling until suddenly a shot rang out in the woods behind us and a drunken guy with a gun stumbled over to our table. Now this was the Georgia I remember, I thought! And I smiled widely until it became clear that the drunk guy with the gun was also a VIP guest who would be sitting directly across the table from me. I spent the rest of the meal obsessed with the idea that the gun might go off in his pocket as he reached for another spear of shashlik, hitting me in the leg if I was lucky, but getting the gut in a worst case scenario in which I bled to death in the Georgian mountains. Luckily, despite the animated conversations and gestures throughout the table, no additional shots were fired and we all escaped intact.

We were corralled by Sergo and ushered into the white Niva that was originally meant to retrieve us which turned out to be driven by Lela’s husband Dato who repeatedly apologized for not driving two hours down from the mountain and back to get us. He was in infectious good spirits and Sergo leapt into the car informing us that we would be moving onto to yet another VIP supra. This one would be at the home of Chargali’s Hepsberi Gocha, a local leader he explained as being something like a cross between a village elder and mystic. The Hepsberi Gocha’s places was palatial and we were led up a winding flight of marble stairs to an outdoor deck on the second floor where VIP guests, singers and writers and newscasters some of whom even I could recognize from TV, were already seated around a long table overflowing with food and wine. Looking down across the balcony from our places at the table we could watch the tireless women knitting khingali and khatchapuri from freshly kneaded dough in the outdoor kitchen space below us. It was all very 18th century, the opulence of the estate, the grandeur of the table and the fact that the VIP guests around it were exclusively men with of course an exception made for Lela, who skillfully managed to break through the gender barrier but only at the price of a short cut hair cut and mannish clothing.

We feasted and the musicians sang and it was all lovely until yet again the same thuggish looking crazy guy with a gun entered and for some reason decided to fixate upon me and Svirga. He was convinced that we had a problem with him—that we were scared of him and no amount of smiling or choruses of “ara problema” would sate him. He pulled out his ID to show us that he was in fact a Kutaisi police officer, specifically from Bagdati a town in my area of responsibility. Perfect. And then he started coming on to Svirga. The very calm and stately Hepsberi Gocha recognized the problem from across the table and intervened to escort the drunken Kutaisi cop out of the party. When the policeman was unwilling to leave Lela’s husband Dato got involved and yanked the guy physically from the table. Other men joined Dato in dragging him down the stairs and from the driveway we could hear a cacophony of yelling in deep throaty Georgian tones that sound aggressive even when people aren’t on the brink of fighting. Dato returned to the table with blood streaming down his face and reported that the police man had cracked him one at the bridge of his nose. However, the next day this story was modified to his having run face first into a post on his way back up to the party.

The next morning I donned my trusty yellow Upper Merion Area High School basketball shorts courtesy of my brother circa age 15 and ran up into the mountains. It was so high up I that noticed my fingers starting to swell like they do on an airplane and looking around I could see the clouds first at eye level then as I climbed higher and higher I could look down on them as they floated along. It was a hard climb but a beautiful run and hearing dogs barking ahead, I armed myself with stones, proud that at the age of 29 there was really nothing I feared anymore. I knew how to handle myself, how to avoid ferocious animals by gesturing as if I were about to throw stones at them. However, when the dogs kept barking at me despite my stone throwing gestures in their direction and continued to block the path, I realized that I needed a different plan. Luckily, at that point I saw to my left a different path leading down the mountains that appeared to bisect the switchbacks I’d been run up. I trekked down and was halfway to the road before I realized that this path had taken me into the middle of someone’s field. And that someone, a young mountain farmer, was heading right for me with the dogs, who must have been his, at his heals. “Gamarjobat” I smiled widely and waved. He looked at me skeptically as if I was literally from another planet. “I was scared of the dogs so I came down this way,” I explained in Russian. He showed no comprehension and said something back to me in Georgian. “I’m just running. Ja sportmenka,” I said and couldn’t tell if it was my fistful of rocks or bright yellow running shorts that were confusing him. He tried to talk to me again in Georgian. And it was only at that point that it occurred to me that he spoke absolutely no Russian and that this was not a testament not his age but to the fact that I had really traveled so far into the wild countryside of Georgia that Russian wasn’t spoken. After a round of him asking me questions in Georgian, my replying in Russian and receiving only quizzical looks back, we had the only conversation I was capable of having in Georgian, but one that seems to work well in all circumstances: “Gamarjobat” (Hello) “Ara problema” (there is no problem) “didi madloba” (thank you very much) “nak vam dis” (see you later).  And with that, saved from the dogs, I galloped off down the hill picking up speed past a pack of pigs snuffling through the underbrush.

Arriving back at Lela’s house, where Svirga and I were staying, at breakneck speed down the cliffside I released two hands full of stones and nearly tripped over my own feet as I slowed to a halt in front of two teenage boys milling alongside the gate. They too looked at me with pure bewilderment. I smirked at them as I slipped through the gate shutting it loudly behind me and prancing up the path to the house. Svirga and I were staying in a little guest house in back of the main house and the only “bathroom” facilities were a dingy pungent outhouse and a spigot of running water coming out of the mountain. I had been dreaming about getting back to that spigot throughout my run and just as I was passing the main house to get to it, I heard shouts of “Gogo, Gogo” (Georgian for “girl girl”) from a window. I looked up and saw a kitchen full of men with one brandishing a big bottle of alcohol. “Gogo, Schapps” he beamed at me toothlessly and beckoned me into the house. He sat me down at the table and wrapping an arm around me toasted to women and to my future motherhood, wishing me a Georgian husband and six children in the next five years, i.e. the worst possible version of hell. However, as always, I declined to inform him that I had actually made the mistake of marrying a Georgian at age 22 and listing the reasons why I would never do that again. Instead, I just graciously downed my cha-cha (homemade vodka) with my khatchapuri and eventually disentangled myself from their eventful breakfast to shower and get myself ready for the day.

The sun was breaking through the clouds as we arrived at the stage heating up the day. I went to sit in one of the bleachers among the people already gathering for the show to remove my thick wool socks and stuff them in my bag but Svirga directed me instead to an empty section of chairs in the front row where we would have more space. We both sat down, stripped off a few layers and start chatting. And before we knew it, all the seats around and behind us had been filled and we were accidentally and uncomfortably taking up the two best front row seats in the house. As we were getting up to leave them, Sergo came by, patted us on the shoulders and said he was glad we’d gotten good seats. He then put on the official face of the Director and cleared all the people from the row of seats to my left. “Oh, we can move too” Svirga and I told him. “No, no, of course not. You are my guests” he said and we remained uncomfortably in our front row seats as the people who’d been forced to move glared at us. Sergo stood there beckoning at someone in the distance and out of nowhere a procession of long bearded, black robed priests materialized and culminated with the patriarch of Georgia himself sitting down in the seat next to ME. All of the cameras were suddenly on us and the Patriarch in all of his glory and gravitas stepped up to the stage to welcome the guests. He returned to his seat spilling over into my own as Svirga and I looked at each other in disbelief.

