Film Notes: "A Soviet Story"

“A Soviet Story” Edvíns Šnore film shown at school the last Friday of Occupation Week

·         Opened with pictures of dead and the line: “These were methods used by the Nazis…But this film will not be about the Nazis…These people were killed by one of the allies: the Soviet Union.”

·         Claims the memory of Soviet crimes has been erased from history

·         Presents the common idea that there was nothing wrong with the basic idea of Communism and then counters it

o   Lenin wrote that certain groups of people would have to be killed before the new world order could emerge

o   Lenin supported social engineering

·         Ukraine 1932-33: extermination of 7,000,000 people by means of Stalin’s prepared “famine”

o   people were given bread for turning over bodies to the police, so some people were handed over to be buried alive

o   10 years before the Nazis

o   confiscated grain was exported to the West

§  Western media did publicize the plight of the Ukrainians, but no help was sent…even such a protest as a boycott of the bloody grain was not enacted

·         Marxism preached the need for a “new man”   

o   Nazism would preach the same need shortly after

o   both ideologies were at war with human nature (unnatural ideologies)

·         “Only Socialists publicly advocated genocide in the 19^th-20^th centuries”

o   personally, I wonder if this statement means “only” in the world or in the group of countries usually covered in Western history books…

o   Engels wrote that “racial trash” needed to be destroyed

o   Marx could be considered the “ancestor of modern political genocide”

·         1924- Lenin died

·         Dr. Goebbels published an article in the New York Times in which he compared Lenin’s philosophy and Hitler’s “religion”

o   called Lenin the greatest man in history, second only to Hitler

o   Early Nazis stressed how they considered themselves brothers with the Soviets

§  National Socialists and International Socialists

§  excellent clip in the film showing parallel propaganda posters

o   Later Nazis would stop stressing their similarities publicly, but Hitler and his cabinet continued closely studying the works of Marx and Engles

·         Bernard Shaw (author and communist)

o   supported both dictators

o   wrote about the need to kill the parasites of society

o   called for the creation of a “humane” extermination gas

§  the creation of Ziklon-B 10 years later would be defended at the Nurmburg trials by Eichman using Shaw’s words

o   fundamentally opposed Nazism because Hitler had distorted Lenin’s teaching

§  i.e. extermination should be based on class, not on race

·         Bloodbath in the USSR

o   Bkivna forest in Kiev is a mass grave and memorial forest

o   homeless children in Russia embarrassed Stalin so he ordered those older than 12 years shot

o   Stalin gave his generals killing quotas

§  never signed execution orders alone

§  killing by quota meant randomly exterminating whole groups of his own people

·         nothing to do with class; nothing to do with race—just in the name of terror

§  Khruschev was given a 7k-8k quota and asked that it be increased

o   1937-1941- “repressed” 11+ million of his own people

·         Friendship between Stalin and Hitler

o   Stalin wanted Hitler to destroy the old order in Europe for him; his plan was to wait and then lead the Red Army in as “liberators”

o   secret alliance signed which led to the invasion and division of Poland

§  later, a second secret agreement would prospectively divide the whole of Europe between the two leaders [[this document would later be smuggled out of the “President’s Library” in the Kremlin]]

§  USSR Press justified the invasion of Poland as the joint effort by the peace-loving Nazis and Soviets to eradicate “Polish fascism”

o   Soviets invaded Finland, where they were defeated with huge losses to both sides

§  Red Army lost 1/3 of a million people

§  this attack prompted the League of Nations to expel the USSR

·         thus joined the ranks of Japan, Italy, and Germany

o   Soviet citizens starved as food supplies were sent to Hitler and the Nazis

o   Molotov made fighting Nazism a crime by USSR law

o   Churchill called Nazism “Soviet Despotism”

o   Katyn

o   Igor Radiovnov considers (yes, present tense) the Soviet-Nazi alliance something to be proud of because it was his country helping nobly in the “war against Jewish Fascism”

o   Lev Trotsky “warned the world” that Stalin and Hitler were collaborating, and was assassinated as a result

o   NKVD

§  trained SS, Gestapo, and concentration camp architects

§  carried out same “experiments” and tortures as Nazis

·         when USSR became an allied power, funding for these “scientists” came from the allied countries

§  had own army that followed the Red Army into battles

·         killed own soldiers to discourage retreat/desertion

·         tore dog-tags off of dead Red Army soldiers to prevent their being identified (wanted to keep official number of mortalities low; currently stands at 27 million but should really be much higher…there just aren’t records to tell researchers how much higher)

·         After becoming an Allied Power…

o   Stalin deported entire ethnic groups to Siberia

o   put Nazis into their own concentration camps

o   carried out mass ethnic cleansing in the Baltics

·         Current events

o   Dzintars- master torturer currently lives in Moscow, protected by the Kremlin as an “honorable veteran”

o   addresses of officers who carried out the Katyn massacre are known, but they are protected by the Kremlin

o   ex-KGB Vladimir Putin said in a speech “one must acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”

§  under his regime, xenophobic and racist propaganda has been increasingly pushed

§  considers criticizing the USSR to be criticizing current Russia, because his idea of current Russia is not a re-birth after the bloodbath but a continuation of it…the next generation of a country that cherishes the example set by its noble ancestor

·         could be compared to the state of Germany post-WWI

o   so does this mean a second war is inevitable if Russians are to choose a new path for themselves?

o   Radionov said “the Russian media is in the hands of the Jewish Mafia”

·         FILM’S POINT

o   “Europe now has the opportunity to condemn these crimes and to demand the extradition of those who committed them. Yet Europe hesitates. Why?”

§  because Europe is dependent on Russia for petrol/gas

o   if the Kremlin were to decide to arrest those responsible for Katyn, they could flee to Great Britain for protection, because the Katyn massacre isn’t defined as a war crime in Great Britain (legal documents only consider WWII murders committed by the Nazis to be war crimes)

o   EU is apathetic because it is convenient for them to be; this way they can get their petrol/gas from Mr. Putin, deny that they teamed up with a monster (Stalin) to fight Hitler, deny that they turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the citizens of the Soviet Union…

§  neo-Nazis and radical nationalists frequently murder “social parasites,” ethnic minorities, and other undesirables still, and the Russian government is taking no measures to stop such murders

§  proposed that Europe in part believes Marx and Hegel, that it’s acceptable for certain demographics of the population to be killed as long as they are the weaker demographics…as long as their extermination makes space for stronger, more worthy demographics to take power

