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Rien navait modif le silence des massifs HENRY TROYAT (1954)

Georgia at the Spring Equinox : Thresholds of Change

MUSIC

by Martin Smith

For French Historian Fernand Braudel, history operates at three speeds simultaneously: and in
assessing a countrys well-being, it is maybe a good idea to look at all three.
Change on the slowest level is encapsulated in age-old rituals and social patterns, which may evolve
at an imperceptible pace. Thresholds whether of time or place are a good place to look for such
indices of change, or indices of stability.
In Nakhiduri, an Azerbaijani village beautifully spaced out along a long straight section of the E117,
there is a succession of beautifully-painted iron entrance gates. The locals clearly spend energy in
keeping them looking beautiful; and between each property are solid, traditionally built stone walls,
an elegant variation on dry stone field walls, and clearly mortared in more recent times.
This is rich farming country, and the harvest, particularly of potatoes in the spring the growing
season is barely a month or so is spectacular. The potatoes are sweet and fine; a few of them
boiled with a herb or two and butter making an excellent meal.
In Marneuli is also the thriving market the word for Sunday in Azeri is bazaar and a branch of
the attentive and well-stocked supermarket, Smart. The range of foreign beer here is impressive;
and you can buy acceptable cakes, although not jam. Not far away, however, is an Azerbaijani
restaurant that seems never to have opened, and a MacDonalds which was finished, but then left to
await the next ripple of Braudels top level of change, evenemential time.
In Bolnisi at present, great attention is being paid to renovating the holes in the road, the bus stops,
the verges and a shop front. A tree was cut down a mere relaxation for a couple of townsmen
lately, and bodily dragged away by one of them, in Herculean fashion. All the twigs and branches left
over were carefully collected by a lady who tells me she is from Abkhazia. I watched her go home in
the dusk after she had filled a flour sack with as much as she could carry.
The threshold between school and home has always been a difficult one to fill for adolescent boys,
but now rugby is the new craze. A balding coach teaches the principles of the scrum, quite

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respectable kit appears from nowhere, and the training is taken seriously. Stretching exercises,
passing routines, and strategy are studied in the practice sessions, and when I pass by, I try to catch
the swirling ball.
Change in the capital operates at a faster pace, but it is interesting that an important old threshold
has been uncovered right in the centre of Tbilisi the city walls. There are post-modern buildings
and bridges, and one curiously unfinished structure which is apparently a cancelled building. A huge
lot in Rustaveli was destined for a de luxe residential block, but is now becoming a Turkish-looking
Museum, the decorations merely stuck onto the outside of breeze blocks and concrete.This is the
cut and paste approach to the Tbilisi architectural heritage which has only come to a halt with the
recent economic slow-down.
In a few weeks, in Tbilisi, Marjanishvili will be full of the greenery of Palm Sunday, and not long
after that Georgias characteristic maroon-painted Easter eggs of a theological, not a commercial
significance will make their appearance.
After church one can have a coffee in the confident, chic, welcoming cafe Entre, which has been a
Georgian success story, and is now expanding outside Georgia. The cuisine owes something to the
London sandwich shops, something to Georgia and Italy in its salad and savoury dishes; and a lot to
France in its delicious and filling croissants: they are quite good enough to take home and heat for
breakfast the following day.
Machakhela, at Maidan, just close to the Mtkvari and the statue of Vakhtang Gorgasali, is a more
Georgian affair, although steak and chips is also on the menu. Prices are very reasonable, there is a
wonderful terrace ( a great place for interesting fortuitous encounters with scholars and experts!) and
the place is always full. Moreover, it is open all night, so is a good destination for the taxi to stop at
after you arrive, crumpled and disoriented, in Georgia after some sojourn abroad.
A rejuvenating Georgian welcome, allowing you afresh to make sense of the world from this unique
eyrie, will be awaiting you: and you will be greeted heartily as an old friend, and as an honoured
patron of the establishment.
Another Vahktang Maisai - tells us, in the Georgian Times of 16 March 2015, that there is just now
a political crisis in Georgia occasioned by the fall in the value of the Lari, and certain constitutional
developments. But in a country with statues of the severity the mounted horseman to look at as you
sip your Natakhtari (the spectacular, dizzying, gilded slain dragon is just up the picturesque, cobbled
Leselidze Street) one feels, nonetheless, secure, meditating more on Braudels indices of long-term
change the death of capitalism, global warming, a melt-down of the banking system, the abolition
of the monarchy, or a nuclear holocaust than on a surface ripple on the Mtkvari, that turbid and
inscrutable Styx. A ripple hardly touching although arguably produced by Braudels second level
of change: the evolution of cultures and societies in a cyclical fashion. That would include the
communist experiment, I guess, during seventy of the twentieth centurys traumatic years.
As we take an ice-cream of the finest Italian vintage in Luca Polare, just up Leselidze Street (there is
also excellent coffee here!) we can obtain a copy of the more serious Financial - and note Israeli
businessman Itsik Moshes opinion (of the same date) that in twenty-five years it should not be
difficult to improve the economic conditions of a small country like Georgia where education,
talent and potential is sufficient. If all those talented Georgians abroad were to return eventually,

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along with the never-ending steam of foreigners who rightly revere this wonderful country, it would
be a Russian spring indeed.