Lela got up to say a few words about her grandfather and then the stage filled with youths in colorful costumes, some with swords, others with big hats, girls with long braids. In the rock face of the cliff behind the stage hundreds more costumed children filed onto ledges and as the orchestra started up, they all started to sing and dance in complicated patterns to lively music across the stage. It was then that we realized that we were sitting at the heart of and by extension fully endorsing a Georgian nationalist event that was to be broadcast on all the state run channels in the run up to the election. Svirga and I shook our heads in amazement at each other. I breathed in deep and languished in the absurdity and deep satisfaction of the moment. There I was sitting with the Georgian national orchestra playing, a choir of 200 costumed children embedded in the rock singing, another 30 children in outlandish national costume dancing, pressed up against the robes of the patriarch of the country, watching the sun stream through the clouds that were hanging on the mountaintops all around us, staring into the huge face and eerie eyes of the poet being celebrated. This was exactly why I left the States I thought. Because in 29 years I had never felt this sense of liberation and exhilaration there and imagined that in living another set or two of 29 more I would not find it there. It was then I noticed that one of the sound guys walking back and forth along the stage was a clone of a certain ex-boyfriend I had lingering feelings for. My eyes drifted from the show and started following his movements. I watched him take a drag on his cigarette with an identical pucker of his identical lips to the ex-boyfriend with whom I would have been in love had I believed in love as a sustainable concept. This seemed like validation from the universe that I should keep living life boldly alone and stumble into absurdist adventures that make my heart swell rather than succumbing to some contrived version of “happily ever after” that might be sustainable but ultimately winds up stultifying. I leaned back in my seat and enjoyed the spectacle.

Eventually the show thundered to a conclusion. We looked for Dato who was meant to drive us home to Kutaisi in his white Niva but he was nowhere to be found. Instead we got back into the hatchback with the girls at which point we were informed we would be going to the after-party at a hall in the outskirts of Tbilisi. Not knowing what to expect, we got to the hall and found that three large buses had been used to transport people from the event to the after-party and these hundreds of bused in people were all there to take part in a giant supra of rare proportions. Once inside, I needed to go to the bathroom so Nadia was leading me through the crowds toward the back when someone grabbed me by the arm and started steering me in the opposite direction. It was Lela and she deposited me at the front of the hall, picking up a microphone to say “And we have another special guest tonight, Leslie from New York”—“To Leslie from New York!” 300 people raised their glasses to me and my completely dumbfounded face as I was then seated at the VIP table without ever making it to the bathroom.

I soon figured out that I had been selected for this ultimate VIP experience, not for anything special about me other than my American citizenship and English-speaking abilities as I was seated next to the real “guest of honor,” the American CFO of the mobile phone company that had sponsored the event in Chargali. Larry was exactly the kind of American I loved to hate, who took private Georgian lessons and had a Georgian wife and wore his wedding band Georgian style on his right ring finger, who was of course infinitely better than the American who lived in Georgia for years without learning to say thank you properly, and yet whose motives I still questioned as he went about living his posh expat lifestyle detached from the suffering of the country, always seated at the head of the VIP table and celebrated by everyone around him. However, before I could get about the business of disliking Larry, in yet another odd turn of events he turned out to be a fourth generation Lithuanian raised in Chicago at a time when it was fashionable to send kids to ethnic schools on the weekends so he spoke Lithuanian and was even more delighted to meet Svirga than me. It turned out to be an exceptionally fun dinner with all the classic toasts and lots of cha-cha consumed by all. As it was drawing to a close Larry asked us how we’d be getting home. When we gestured over to Dato, his eyes squinting, big smile plastered across his face and vodka in hand, Larry told us that under no circumstances should we drive at night on the unlit road to Kutaisi and offered up the spare bedroom of his house in Tbilisi. We tried to ascertain if he was just being American, i.e. ridiculously cautious and risk averse in matters of life and death, and negotiated with Sergo that we would drive first to Tbilisi, stop for some coffee and then Dato would take us to Kutaisi after he’d sobered up. This of course backfired when in Tbilisi we drank instead of coffee more vodka. So around 12:30am Sergo commissioned a taxi to take us back to Kutaisi.

Svirga and I piled into the cab cutting short our gushing ‘goodbyes’ and ‘thank you’s to Sergo. It was already almost 1am as we set of on the 3 hour ride back to Kutaisi so we were not thrilled when 5 miles down the highway the driver who had already expressed his distaste for us spoiled foreigners, informed us that he had not slept for 3 day and needed to stop for coffee. Georgia of course has no concept of a to-go cup so Svirga and I sat waiting in the car, trying to nap, as the little woman in the shop painstakingly prepared the driver his Turkish coffee and he sat and sipped it leisurely while noshing on some khatchapuri. While stopped, we had decided that I should sit in the front and Svirga in the back so that we would both have more space to stretch out. However, I realized that I did not get the better end of this deal as soon as the driver took off down the highway at warp speed. Now I’m used to and even a proponent of speeding somewhat excessively however this driver was going at a speed so fast it would have scared me in any car on any road with any driver let alone in a Russian manufactured car on an unlit Georgian road full of potholes and livestock with a driver who hadn’t slept for 3 days and didn’t like us. Even better, only after speeding down the road at this warp speed for 45 minutes did the driver realize that he was not actually on the road to Kutaisi. Dead-ending at a little village, the driver aggressively spun the car around and to make up for lost time sped at even more insane levels back down the wrong road to pick up the right one. Luckily my mile-trained eye couldn’t tell how fast we were actually going in kilometers per hour and I actually found that doing the math problems in my head to calculate from kilometers to miles per hour helped keep me calm.

The conversation with myself in my head and with the driver out loud went something like: “Ok so the Central park loop is 6 miles and 10 kilometers so that means that if we’re going—‘Oh shit watch out for the turn’—185 kilometers per—‘Cow, cow, cow in the road, sir’—hour, then 185 times 6, carry the 3 and the 4—‘lamppost, dear god, lamppost’ divided by 10, is is 111 miles/hour—Oh my god Gary was right we are actually going to die!!”  In the midst of this I got a beep on my phone and found a text message from Nadia saying: “Girls girls! How r u doing? I am very drunk. I met one person who said that ur taxi driver is maniac and he likes girls like u. girls don’t be fraid. I’m with you.” A few minutes later Sergo called to ask where we were along the road. Svirga asked the driver who said “We’re about 5 minutes from Zestaponi so about an hour from Kutaisi,” which she then relayed to Sergo. However, as Svirga was hanging up the phone I noticed us quickly passing by a sign for Kharagauli. This was part of my election area of responsibility and I knew the distances well. I disappointedly turned around to inform Svirga that Kharagauli was almost an hour from Zestaponi and while I took great delight in catching the driver in his lie, this did not outweigh the disappointment that it was 3am and we were still 2 hours from Kutaisi