Obviously, this was a film whose producers had an agenda. It is very clear: the goal here is to lay out all atrocities of the USSR and then to provide insurmountable evidence that the Soviets were worse than/collaborating with/the predecessors of the Nazis. To what end? To point out that the Western Powers collaborated with a genocidal dictator and continue to demand justice for the people who were victims of that collaboration. To draw attention to the roots of the current Russian government, which the West still collaborates willingly with. To suggest that either gas is more important to Western politicians than human rights, or that Western politicians secretly want to let these “weaker” groups kill each other off. I think that the last charge—that Western politicians are secretly disciples of Marx and Hegel—is very extreme. There is certainly truth to the charge that petrol/gas motivates the Western leaders to overlook things like the propaganda (a poster with a picture of Obama in 2009 advertised chocolate ice cream with the slogan “flavor of the year”) being distributed or the ethnic cleansing (train-loads of minority citizens being deported to Chechnya and Dagestan, where guerilla warfare will kill many of them and where a ban on cameras/journalists ensures no witnesses of consequence) being carried out in Russia today. But at the same time, the film presents its ideas in such a way that it seems to accuse the viewer of not realizing—to put it quaintly—that the Soviet Union was bad. The interesting and informative and heart-wrenching bits are periodically interspersed with declarations in a tone that seems to suggest the viewer likely doesn’t consider Stalin a dictator or a murderer. It felt patronizing and propagandist. I know that things were bad; I want the facts and the stories, not melodramatic announcements accusing me of misplaced sympathies. Even more interesting is the fact that the Georgian government requested a translation of the video (professionally done, with subtitles and dubbing and Georgian-language menus) for viewing in schools here. Georgia isn’t mentioned in the video. The Georgian-born Stalin is presented as the leader of a ruthless dictatorship, but no mention is made of the consequences for the individual occupied countries (with the exception of Ukraine and the cluster of Balkin states). There’s the fact that Georgia was Russian starting in 1801, which means that their history of oppression goes back further than mentioned in the film. And then there’s that troubling last note which goes beyond accusing Europe of apathy and actually accuses them of quiet approval. Why would this government want such a film in their schools to mark Occupation Week? Perhaps because it paints everyone else—all other countries—as potential occupiers who cannot be trusted. What a message for kids who are also being required to study Russian and English and who have imported English teachers! A little scary.

Frozen again

I wanted to go outside and hike today, but the weather was miserably cold. Instead, I stayed inside. I read and wrote. I showered. I drank a lot of coffee and danced with Eka to bad pop music on this “Popbudzk” television station. The station is Polish, I think, and they play music videos. They always seem to have different themes, and today’s was 100 best women vocalists.

Eventually, though, Bakari called. A friend had leant him a truck for the day, which is a pretty big deal, so we drove off into the Caucasian mountains as far as we could. We stopped to greet neighbors and drink mineral water. We towed a car out of a ditch, and I saw icicles bigger than I am. When we were about 9 km from the Russian border, we turned around and went back to Oni. There, we picked up Magda, Vera, and Dato and drove in circles around Oni. They talked about how the man whose been pursuing Magda has to back off because it was just discovered that they’re 3^rd cousins. They talked about a boy from here who just won a national wrestling competition and so will go on to represent Georgia in European tournaments. They talked about the lives of their neighbors, and then they got bored. When Magda, Vera and Dato left, Bakari and I went to visit his uncle Gio. We watched a little bit of a documentary about an Italian journalist killed in Tbilisi (back during the days of their first president) for writing an expose about organ-thieves in Chechnya. Then we watched a bit of a different documentary, this one about the Russian invasion of 1801.

When we were watching TV at Baka’s house later, the same documentary was on. His mother blinked a few times and then shook her head and told us that during her childhood “Occupation Week” was a time of mandatory celebrations and ceremonies…not memorials. The Azerbijani television station had a pair of red carnations in the corner of the screen to mark their occupation, which occurred at the same time as Georgia’s. I always was told that using even numbers of red flowers to mark sober events was a Russian custom, but I guess after 91 years it isn’t always clear whose traditions are whose.

The rest of the evening was lighthearted enough. We watched a film called “Autumn in New York” which was dubbed into Russian. Baka and his mother took turns translating the Russian into Georgian so I could follow the plot. Then it got late so I went home.

As Baka walked me home, our conversation became a bit strange. While we’d been at his house, his mom had asked if I go to church here. I said that I do, and she asked if I knew that I’m forbidden to go when I’m on my period. Baka cut in and said that he and the priest had discussed this (!!!) and that I’m not held to that rule because I’m not orthodox. His mother asked why I would go to church then, and I cut in to answer that there is only one church in Oni. She shook her head and went back to the film.

Then on the walk home, we started out talking about how violent Tbilisi was back when Baka was a university student there. Somehow, from there we got to a place where Baka was telling me that Georgians resisted the Roman empire because of their inherent strength, that they’ve survived as one of the oldest countries in the world because of their strength and their orthodoxy, and that Turkish and Russian people are terrible. I was a bit taken aback. One of our first conversations had been about how the people in these countries are not the same as their governments, and so we find that we love the people and hate the governments. Georgians are remarkably strong people, and they have a beautiful, ancient culture to be proud of. But, they aren’t old as a country. They’ve been occupied almost constantly for the last 500 years! And I really don’t think that God cares much for man-made land divisions, extreme nationalism, or bloody wars waged in the name of pride. Finally, I have (and understand how some other people have) problems with the governments and ruling people in Turkey and Russia. I can also understand how the way people from a distant custom reason, communicate and interact can be disagreeable to an outsider at times (ahem…). But how does one just dismiss two entire nations of people? I said that I happen to disagree, and his answer was that the only way I would disagree was if I didn’t know the Turks or the Russians. I wanted to ask if he’s met every person in both countries and found each and every one of them to be a monster as he claims. I wanted to tell him about my friends from both countries and how sincerely I love them. But he is thoroughly convinced that all of Georgia’s neighboring countries are out to eat up his homeland, and that the favor of God—their role as the chosen people—is what protects his countrymen. Arguing was useless. I shook my head and said good-night.

24.2.2012

Last night, I went for a walk with Bakari, Magda, and two other younger people from Oni. We walked in circles on the main street, bought chocolate and mineral water to share, and talked about how the one young man was going to leave in a few weeks to go to the police academy in Tbilisi.

One of the things that Saakashvili has done well here is reform the police. There is corruption in some small town local governments, that is for sure. But the police—Personally I was frustrated to be followed when I first got here. They stopped following me after I was harassed by a drunk officer and reported it. Some of them haven’t looked me in the eye since that happened. They were getting new cars when I first arrived here and they got a few new cars last week. They’re also getting a completely new building; the construction can be heard from my school’s path. A friend who’s a bit of an anarchist told me that the money the government sent to rebuild the town has all gone into the police trucks. He also told me that my phone’s area code—which my program told everyone is the Tbilisi area code—is actually the code for phones that are monitored by the police. On both counts, I didn’t want to believe him. But I do wonder where the money for such shiny new trucks comes from, and Eka affirmed that my phone’s code is the police code. All this said, people on the street seem content with the police reforms. The academy in Tbilisi is a shiny glass building. There are commercials on TV for it often, and it does seem to be one of the preferred career paths for young men here. Most of my 9^th graders say they want to become police officers. They like and trust their officers, which I’ve repeatedly been told is a huge change from how things used to be. I’ve met plenty of officers who are honest and nice people. They wanted to become cops because it’s seen as noble and helpful. They work 36 hour shifts in a small town near two dangerous borders. True, they’ve joked that they have cars instead of horses because they drink during their shifts and would fall off horses. But I’ve only seen a police car outside a beer shop once, so I’m sure it was just a joke. Right?

