Friendship between the nations

At first the Xerox Café next door let me use a computer in a claustrophobically tiny, inumbrated side-room without lamp or light bulb, where my only luminary source was the flux and reflux of natural light that reached me from the main door. As customers engaged in their daily game of come and go, they obstructed or gave free my gateway to the sun, and I worked doused in an ever fluctuating Chiaoscuro.

Then, when the monitor of that computer failed, I was promoted of sorts to the small room in the house facing it; the place, in fact, where Avto, the guy who manages the Xerox shop, eats, sleeps and shits. His little abode is of typical Georgian character. The lightless frontroom most closely resembles a box room full of junk from which the toilet is seperated by a man-sized chunk of paper-maché trying as hard as it can to function as a door. Since we are in Georgia, the land of the ever-running water faucets, the tap is cranked open 24/7 -no matter how much force you apply to it, the stream of water pouring forth does not diminish. Inside the often chilly main room the obligatory leaflet-sized copies of icons are pinned to the mossy wallpaper which is curling off in most corners of the room. Next to the keyboard lie palm-sized prayer books. Somehow appropriately, and very typically of Georgian funereal culture, most work that comes through here is the printing out of photographs of the recent dead, so the make-up artist can make them look like themselves for the open coffin funeral.

Disadvantageous to my working habits though it may be, it never gets boring here. Mtvarisa usually hangs out in the back, studying Italian when she has nothing to do(economically motivated emigration is planned in the near future) and generally chatting with me more than Avto, her employer, can approve of. And once in a while, friends are bound to drop in. Today Kristina and Arthur come, a young couple with whom I converse in Dutch. Whereas studying languages may seem pure intellectual indulgence in the West, in a country like Georgia, even a relatively obscure language like Dutch can secure you a relatively very well-paid job at out-sourced Dutch companies. Kristina, whose Dutch is fair but whose English remains rudimentary, sells bird seed over the phone to customers in Utrecht or Antwerpen. Arthur, whose English is near fluent, was able to get a prestigious job at the Dutch embassy. The two of them come with a kilo of strawberries which we empty into a big tin bowl and smother in sugar. We hand out forks to everyone and start impaling the little red devils' heads rolling around in fairy dust. They are devoured in no time. As we still prattle lightly about nothing in particular over our afternoon snack, Avto calls through the door that he may have a job for one of us: A man in a jeans, leather boots and the sort of irremovable sun-glasses that make him look like a modern-day Mkhedrioni agent, wants a translator. He needs to have a phone call done to the U.S., from where he is going to import a car.

It's an easy job for Arthur who was lucky enough to have the occasion to learn fluent English when he was drafted: He shared his military service with some of the division of 200 U.S. American soldiers that George Bush sent to Georgia in 2005 as a symbolic interchange of favours for those Georgian troops that were deployed in Iraq (and who are to be "shipped" back in a hurry after the Russian "invasion" into South Ossetia in August).

"You say it will take less than a week? Are you sure about that? We are in the country Georgia, the Ex-Soviet Republic, not the American state..." Arthur explains over the phone. It was a quick, easy job, but for the expedient execution, Mr. Mkhedrioni lays down two crisp new ten Lari bills on the table.
As soon as we are alone again Arthur laughingly proposes: "Let's have a party and spend it all!"

And so, off we traipse into the dusk of day, across Tamar Mefe Bridge and into Tbilisi's historical old town, to a nice, atmospherical basement restaurant, well hidden from tourists.

As a starter we order Kharcho - a tasty concoction of soft farmer's cheese meshed with thinly cut pieces of mint, all rolled up into funnel-shaped bags of razor-thin Sulugumi cheese, which stems from the area around Zugdidi (accidentally, Arthur's home town). I must admit to a natural propensity for all dairy products (I could never be vegan) and the same kind of weak spot for mint as a spice. So, as I slowly suck on the soft, succulent foodstuff, my predilections combine, and I feel like transported straight into some culinary heaven -this is like, the best dish ever. When I am to talk of our dinner the next morning I am to say "This happened yesterday, but I am sure I will speak of it like that even in ten years time!".
We accompany the main dish, the eternal, but still incredibly tasty Khinkali, with a bottle of Borjomi mineralwater and some Georgian wine -both products which used to be among Georgia's strongest exports, famous far beyond that city on the Volga or even the Ural. But during the "diplomatic crisis" with the giant of a neighbour to the North in the winter of 2005-6, Putin banned these products from exportation, ostentatiously "on grounds of hygiene".
"We,on the other hand have no calms consuming Russian imports!", says Arthur merrily and opens a bottle of "Stol'ovskaya Vodka". And down goes the first toast on "Mezhdunarodnuyu Druzhbu"-"Friendship between the nations"...