ანუ რა ხდება ალ ქურჯში. სეზონი II

[t-90]

ონლაინ, Instance said:

ეგ რომ ესე იყოს ტანკო ეს ნუნუ არ იქნებოდა ესეთ ბრძენად დახატული. ასეთი შთაბეჭდილება დამრჩა რომ ნუნუს საქართველოს მოვლენების ანალიზსში ყველაზდ ჭკვიანად აღიქვამს. თავის თავზე გაცილებით ჭკვიანი გონია.

ეს მხოლოდ იმით რომ ქალზეა შეყვარებული არ აიხსენება.

ხო მაგრამ ზუგდიდის დაცემისას და სხვა მოვლენებისას ზვიადელები გიჟებად ჰყავს გამოყვანილი მერაბა კიკნაძით დაწყებული და ოთარას ძმათი დამთავრებული.

თუმცა რატომაც არა? ზვიადელებშიც იყვნენ განათლებული და სერიოზული ხალხიც.

5 minutes წინ, Instance said:

არა თქვი ხომ ძალიან მაგრად იკითხება, ასე კარგად იკითხებოდეს წიგნი 90-იანებზე მე არ მახსოვს.

ახლოსაც ვერ მოვა ამასთან "სამი განზომილება"

სამი განზომილება არის აი ჯაბას მეტყველებით წასაკითხი

ეს ნაშრომია ფაქტიურად.

6 minutes წინ, Instance said:

 

თუ ასეა, მაშინ გაითვალისწინე რომ ამას კი ასე კარგად ვერ დაწერდა გულთან ძალიან ახლოს რომ არ მიეტანა ნანახი, ასე კარგად წაკითხვადს ვერ დაწერდა გარე დამკვირვებლის თვალით რომ დაეწერა.

ძალიან პერსონალურია მისთვის ეს თემა, რატომ ხეზ.

აზერების და ჩეჩნების ამაბვი როგორ აქვს დაწერილი?

7 minutes წინ, Instance said:

ეს არ წერს მერე რაღაც რეკლამაში გამოჩნდაო, რა რეკლამაა არ ვიცი და არც გვარი ვიცი

ანუ რა ვიცით რომ მკვდრებშია?

ისე იცი მარინას გვარი? მე ვერ ვიპოვე

სიმართლე გითხრა მეც არ ვიცი ან არ მახსოვს.

არ ვიცი რომ მკვდრებშია მაგრამ ეგეთი რამის მერე ან მკვდრებში ამთავრებენ ან სადმე კაი ადგილას და კაი ფულშI.

 

[Instance]

5 minutes წინ, t-90 said:

აზერების და ჩეჩნების ამაბვი როგორ აქვს დაწერილი?

არ ვიცი.

მგონი ყველაზე გაყიდვადი წიგნი ჩვენზეა

5 minutes წინ, t-90 said:

თუმცა რატომაც არა? ზვიადელებშიც იყვნენ განათლებული და სერიოზული ხალხიც.

აქ ნუნუ უბრალოდ განათლებულ და სერიოზულ ტიპშად არ ჰყავს გამოყვანილი. მისი პირით ლაპარაკობს რაღაც კოლხური ღრმა მისტიური სიბრძნე რომელიც ყველა ამ "რაციონალისტს" უგებს ვინც კი ამას ხვდება თავისი ჩათვლით

Edited 10 ოქტომბერი, 2022 by Instance

[t-90]

20 minutes წინ, Instance said:

24 minutes წინ, t-90 said:

 

არ ვიცი.

მგონი ყველაზე გაყიდვადი წიგნი ჩვენზეა

ნუ ჩვენთან უფრო საინტერესო ფიგურები იყვნენ სავარაუდოდ.

მაგრამსაინტერესო ზოგადად თხრობის სტილია.

თუ სხვაგანაც ეგრეა ზნაჩიტ ჩვენ არაფერ შუაში ვართ.

 

21 minutes წინ, Instance said:

26 minutes წინ, t-90 said:

 

აქ ნუნუ უბრალოდ განათლებულ და სერიოზულ ტიპშად არ ჰყავს გამოყვანილი. მისი პირით ლაპარაკობს რაღაც კოლხური ღრმა მისტიური სიბრძნე რომელიც ყველა ამ "რაციონალისტს" უგებს ვინც კი ამას ხვდება თავისი ჩათვლით

ხო მამენტ ესეც საინტერესო სფეროა. მედეა არ ახსენა ტყუილად.

[Instance]

3 minutes წინ, t-90 said:

თუ სხვაგანაც ეგრეა ზნაჩიტ ჩვენ არაფერ შუაში ვართ.

Google book-ში დავსქიმე ადრე აზერბაიჯანზე (არ წამიკითხავს მთლიანად) და ასეთი შთაბეჭდილება დამრჩა იქ უფრო მშრალად ყვებოდა

 

[t-90]

2 minutes წინ, Instance said:

Google book-ში დავსქიმე ადრე აზერბაიჯანზე (არ წამიკითხავს მთლიანად) და ასეთი შთაბეჭდილება დამრჩა იქ უფრო მშრალად ყვებოდა

 

მაშIნ ნუნუში ყოფილა საქმე

[Instance]

5 საათის წინ, t-90 said:

ხო მამენტ ესეც საინტერესო სფეროა. მედეა არ ახსენა ტყუილად.

როგორაა იცით, სენიორ, რასაც ნუნუ ამბობს ეს ჩვენთვისაა ჩვეულებრივი რასაც ნებისმიერი გამოსული ზვიადისტი ამბობდა.

ეს ტიპი რომელიც საქართველოს თემას იცნობს გარედან და პროშევარდნაძისტურად რომელიც წიგნის განმავლობაში გადმოდის ზვიადის მხარეს, იმისთვის ეს მოსჩანს რაღაც მისტიკურ სიბრძნედ.

[Instance]

17 საათის წინ, t-90 said:

კიტოვანის ბრიფინგია საინტერესოა. კითხვები:
1) ჟურნალისტებს უტევენ ზვიადელები და თქვენ რას შვებით
2) გამსახურდია კაგებეშნიკი არ იყო კაცო და მანამა გიჟი რომელსაც მთელი ინტელექტუალების ამოხოცვა უნდოდა?
პროჭილოკიაობა ემირატულად

ეს უმაგრესია

Spoiler

“Sir,” a man from some magazine asked the minister of the interior, Tengiz Kitovani. “When are you going to start providing protection for journalists when they are attacked by irate and fanatical supporters of the Opposition?”

Say what? This was just the first portion of a large pile of other rhetorical, planted crap.

“Is it true, Mister Minister of the KGB, that Gamsakhurdia actually served as an informant for your agency for thirty years and was in fact placed by your agency as a national leader in order to dupe the people?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the spook replied. “Of course I had nothing to do with the old security system, and most of its records were burned by the fanatical followers of the fascist, but on the level, I think there is reasonable doubt about Gamsakhurdia’s motivations. . . .”

“Is it true, Mister Chief of Police, that it was actually Gamsakhurdia’s wicked and psychotic wife Manana who begged you to massacre the intellectuals last September, but that you refused?”

“Well, I didn’t think this subject would come up here, but I was shocked when the witch called up my assistant and begged him to beg me to tell the troops to mow down the intellectual elite of our country! I refused, and it was at that moment that I realized that the time had come to topple the dictator and killer of his own people.”

It was all pretty disgusting, sitting there in that conference room with the fat quislings on the dais and the somewhat thinner quislings in the chairs all around me.

 

10 საათის წინ, t-90 said:

ხო რა თქმა ნდა გარეკილი აქვს.

აფხაზეთში ხო დატოვა? აუ ის დას რო ხვდება ის სცენა არის იმენა ძალიან მაგარი.

დის სცენაც მაგარია და სოხუმში რომ ტოვებს ისიც  

Spoiler

The frontlines were now something like 100 yards from Nunu’s house, and getting closer by the minute. The entire street appeared to be in flames from the dacha, but when I came clear of the smoke, I discovered her house still standing.

“So he laughed about the dog,” she chuckled when I showed her my dog wound and told her about Shevardnadze’s response. “He is a Russian dog himself.”

I stayed there that last night, first because I was afraid to move through a new and withering rain of Abkhaz heavy machinegun and mortar fire and then, as darkness fell, because I was afraid of getting cut down by Georgians who might take me as an Abkhaz point man in the darkness. We tuned in the BBC and Radio Moscow and both had the same report: Sukhumi had fallen, and Shevardnadze was surrounded in his bunker, suing for peace. I wanted to believe it was true because it meant that it was over, that the frontlines had crossed us and that we might still survive. But we both knew the reports were wrong because there was no BBC or Radio Moscow reporter in the city and no communications out even if there had been. Besides, the mortar shells kept crashing in and the machinegun fire was incessant. There was at least another night to go.

