On figs and friendships...

This time last year I was in Georgia, on a train to Tbilisi – the final destination of our team assignment. Yulya and I were just cooling off after a huge fight we had in Batumi. We fought viciously throughout the trip. Mostly about work. Sometimes about logistics. And yet, during that month of constant travel, hard work and occasional nights spent sharing a bed, the two of us had grown close. Yulya told me that I snored. She also said that for an Armenian girl, I am rather prissy. When I was sick in Batumi, she woke David up in the middle of the night and the two of them went roaming the streets in search of a drugstore to get me medicine.

In Tbilisi we stayed in the center of the city, off of Chavchavadze, in a four story palace with lacquered parquet, marble staircases, infinite bedrooms, fountains in private courtyard... It only cost us $100 a night ($33.33… each). The luxury was astounding. The comfort of the place was priceless.

We were wrapping up our work – cleaning the data and writing the report. We worked hard – we were a good team. During our breaks we’d take trips to the nearby internet café, walk all over the center of the city, peep into luxurious and ridiculously expensive stores, wondering whether anyone was able to afford buying anything there. Sometimes Yulya asked me to have a cigarette with her on the balcony where we’d hang out, talking about boys, David’s religious views, life in general…We lived on bread, ham, tomatoes, Viola cheese, ice-cream and fruit that we couldn’t seem to get enough of. One day I bought white figs – the first of the season. “What are these?” asked Yulya, frowning at what looked like giant green dumplings. “Oh my god, these are amazing,” she said, as she bit into one. “I’m going to eat them every day. Like every day!” She said that every time she really liked something. We only had three more days left. Yulya and David were going to Ukraine, I was heading home, to Armenia. It was a teary parting.

A month later, Georgia escalated war by invading South Ossetia. Russia retaliated by bombing the hell out of every single strategic military target in Georgia, including Poti and the cities where we had stayed only weeks earlier. Abkhazia, in its turn, got all hot and bothered. “Can you believe this shit?” Yulya would ask me over IM from Lviv. “I know, it’s crazy. We were just there!” I’d write her back from Yerevan. It was hard to imagine what it would be like had we been there then.

Coming back to the States felt like I had just escaped something dark and evil, even though all I saw of that war was from the screen of my mother’s TV. I returned to Richmond. School started. Yulya moved to DC. A couple of months later Yulya and David broke up. I went to see a shrink. Life took over with its everyday routine. I missed Yulya but I hardly thought about Tbilisi…

It is only now that I realize how much I miss it – the month in Georgia, those last few days. It all seems surreal – like one long, kaleidoscopic day. It all seems centuries away. And yet, when I close my eyes, I can see Yulya’s face as she’s biting into a fig... They were, indeed, truly amazing figs.