Finally, around 4:30am our maniac driver reached the outskirts of Kutaisi and ignoring our desperation to get home and sleep at least for a few hours before work the next morning, he stopped to buy a phone card, leisurely scratched it off and typed in the code to refill the credit on his phone. We were also faced with the problem that since we were always being driven around by other people we did not exactly know where in Kutaisi we lived. Regrettably, the only solution to this problem was for me to call Shota and hand the phone over to him to explain how to get us each to our places. Shota was infuriated that we were in a car with (and paying) another driver and was curt with me and yelled at the driver but did manage to give him directions that got us to Svirga’s place. Once Svirga had gotten in the door I looked at the driver who had yet to put the key back in the emission. “Ok, let’s go” I said losing my patience. “But your husband told me—” I cut the driver off so violently I think I might have actually scared him screaming wildly “He is NOT my husband. Drive NOW!” “But I don’t know where you live, he wouldn’t tell me. He said he was coming to get you himself.” With empowered American female pride raging in me, I forced the driver to start the car and attempted to direct him to gangster’s paradise. However, in my deeply dependent state, I only got us lost and in the end had no choice but to call Shota back who then came to get me. My weekend of spectacular fun and freedom was clearly over.

Greetings from Georgia -- Part 3 (email from October 2006)

A good friend and interested party recently suggested that since Georgia is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis that's splashed across the headlines of the international press, maybe I might want to use my $100,000 SAIS degree to talk a little more about the political situation in the country rather than analyzing local dating habits in excruciating detail. With elections set for tomorrow and our E-Day planned already mapped out, I am happy to oblige (though I'm assuming most of you won't make it through to the end.. I promise the next update will return to less weighty topics).

First of all, let me say that on the ground in Kutaisi and the surrounding area of central Georgia, there is absolutely no evidence or even discussion of the diplomatic crisis with Russia. I have been getting my news from the same sources I would get at home—English and Russian-language newspapers online. What I do have access to here beyond the news is a close-up view of the domestic political landscape, which is very useful in putting this "crisis" in context. Of course I need to throw out the disclaimer that I'm talking as myself, as someone who has studied conflict and knows Georgia well, and not at all as a representative of the OSCE or its Limited Election Observation Mission to Georgia. The OSCE report will likely wind up saying something completely different than what I tell you now and that's not because the organization is biased or basing its conclusions on higher political goals, but because I am speaking as one person with a distinct perspective from a specific space in Georgia, while the OSCE report will have to synthesize my view with the different perspectives of the 25 other observers in 11 other locations across the country to draw its final conclusions.

(Domestic Context)

What I've been doing with my days for the past few weeks is going out to district capitals in the Imereti region (my area of responsibility in central Georgia) to interview election officials, representatives of political parties, initiative group candidates who are running without a party behind them, coordinators of local election-related NGOs and journalists from the local media about the upcoming municipal elections in Georgia that will be held tomorrow. These will be the first local government elections to be held since the Rose Revolution toppled Shevardnadze's semi-authoritarian regime and brought young, charismatic Columbia-educated Mikhail Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) party to power. Since taking office Saakashvili has made questionable amendments to the Georgian Constitution that have in large part eliminated the checks on his executive power from the other branches of government and centralized power in the presidency. This makes these elections particularly important because they represent the first chance to decentralize power from Tbilisi, allowing citizens to identify their own local needs and actively steer their own development.

What I can say conclusively from everything I've observed on the ground is that Georgia right now is by all definitions a one-party state. Saakashvili's UNM dominates the political landscape, while the remaining opposition parties are small, weak, fragmented and disorganized and present no real competition to the UNM. One woman interviewed suggested that the feeling throughout the country is that there "should only be one party" and that members of the opposition are shunned. The question is whether Saakashvili and his party have achieved this dominance through authoritarian or democratic means. Is the opposition weak because there is such overwhelming support for Saakashvili and his party or is Saakashvili deliberately squelching the opposition before they have a chance to develop into real competition for him? It is a little of both I am afraid.

On the one hand, Saakashvili and his party are extremely popular and with good reason. People are thrilled to have for the first time since the Soviet era reliable electricity, well-paved roads, a disciplined police force, freshly painted buildings, new stadiums and even an amusement park in addition to an actual vision for the country's future. Saakashvili has made his goals explicitly clear: he wants to restore Georgia's territorial integrity (by reincorporating the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into Georgia), join NATO and move toward EU membership. And he has made a lot of smart, responsible decisions that have led to significant, tangible improvements in the quality of life throughout the country. He has spent a lot of time in the west, knows exactly what he wants his country to look like and is taking real steps to make this vision a reality.

On the other hand, rather than simply campaigning on their achievements and ideas and riding the resultant wave of popular support, Saakashvili and his party are playing many of the old style political games to hold onto and consolidate their power. The first tell-tale sign of this was of course Saakashvili's amendments to the Constitution. I of all impatient goal-oriented people can definitely understand the appeal of centralizing decision making power so that things get done efficiently and effectively without the battle of compromise slowing down progress and watering down ideas. But the point of democracy, the cornerstone of the EU, is for the people to decide in which direction their country goes and how it gets there, not a single leader, no matter how clever or progressive he and his ideas may or may not be. It is fine for Saakashvili to put forward and implement a revolutionary agenda, but the people need to support it from among a range of options put forward by other clever candidates.

Unfortunately, it seems that Saakashvili in fear that his revolutionary agenda might not win in free competition, has been biasing the electoral playing field in favor of his party. To start, there was the announcement of the election date. For months Saakashvili and his government officials had been publicly announcing that local elections would be held in December 2006. Lulled by the certainty of press release after press release mentioning December elections, all international organizations and local opposition parties began making their plans (and procrastinations) accordingly. Then, over a public holiday in late August, Saakashvili posted a press release to the government website in the middle of the night saying that elections would actually be held on October 5 with the bare minimum of 40 days notice. The lack of subtlety in this move may be comically childish to us outsiders, but the impact of the unexpectedly short timeframe has had real impact on the opposition's ability to organize themselves, find funding and candidates and form coalitions, giving Saakashvili's UNM a distinct advantage from the outset.    

