Intrepid Iphigenia and I needed to go out to buy some fruit and veg. We had just arrived in Tbilisi a couple of days before. Tense and touchy, we start arguing about where to buy the said goods. Iphigenia spots a stand in which she says the produce looks agreeable. But I’ve been to that one before during a previous stay in town and I say, “No, let’s go to another.” She doesn’t understand why, of course, and I have to explain, but I don’t have time to expound on Patrick Leigh Fermor’s brilliant theory of the way in which locals perceive outsiders.* Instead I tell her that the lady is a bit nosy and she wants to marry her daughter off to me, probably because I know how to string together a few sentences in Georgian. Iphigenia replies with a Don’t be silly , but I am adamant. I am cold, cranky and, as such, determined to avoid niceties, conversation, explanations — hell, all human contact, for that matter. Iphigenia shortly lets me have
Excerpts from bygone days abroad