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