Saakashvili has also employed very questionable tactics in his campaign, intentionally blurring the line between party and government. The most flagrant example of this is his changing and use of the national flag. When I lived in Georgia the national flag was maroon. Four years later Saakashvili and his party campaigned as the United National Movement under the banner of a white flag with red crosses in the lead up to the Rose Revolution as well as in the parliamentary and presidential elections that followed thereafter. After winning by a landslide, Saakashvili changed the old maroon Georgian national flag to the UNM white flag with red crosses. This flag now flies in front of all municipal buildings alongside the EU flag (very wishful thinking, Misha). He has had all maroon flags throughout Georgia replaced with his white flag with red crosses, repainting parks and buildings to invoke the new symbol of Georgia. And the effect is creepy: everywhere you look you see the flag and think "National Movement" but then have to remind yourself that it is not completely inappropriate for the Chairman of an Election Commission to fly the National Movement flag because it is now the Georgian flag. Moreover, rather than changing the UNM party flag to something new and different, UNM is currently campaigning under the banner of the national white flag with red crosses and the EU flag paired together. These two flags are now used as the symbols of the UNM party and appear in front of all of their party offices and on all of their party posters and pamphlets. Of course, this is what flies in front of all government and municipal building as well. As a result, the white flag with red crosses paired with the EU flag is meant to represent at the same time the country, the country's future, the government and the UNM party as if they are all inseparable concepts. Again, the feeling that you get from this messaging is that there "should" be only one party—that another party would stop progress in its tracks and that no other government could work for the good of the country or lead it in the direction of Europe.

Another dirty campaign trick that further blurs this line has been the opening of UNM soup kitchens throughout the country to provide meals to the poor. If you ask someone on the street about the soup kitchens, they will say "Look how wonderful! This is what Saakashvili and his party do—they take care of those in need." They do not understand the provision of such services as the government's responsibility but as Saakashvili's charity. Rather than feeling entitled to government services from any administration that might come to power, they feel fortunate to have the benevolence of the UNM and Saakashvili. It is unclear whether the funding for the soup kitchens is coming from the state budget and being falsely attributed to the UNM party, which would be a flagrant misuse of administrative resources and against the law. However, if not, it is still clearly stated in the election law that a party is not allowed to provide anything of tangible benefit to the citizens during the campaign period, which makes the soup kitchens illegal even if they are funded with party money. A party is supposed to campaign and win on ideas and platforms. Yes, a ruling party can point to its past achievements, but these soup kitchens only serve to reinforce Saakashvili's blurring of party, government and state.

Finally, there comes the part that is highly contested and debatable. There are rumors throughout Georgia that Saakashvili has put the message out to his party that they must win every seat in the local government and that they should use every means at their disposal to do so, fair or unfair, legal or illegal. We have heard countless reports from the opposition about UNM party members pressuring opposition and independent candidates to withdraw from the elections. And in a large percentage of districts UNM candidates are running uncontested following the withdrawal of opposition candidates. The opposition describes a pattern in which the UNM party members, usually working in the current local administration, first offer the candidate a very nice job with a high salary in the next administration if he withdraws from the race. If the candidate does not take the bait, the UNM member will threaten to make sure that the candidate and all of the candidate's relatives who are currently working will be fired if he does not withdraw. Because such a high percentage of those employed are working for the administration directly or in state-funded facilities, this is a very credible threat. The opposition also claims that the UNM has threatened to shut down local businesses that fund the opposition or independent candidates. Meanwhile, we have also heard accusations that the UNM has threatened whole villages that if the UNM candidate does not win there, their village will never see any government resources as well as that the UNM has had heads of factories and schools tells their employees that they will lose their jobs and shopkeepers that they will lose their licenses if they do not vote UNM. The opposition is saying that the pressure on them now is far greater than it ever was under Shevardnadze.

However, these rumors are slippery and for the most part unsubstantiated. Saakashvili and the UNM have spread the counter-rumor throughout the country that the opposition is making these claims of pressure and intimidation solely to discredit the election results because they know that they will lose. The Industry Will Save Georgia party is backing up the UNM claims that everything is running smoothly and fairly in an atmosphere free of pressure. But then again the opposition is claiming that the Industry Will Save Georgia party is just a puppet party co-opted by Saakashvili and the UNM. People on the street are saying that you would have to be crazy to be a member of or vote for a party other than Saakashvili's because he is doing such great things for the country and they say so with fanatic enthusiasm. It is impossible to say for certain who is telling the truth.

Whatever the case, whether Saakashvili and the UNM are maintaining power through dodgy or democratic means, the end result will be the same in tomorrow's elections. The UNM will win the vast majority if not the full 100% of seats in the local governments consolidating Saakashvili's power even further throughout the country. This will allow him to plot out and implement any agenda that he dreams up, whether well-planned and healthy for the country or extremist and dangerous for the world. The only checks on Saakashvili's power as of tomorrow will come solely from the feedback of the international community in the form of support or scolding.

(International Impact)

Against this backdrop, the timing of the diplomatic incident with Russia begins to make some sense. The incident, in case you haven't heard, occurred last week when the Georgian government boldly and unexpectedly arrested four Russian military officials on accusations of espionage. Russia overreacted by cutting off all air, rail, sea, road and postal links with Georgia. The OSCE has since stepped in to defuse tensions by taking the prisoners from Georgian custody, holding their hands on the flight over the border and depositing them with the Russian authorities for their prompt release.

While many claim that relations between Russia and Georgia have deteriorated over the years, I would say that they have for the most part not changed at all since I left Tbilisi in 1999. That is, they remain as theatrical and childish as ever. Georgia still makes a habit of over-dramatizing the threat of a Russian plot to destabilize its government and reclaim control of its territory. They usually do so to drive up support for the current administration's latest policy or deflect attention from its latest failure. Meanwhile, Russia over-dramatizes the threat of a western conspiracy to co-opt Georgia and push a hegemonic US agenda on Russia from its borders. They make jabs at the Georgian government and economy like cutting off gas in the winter, banning the import of Georgian wine into Russia, or as of now suspending all travel rights and postal service between the countries just to remind the Georgians in whose backyard they are living and who has the power to tangibly impact their quality of everyday life. This of course feeds into the Georgian threat perception and the vicious cycle continues in a fairly comical way. A journalist friend here recently lamented that "it's like reporting on a fight between kindergarteners in the playground every week."

Thus, for those of us who have been reading about "deteriorations," "escalations" and "provocations" for years the latest "crisis" is not particularly interesting news. What IS interesting news, however, is that it has made the international headlines. Assuming that Saakashvili has read all of the same political sciences literature that I have, this fact gives me a great deal of pause in dismissing the incident outright, as I otherwise would. The incident was clearly an orchestrated move by Saakashvili to provoke the Russians into acting out against Georgia, but why now, why the media attention and what comes next?

First of all by way of an explanation, there is nothing like an outside threat six days before an election to mobilize voters in favor of the current government that has been successfully shielding them from said threat. Goading Russia into acting against Georgia on the eve of the elections is fully in line with Saakashvili's above-detailed desire to maximize his domestic power. But what exactly is it that Saakashvili wants to do with this unbridled power once he claims it tomorrow and how does a well-publicized threat from Russia forward that agenda?

