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‘Call Me George’

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You know you’ve failed to adjust to a place when you start viewing daily trifles as culturally anomalous.


Riding the bus from Freedom Square to the university on Chavchavadze Avenue: a trip of a few kilometers.  Easy enough.

But at each stop the denizens pile themselves in.  Stop after stop, a distressing number of people are insisting on getting on the No. 140.  At one point the doors cannot be shut.  The driver shouts testily, “There's another bus coming, eh!  Why don’t you wait for it?”

It doesn’t work.  More people get on.  Strap-hanging, I can no longer move.  Stuck between university students and a couple of older guys, I realize that I no longer have to hold on.  Jolts from the road or otherwise, I’m not going anywhere.

We arrive at my stop.  “Excuse me,” I say.

No one looks at me, no one moves.  I can see the light pouring in from the door.  Fresh air and personal space.  I gently nudge those unresponsive ones around me to show that I need to alight.

A second Excuse me, this time louder.  No response.  A third.  Nothing.  The doors are closing. . .

I start shoving.

“vai me!” say the ladies.  “Woe is me” or “Oh my”, and, in this instance, “How dare you push me, you insolent brute!”  vai me!

The men are no better.  “bich’o, ra iq’o!” one says as I step on his toes — Man, what are you doing? and/or Can’t you just wait till the next stop?  I’ve interrupted his mobile “thinking” session, his birzha in transit.

I’ve climbed over four people and I’m still not there.

More Woe is me’s.  More What are you doing, Man’s.  Visibly distressed, nearly frothing at the mouth, I’m looking every inch the part of the typical Westerner, always in a hurry.

Then, blinding sunlight.  Free at last!  But I’m furious.  I spit in disgust.  I kick some wooden planks under some scaffolding.  I swear up and down that I have to get out of this place.

Tbilisi, you win.  You can have the bus; I’m getting off.

Select Enlightenment:
M. Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (NY: Harper & Row, 1984).

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