Anyway. Bakari and I went to have tea with his mother after the others went home. His mother had a huge operation about a year ago, and he spends his nights performing a few medical procedures for her every 5 hours. They really don’t have much money, but they like company. His mother sat next to me reading a Russian atlas while Baka pulled out a stack of black and white photos from his childhood. We looked through them, pausing periodically so he could tell me which girl he loved, point out the Levi jeans or Converse sneakers that someone smuggled through the Iron Curtain for him, or tell me what happened to this and that classmate. Some were people I recognized. One now lives in Germany; one is in prison; about a third are dead. This is a little unnerving, because Bakari is only 37.

He asked if I knew about Occupation Week. I said that Eka had mentioned it when I asked why the news anchors were wearing roses. He explained that the 23^rd used to be “Men’s Day” in Soviet times. Now it’s known as “Russian Military Day.” We didn’t mark it, but my male friend who teaches in Batumi was presented with flowers when he walked into school. For once, Oni is less Soviet than a big city.

Which brings me to today. School started with an announcement that we would be combining some of our classes so that the younger grades could go to Keti’s puppet show at 1 o’clock. Matsatso and I taught 1^st through 3^rd grade, 4^th and 6^th grade, and then 1^st grade gym class (in which they played chess). When we went back to the teachers’ room after gym class, I was given a paper rose to tape to my sweater. I figured out from the conversation that we were having an assembly of some sort to mark the last day of Occupation Week, and we went down the hall to watch a film with the 7^th through 9^th graders.

The film was called “A Soviet Story.” I took it home to watch in English, and I’ll write about that separately. At school, though, we watched the Georgian version so I didn’t understand much. They fast forwarded through a lot of it, looking for the part where it talked about Georgia. It didn’t talk about Georgia, so we listened to the part where Putin talked instead. One of the teachers loudly protested through the film: “They used to say things were this way. Now they say things were that way. They’ll change the story again in a few years, but that’s just not how things were for me.” I don’t know whether the students agreed or not, but they got bored after an hour like normal kids. I’ll ask them on Monday about their thoughts. In yesterday’s class, the 8^th graders couldn’t tell my co-teacher when their Independence Day is. They kept throwing out dates and she kept shaking her head. Then she asked when my Independence Day is. I reminded her that she has a booklet (which she had before I arrived here) about it and that it’s written about in the 7^th grade textbook: July 4^th. The picture in the booklet she has is of children wearing red and white striped shirts. They’re wearing dark blue shorts and carrying pinwheels…She asked if these are uniforms, and I told her and the kids that usually people just BBQ and light fireworks. There certainly are no uniforms for most of us civilians. They nodded, and then they started arguing about why they didn’t know their own holiday’s date.

The students all left after the film, but the teachers went into the teachers’ room. We ate mtchadi with cheese, badje (paste of ground walnuts and dried marigold petals), and a sweet dessert made from boiled buckwheat mixed with sugar, walnuts, and raisins. It was all very good and very simple food. Here’s to the first Friday of Lent. My fellow teachers are fasting too. The fast a lot. The past two weeks have been meat-free for them. Starting this Sunday (I think…they debate among each other about specifics) they start a big fast. They’ll essentially be vegans until Easter (although they also debate about what exactly is and isn’t allowed on which days…). In the US that’s easy enough. There’s lots of produce and there are lots of meat/dairy/egg substitute products. Here in Oni it’s a little more difficult. I already can’t find tomatos, lettuce, or eggplants. We’re running low on pumpkins and so have been eating a lot of potatoes and beets. I guess during the fast we’ll eat potatoes, borscht, and egg/milk/butter-free breads. I’ll be curious to see how creative people get with their few available ingredients. There was more produce back during the pre-Christmas fast so there were more options. Now…I’m not sure how this will work.

Walking home, I noticed that the sun was warm on my cheeks despite the cold wind. This and the sight of the catsikutsera tempt me to hope that spring will come soon, but I’m trying to be practical and not hope too much so that the bitter first weeks of March don’t make me despair. Matsatso and I were talking about seasons as we walked, and she said that summer is her favorite. Oni, she said, is very very hot during summer afternoons. But the mornings are cool, and it’s ok to have to stay inside in the afternoons because family members who spend winters in Tbilisi come back for the summer weeks. Her sisters come back and bring her nieces and nephews, and she loves being together with them again after a long winter apart. She said that she likes autumn’s colors and fruits, and she loves snow in the winter. Then she surprised me by saying that she doesn’t like spring. Her reasoning is that nature goes crazy in the spring and people do too. She said that people’s minds and hearts become reckless in the spring and she doesn’t like it.

I’ve known for a while that seasons affect how people feel. That’s logical enough: short days are depressing, being inside all the time is annoying, heat makes us lazy. But usually I wouldn’t link how I feel in spring with the sudden blossoming of nature. I’d just say that it had to do with finally having freedom after months cooped up because of the cold. She’s right though. Nature and people both go crazy in the spring. I find it a bit refreshing. I always relish the first day that’s warm enough for me to throw all my windows open and leave my coat at home. Wearing short-sleeves and a skirt again is heaven. Being barefoot in the grass usually comes later, but I love it. Spring is the time of year to let the sunshine and the flower-scented breeze clear out the dust that gathered in my home over the winter. Vegetables other than potatoes become abundant just as the weather is warm enough for real outdoor exercise (and, here, for shower water every day I’m told!), which means I can revitalize my body at the same time that I’m revitalizing my home. So then I feel much better and I watch plants grow…As alive as I feel when I shiver and watch my breath crystallize the morning air in my bedroom, I feel even more alive when I’m outside with my hands in the dirt.

Some people make resolutions at New Years. I’ve always been better off if I wait until around Lent. Then by Easter it’s usually spring. When spring comes, I stop worrying about keeping warm and start working at untangling all the knots I made in life over the winter. I order my thoughts, re-assess my priorities, start restoring/redefining/repairing relationships…Spring is crazy, but I like it.

The rest of the day, I was a pretty boring person. My computer hasn’t been working, so when I came home from school I took it apart and cleaned it. That helped. Jumberi was both impressed that I could use a screwdriver and frustrated that I wanted to work. I got home before he did, so I was at the table with computer parts spread out in front of me when he walked in. He immediately ordered me to eat, and I politely explained that I wanted to work first. He grumbled as he sat down to watch TV and then proceeded to turn around every three minutes and order me to eat. After the first few times of replying that I wanted to finish working first, that I wasn’t hungry,  and that I would feed myself when I was hungry, I stopped answering and resorted to shaking my head ‘no’ without looking up. Then Eka surprised me by bringing the internet home with its bandwidth restored (her poker-playing friend had run it down to 0 over a week ago). So I sat at the table and quickly sorted out my summer class registration—ignoring Jumberi’s hovering the whole while—and then shot off a bunch of emails until her friend called and said he “needed” the modem…for another poker match. Eka ran off to a supra so Jumberi and I had a fried potato dinner together. He kept trying to spoon extra onto my plate, and finally I put my plate in my lap so that he couldn’t reach it.

He does this to Eka and Nona, too. Everyone does it; it’s a cultural thing and I know by now that forcing food on someone is a way of expressing love and care. Most days, by now, I can politely negotiate the situation or laugh it off and not be upset by it. But there are some days when I sincerely don’t want to eat. The orders to eat and drink and sit are especially frustrating when coupled with “my little girl” or “my little beauty” or whatever other “my little…” it may be that day. I want to say, “I am not a baby! I know when I am hungry and when I am not; I know when I am thirsty and when I am not. I am not yours. My body is not yours. I am mine. Step off and have a little respect! I respect you!”

