Wandering Tbilisi

Tariel was from Sololaki, but his blue eyes echoed how he did not really feel like that. His father was Svan – from the high mountains of Svaneti where hair and eyes were paler and people lived at the feet of peaks built by myths as much as nature. His mother was Khevsur – the eastern mountains near the Chechen border. They held their myths in more delicate ways – stitched them in cloth so no one else could really understand what they had been through. When Tariel walked the crumbling streets of Sololaki, Tbilisi opened up before him to show a grander view – the distant mountains where his family really felt at home. The secret stories that were hidden there.

His eyes caught me when I first saw him – they shone from his face as if lit by a strange light that understood more of this city than anyone else ever could. The troubled history and how it was changing. He seemed to know that more than most – not a misplaced optimism so much as a realisation of the grander scale of things – what Georgia had once been and how short a couple of decades were in the history of the world – they were but seconds – if that. I was scared for him that his life was simply the same. His eyes lived it so intensely I was not sure they could keep it up for a lifetime of the length normal for most people. I think the idea would have bored them – they were so eager to see elsewhere.

Sololaki was one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Tbilisi. Balconies weighted with years of plants and extended families heaved over the crumbled streets as they wove their way down to Rustaveli and Freedom Square. Courtyards filled throughout the day with shouting children and ejected footballs at ill-timed passers by. Tariel’s apartment hovered above one of these courtyards. Was walled with smashed glass that reminded me of greenhouses, that given a life of their own had grown with the greenery – crawled across the front of the building to catch the light that fed them more – encouraged them on despite the shattering and wood splintered with the weight.

I was walking past when I first saw him. He was wreathed in running children, they spun around him in a whirl of laughs and jumping. Trying to erase his stillness, but somehow it just emphasised it more. He stood like a lighthouse – those eyes beaming out a ray that made me feel like I could no longer lose my way despite the chaos around him. I was transfixed.
“Gamarjobat.” I winced a little at my stilted Georgian greeting, but he smiled. Didn’t move, but there was something in that smile that moved him more than steps towards me would have. I smiled back before carrying on down the road.