Saakashvili has made his goals for Georgia explicitly clear. He wants to restore the territorial integrity of the country, join NATO and move toward EU membership. While many of you are likely scoffing at the ludicrously ambitious if not flat-out delusional idea of wild, backward Georgia becoming an EU member state, those of you who know Georgia realize that getting the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to return to the Georgian state is just as far-fetched a goal. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union heralded the democratic election of a nasty ethnic nationalist regime in Georgia. They have been self-governing independent entities for nearly 15 years now with strong ties to Russia that include military support and zero interest in returning to the Georgian state.

Sound familiar? It might. Because structurally the situations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are directly parallel to the situation in Kosovo. Kosovo was an autonomous province within the republic of Serbia within the greater conferderation of Yugoslavia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were autonomous provinces within the republic of Georgia within the greater confederation of the Soviet Union. When the multi-state frameworks of Yugoslavia and the USSR broke down, Serbia and Georgia became independent states. Both elected ethnically nationalist governments which alienated their minority populations and Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia asserted their right to break away. Kosovo sought the help of the west in this effort while Abkhazia and South Ossetia sought the help of the Russians. This is overly simplified of course, but it is in essence the same game with the teams reversed.

And we know which outcome the US favors in the game between Kosovo and Serbia. It is widely known and well-documented (though still vehemently denied) that the US is pushing hard for Kosovo to be granted independence by the end of this year. For years Russia has protested this outcome siding with its Slavic Serbian brothers in fear that the precedent might be applied to Chechnya . However, with a co-opted Chechen regime stabilizing the situation in Chechnya, Russia has recently turned the tables on the US. They are now saying ok, fine, give Kosovo independence but this will set a clear precedent to be applied in Georgia, entitling Abkhazia and South Ossetia to independence. The US loves Georgia, a Christian nation willing to at least speak in the rhetoric of human rights and democracy on the doorstep of both Russia and the Middle East whose current president's Columbia law school education they so benevolently funded with a State Department fellowship. And they would hate to see Georgia concede its rightful territory to Russian influenced independence (as much as Russia hates to see Serbia concede its rightful territory to American influenced independence—and who said the Cold War was over?).

What this means is that the clock is ticking and time is running out for Saakashvili to reassert some semblance of control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia before Kosovo is granted independence by year's end. Many analysts have speculated that he may even be gunning to employ the newly US-trained Georgian military in starting a war to win back the territories by force. But even with new equipment and tactics, can the tiny little Georgian military really win against the huge nuclear-backed Russian forces?

No, definitely not. However, this did not stop the Kosovo Albanians and it may not stop the Georgians from trying. Not from trying to win mind you, but from trying to provoke disproportionate retaliation, win the hearts and minds of the western public and court international intervention into the conflict. In what could become the first example of Kuperman's moral hazard theory employed by one state against another, Georgia may intend to provoke Russia with enough little jabs of force until Russia gets so frustrated that it uses its proportionally greater force against the smaller state. Having already familiarized the western audience with the black-and-white struggle between Georgian good guys and Russian bad guys, Georgia can then point the finger at the big bad human rights violating Slavic menace across the international media and cry for US and/or international military assistance to come save them. Such assistance could include accelerated accession into NATO to protect Georgia from the threat of Russian reoccupation, if not military intervention into the conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by international rather than Russian peacekeeping forces. Provoking Russia could be Saakashvili's fast-track to achieving at least one if not two or even all three of his goals in one fell swoop. If he can get Russia or the Russian-backed Abkhaz or Ossetians to attack Georgia, he sets the stage for the US to intervene and then push their shared political agenda swiftly through the pipeline (so to speak).

Of course, maybe in consuming a daily diet of conspiracy theory here in Georgia I am simply manufacturing a fairly ludicrous one of my own. However, on the off chance that there is a grain of truth to my thinking, hopefully every party will be smarter in playing the moral hazard game this time around. In this case, Russia needs to be very careful not to play into Georgia's hand by overreacting to provocations with displays of force. As importantly, Russia needs to play the international media card with as much savvy as the Georgians, making sure that they get their views and their voice into all of the mainstream media outlets. They cannot allow themselves to get pegged as black against Georgia's white.

Meanwhile, the US government needs to get over its current conception of old alliances and start basing its international policy on shared principles and values rather than hunches and grudges, likes and dislikes. The US claims Georgia as an ally in the struggle of western democracy against Putin's authoritarian abuse of human rights. However, to do so they have to blindly ignore the uncanny resemblance that Saakashvili's Georgia bears to Putin's Russia. While Saakashvili may be claiming that his end goal is the democracy and human rights paradise of the EU, he is certainly staking out an authoritarian path to get there. The US cannot keep squandering the dying remains of its credibility by promoting hypocritical policies. The whole world sees what we're doing and it's not only embarrassing, it's dangerous. If Georgia is in fact our ally, we need to show it some tough love by demanding political reform.

Moreover, the EU needs to assert itself against the US more effectively and start calling the shots in its "neighborhood." Europe will have to live with the consequences of renewed wars in the Caucasus in the same way that it bore the brunt of the wars in the Balkans. Hopefully, everyone will be able to recognize the pointlessness of the Balkan wars that only served to complicate rather than clarify borders and positions at the cost of many innocent lives, as a fundamental lesson. Is it so hard to come up with an institutionalized solution to standardize and regulate how borders change and what happens to states and sub-states when multi-state frameworks collapse? Couldn't the terms and conditions be negotiated democratically hammered out by technocrats with full and fair participation at the international level in a way that all states agree to the rules and tons of future wars are obviated? Do politics always have to be such ad hoc cowboy nonsense or could we actually apply the principles that we claim to believe in to promote enduring peaceful relations and understanding among the human race?

Clearly, time for me to go to bed...

with love from Kutaisi,

Leslie

Greetings from Georgia -- Part 2 (email from September 2006)

So in the end Kutaisi is as charming as remembered: A sooty, gritty old city in the center of Georgia where the dramatic landscape of mountains and vineyards pauses for a moment to become uninspiringly flat and barren. A parallel situation would be coming from Georgia to monitor elections in New York, looking forward to the beauty of the Catskills or Niagara Falls, at least a charming farming town, but instead getting assigned to Albany and its surrounding suburbs. And the contrast between Tbilisi and Kutaisi is just as pronounced as between New York City and Albany. In one, there is life and friends, bars and restaurants, parties and concerts. In the other, there is—well let me attempt to be more positive—there is a sprawling park in the center (unfortunately under construction and only relaxing if you like the sound of jackhammers), a cafeteria that serves five different kinds of khatchapuri (in addition to an inedible Georgian version of "pizza,") a bar that stays open until the ungodly hour of 11pm (at which point all nightlife ends in Kutaisi), an outdoor market (that seems to sell only watermelons and eggplants), and 5 new ATMs.  