Later, I watched the movie that my kids watched at school today. It was very interesting. The producer/writer/researcher makes no effort to be subtle about his agenda. Notes to follow…

Abi Mas!

What a day at school. Yesterday seems like an eternity ago. Today we started by going to the 6^th grade and handing back tests. There are four girls in this class. Two are very good at English. One insisted that she couldn’t write the test but then got a perfect score. The second quietly worked through it and got an almost perfect score. My co-teacher and I actually had a bit of an argument about her test, because my co-teacher wanted to give her a perfect score despite her two wrong answers. I understand that grading is relaxed here and I’ve learned to overlook spelling and punctuation errors (when grading, not when correcting…I correct thoroughly; the grades are up to the real teacher anyway). However, answers that are missing verbs or have incorrectly gendered pronouns are wrong. No two ways about it. My co-teacher assented and agreed to give the girl a 9 instead of a 10. I’ll never know what actually went into the grade book. I’m not huge on grades to begin with, but it’s a matter of principle in this case.

Our two other girls in this class are not as good. One tries hard enough and can complete exercises well if given extra time. The other doesn’t try, doesn’t care…and it’s very hard to help someone who doesn’t care. Neither of them finished the test. I was really impressed with my co-teacher when she gave them their tests today and offered to let them take time to fill in the incomplete sections. I was less impressed with the girls, who both declined. I’ve never known a student to turn down extra credit. Then again, if all grades are subjective and teacher-dependant than I guess students wouldn’t really feel motivated to attempt re-tests or corrections for credit.

Later on in that class, we came across a textbook exercise that discussed picnics. People here love picnics. Food is usually a popular discussion topic. One of the new vocabulary words in the book was sandwich, so I asked what kinds of sandwiches our students like. I know perfectly well that sandwiches aren’t popular here, but I was curious about how the kids would answer. They answered that they don’t eat sandwiches. Fair enough. Then my co-teacher suggested that people in Oni don’t eat sandwiches because sandwiches aren’t Georgian food. Sandwiches, she said, are what one finds at McDonalds…and they all love McDonalds but it isn’t Georgian. I protested that some McDonalds dishes are sandwiches but not all sandwiches are from McDonalds, and moreover fast food isn’t really food. There’s a world of difference between a cucumber sandwich, a BLT or a grilled cheese with tomato and a Whopper or Big Mac or whatever. She insisted that McDonalds has wonderful and delicious food. For a whole minute I tried in vain to explain about cholesterol and sodium and free-range chickens and naturally-grazed cows.  Then I realized what a fool I must sound like to children who have no concept of factory farms, so I laughed out loud and went back to our textbook exercises. No room for pride when learning through experience!

Another hour thinking on women and marriage

Maybe the theme of today is that sometimes I am too quick to judge. My other American teacher here—whom I thought was pretty intelligent and responsible—skipped out on school this week (including the snow-day make-up day he should have had Saturday) to go on vacation. Which would be excusable maybe if he hadn’t then called me his first day away to ask me to wire him money from my account because he was running out. That, too, would be excusable—people make mistakes from time to time—but then today he texted: “Tell me what books you want from Tbilisi. Oh, and when does the marshutka leave.” I assume he means to ask when the marshutka to Oni leaves from Tbilisi. I’m tempted to tell him it left Oni at 8 this morning. That would be cruel, so I won’t, but I’m a bit frustrated. Clearly he didn’t bother to plan for this trip at all. How would I know when the marshutka leaves Tbilisi? He’s the one who’s there! I could ask people here, but he could have done that before leaving or asked his host parents to do it for him. The boy’s 27 and expecting me to mother him. I’m rather patient usually, but I don’t like being used.

Meanwhile, Matsatso and I went to Tatia’s shop today. We ran into the man who had been drunkenly harassing her a few weeks ago, and once he left we started teasing her. She startled us both by saying that he’s a good boy and she likes him very much. At first, Matsatso and I thought that maybe she was joking. But no. She really does like him, despite his being something of a crazy drunk. Well then…

The last incident of the day on this theme actually has me ready to cry. I was talking again to the woman I wrote about earlier—whose husband sold his father’s ring to buy her birthday flowers and now is most likely cheating on her while she is ever-loyal to him. She told me that she didn’t want to get married but that her now-husband was very “crazy.” I asked what she meant. When she was a university student, he and his friends kidnapped her off the street in Tbilisi. She escaped and ran home, but they kidnapped her a second time, that time in Oni. Again she escaped, but they kidnapped her a third time. This was in Oni, again, and this time she gave in and married him. She told me repeatedly that she didn’t want to be married because she was still a student. She was in her 4^th year of university (she did finish university, and end up with a double degree) when she was married. She sighed and laughed and said “Everyone here knows this story. It’s ok, because now we love each other very much, but I didn’t want to be married.” She asked me what age people get married in the US. I answered that ages vary but that generally speaking they marry older than they do here. She nodded and said that she knows they have boyfriends and girlfriends when they’re young but that they aren’t married when they’re young. I reminded her that most Americans don’t want to live with their parents as newly-weds. We usually want (and most parents encourage us) to work for a few years first and save money because houses and families are expensive. She said that here some girls who were her classmates were married as young as 16 and that this is normal. She called them women and I said that very few people—if any—are women or men at 16. She agreed. She said she doesn’t like this tradition and that she thinks it’s bad. Just as before she’s told me that she thinks the traditions of wives living with their husbands’ parents and families holding expensive and exhausting supras when loved ones die are bad traditions. In the two previous cases I’ve been careful to point out that these aren’t necessarily “bad” traditions. I’m critical of them myself. I think that the first can be miserable for a wife if it isn’t her choice (although if she likes her mother-in-law and chooses to live in one homestead it can have many advantages for a family). I think that the second can be…well…expensive and exhausting for an already money-strapped and mourning family (again, if the family has the funds and the hands it can be a good thing, but their church mandates this ritual and so even those without the means are obliged to follow it). When we talked about these things, though, I point out that they are not inherently bad traditions. Maybe they’re just outdated and could be updated if an element of choice was introduced. With the question of child marriages and bride-napping, though, I have to agree that they’re bad traditions. I could argue about psychology and human rights and feminism and economics even, but I don’t need to. The state of many marriages here is evidence enough that this tradition doesn’t work.

I want to cry for this woman. For my friend. Usually, I’m not a fan of the “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her” philosophy. Sometimes, though, the only way to stay sane is to pretend to believe things we don’t yet believe gulit. I’m going to choose to try to believe that her marriage is a happy one. She told me that her story is great. Maybe she really believes this. Her eyes suggested that she’s convinced herself of this so that the thought of what might have been doesn’t drive her insane. And since nothing is going to change so long as that’s the way she chooses to cope, I have to respect her and this one choice of hers.

