War and Peace, and Ethnic Conflict

A country as unknown and as secluded from the average American mind as Georgia, it seems almost laughable to imagine having a rendez-vous with someone from back home, least the President of Lehigh. And yet, as Saturday afternoon painted the Tbilisi ski in a clear blue slipping into a grapefruit pink, I sat in the Tbilisi Marriot lobby patiently awaiting President Gast’s arrival. Despite the fact that I had only met her a few times previously, it was a wonderful gift to see a familiar face on the cobblestone streets of the Caucuses as she descended into the lobby. President Gast and I spend a surprisingly comfortable afternoon together walking the streets of Tbilisi discussing everything from our professional work in Georgia and Azerbaijan and our personal interests in the international community to amusing stories of past travels and even her daughter’s longing to go trekking in Tibet as a high schooler (Mom and Dad, remember when I tried that one on you?). We stopped for some black tea with mint at my favorite artsy café with the staff who knows me all too well as the girl with the pink laptop who ‘must be writing something good.’ Every so often President Gast would point to a building to inquire its use or history, and, at times surprising myself, I answered with far too long responses about religion in Georgia, the cultural mix of east and west, the jazz club I had visited the night before and Jazz’s importance in the country, and everything in between.

Sometime after, President Gast and I found a restaurant to eat at (luckily one of the few words I can recognize in Georgian is ‘bread’ and hoped that the second word in the name was ‘house’). We wasted the night away trying delicious Georgian Saparavi wine and traditional dishes, including a pumpkin spread, braised beef kinkhai, khatepuri (of course), porridge with mint and cheese, and a range of other tasty treats. Though the music was quite overpowering behind us, we managed to continue our previous discussion. And, at last, we came to the often hackneyed subject of the 2008 conflict here in Georgia and its prior wars. In this post I could poetically describe the jazz I heard Friday evening or the gallery opening I attended on Sunday by Georgian and American artists, but my time is coming to a close in Georgia within a month and I have eloquently skirted around the taboo topic that still lurks behind dark corners of this city.

In earnest, prior to coming to Georgia the only thing I knew about the country centered around what I had read in the Times just before shipping off to Lehigh freshman year, and later, what I had covered in my Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict course. I read countless books and reports on the conflict and the political battles with Abkhazia and South Ossetia since this republic’s independence in 1991. Exploring the richness of Georgian culture and customs, sans battles and bullets, has truly been and continues to be an unbelievably incredible experience that has changed me deeply. Nonetheless, nearly every experience, from my conversations with waiters to supra feats in the countryside, is sprinkled at least in part with memories of war. It, like the Soviet memory in my last posts, still hangs heavy in the air throughout the country. In places like Gori you can still see where the shelling mutilated walls and on my walks into old town I must pass a solemnly standing monument to all those who perished three years ago. Internally displaced persons still reside in these Levitt like communal centers years after the conflicts, still waiting with dwindling hope to return home.

But it is not only the physical that haunts citizens, and my visit, of the past. The waitress that I had talked about gay rights to spoke to me a few weekends ago of where she had been when ‘Russia invaded her country with tanks and bombs.’ Our tour guide at the Stalin museum related how she had hid in safety as troops invaded Gori. My taxi driver last night yelled back through tight turns and red lights about his family being displaced from Abkhazia almost a decade ago and still not being able to find a stable job to support his family. (After hearing his story through broken English and calls to his wife asking how to say things in English, I gave him 50 Lari for a 5 Lari ride; from a conference I had attended, I could guess that that 25 dollars would be more than what he had made this entire week to feed his family. With teary eyes, he thanked me and hoped that one day he could earn that much money for work). Even in my art research interviews, artists and curators alike reference war and trauma as a major influence in the contemporary art scene.

I look around me and I wonder how so much beauty and how so much pride has survived years of invasion and strain. Hearing their stories, at times the smiles they wear or the hospitality they show me seem unattainable. This past week, the body of Georgian Coporal Valeri Verskiani was repatriated back to Georgia from the war in Afghanistan, where he was fatally wounded in battle. I passed his memorial at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier midday yesterday on my way to a meeting at Tbilisi State University. Hundreds had turned out to crowd the streets with flowers and support for his bravery; the Minister of Defense attended, as did many foreign ambassadors. In America, we tend to remove ourselves from our own fighting around the world. If asked the question to name who, or how many, Americans have died this month in Afghanistan and Iraq I am sure that most of you could not answer. For most of us, war is the terrible images on our nightly news as we continue to eat our dinner and hurry off to class or baseball practice. We are proud to be Americans as we sing our patriotic songs on the fourth of July, but seem to forget, consciously or unconsciously, those brave men and women who give their lives to protect us. Living in Georgia has taught me an endless amount: I have learned how to do traditional Georgian folk dancing, and how to bake bread. I have learned the history of Tbilisi, and the proper way to visit public baths. But living in Georgia has also taught me the price of my freedom, and has afforded me the realization that having peace at home, though a blessing, is a double edge sword. Georgia has survived these past two decades not because of the aid the international community has flown in or the policies brokered by foreign diplomats. It has endured because the memorial of a corporal draws hundreds in support- because being Georgian is not just about knowing how to drink chacha or sing in four part harmonies. Being Georgian is about being strong for one another, to one another, and with one another.

I read the NY Times every day, and have for some years now. I spend most of my time reading articles on cyber revolutions in Egypt or nuclear meltdowns in Japan. For the years that I have read, I have never clicked on the ‘at war’ sections unless a new political or economic policy was being enacted. Since arriving in Tbilisi, I make a point of reading the articles, the names of the deceased, or the blogs about our troops. Perhaps after reading this, you too will spend a bit more time thinking about the headlines of your newspapers or tvs before taking your next sip of coffee.