five days

Fourteen years ago today, war blossomed on the border of Georgia and Russia. The breadcrumbs are all too familiar, the military exercises brushing against the edge of a foreign country, the saber rattling, the bland fabricated excuse, and then the memory for so many of tanks on the main streets. Within five days, Georgia had lost 25% of its territory, some say more like 33%. What gives me pause is how this story is so invisible now, forgotten, not even a footnote. Bush was president then, and I frown every time I go to the airport here because that highway is named after him, the man who did nothing while innocent people were displaced, and soldiers died. The reward for posturing is paid with the blood of strangers.

Today, the anniversary carries a note so bitter, so sour for me, the outsider. One nation can be invaded by Russia and abandoned, while Ukraine is given mountains, both children of that dysfunctional Soviet family that had a messy divorce, but why are they the favorite child, and we are the outcast?

There are no answers to these questions, at least not ones we want to hear.

I have been to Kiev a number of times, working on commercials. If you walk in the street and want to buy some doll for your daughter, chances are the seller speaks English, and has a warm smile that flashes a missing tooth, or gold ones. I liked it there, buying cheap wine, working long hours in ancient soundstages with good people. They knew how to drink and dance when the job was over. But at the same time, Kiev was the home of countless topless bars and massage parlors. One woman working on the film shoot confided to me that if she did not find work as an assistant director - the only other job she could get was bartending in a strip club, or dancing on a pole. I saw Kiev differently then, from that inside perspective. Me, the innocent traveler managing visual effects work, taking a picture of a place called the Red Lion because I liked the neon, having no idea there was a strip club behind those tall doors. Not for a second, did it cross my mind this was a place to live.

From the first trip to Tbilisi, even in the brutal heat of July I felt like I could be myself here. That was ten years ago, after the country was invaded, the economy crippled and yet I do not think I drank water as sweet and kind, as I did on the fountains that dotted the main street - Rustaveli, where the tanks rolled and now my daughter skips, on the way to buy a late night ice cream. Why Georgia was left to defend itself, and why this is not even a story any more, while the world wraps itself around a war in Ukraine is a bitter pill to swallow. I see Americans saying over and over “I stand with Ukraine” and wonder where they were in 2008, and if they would have done the same for Georgia. Maybe it is all a false sense of action, fueled by Facebook and some bizarre idea that what your profile image says will accomplish anything. Paper tigers on computer screens.

I pass our neighbor, Ramaz in the middle of the day. I mention the anniversary to him, and his shoulders turn in, not a shrug, just him trying to express that there is nothing to say. I tell him “I remember.” I think maybe it means something, but he stays there, hands on the railing, saying nothing, and then goes inside.