I wanted so much to believe that I was imagining her sadness. That I was seeing in her what I, as someone from an outside tradition, believed I should see in someone who was married too young and by the choice of her family/society/culture/husband instead of her own. My liberal university had me convinced that my perception would always be flawed by a kind of (ironically super-traditional) original sin. I was born white, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual and American into a caring family. Such a birth is, in some schools of thought, a sin which will forever damn me to consider the lives of those who are different from me with a patronizing colonizers eye. I’ve been taught to be aware of the concupiscence I therefore carry and to always suspect myself of being (even unwittingly) a psychological oppressor. Certainly, many of my viewpoints are related to my having grown up fairly privileged in a free country. Here especially there’s no denying that. But it was bitter-sweet today to learn for sure that my perception of my friend’s situation is not an occupier’s/oppressor’s/(blahblahblah) of an oppressed/victimized/objectified/underestimated other. Rather, I’ve been seeing her as a human with a beating heart sees a fellow human with a beating heart. This is sweet because it reassures me that I am more than my birth…that I am also a soul who therefore shares kinship with all other souls. It is bitter, because it means that the unhappiness of this woman I love is real. As is my helplessness when faced with it.

Welcome to real life

This week, all of the news anchors on television have been wearing red flower pins on their jackets. To me the flowers look rather like poppies, but I’ve been told that they’re roses and that they’re being worn to mark the last wave of the Soviet Occupation. I’m assuming that this was the occupation that led to the Rose Revolution, but I’m not sure. And I haven’t had internet for two weeks so I can’t check. (You do realize that I write these daily and then post them in bursts when I get internet, right?)

I’m learning lots of interesting things. My co-teacher ran out of the prescription medication that her dermatologist gave her, so she came to school one day with a bag of different medications and a syringe. She told me that she called her doctor and he told her how to mix her own version of the prescription. I told her that this made me a little nervous. She told me not to worry because mixing medications is ok as long as one is careful with antibiotics. The other teachers seemed just as intrigued as myself when my co-teacher informed them that she would be (in the teacher room at school) mixing her own medication. They all talked about how antibiotics are the scariest of medications and so should be put on the skin but not swallowed. Then they talked about how working at a pharmacy is one of the best jobs that a woman can have because it’s easy and it teaches her useful skills. Meanwhile, my co-teacher pulled out a glass bottle with little white cultures growing in it. She told me that this was the bottle her medicine was in before. She wanted to mix her new medicine in it, and I begged her to boil the bottle first to kill the cultures. She poured a little hot water into it and swirled that around, and then she started grinding up pills and pouring syrups together.

This reminded me of a conversation I’d had with our Nona—who works at a pharmacy—in which she said that young people have been buying the alcoholic syrups that are used as bases when mixing different medicines. Something like rubbing alcohol, but without the poisons that the are added to it in America to prevent people doing just what these kids are doing: mixing it with a bit of water and drinking it.

Young people everywhere do stupid things. Myself included, from time to time…and I have to remember what middle school and junior high were like so that I can temper my reactions to things. Like when today in 8^th grade I noticed a girl pulling her sleeves to cover her knuckles. This was the first time I thought about cutters and self-mutilation as a teenage fad since coming here, and I was a bit uneasy when I had her show me her hands. There were bloody gashes between each of her knuckles. Maybe, I thought, she ran into an angry dog. That happens here, but these were too deliberately made to be dog scratches. Maybe her parents had been angry at her…We have a few students whose parents are drunks or have anger management problems. Worried, I asked my co-teacher when we got back to the teacher room. Our principal was there as well, so I was careful to use enough Georgian that she would understand what was going on. I was a bit distressed when my co-teacher seemed amused rather than disturbed. She informed me that girls sometimes take matches and scratch the initials of the boys they like into their hands. Another 8^th grader—who I hadn’t noticed—apparently had small initials bloodily and neatly scratched into her wrist. I protested that this one girl’s knuckles didn’t have initials on them. My co-teacher suggested that the girl had written many people’s initials or someone’s whole name or written initials and then scratched them out. Luckily, our principal was properly horrified. Not that that means she’ll do anything beyond call the girls stupid and crazy, but it’s a better reaction than empathetic amusement.

Between the bloody knuckles and the dogfights, I’ve started worrying more about these kids. When I first came, I worried that they had nothing to do and so went home right after school each day and stayed there. Now I know that they are actually pretty busy; they go to practices and lessons for dancing, singing, playing piano or panduri, acting, playing basketball, playing soccer, wrestling, and making traditional felt art. They go home after school to eat quickly before running off to wherever. Then most of them go home around 6 or 7 to eat a light dinner (they don’t eat lunch…they eat a supper and a dinner). Then they play computer games or watch television until they go to bed. A 5^th grader upset my co-teacher yesterday by telling her that he had gone to bed at 2am that morning because he had been up watching vampire movies. My co-teacher was aghast. I told the boy that he could do this on Fridays and Saturdays sometimes, but because he’s a school boy he shouldn’t stay up so late during the week. My co-teacher snapped that Fridays and Saturdays are no better because he’s young and so he shouldn’t be up so late. I shrugged and told the kid that I know I’m not his mother and can’t tell him what to do but I know that he’s smart enough to make good decisions, and that I expect him to do so from now on. My co-teacher (who somehow thought the knuckle scratching and dog fights were no problem) was about to continue reproaching him, so I quickly asked to see everyone’s homework and reminded the kids that they have a test next class. Of course staying up to 2 am to watch vampire movies is not ok for a 5^th grader on a school night…but there are bigger things to worry about.

Not all of the games the young people play are violent. They also have their share of handgames and folksongs and little superstitions. I’ve learned that it’s believed that if someone is ticklish then he or she has a girlfriend or boyfriend. When a piece of white string was pulled off my jacket sleeve, the other woman informed me that I must have a white boy. She wrapped it around her finger and said a letter of the Georgian alphabet with each loop. She ended on V and smiled. Apparently this means my “white boy” has a first name that starts with a V. This game was new to me, but I watched two men do the same thing at a supra last night. Again the string was white. I wasn’t wearing anything white, but when the short string suggested that the one man’s “white girl” had a name starting with A, they looked at me and chuckled. I suggested that there are lots of “Ana”s in Oni; they said her name was probably “Anita.” Silly harmless games like this are fine. I’m tempted to tie them to the obsession with marriage here, but then I remember playing similar games when I was younger.

Not that there aren’t lots of other conventions here testifying to the curious dual role of marriage here as all important and fairly meaningless. I had a conversation with another woman about the tradition here of a wife moving into her husband’s (parents’) house. She told me that she would rather have her own house, but that if she has to live with someone’s parents she would rather live with her own parents. She likes them better than her husband’s parents anyway. I later was told by one of her neighbors that her husband’s father is very sick. This combined with the fact that she has no children means that life in her (husband’s parents’) house is most likely not enjoyable for her. The neighbor also hinted that her husband may  have another woman on the side. I suggested that this seems to be very common here; that many married people seem to have affairs. The neighbor agreed more enthusiastically than I had been expecting.

I thought of how this woman we were talking about had told me two stories about being courted. First, she said that when she turned 18 she didn’t like her husband but he was convinced that she was going to be his wife. He didn’t have any money, but his father had given him his wedding ring to sell if he needed money for school. The boy sold the ring and used the money to buy 18 dark red, long-stemmed roses as a birthday present for this girl. She thought it was very romantic. She married him when she was 21. At some point later, a doctor she was seeing about a thyroid problem gave her a very expensive bottle of perfume as a gift. “But,” she said, “I was already married and he knew this. So I don’t know what he was thinking. I just said thanks and left.” She’s a “good girl.”

