Introduction
Contents
The fat man in the seat behind me was in distress. Throughout the flight from London he and three loud, Russian speaking companions had talked and laughed, constantly bumping my seat, jostling me. Now they were suddenly quiet and still, and I sensed their alarm. Twisting round in my seat, I saw his big face pale and sweating, his eyes flat and panicked at once. Then his full weight slumped forward, nearly flattening me against the seat in front of me. Two of his friends stood, calling for aid, and flight attendants rushed to lower the fat man into the aisle, onto the floor of the plane, where he lay unconscious and panting. The pilot began to make an announcement in an unintelligible, guttural language (could this be the sound of Georgian?), and I had a terrible feeling that I was about to be grounded in Baku by the fat man’s collapse.
I didn’t want any delays; I was on my way to join my husband in Tbilisi, an hour’s flying time from Baku, starting a new chapter of my life. Jim had left Washington DC three weeks earlier to start his new job as chief of an education development project. Our home in Capitol Hill was ready to sell, in the capable hands of our realtor, and I’d sold our Toyota and held a lawn sale to get rid of anything we wouldn’t miss after three years abroad. The rest went to storage; we would rent a furnished place in Tbilisi. I had shipped our summer clothes, our bed, my favorite kitchen tools, and said goodbye to friends and family. On October 23, 2011 I boarded a flight to Tbilisi, my jewelry and some family photos in a small carry-on. I was ready, looking forward to seeing Jim again and curious about our new home town, and I didn’t want any delays.
The fat man revived slowly, sat up in the aisle and then regained his seat. The flight attendants prepared to land in Baku for our scheduled layover. Most of the other passengers left the flight there, including the fat man and his friends. I peered through my window into the night, watching luggage handlers and mechanics moving about in the darkness like stagehands changing a set. Perhaps two dozen new passengers boarded the plane, and we were off to Tbilisi. My new chapter was beginning.
Arrival in Tbilisi after more than 24 hours of travel was a blur of impressions—a modern airport with soaring ceilings, bright lights, and long, polished corridors; efficient passport control; escalators; and then a dear, familiar face among the throng waiting to meet arriving passengers. Jim had a hired car and a driver named Ika, who whisked my luggage into the trunk of a sleek, black sedan and sped us through a dark wasteland toward the city.
By night the hills around Tbilisi are dotted with old churches and a ruined fortress, all flooded with golden light. Old stone bridges and a new suspension bridge, twinkling silver and blue, span a black river canyon at intervals. A vast presidential palace, all chrome and cold white light, overlooks the city. Down in the center we hurtled along an avenue of elegant Beaux-Arts buildings; past a monumental Parliament in yellow stone; into a vast roundabout, at its center a towering monolith crowned with a gilded statue, a man on horseback. Even exhausted and travel-weary I recognized Saint George slaying the dragon.
Then a hotel lobby, warm and bright; welcoming smiles; handshakes, thanks, and farewell to Ika. A small elevator, a room, a hot shower, the welcome relief of lying down after so many hours of sitting in airplanes and airports. The next thing I knew, brilliant morning light was glinting off the golden statue of Saint George, directly outside our window. The new chapter had begun.
First Day in Tbilisi
At 4:00 in the afternoon, it’s snack time on the streets of Tblisi. Men, women, and children are walking and eating—puffs of golden brioche, large disks of cheese-filled khatchapuri, foot-long sausages wrapped in pastry like oversized pigs-in-blankets. It is my first day here and I’ve been wandering the city center, taking care not to go too far from the Marriott Courtyard on Freedom Square.
In the high-rent neighborhood of our hotel, the shops are mainly of the Cartier and Versace kind and not unusual or particularly interesting. On the other hand, informal shopping malls in underground pedestrian cross-walks beneath the broad, tree-lined avenues offer a fascinating variety of goods from hand-knit mittens, socks, and vests to bananas and persimmons (eaten hard and crunchy here), and from used books in Russian, French, and Georgian to original art to hair scrunchies in neon hues. Most vendors sit beside their offerings, which are laid out on a low table or on the ground in boxes, but there are a few shops too, and that is where I find my first purchase—a Georgian-English phrasebook for 15 lari (just under $10 at 1.6 lari to $1 USD). I conclude the transaction by consulting the book and using my first word of Georgian: gmadlobt (“thank you”). The Georgian alphabet (5 vowels, 28 consonants) resembles the Elvish script of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth: strange, curvilinear letters, quite beautiful.
I think I’ve never seen more public art than here in Tbilisi, especially sculpture. This varies from the monumental gilded statue of St George–as always, on horseback, slaying the dragon—atop a great pillar in a vast fountain at the center of Freedom Square; to a series of whimsical figures seated on pedestals set in the sidewalk; to a jazz trumpeter in bronze, his head, hat, hands and horn protruding from the marble-clad façade of a building, along with his right knee and left shoe.
Flower sellers along Rustaveli Avenue display dahlias the size of salad plates in gorgeous bright colors—fuschia, orange, flame-tinged yellow. The scent of frankincense wafts from the shops of icon sellers along Leselidze Street. Devout Georgians cross themselves three times when passing a church or the statue of St George. In long grey hassocks, with untrimmed beards flowing to the waist, Orthodox Christian priests look a bit like Rasputin.
In the Eastern way, pairs of men and women here walk hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm.