That’s all the breath I have. First, my wife came down with a bad cold, despite trying to wrap up well against the winter temperatures. Then, so did I, even though similarly protected. Are we just getting a bit older? We’ve both been hacking away, taking plenty of medicine, keeping warm in our apartment. Praying.
And following the news in our beloved country. Wave after wave of protests from all sectors of society, not yet abating at all: professionals, media, artists, the provinces. (“Svans! I should have been there with you… but one night’s solidarity in the cold would mean bedridden weeks for me in this state, I fear.”) A week left as I write this, mere days after its publication, and the standoff between the current president and the newly chosen, highly controversial one must come to a head. She will lose her security detail on the day her term finishes, the 29th of December, but she has vowed to stay on. How? Are we heading into another revolution?
Lord knows we’ve had enough of those: the despair, rage, overturning, euphoria, followed by gradual disillusionment; rinse, repeat. Georgians, you are made of stern stuff, but even a Man of Steel (Stalin) will rust. And anyway, such Steel proved to be your biggest catastrophe in living memory…
With all my heart and caught breath I want this country to enter peace, prosperity, a situation to which its emigre population will want to return instead of eking out a living abroad as foreigners in Greece or Italy or wherever, sending money home. It’s happened in Poland… what will it take to bring it about here? Are there just too many big powers either bent on preventing it or apathetic to it, not having perceived vested interests? Just… not on our cards?
How much of what we read is disinformation? In this day and age of too much media, instantly available and received unfiltered by a population with skepticism turned down nearly to zero, what news can we trust? The war on the information front is raging more fiercely than ever. This is true everywhere, indeed, but also here. I despair of offering advice, except: don’t believe everything you read, or see, but check it. Please. Even live video can be faked.
I also know this of you Georgians, from my quarter-century here: ancient, big-hearted, deep-souled, generous, proud, fierce in defense and profound in friendship. If I ever got locked out, away from you, I would have lost the longest-term home I have ever had in my life, and left my heart behind, bereft. Better locked in than out, if I had to choose. I mean it. Coming here in 1999 was love at first sight, and it has never let up, despite ups and downs.
So we wait, in the unbearable tension, each day and night with new marches, new speeches, new denunciations and assertions. Hoping against hope. The powers that be are trying to play a waiting game, a war of attrition; the weather does not appear to be on their side, staying mostly dry. It might be a key factor, such a prosaic thing. Do they really believe they are right, or just believe in the sanctity of their own pockets and scepters? Which would be worse?
Dare I say, Happy New Year? Please? Time will soon tell.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