Upon arrival I strongly objected to living with Sven and Eka in the house that they had rented during their last stay in Kutaisi. Cramming into a little car together, spending hours a day trekking out over bad roads to small towns and villages to interview local election officials and candidates sounded like quite enough exposure to their "very special relationship" to me. However, I reconsidered my hardline stance upon our arrival. The house belongs to the widow of one of Kutaisi's most notorious gangsters—"Djoni" ( i.e. the awkward Russian transliteration of "Johnny")—who was shot in front of the house in the early 90s ending his reign of crime and terror in Kutaisi but leaving his wife Lali and their 3 year old daughter with several properties throughout the area. Set in a tropical oasis of banana trees, palms and orange flowered bushes, the house rises up three stories, each level sporting a series of sizable stone balconies and ornately barred windows. All exterior doors are made of steel, but once you get past them the house is beautifully trimmed with rich mahogany including a tremendous spiral staircase up to the 5 bedrooms. Mine is the largest with french doors that open onto a king-sized bed dressed in red sheets and heavy green velvet drapes that block out all sunlight and give an even more gothic feel to the sturdy mahogany furniture. Sven and Eka live in a corridor of their own sharing a marble-fixtured bathroom that always has hot water while the other two bedrooms remain empty. Djoni's widow also cooks our meals every night and has hired a maid to clean the house and wash our clothes. As my friend Svirga, a Lithuanian girl from the other election monitoring team based in Kutaisi, observed, "Oh wow, you are literally living in gangster's paradise."

To be fair, once we get far enough out past Kutaisi proper to the little satellite towns of the Imereti region with great names like Kharagauli, Zestaponi and Tkibuli, the scenery does become more interesting. I'm already collecting stories of crooked town officials and incompetence-inspired mayhem to share eventually.

The other night Svirga (a sweet svelte blond girl, not to be confused with my Swedish partner Sven) and I hit a new Kutaisi low before we managed to escape for a weekend in the mountains. It was Friday night and we were desperate to do something—anything—so going out with our drivers and Eka to a restaurant "downtown" suddenly sounded like a brilliant idea. I don't know what I'd pictured in a Kutaisi restaurant, but it certainly wasn't a basement full of men in tight clothing dancing what resembled the tango in each others arms. In most other cities around the world, you would walk into this scene of men in lycra twirling each other around and just assume you'd entered a gay bar. But not in Georgia, where gay men are severely beaten so that heterosexual men can preserve their god-given right to kiss each other in moments of high emotion, hold hands walking down the street and wear tight sleeveless tops while dancing cheek to cheek without ever having to worry about being called "gay."

"But where are the women?" Svirga and I asked spotting only one waitress in this crowd of about thirty men ages 18 to 45 out eating, drinking and dancing on their own. "At home with the kids" naturally, our drivers Ramaz and Shota explained. They puffed their chests with pride as all heads turned to watch them parade their foreign girls over to a table with a prime view of the dance floor. As the drivers began ordering platefuls of food and litres of wine for the table, Eka tried to give more context to the single-sex atmosphere. "All men here have been married since they were stupid seventeen year olds and kidnapped their wives," She rolled her eyes. "Now they are simply bored at home and go out for drinking together in the evenings."

"Kidnapped?" I asked assuming she'd just picked the wrong word. But no, Eka explained that most girls like her from the villages of Georgia are kidnapped when they reach puberty. Apparently, the tradition born of wild Cossacks riding off on horseback with stolen brides under their arms has been charmingly updated throughout the years to now involve bands of pimpled teenagers driving up in beat-up Ladas to whisk young girls off to cheap motels or a relative's house for the weekend. Three days later the girl is brought back to her village and forced to marry one of her kidnappers. The girl doesn't have much of a choice in the matter at this point since her parents won't take her back into their house after a kidnapping. It's assumed that she is no longer a virgin, even if she wasn't actually raped during the ordeal, and as upstanding parents you just wouldn't want to take that chance of having a daughter who wasn't a virgin in the house. I mean, what would the neighbors think?

Eka went on to explain that it's really not all that bad. Most of her friends are married to guys who kidnapped them when they were around fifteen and only one was against her will. Most of them kind of liked the boys who kidnapped them. They'd seen them around the village and exchanged interested glances, which is apparently code for 'I won't put up a fight when you and your friends come by to kidnap me.' Then when the car pulls up it's kind of like the boy asking the girl out on a first date and proposing marriage all in one shot. She can either run away screaming or if she likes him put up a mock protest before getting into the car. "In America, when you're fifteen and a boy likes you, the two of you go out to movies and eat popcorn, sometimes you get pizza. Your mom drives you," I explained for contrast, remembering again why I actually do like the States—no civil war and no pre-modern traditions that actively promote teenage pregnancy. A lot of the times, the girls are just curious, Eka offered, they get in the car because it seems fun, they're bored and they want to see what will happen. And I pictured myself so vividly at 15 peering through the front door of my parents' house at a car full of boys across the street, knowing that the one I have a crush on is in the backseat. The chances that I would have had the presence of mind not to go leaping into the car with exuberantly flushed cheeks and abandon are absolutely nil. Again, I thanked my lucky stars that my parents' house is located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania rather than Kharagauli, Georgia. Though you do have to admit an elegant efficiency to the system. I mean why waste so many years going through the ups and downs of dating when you can just get everything from the first date through the honeymoon over in the space of a long weekend with a well-orchestrated kidnapping?

As we learned about one anachronistic Georgian mating ritual from Eka, we unwittingly became a party to another. Two of the men crowding the dance floor broke off from the pack and approached our table. "Oh shit, they're going to ask us to dance," I groaned. "Don't worry," Eka smirked, "They're not allowed to talk to us unless Shota and Ramaz say they can." And as predicted, the men came up to the table—one smaller with a Michael Jackson era jacket unbuttoned to his navel to reveal the entirety of his hairy pale abdomen and the other in a tight black tee shirt rising up awkwardly above a rolling khatchapuri-filled stomach. But rather than slobbering the drunken hellos and pick-up lines you'd expect to get from these guys in a western bar, they bypassed Svirga and I entirely and began heatedly talking with Shota and Ramaz. "How much for your women?" I translated in jest. Svirga was clearly not amused and expressed strong desire to get on the next plane back to Vilnius. The whole exchange was right out of a cave-man era sociology textbook: Males from one group leer at females from another. Males create frontline to defend females who are considered possessions rather than sentient beings. Outsider males approach and gesture at females. Insider males push at their chests forcing them back five feet from females to prevent accidental contact. Both sides put on displays of virility that include yelling, yawping, shoving and grunting. Both sides accept outcome that females will remain with original males. There is then wine-pouring and toasting to the health and fertility of the females as the outsider males clink glasses with the whole group in a conciliatory gesture before reluctantly retreating in defeat, taking the wine from our table with them as a consolation prize. Within ten minutes a new posse of men approached to move through the same set of theatrical yawps and gestures. And I have to admit that the immunity afforded us by Shota and Ramaz holding down the frontlines really was fun. Just a glance from Svirga or I was enough to inspire confidence in any guy out on the dance floor and send him panting up to our table certain that he would be the first to make it through the male gauntlet to the sweet feminine prize. Meanwhile, we could snicker from the safety of our defended position knowing we would never have to deal with the consequences of our wandering gaze. This of course got old very quickly though and we wrapped up the evening before Shota and Ramaz were too drunk to drive us home.