“Scared?” a semi-sleeping Nunu asked when I slithered into a fetal position on the rug beneath the dining room table. I didn’t answer, but put my shoes back on and placed my glasses in my shirt pocket just in case I needed to make a quick exit from a burning house. Of course I was sleeping in my clothes. In the morning, with the house across the street ablaze, I begged Nunu and her mother Lamara to pack a bag and leave with me. Nunu refused for both of them.

“I am staying until the end,” she said.

I didn’t even bother to ask why. Nunu gave me the penultimate shot off the last bottle of her homemade brandy. I left the last half-inch in the bottom for a “next time” I didn’t believe in and said good-bye. She gave me a kiss and I walked to the end of the block, sprinted across the side street in a rabbit pattern, sought smoke for cover down side streets, and dodged bullet, mortars, and GRADs in open places until I was once more on the veranda of the so-called Stalin’s dacha, the place where Shevardnadze had allegedly been “surrounded” the night before.

It was silent. No, it was something more than that. The place was empty, abandoned. I hobbled over to the main door to the dacha and let myself in, still hoping against hope that there was someone there, someone who could tell me something else, someone who could tell me what to do. Then I heard a noise in the kitchen area and followed it to its source: an elderly woman, sweeping up the accumulated filth of Shevardnadze’s guards.

“Who’s here?” I asked.

“No one,” she replied.

“Perhaps you didn’t understand my question,” I suggested with growing unease. “Where is Shevardnadze?”

“I told you he is gone.” We stared at each other for a moment and then the maid went back to her task of cleaning out the dacha before a new tenant arrived.

“Excuse me,” I asked the cleaning woman. “Is there anything left to drink?”

I took two bottles of wine and a stale loaf of bread and went out to the veranda. Below me lay the city. Dense plumes of rising ash hung over the center, marking the place where a GRAD missile or 122 mm artillery round had slammed into an apartment block or private home. First came a sudden flash, followed by a small black puff of smoke, then the delayed report of the explosion, rolling upward toward my dacha HQ. It took time for the fires to get going, but soon the only part of the city that seemed to be free of fire was an area to the north of the railway station called “Novyi Raion,” or “the New District,” that had been shattered and burned by hundreds of rockets over the past week. Now Novyi Raion seemed quiet because the Abkhaz had moved past it, and were now somewhere around the bazaar—that is, Nunu’s house. There was nothing I could do for her anymore. There was nothing I could do for anyone, even myself. Except drink.

ეს დასთან თბილისში შეხვედრა

Spoiler

I hit the streets of Tbilisi in as bleak and black a mood as I could recall ever having owned, which soon magnified a thousandfold when I found myself staring into a familiar face smack dab in the middle of the Rustaveli Avenue sidewalk.

It was Nunu Chachua’s sister, Nana.

“Tomas?” she said, looking at me as if she had just seen an apparition. The rest of the world disappeared and the enormity of the catastrophe washed over me like a new tsunami of death, destruction, and destroyed dreams. “Where are they?”

I waited in silence for what I knew had to come.

“You don’t know?”

I tried to explain that Nunu would not leave, and that her mother Lamara would not go without Nunu.

“You left them there?” Then Nana collapsed on the street, wailing and punching and clawing and screaming at me in Georgian as I tried to help her up, help her, and help myself.

“YOU LEFT THEM THERE?”

There was nothing to be done but receive her blows and try to hold her. But she would not be held by the likes of me.

აქ ჩანს რომ თვითონაც თავი ლაჩრად აღიქვა გოლცმა

[Instance]

19 საათის წინ, t-90 said:

კიტოვანის ბრიფინგია საინტერესოა. კითხვები:
1) ჟურნალისტებს უტევენ ზვიადელები და თქვენ რას შვებით
2) გამსახურდია კაგებეშნიკი არ იყო კაცო და მანამა გიჟი რომელსაც მთელი ინტელექტუალების ამოხოცვა უნდოდა?
პროჭილოკიაობა ემირატულად

ისე მარტო ქართველი ჟურნალისტების მიმართ არაა სკეპტიკური არამედ ზოგადად ჟურნალისტების მიმართ

Spoiler

“That was Thomas Goltz, reporting from Baku . . .” said that stately British voice-in-the-box, referring to the world’s newest “expert,” on all things Georgian, namely, me.