Grey day

I spent the morning reading and writing, trying to prepare my colloquium. When I spend a long time sitting in the kitchen—especially if I have my computer—Maguala gets (passive-aggressively) upset. Her imprecations to put on more sweaters and eat more food take on a very gruff tone. After three hours of this, I quit trying to work and left the house.

The practice for the children’s theater was starting at 1, so I called Giorgi and asked if I could watch. He said yes, and soon I stepped into a room with a group of children jogging in place and Giorgi laughing at some of the older boys’ attempts to look cool in the process. Then they played a game that was almost duck-duck-goose as a warm up before starting their run-through of the play.

Their play is “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Forgetting that the story is pretty well known, they struggled trying to figure out how to translate “Dwarves” to me. Amusing. The kids were great. Their take on the show is absolutely hilarious, and I loved watching it. I did notice that Giorgi sometimes lets them perform without watching them. He does this in the adult theater practices, too; he’ll go to the fire to light a cigarette or he’ll go to the restroom or he’ll step outside to take a phone call…and the show goes on. It could communicate a sense of trust, perhaps.

Or maybe it has to do with a lack-of-pride in one’s work. I’ll write more about that in a minute.

After about an hour, Gio stopped practice and told the kids to go eat and be back in 3 hours. We talked a little, and then his friend Lasha arrived. Lasha is a director who lived in France for a time and now is a professor in Tbilisi. He was Gio’s teacher (as well as his friend…and apparently his girlfriend now is the sister of a girl Gio dated ((remember that they live in the big city, where people actually date before marriage)) two years ago). So he came to Oni to observe Gio’s projects and offer advice. Lasha has a long blonde ponytail that he’s going to keep hidden while in Oni. He also stepped off the marshutka with a flask of whisky, pretzels, and some fancy cigarettes for Giorgi. We walked through the snow to where they’re staying, but I really wasn’t ready to go home. I knew that Maguala and Jumberi would be going to a supra around 4 and so I didn’t want to be home until then. I was looking forward to a little alone time. I don’t get it often here.

As I wandered slowly down the street, I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw one of my students walking with a group of her friends. She waved, and as I waved back I heard someone else call me. I spun around and there was Bakari in his truck. He said that he was running errands but that I was welcome to come along if I wanted. So I climbed into the truck.

His dzma-katsis mother passed away just over a month ago. Tomorrow will be the traditional 40-days-after supra in her honor. Baka had a long list of people to remind to attend the supra. We went from house to house, stopping at each to roll down the window and yell out a reminder to whomever came outside. Then we picked up propane (which meant taking a tank to a man who filled it, which was more complicated than it sounds) and flour, ordered kiln bread, ordered wine, and visited a butcher’s basement…where I was greeted by a very fresh carcass hanging above a pot of blood and its skin. Why is it that every time I encounter a butchering it’s a surprise? I have the stomach for it, really. I just like to know before turning a corner and finding myself face-to-face with some beheaded, bleeding thing.

Preparing for a supra is a lot of work. I knew this from my house, but watching the man’s half of the work was something new for me. When we finished running around, we stopped for coffee and some music videos (Pavarotti and Bryan Adams did a duet?). Baka admitted that he doesn’t like these death supras. He prefers, obviously, the wedding supras where there is singing and dancing and happiness. I said that the 40-day supra tradition seems like it would be difficult for families. They’re already mourning the death of a loved one, and now they have to worry about preparing a huge supra (at which the women, if there are women in the family, won’t get to sit down and eat until everything is almost finished) and about where the money for it will come from.

I thought about the kinds of friends I have back home who will run errands with me just so we can spend time together. And I thought about the people I would do the same thing for. Baka caught me thinking and asked if I’m home-sick. I explained that I miss people more than anything else. He said he’s the opposite, that he would miss his country but not many of the people. He said confidently that all Georgians get home-sick for their country when they leave. On the one hand, I’ve heard of too many Georgians living abroad to believe this completely. On the other hand, I’ve often wondered why so many of them who found good jobs abroad chose to come back here.

We talked a little on the topic of jobs too. Baka kept saying how much he wanted coffee. I asked why no-one had thought to set up a to-go coffee stand in any of the shops at the car station. It would be cheap and easy, and there’s demand. He insisted that there’s no money left for buying coffee after people re-built their houses from the bombs and earthquakes. He also said that those who would want to buy coffee would rather have vodka, which is cheaper to drink at home. This second argument was weakened by his reiterating how much he wanted a hot coffee. The first argument is one I’ve heard before. But if there is no business, then there are no jobs, so there is no money. It’s a circular argument.

What would it take for a shop to start selling to-go coffee at the car station? 1) Keeping a kettle hot on the already installed and lit woodstove. 2) Ordering disposable cups and/or having people bring their own. 3) Keeping instant-coffee and sugar stocked. Coffee here is sold in big containers for 6-30 GEL. Considering how much time people (particularly men) spend standing in the cold at the car station, the low-cost of the instant coffee mix, and the low price of the hypothetical product, it would be very easy to make a small profit from such a mini-business. And Baka says that people don’t have money for it, but they somehow have money for 3 or 4 boxes per day of cigarettes, which aren’t cheap (compared to the US they’re cheap…but…), for the gasoline they burn driving their cars in circles (also not cheap), and for betting on internet poker tournaments.

Baka said he wants to go to Tbilisi because he’s heard that there are some good DJs there at the moment. He also told me about how he had a collection of model cars when he was young. This was back during the USSR. He explained that he knew things from the west were illegal, but whenever he met someone who had a diplomatic pass for some reason or another he would beg them to bring him back just one model car. So he managed to gather quite a collection…which was later destroyed.

At this point, we were driving through the snow to Utsera, a village known for their 10 different mineral water springs. He showed me a house there that used to be his (before a financial crisis forced him to sell), and some buildings that were a resort and restaurant during the USSR. He stopped the car when we were 8 kilometers from the Ossetian border to point this out. He also stopped when we were 20 kilometers from the Russian border, but that was as much to turn the car around as it was to show me the mountains.

He dropped me off at Maguala’s play practice, which luckily for me was starting a half hour late because one of the leads had been off drinking and was late. He stumbled in shortly after I arrived. We chuckled and waltzed around the old nightclub while Gio and Lasha looked at old photos and shared their whisky flask. Then we went in to practice.

The music wasn’t working because the electricity was on-and-off from the strong wind. There were bats circling over the stage. One lead was drunk. Two of the young girls didn’t show up at all. This is actually pretty normal, and I usually admire Gio for having the patience to wait everything out and hope it comes together eventually. Today, though, I worried a little for him. How could his teacher advise him if the production as-shown wasn’t as close as it could be to the version they want to present on opening night?