I don't know that I wound up extracting any pithy lessons from the night except that maybe in weighing the pros and cons of each system, equality for women is a pretty good deal. You may have to spend some more time and effort fending off sleazy men in bars and of course dating a lot of duds until you finally find a guy who inspires you, but in the end it's worth not being forced to live with the decisions you make as a doe-eyed 15 year old for the rest of your life. Oh and you get to have a mind and a career and all that too.

On that note I will leave you with more to come soon!

Greetings from Georgia -- Part 1 (email from September 2006)

I'm back in Georgia so this is a weird email.. ignore anything that creeps you out and feel free to request self-consciously edited daytime email updates in the future!!

Well, I've made it to Georgia! For those of you who I didn't have the chance to update before leaving New York on only a few days notice, I'm here on a long-term OSCE election monitoring mission. I flew from New York to Munich on Monday where my 11 hour layover gave me the chance to eat sausages and drink weiss beer with Phil and Ian before eventually landing in Tbilisi at 3am on Wednesday. The airport was as grim as ever with a pile of newspapers jamming up the baggage carousel, an event which attracted five guys in florescent vests and a woman with a broom who all pointed and yelled at each other as they took turns ripping but not managing to pull out the pages one by one. After extricating my bags from the heap that developed beside the jammed carousel, I elected to pass under the "is not submitted to the declaration" sign rather than the "is submitted to the declaration" sign encouraged that Georgians have managed to retain such charming translations with all these international aid workers now running around Tbilisi "developing" things.

An OSCE driver who introduced himself as Mamuka picked me up and sped off down a surprisingly well-paved version of the road to the city center explaining that they finished re-paving the one side just before George Bush's plane landed for his state visit to Georgia last year and finished the other side just in time for him to leave Tbilisi for the airport. Tbilisi when we reached it was unbelievably well-lit with fountains I'd only seen rusted and inert in 1999 spouting great plumes of water into the night sky. The hotel Iveria which was once brightly colored with the laundry of refugees from the Abkhaz War hanging along its balconies stood empty and ready to be wrecked and rebuilt by some hotel developer who had paid a high enough price for it that the government was able to bribe all the refugees into leaving with $7,000 per family. All along Rustaveli street—the main drag through town where walking alone at night used to mean dark cars pulling up alongside me trying to coax me in until I screamed "idi na huiy" at them not knowing what it meant, only that it would make them go away—there were people and shops and functional streetlights. Mamuka explained that the police who had once been the scariest part of Tbilisi as they were drunks, wielding guns and demanding money without fear of reprisal had been vetted over the years and were actually a trustworthy lot these days. I crashed at the Hotel Edelweiss as assigned to me by the OSCE and slept soundly through the smoke and loud Russian gossiping of the hotel manager with her friends right outside my door.

That afternoon I wandered around the city jetlagged before my interview with the Eurasia Foundation but could not find anything I knew. It all seemed different. I knew that Dato's bar had been knocked down and that they were building some monstrosity of a modern apartment complex in its place but I couldn't even figure out which street it had been on. So I was looking for that street and the street I'd lived on after I’d moved out of the backroom of the bar and just couldn't manage to orient myself. Finally, I took a wrong turn and it smacked me in the face. I'd been looking in the totally wrong neighborhood. But once I found the hole where the bar had been, where I had spent nights sitting around a table talking to Dato with Brooke as a translator, learning to cook in the kitchen, throwing parties on the green-cushioned sofas in the back room, it was like all of my navigational skills returned to me. I found the apartment I'd moved to after leaving the bar and I knew all of the spots along the way like the apartment of that terrible guy Miho who was always starting fights on some aggression-inducing drug and Dato's niece Maka's school where we'd pick her up in the afternoons. At some point I looked to my right and saw a perfect Siamese cat digging through a dumpster. I went over and there he was totally beautiful but skinny and bedraggled and digging through the trash. I had half of one of those long potato piroski that they sell on the street in my bag so I fed it to him and he was talking to me in that distinctly Siamese voice just like my own Georgian Siamese cat Joe's. And that struck me as so Georgia-- that the street cats should be purebred Siamese and that the purebred Siamese cats should be street ridden.

The interview with Hans at Eurasia went phenomenally well.. He was absolutely as brilliant as everyone had billed him and our conversation ranged from the low merits of post-1945 British literature to the creation of a self-conscious culture through the development of its social sciences. And yet my gut wasn't screaming. My head was saying "yes, yes! Please I want to work with this incredibly sharp and inspiring person and travel around to Baku and Yerevan until I speak perfect Russian" and my heart was saying "Oh, I want to stay in Tbilisi and have a new apartment and bring Joe back to his motherland" But they weren't lining up in that way that gives me the gut intuitive feeling of "right" that I've come to depend on to guide my decisions. Instead my gut was still screaming "Kosovo" at me. Like "enjoy this now, this is your gift but then you have to give it up and go work in Kosovo whether it makes sense when you calculate it out or not."

The next day was the OSCE briefing where I got my field assignment and partner which were pretty much a double doozy. I'd been saying since even the idea of the mission came up that the only bum deployment across all the diverse ecosystems of gorgeous, lush Georgia was flat, miserable, industrial Kutaisi dead in the center with no caves, vineyards, beaches or minority populations to make it an interesting month. I should have known that I'd used up all of my election monitoring karma getting assigned to a seaside resort town on the Greek border with Graeme at the Albanian elections last year. But instead, that morning at breakfast when I met an older Swedish guy who said that he'd precociously paid a visit to the OSCE office and was thrilled to have found out that he'd been assigned to Kutaisi, I just pitied the poor sap who would be stuck as his partner. Particularly, as he went on to talk for a full twenty minutes about his "very special" pre-existing relationship with his interpreter Eka who had been with him on three prior missions and then come to visit him for 3-months of a summer in Sweden and then again for New Years of this year. Yes, there was a wedding ring on his finger, but as he told me about how he'd been partnered with a Turkish woman in 2003 who "just hadn't understood his relationship with Eka" and how he hoped that that wouldn't happen again, but regretted that it was likely to because he and Eka were so close that anyone else who joined the team was bound to feel excluded, I didn't even calculate the odds that I would actually wind up in the place of that poor Turkish woman on my way to the grimmest city in Georgia with Eka’s 22 year old hip bones jutting sharply out the top of her impossibly low-slung jeans and Sven puppy dogging after her like a sad old hound.

