I have been watching the chaos unfold in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia for over a week and it reduces me to tears sometimes. As someone who has maintained a close intimacy with wars...how to prevent them, manage them, figuring out how to clean up after them...for the better part of seven years in Washington DC...this one has finally hit home. This one makes my guts turn and my eyes tear up even more than the sickly "cleansings" of Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan, DRC, Uganda, etc, etc.
The reason for this, I suspect, is that I have been in love with Georgia and Georgians for the past three years. Yes, yes....they are a fiercely nationalistic folk to the point of being almost intolerable at times....yes, they did taunt the great Russian bear...and yes, in war there is rarely one party that can credibly proclaim "innocence," but still, it sickens me.
It sickens me and twists my heart because I remember disembarking from the plane in Tbilisi three years ago on a very cold night (all flights seem to land at 3AM in Georgia) and emerging onto the blackened tarmac and taking my first breath of Georgian air. At the time, it seemed so deeply exotic, this tiny place in the Caucasus. As close as I would get to the Middle East for another two years and as close as I would get to the object of my childhood fascination and then adult scholarship, Russia, for another year. I remember arriving at my hotel (a stately old mansion long having fallen into disrepair but remaining elegant) and being encouraged to try Georgia's "famous" mineral water that both Stalin and Roosevelt were rumored to have loved. It was a salty, gag-inducing fluid that, despite the promises of its "curative" powers, took all of my willpower to simply swallow. I remember better the delicious wine, bottles and bottles of which can be drunk without ever incurring a hangover...much more in line with my idea of "curative."
What I remember most vividly, however, is the guns. Despite having been in multiple war zones by that point in my life, I had never really been afraid of being shot (OK, the child soldiers in Liberia with the darting eyes and itchy fingers on rusted AKs did frighten), but, in Georgia, I was almost shot. Literally. Twice.
The first was in a bath house in the middle of the night (did I mention that there is good wine to be had in Georgia? Or that, as a guest, you get your own BOTTLE of vodka with dinner and that is bad form to refuse as you're expected to toast far into the night?). Don't ask, and I probably won't tell anyways...at least not here...how I found myself in a bath house in Georgia with six naked men and women (three Russians and the rest Georgian...and yes, they did get naked together in the not-so-distant past despite their current tensions...I witnessed it) but, there I was. One month into my thirtieth year, in a frozen former Soviet republic, in a bath house, naked....with six other people. They were all naked too but that didn't matter...it wasn't about nudity...it was about politics. It was about getting clean...physically and psychologically.
It was also about guns. Guns, pistols mostly, on the slippery side of the tub...displayed openly on top of piles of clothing. It was my "bottle of wine and seven shots of vodka" clumsy self that, upon trying to scamper as quickly as possible into the tub (I am not Georgian or Russian...naked is naked and naked is awkward in a tub full of strangers), knocked a pistol off the side of the tub. Where it promptly fell to the floor and...discharged. That frozen moment in a bath house in Georgia, all ancient marble and polished floors, poor vision amidst the steam, and the sound of the ricochet as the bullet met a wall. Frozen...three Russians, three Georgians, one American...who was going to get hit? Who did I accidentally maim or kill?
No one, it turned out. After the ricochet the bullet found its resting place in the stall of the nearby shower. The Georgians and Russians broke into gales of laughter and promptly assailed the matron of the baths with demands to bring another bottle of vodka so they could toast the American who needed to "aim better in the future."
Then, two days later, watching the U.S. Superbowl (the year the Philadelphia Eagles finally stopped choking long enough to get to the game and then REALLY show the world what choking looks like) at a place called the Hangar Bar. It is an institution in Georgia and run by a 5'1" female former Army captain who is no bullshit...none whatsoever. 4AM (Georgia is nine hours ahead of the U.S.), watching football in Tbilisi via a wonderful gift called the Armed Services Network, and down the stairs comes Georgia's most famous rap artist. Yeah, I know....I hadn't heard the news either about Georgian rap but I believe what they tell me. Drunk, this rap artist, really, really drunk. Falling down, stumbling, cursing....drunk. Suddenly a crash, the sound of metal on wood, something cool resting against my boot under the bench where I was sitting. A gun. Another one. Safety off, right under my chair. Had it gone off, I would have been shot in the ass...a wound I certainly DO NOT relish sustaining. Plucky female Army captain scampers, retrieves the pistol, tosses the Georgian rap star out into the frigid night with the help of some beefy bouncers.
"Um, was that a gun?" I query...amazed that in two short days I have missed being shot at close range (and once in the ass, for Christ's sake! While watching football!!!) twice. "Yep," she replies, nonchalant. "At least it didn't go off this time, though."
And this, this...is Georgia. Besides the guns, there is some seriously beautiful architecture, rolling forests, palm trees growing in the snow, cities of artwork and sculptures, and some of the best food and drink to be had on the planet. And then, of course, there are Georgians themselves. All black hair and black eyes set in porcelain skin. Fierce, nationalistic, proud...and kind. Georgian hospitality might outdo even the strict codes of the Middle East and South Asia. No detail missed, no cost too high.
This is my Georgia. A place that, for the next two years, I did everything in my power to return to again. My "again" was this past fall. Two weeks in Tbilisi. Back in beautiful Georgia.
Something had changed, however, the tone was different. Something looming...chaos on the edge of a fragile peace. Moods had darkened, a fever was on the rise....tension in the air.
August.
Spark.
Ignite.
And now...burn.
I know war....not as a soldier or a marine (although through the eyes of plenty of soldiers and plenty of marines)...but as someone who sits and analyzes, tries to figure out how to make it end. Also as someone who has walked in the craters left behind after the mortar attacks and seen the skeletons of bombed out buildings and bombed out people.
I now think of this and try to transpose these images on Georgia. Bombed out Georgia...it is hard to fathom. There is wrong on both sides, this is for certain. Being a student for many years of Russian history (military and social alike) I am not surprised by what is happening. Angry? Yes. Falsely hopeful that they will spare beautiful, uppity, Georgia? Of course.
Still...my heart is with that country and its people...wrongly or not. Justified or not.
I know this is a fight that has bigger implications. Much wider...deeper. I know that my own country has rendered itself powerless in so many ways that even our words are now morally bankrupt...perhaps they have a dirty, slimy feel to them? The big bully in the schoolyard who encourages the scrawniest kid to fight, armed with a fist of rolled quarters and a sense of historic outrage, and then, when the kid's nose is being bloodied badly...takes off for the monkey bars.
Oops...not my problem anymore.
This is my country. And that is a country I fell in love with.
Somedays, Uganda cannot come soon enough.
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