The funny thing was that I knew next to nothing about Gamsakhurdia or the situation in Georgia. I had never met the man, never been to Georgia and my information about him and his country was limited to the Moscow evening news and the BBC. A true confession: aside from being able to confirm that he had set foot in Azerbaijan, I knew so little about Gamsa khurdia that I was obliged to cloak my new, putative expertise by avoiding the pitfall of mispronouncing his name. “Azerbaijani sources have confirmed that the Georgian leader . . .” was one way to get around the slurry of consonants. Variations on the same name-avoidance theme also included references to “the Georgian president,” “the ousted mercurial headman,” and perhaps even “the contentious chief of state.” In other words, I did not know what the hell I was talking about but somehow managed to make it sound as if I did. Still, I had been on BBC News Hour, and thus by universal definition— or that feckless manner in which news is usually produced—had become an expert on Georgia, because what is reported on the BBC is the news all others have to carry, and what the BBC ignores is by definition not news. And now, as an expert, I was supposed to produce news on demand. That meant finding Gamsakhurdia, however you were supposed to pronounce his name.

“TASS reports that he has left Armenia and is back in Georgia,” said Matthew helpfully, referring to the Soviet news agency regarded as a Communist Party lie-machine until the collapse of the USSR. Following that event, TASS had suddenly and miraculously been reborn—with exactly the same staff—as the Russian equivalent of the Associated Press. “He’s in a place called—hghmm, let me look at my map—it’s a place called Zugdidi. He has called for the start of civil war. File me 1,000 words with lots of color by Thursday afternoon.”

“Matthew, today is Wednesday,” I said. “And even if I find him in that place you just mentioned, how do I file from a country in the midst of civil war?”

“Okay, I get your point,” said Matthew. “A Friday file would be fine.”

“Matthew,” I said. “This is impossible.”

“I know. But if anyone can do it, it’s you,” said Matthew, booking the line space.

Friday, I said to myself and laughed. I had two days: one to prove the impossibility of finding Gamsakhurdia, and the second to write about whatever else I found. Parachute journalism at its superficial worst. But it was an excuse to get my feet wet in Georgia.

The Quest for Gamsakhurdia had been joined.

Spoiler

“Zviad Gamsakhurdia may not have been the most intelligent man in Georgia, but he was the bravest—and did what a brave man had to do,” said my old friend Merab Kiknadze from those early Sukhumi days, standing with me at the edge of the mourners as the speeches went on and on that cold February day.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked Merab, who had been living in exile at times in Grozny and at other times in Sweden.

“Don’t ask me anymore,” he said elliptically. “I don’t speak to the press anymore after the way your profession maligned, lied about, and then crucified him.”

“But you are talking to me.”

“You are different, sort of,” said Merab. “But I still want to know why you let Shevardnadze off so lightly in that Foreign Policy piece of yours.”2

“You read it?”

“We read everything,” snarled Merab.

“I couldn’t get it published any other way.”

“Oh.”

We stood together and listened to the speeches and eulogies for hours, it seemed. And it was bitterly cold. Finally, mercifully, Gamsakhurdia’s wife Manana was pulled off the casket while pallbearers, led by an incense-sprinkling priest, lifted Zviad and placed him in the earth of Muslim Chechnya.

The Gamsakhurdia-Shevardnadze rivalry was over, at last.

“Remember that night in Sukhumi when I told you that you could see Zviad?” Merab mused as we walked away from the single-entry graveyard, referring to the Gamsakhurdia video night way back when in Sukhumi, circa February 1992. “We actually hoped we might be able to win, that the West would support us. We miscalculated badly.”

“I’ll say.”

“Georgia has now entered a long dark period,” he sighed. “I can only hope that future generations appreciate what they have lost, but I doubt they will.”

Spoiler

I dodged my way away from the Rustavis at around eight or nine in the morning, making a zigzag pattern down the exposed lane that led back up from the river to the main road through town and Novyi Raion. It didn’t take long to find the area hit by the phantom fighter-bomber the night before. The 500-kilogram “vacuum” bomb had vaporized a two-story residential house and torn off the back half of four other houses surrounding it, with collateral damage spreading several hundred meters further. Miraculously, only one man—a local doctor—was killed outright, although his wife was said to have later died in a local hospital after she was brought in for treatment. Traces of the strafing attack were equally easy to find. Football-sized divots defined the path of the rockets and cannon, while the accompanying machinegun fire had ripped apart cars and fences along the street leading to the destroyed house, as if the pilot had intended to catch survivors or rescuers out of doors as they dug through the rubble of their friends’ homes. That no one was killed in the strafing run was a miracle, although over a dozen people had been wounded. One man by the name of Serge Tromidova told me how he had been lying in a bedroom on the ground floor when a rocket blasted through the top story of his house and penetrated two walls before exploding, sending a piece of shrapnel through the floor that dropped hot, but no longer deadly, on his chest.