Gio wasn’t worried. He and his friend took out their flask when they got too cold. They talked and smoked. At one point, Lasha got up and left. It was at that moment that I recognized the lack-of-pride in one’s work mindset that I mentioned earlier. When people have their wine or their tcha-tcha or their food that they made from their grapes and vegetables in their houses, then they are very proud. If they know Georgian dances and songs, aside from being better marriage material they are also very proud. But the idea of doing theater as anything other than a professional is confusing to people here. The actors don’t care enough to show up to rehearsals on time or sober. The director doesn’t care enough to watch everything and give or take notes. And in this moment, the director’s teacher didn’t care enough to at least ask them to pause the performance while he stepped out. I’m not saying that no-one cares at all. The most obvious evidence of this was that Gio’s face when he realized that Lasha had left showed clearly that he was hurt. In the US, courtesy would keep us from walking out of something that a friend had made and asked us to come see. We would stay through, because doing so says to our friend that we acknowledge his effort and value his work.

Lasha did give the cast notes after the rehearsal. Gio didn’t write anything down, but he listened. Lasha addressed each cast member individually and then the group as a whole. I didn’t hear what was said, but apparently he gave a very complimentary review.

Then I went home and ate dinner. Jumberi told me he was going to kill me if I don’t start coming home to eat during the day. I have to be careful. He’s joking; this is the only way he knows to show affection. But the constant orders to eat and drink and sit get tiring, and my language is advanced enough that I can tell him off rather strongly. Which I shouldn’t, but a few times I’ve felt trapped and come very close to it. I need to be careful.

I learned a couple of years ago that this is one of my weak points. I resent being told what I think or feel by people who don’t actually know anything about me. Jumberi informs me that I’m starving; Maguala, that I’m cold or tired; Eka, that I don’t like bread; Baka, that I like to drink a lot. I don’t know where these ideas come from. I’m rarely hungry, cold or tired. I like bread. I like to sip a glass or two of wine slowly—something this tradition doesn’t permit. Finally, I can say “Actually, it’s just the opposite. Why would you think such a thing?” in Georgian. Still, though, I’ve noticed that this conversation pattern is normal with people here and so they don’t realize that it bothers me. I need to be very patient…

Being a Long-Distance Student...is difficult.

We have six guests right now. Originally, the plan was that I would be sleeping downstairs with Eka. Then Eka decided that she’s going to Tbilisi, so now I’m sleeping down there alone. Our guests are with a US aid project, and I’m curious to talk to them tonight and see what they’re doing in Oni. Unfortunately, to do so will be possible only because I’m staying home from play practice tonight. Eka is gone and Maguala has to go to practice, so I’m staying home to help Nona serve dinner.

This is probably better in all honesty. The day before summer registration started, I finally had internet and so was the registration notice from my university. I quickly shot off emails to my Student Affairs office and my advisers, trying to remind them that I exist and politely requesting that they clear me to register. Here we are four days later. I don’t have internet, but I did this morning. I took advantage of the opportunity to send an article to one of the university’s journals about international human rights issues. But I couldn’t register. My advisers are both lovely people. They’re also very helpful. My first year, I was assigned to a woman with the same interests as myself, but she decided to go on sabbatical to pursue those interests so I was reassigned at Christmas. My second adviser is a very intelligent and helpful person, but we don’t have the same research interests. To complicate things further, I went abroad and she went on maternity leave at the same time. The one woman I’ve spoken with at length about what I’ve done and what she would advise me to do next is no longer my adviser because university policy changed. Where she used to be the adviser for the 2013 class, she’s now the adviser for Sophomores.

I’m ok being somewhat distant from the advising department, but the university makes it a problem. In order to register or declare a minor, I need adviser approval. To get grants or credit for independent research, I need a faculty member to approve and supervise my project. Not so convenient when New Yorkers (and particularly at a huge university) don’t have time for me unless I’m there in flesh and blood. And the way the bureaucracy is set up, even having a few kind professors and advisers who agree to help me doesn’t help. It 

Catsakutsera

Happy day-after-Valentines! Um…

About three days ago, life here suddenly became extremely eventful. I remembered to bring my camera with me to play practice and so took pictures of the old theater that I wrote about. Sometimes the actors show up late or drunk to practice. That night, most of them didn’t show up at all. While the older few who were there sat around the fire to keep warm—before we realized that the rest wouldn’t be coming—I roamed the building with my camera. After a while, Giorgi came to join me.

I was photographing the giant star and the chandelier on the ceiling when he came up. “It’s Stalin’s star,” he said, “It’s a Soviet star and it’s Stalin’s star. This was his theater.” When I asked what he meant, he explained that Stalin’s wife had been from Racha. Apparently, she was also an actress. Whether she ever performed in this theater or had just attended shows there I’m not sure. But regardless, my perception of the building suddenly and irreversibly changed to include her presence and that of her infamous spouse.

We explored together until we ended up in the old garderobe upstairs. We admired the old traditional costumes, which were beautiful underneath all their dust and mold. Then we stood by the glass-less window. Giorgi lit a cigarette and pointed to Mars. Pointing to different patches of darkness, we declared somewhat pointlessly that Latchta would be here or Rioni would be there. We pointed to Ossetia and to Tbilisi and eventually to New York City. Incredibly, they all looked pretty much the same from that window.

Then we fell quiet for a spell. The conversation that followed made me indescribably sad. We started out joking softly about our countries and our lives. I told him that I love his country, that the warmth and hardiness of the people never ceases to amaze me. For as much as I struggle here sometimes, I still cannot help but love these people and their mountains. He sighed and told me that he loves his country but that it is not free to be his country under the present government. He especially said that there is no freedom in the art world. Since I’m not an artist, my lack of freedom comes more from being under constant scrutiny as a foreigner in a small town, yet I said that I still feel too hobbled to stay here long term. I don’t see why I should hide who I’m with or what I think if I’m not doing anything wrong, and so I’m looking forward to relocating again. Giorgi said that he is curious about New York, and I said he could come visit once I’m back. He said he has a friend who went to work there and just decided not to come back. His friend got married there, though, which helped him get his documents in order. We talked about where in Europe he wants to move and different theaters I wish he could see.

We stared at Mars again and Giorgi finished his third cigarette. “Maybe I’ll live there one day,” he joked. “I’ll call and tell you that I live on a different planet now. You can visit. It’ll be my home.”

Practically speaking, I know that nothing will come out of our conversation. The government won’t start supporting his theater projects. He won’t move to Mars. Most reassuring for my parents, I won’t be getting married as someone’s ticket to a slightly freer life, no matter how the young men and old women here joke.

The nature of marriage and love here has intrigued me for quite a long time. From what I’ve seen, most spouses here don’t talk to each other. Some don’t spend much time together even. On the surface, people seem very conservative and traditional. Some women don’t wear pants, and some have told me that their husbands don’t let them decide for themselves whether to wear skirts or pants. In church, men tend to stand on one side and women on the other. Dating doesn’t really exist; boys and girls walk together in the street if they like each other and then maybe they get married.

And yet…the more I talk to people the more I learn. Because of or in spite of the fact that people are pressured into early marriages, the theoretical exclusivity and security of marriage don’t seem to matter so much.

One man I know loved one woman but had to marry another after getting her pregnant. They live together with their two children in theory. In fact, the husband frequently stays in Tbilisi while his wife stays here. The older of their children is a 19 year old boy who has an absentee wife himself.

A grandmother told a story the other night of how she could have been happily married to several of her classmates. Instead, her father wanted her to marry an engineer who had been pretty insistent on the matter himself. So she’s shared a house and about 40 years of marriage with a man she hardly converses with to this day.