The disappointment was soon mitigated by an email reply from one of Daria's friends to a request for Lado or Bako Burduli's phone number. Lado, the elder Burduli brother, known throughout Tbilisi as the grandfather of alternative Georgian rock, and Bako, his younger brother the famous Georgian pop star, had been close friends of ours in 1999 but I was slightly concerned that they wouldn't remember me as I called Lado on his mobile in 2006. And yet after seven years of no contact, I did not even have a chance to run through the first line of the premeditated explanation of who I was. "Leslie—oh my god—how are you? What are you doing tonight? I will make party for you!" I had to go to some OSCE dinner but called him as it was winding down and he invited me over to his place for drinks with him and Bako. I said I'd take a cab and 30 seconds later got a call back saying "don't take a cab because Bako is already in the car coming to get you and anyone else you want to bring with you." Bako comes and just like old times squeezes five people into the backseat of his little red car. He is utterly the same Bako! He's put on some weight in his face but is now on a diet to lose it. He's not drinking, not smoking because he's recording a new album. He's starting his swimming regimen tomorrow. All lines I've heard before. And it's incredible to see him. We get to Lado's neighborhood and it too is utterly the same! Everything is so vividly familiar as if time has collapsed on itself and I left Georgia yesterday rather than seven very full years ago. Bako is insisting on buying me juice when I say I don't want more wine. He's beaming. I'm beaming. We climb up the rickety stairs that open onto Lado's apartment where I suddenly see a million memories all at once. Sitting on the floor with Dato learning Georgian words, standing in the hallway with Brooke discussing the punk song repeating itself on the stereo, hanging out with Japanese tourists that Lado has brought home with him from Rustaveli avenue. It's all there. And then there's Lado who is still utterly Lado but even better! His crazy hair is silver and tamed into a curly bob. He's fit and full of confidence. He tells jokes that just aren't funny. He makes twenty phone calls to drum up a party for me. And rather than using the space of his big rooms, he insists that we all pack tightly into his kitchen to drink vodka and wine and cognac. He toasts to me. We talk about the American girl from Missouri who he dated for 3 years and about how he now understands the American people. He shows me a picture of his daughter who is now 19 years old, stunningly pretty and studying in London. I tell them that Rita is now a priest and that Brooke is now a professor and married. Bako's response is "wow, this is very strange for me, you know, because Rita was my girlfriend." I tell them that I might look for a job in Tbilisi and they are overjoyed. Bako says, "but you have a very strange profession.. if you wanted to be fashion designer or painter, we have many friends who could help you find a job but in politics we have no one" We discuss my imminent departure to Kutaisi and how it is indeed the worst part of Georgia. Lado assuaged me by promising to SMS me his Kutaisi artist-friends mobile numbers though he vehemently objects when I suggest that he come to visit me there.

Lado's friends show up and are fantastic: Shalva who was in his band in the 80s and is now a photographer in Paris.. Shalva's cousin who doesn't speak English and says nothing with an eyebrow raised for the entire night.. and the girl that Shalva is courting with grand proclamations of love and admiration for her beauty who is wearing heavy turquoise eyemakeup. It's all so perfect. And Shalva takes an immediate liking to me and starts toasting to me. My OSCE compatriots are slightly confused but impressed with the whole scene. They get tired though and Bako leaves the party to benevolently drive them all home to their separate hotels without being asked. I've at this point heard something from Bako, Lado and Shalva each in separate conversations about the need for soul and feeling and love and how life in Georgia is about putting all of these things first. Lado works himself up into such a state that he has to play guitar and sing deep-throated Georgian lyrics to release some of his excess emotion. Bako goes home soon after returning so that he can proceed with his healthy recording-conducive lifestyle early the next morning. We take pictures of each other with my digital camera to commemorate the moment (to be forwarded when I can hook my camera up to the computer).

Lado is maybe coming onto me and I am completely betrayed by myself and start finding him very attractive. Something about the pale skin and silver hair is making him glow like an angel. And he keeps bringing up all of these old memories that I'd long forgotten in the recesses of my brain and telling them from his perspective. Like the story of meeting me, Rita and Brooke on the road up to Tskeneti, how he thought there was no way that we would come to the fashion show he invited us to and how amazed he was when we then appeared in his garden moments later and how he now has pictures of that night posted on his website. And like the time when Girpich made and served up a potent batch of managua at his apartment and how he worried about the "little blond Leslie" turning green and if he would have to take her to the hospital and how he thought my two American friends returning the next day were going to berate him for inducing hallucinations but were really just coming to ask how they could get some more. At this point I think I'm in love with him and he's in love with me not because we are actually in love but because we are flattering mirrors of ourselves seven years ago.   We are reminders of all things constant in ourselves—the good things we love and attempt to cultivate in our best moments. And we can palpably feel the eternal bandwidth of love that keeps friends connected and close over time and space. I do consider staying as he offers up any bed in the house that I prefer but have enough presence of mind to go home in Shalva's cousin's SUV. Halfway home to the hotel my phone beeps with the following text from Lado: "Ok…of course I will visit u but u should tell me date when u and me have free date! Thanx u 4 such nice night." Smirking from the front seat and totally content, I reply: "It was great to see you 7 years and no time later! I will let you know when to visit.. Til then send me Kutaisi numbers so I will not be lonely!" I get dropped off at my door and say illustrious goodbyes to Shalva, his cousin and the girl who it turns out took painting lessons from Dato's father and is close friends with Dato's sister. As I crash drunkenly onto my hotel bed, I get a text back from Lado: "Leslie darling in Georgia u will never be alone. 2 night u bring 4 me so much nice memories even I cant tell u what I love u. rock n roll" I reply "Bravo, Kutaisi tomorrow and rock n roll forever…" and fall into a sound happy sleep.

And yet my response to this flood of feeling for both Lado and Bako.. of returning to a place where I am totally appreciated and loved.. was that I did NOT want to take the job in Georgia and make this my life. It was too much like standing still. Too much about the past rather than the present or future. It would grow old and stagnant quickly. I would tire of weird parties at Lado's and would only appreciate them once I'd left again and viewed them with nostalgia. You love that guy but you don't date him. You love that place but you don't move there. You visit. You feel it all rush over and crash around you. But you don't get stuck in commitments and mired in what is ultimately not yours. It's part of the journey.. a milestone.. a turning point.. an impetus.. then a touchstone. It creates parameters and shows you the heights you need to attain.. the principles you need to live by.. the level of emotion that you need to achieve to sustain yourself. But staying there will only kill what the "there" has just inspired and produced in you. It is the Calypso rather than the Penelope.. a part of the journey rather than the homecoming. So I'm ecstatic to partake of it while I am here but I am also looking forward to releasing it fully back into the ether when it is time to go…

I will be sure to keep you all posted as it all unfolds!

with love from Kutaisi,

leslie