“The Russian pigs,” he cursed. “The only way they fight is bombing civilians.”

His charge could not be proved, although logical extrapolation seemed to suggest the veracity of his claim. The Abkhaz had no air force; the plane had flown in from the north through Russian Black Sea air defense space and returned more or less the same way. They were Russian planes, possibly piloted by freelance aviators or more likely by Russian air force men on “loan” to terror-bomb civilians in Sukhumi. But nobody wanted to know about it, at least nobody at the foreign news desks of the papers I worked for.

“Why would Yeltsin bomb Shevardnadze?” demanded an editor. “They are both democrats! And how can you prove that the planes were Russian?”

The “mystery plane above the Gumista” story was never published, apparently because it was not news fit to print. Perhaps there was an upsurge in violence in Bosnia at the time, and the digest of obscure foreign wars had been filled for that day or week.

The government in Tbilisi was having a hard time convincing anyone outside the country about Russian involvement, too. Even when the Georgians managed to shoot down a MIG-29 and recover the body of the dead Russian pilot with all his papers, the Kremlin refused to admit any involvement. Confronted with the evidence, the Russian minister of defense, Pavel Grachev, denied that any Russian aircraft were operating anywhere near the theater— and then charged Georgia with terror-bombing its own citizens. When it was pointed out that the markings on the aircraft were distinctly Russian, Grachev blithely replied that the Georgians had painted his country’s insignia on the plane in order to disguise it.

When the Georgians brought down a second “mystery” aircraft, they invited a United Nations military observer to inspect both it and the papers of the dead pilot. The observer later told me that although he was convinced that the dead man was indeed a professional Russian pilot flying a Russian MIG-29, he was unable to categorically state that the pilot was operating under orders from somewhere inside the Russian defense ministry. “We need to see orders, written orders, and we need to see the pilots receive them, get in their planes, take off, bomb, and then return to fill out mission completion forms,” the frustrated observer said. “We are never going to get all that.”

ნუ აქ მარტი ჟურნალისტებს კი არა გეეროსაც (როგორც ედვარდი იტყოდა) ახურავს

Spoiler

We scooted back to his place in a nondescript Baku suburb for me to wash the week of road-filth out of my clothes, have a quick breakfast, and watch and compare Russian TV with the BBC reports on the decision of the Russian Duma’s upper house to ask for recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. What was so extraordinary about this largely pro forma process was the almost desperate belief of Western leaders that their words held any sway over Russia at all. George W. Bush, Gordon Brown, and Nicolas Sarkozy had all “warned” Russia not to recognize the two wayward entities lest the West impose diverse meaningless sanctions, and the words of warning were picked up and paraphrased by the diverse expert talking-heads on Russian affairs at the BBC, CNN, and Fox, who advised viewers why Moscow needed to take seriously the toothless threats (changing the venue of the 2014 Olympics, nonadmittance to the WTO, go-slow on the G-8, and so on), even while Russian television stations were devoting live, exclusive coverage to the thundering, standing ovation afforded South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity and Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh when they approached the Duma dais to thank the Russian Federation for recognizing them as independent statelets. The disconnect between the West’s perception of its ability to influence much less govern events in the lands of the former USSR and the real situation could not have been greater, but became even more profound with the prediction by the same “expert” commentators that Russian President Medvedev would of course take the West’s reaction into account before signing the Duma’s recommendation into law in accordance with the Russian constitution.

But Medvedev did no such thing.

Within twenty-four hours, the former Gazprom boss and Putin acolyte not only inked his signature on the Duma recognition document, but invited the international hack-pack to his luxurious dacha outside the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi to celebrate the fact of his presidential imprimatur on the Abkhaz/South Ossetian recognition business in a series of oh-so-exclusive and oh-so-respectful interviews. Ironically, one invited guest was none other than the BBC’s Bridget Kendall, my media colleague of “Quest for Gamsakhurdia” fame from January 1992. CNN, Al-Jazeera, and other mass-media outlets soon followed suit in their obsequious homage and de facto (and almost breathless) sanction of the Russian invasion of Georgia and subsequent recognition of the two entities.

For balance, the BBC and all the others generally rolled live, rambling interviews with Saakashvili, who usually appeared unkempt, distracted, and scratching his scabby wrists. Unlike Medvedev, Misha was repeatedly subjected to unregal interruptions by the interviewers, along the lines of “Excuse me Mister President, but you told our listeners the same thing last week . . .”