After a conversation about nightclubs in Batumi (I didn’t know they existed), a young man told me about how he’s never married because the one girl he could have seen himself with was married immediately after school. With some satisfaction, he told me that she and her husband have found themselves unable to have children. When he remarked that she wouldn’t have any such problem as his wife, he chuckled. I couldn’t tell if it was out of bitterness or a sense of vindication. He also told me that he’s never seriously been interested in anyone else, because no one wants to just spend time together…they’re all on missions to find spouses.

One last—and slightly more complicated—story is that of a woman I know who is beautiful and successful and from a good family, and so should logically have been married long ago. For a while, I thought that maybe she just wasn’t impressed with any of her options in Oni. Then I noticed that she tends to spend a lot of time alone with her best friend’s husband. This doesn’t cause problems with the best friend, who herself lives in Tbilisi most of the time. The first woman, my friend, confessed the other night that this man is the only man she’s ever loved. He married her friend, and she couldn’t bring herself to marry anyone else. I don’t know what their relationship is at the moment, but I know that all three involved individuals are ok with it. There’s also another woman in their social circle who lives in Tbilisi but keeps her husband in Oni. That woman and her husband don’t like each other, so the wife carries on in the city and does what she wants while her husband stays in the mountains and does what he wants.

In short, love doesn’t seem to be seen as a necessary component in marriage. Neither, for that matter, does fidelity. I’ve been approached multiple times by married men. I’ve also had numerous conversations in which men with talk freely about being with prostitutes (which makes the earlier AIDS presentation in which avoiding nail salons was stressed more than condom use more worrying).

I’m learning that often love, marriage, and sex are only loosely associated. Love is always toasted and very important, but rarely attainable in the romantic sense. Marriage is a social necessity. Extra-marital sex is common but only secretly.

 Somewhere, the concept of family fits into all this. The smallest social unit here is the family rather than the individual. Last names are very important because they place the individual in a region and a clan. Married women do tend to take their husbands’ names formally, but on the street they remain known by their maiden names. It’s normal for multiple generations to share a homestead, and usually a wife will move in with her husband’s whole family. Understandably, this sometimes causes problems. With the changing economic situation and the post-USSR opening allowing for exposure to other traditions, some younger people—as mentioned above—are pursuing what would be considered unorthodox lifestyles. I should mention though that the women mentioned above are somewhat exceptional among village women. And, as usual, things in cities are very different. Having a flat in the city allows for something of an escape from the constrictions of village and small-town life…if that flat isn’t being shared with one’s husband, his parents, his sister, her children, her (absentee) husband, and a miscellaneous elderly aunt. People have argued over whether I’m too young to be married (at 21). Many women and younger people react with shock to the marriages of 17-year-olds, yet these marriages still happen frequently enough to suggest that many people don’t consider such early marriage abnormal. In fact, older women tend to react with shock when I tell them that I’m not looking to get married. They ask what I intend to do with my life if I don’t want to become someone’s wife. Who will take care of me if I don’t get a husband? What will my life be worth if I don’t have children? How do I intend to become a woman without a man to make me one (at which point they smile and nod as if I don’t understand what they’re implying)?

Maybe I should note that in Georgian there is no distinction between “Mrs.” and “Miss,” yet at the same time a man who gets married “gets a wife” while a woman who gets married “is wived.” And it’s very very normal to be asked “whose” I am, with the expected answer being either my father’s name or my husband’s.

I haven’t actually said anything about my Valentine’s day. Many of my students picked bunches of magenta mountain violets for me. The Rachulian name for these flowers is catsikutsera, which is different from the Georgian name of kochivarda. I made word-searches and cookies for the 7^th-9^th graders. I also brought in Happy Valentine’s Day, Charlie Brown! for our 9^th graders. The kids were really shy about taking the cookies. The teacher-student relationship here is very strict and formal. It makes my job difficult. I want the kids to talk with me. I’m here for them to practice speaking with, so I want them to be comfortable with me.

On the way home from school, my co-teacher and I passed a group of our students standing on the side of the road. One of them had a big dog on a leash, which was unusual enough that I stopped to ask what they were doing. My co-teacher told me that they were waiting for another student to bring the second dog. Being a bit stupid at times, I still didn’t understand. Only when my co-teacher started telling me about how her dog has a torn ear from a similar contest did I realize that the boys were waiting for a dog-fight. I explained that dog-fighting is cruel and that its illegal in the US. My co-teacher nodded as if she agreed, but then she continued to talk about how which dogs were champions and what makes a good fight dog. So maybe she didn’t understand what I said.

From there I went to the adult English class that Michael and I have on Tuesday. Partway through, Bakari came in and told me that I needed to be outside a bit early. So I left exactly at 6. Baka was waiting outside with a truck. We picked up Eka and Nona, and then we picked up a few other people as well. I sat in the front; Eka and Nona kept giggling and ducking down and asking Baka to stay off the main street so that people wouldn’t see them. We went to a restaurant run by a sweet little Russian woman, and we celebrated Valentine’s day with a small supra. It was actually very nice. This was a small group of people, all of whom I love and trust. And I’m finally advanced enough to carry on complex conversations.

I’m not often nostalgic, but I couldn’t help thinking back... My first Valentine’s Day after entering University was spent first in classes and then at a party. The party was “Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” themed, and held by a friend of a friend in his parents’ Upper East side apartment. I didn’t know the host well at the time, but I would get to know him later as a very talented artist and a good friend. The next Valentine’s day, I was in Berlin. I may have had a dinner party in my apartment with a few girls, but I don’t remember anything special about it. I was in a relationship at the time, but it was long distance and he was living with another girl…and unbeknownst to me at the time that was all going to unravel very shortly. And this year I found myself the youngest guest at a supra with 5 Georgians and a Russian, none of whom speak English yet all of whom I consider my friends.

Eka proposed a toast to love, and she turned to me to comment—in English—that it’s a very good word. I chuckled and answered “Sometimes” but she wasn’t amused. No, she insisted, it’s always a good word. Of course she’s right. It’s a very good word. The best. The most sacred. Didn’t I just teach her last week the verse “In the end will be only faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love” when we were at a supra together? Aren’t I always looking for signs of brotherly love in the communities here to reassure myself that this place is alive? Yet she asked me in English about our word “love,” and so I smirked. Many people here know only two expressions in English: “Hello” and “I love you.” Knowing that I’m an English-speaker, they greet me with these two expressions almost constantly. Sometimes, they sincerely just want to say something and so resort to what they know without a thought for the meaning. Often, though, they are teasing—or occasionally mocking—or trying to hit on me. I’m quick, now, to follow “hello”s with “Hello. How are you?” and usually I don’t get an answer. As for the “I love you” and “I love you, baby”s, I tend to ignore them. For better or worse, the words have become hollow and meaningless unless spoken in Georgian. A friend jokingly declared his love the other night, and I called him out on it. Martla? I asked, “Really?” He answered in English, “No. But I like you.” That was the perfect answer.

So when Eka called my attention to my misstep, I was a little stuck. Mpatie, I said, “Forgive me.” I know how to say “I’m joking” in Georgian, and that was the closest I could get to explaining. I don’t think she’d understand anyway. Asaigi we toasted to love with our arms linked and then kissed three times according to the tradition. And I think this may have been my best Valentine’s day so far.