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.