The Greenest Grass

The dangers of idealizing a place include the overesteeming of men and the exoticizing of their attributes.

It was an exhilarating time to be in Tbilisi. Young researchers, mainly from the United States and Europe, older practitioners and inquiring minds from the world over had flocked to the city. Change of every kind abounded, with academic niches just waiting to be carved out and political glory there for the taking.

Though I had had trouble finding my place, I was eager to learn from and praise the higher-ranking members of the growing expat community.

Then came a singular stroke of luck. An enlightened friend, himself an entrenched expatriate, called to say that he was throwing a party that very night. He insisted on my coming and mentioned that all of Tbilisi’s renowned rays of light were due to attend. And even the Big Yin would be there.

Now, my main interest in the country was originally the Georgian tongue. The Big Yin, said to be from Iowa or Indiana, speaks it impeccably. Georgians, so I had been told, often could not detect even the slightest hint of foreignness in his speech. The long and the short of his story goes that when he was sixteen he caught a glimpse of the Georgian alphabet in a book, proceeded to pick up Aronson’s Georgian: A Reading Grammar and never looked back.

The party was in full swing as I geared up for the approach. The flat smelled of hand-rolled cigarette smoke and unwashed travelers. Beer, vodka, wine and homemade moonshine were doled out plentifully and kept spirits high.

The Big Yin — as sincerely gracious, let it be said, as he is wise — was soon indulging me as I plied him with questions he must have become sick of answering over the years. He even took an interest in my occupation and study: With whom was I taking classes? Did I know what an affricate was?   

Star-struck, at length I gushed: “Man! I’d give up all my knowledge of French to be able to speak Georgian like you.”

He stopped me there, ears suddenly a-pricked: “Really? You speak French?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, momentarily nonplussed. “I guess it’s cool and all. . . . But not as cool as your Georgian, right? Right?”

His interest in me understandably came to an abrupt halt: the alcohol had muddled his wits and my sycophancy succeeded in killing the flow any further conversation might take. He found a way out in the form of a bespectacled, supercilious party-goer — all red cheeks and crooked teeth — who had unmistakably been in desperate need of pseudo-fatherly approval for some time. Intellectual one-upmanship ensued.  

Swishing warm beer around in my mouth, I, too, looked for a dignified way out while rocking myself on my feet, trying to balance imperceptibly: first on my heels, then on the toes. Looking around the room I heard the foreign folk cackle complacently. I suddenly no longer wanted anyone to approve of me nor did I see anyone else to praise.

A few months after the shindig I heard that the Big Yin was toying with a move to Abkhazia. Admittedly I would then be hard-pressed not to overesteem him yet again. But I’ve recently left Tbilisi and carry a lingering antipathy for it, as if it were a hit song played to death on the radio and in every store across the land.

That’s when you catch yourself humming the said tune, smack your forehead and rue the day you stepped out of the house. 

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Select Enlightenment:

H. Aronson, Georgian: A Reading Grammar (Bloomington: Slavica, 1990).