Victory, thy name is Cloud!

So I just finished, for the first time ever, reading a book in Russian. Garri Potter i Uznik Azkabana. Five hundred and seven pages.

Oh. My. Gawd.

It took me a week, what in English would take two days. (Excuse me in advance if this blog is littered with idiomatically clumsy sentences—reading this much Russian has had a noticeable effect on my spoken English too.)

I haven’t read an English language book all week—a long time for me. Russian print is swirling around in my head; I can’t walk down the street without finding myself absent-mindedly repeating some word or another—sometimes without knowing for sure if it’s a real word or one I’ve just made up. It’s incredible and …*sigh*

The funny thing is that the achievement is made more amazing not only by the idioms and expressions and words I seem to have effortlessly picked up and integrated (erratically) into my speech—and Lord knows there’s bunches of words that bounced OFF my head too—but rather by this one tiny, almost ridiculous realization which has swooped me into euphoria.  Namely:

I know two words for cloud.

!!!

I know, it seems useless. After all, I am no meteorologist. I am no weather reporter. I am no sky-gazer.

But two words! This is victory indeed! Because it provides—flexibility. *sighs happily* Flexibility is power, I have decided. I can choose among words…or in this case, between words. I can be the master of my own nuances!

I am on cloud two, I tell you!

It occurs to me I also know now two words for werewolf. I typically discuss neither clouds nor werewolves at length, but I sense integration of both into my daily conversation for at least a while.

Russian: “Hello, Ruth. How are you?”
Ruth: “I am well. Is that a cloud (1)? I am a werewolf (1)”
Russian: “Uh, are you pointing at the pavement?”
Ruth: “Clouds (2) are different in America. Are you also a werewolf (2)?

Good times. Ah, and I now have five words for interrupt. Several ways to describe smirks, bitter smiles, glinting eyes, exploding with fury, exchanging glances, examining things… Precautions. Invisibility Cloaks. Wiping one’s tears/sweat. Aiming one’s wand… Yes, several ways of aiming weapons, assuming all weapons are wielded similarly to wands…

Life, fellow English speakers, is GRAND!    But now I must bid you adieu, for I have two clouds to gaze at.

tale from another no-man’s land

The Russian invasion of Georgia taught me what my local friends had always admonished—plans are illusions. So when an American friend and I were still in Georgia a few months on and on a whim decided to visit Turkey that weekend, I didn’t stress about the unplanned nature of the thing. Just grabbed a small backpack and met him at the bus station. We’d find a way there somehow; no need to stress on the details.

We bought a so-called “direct” bus ticket to Kars, a town not far from Ani, the ancient Armenian capital now located in Turkey.

At the border of the two countries, the passengers disembarked and walked through the Georgian border control, through no-man’s-land and to the Turkish border control. The bus rolled through separately, with our luggage checked by whosoever wished to do the job.

B and I were in the middle of the line, but the guards had already spotted us as foreign. Everyone else was either Turkish or Georgian and we were the only ones bothering to read the signs.

One officer gestured for us to follow him from the line. We looked at each other then followed.

He led us into a squat brick building and down a corridor. We were shown into a small room, sparely set up. A large photograph of Ataturk looked down on us and the two chairs before his desk. There was nothing else in the room.

We sat down. He sat down. He had our passports.

We tried to look like we weren’t watching our passports, and like we were unconcerned about being brought to a private location. B settled this by looking mildly constipated and I smiled hopefully.

The officer nodded at us and looked down at our passports. “You are American.”

“Yes.”

“That is bad.”

Truly there are few responses to that judgment when a uniformed representative of another country’s security is stating this while holding onto your passports in a remote outpost of the world.

I think I went for “ah?” and didn’t quite have the wherewithal to see how B was handling the news. I could feel Ataturk’s eyes on us.

The officer stared at us, then grinned.

“I am joking.”

On grateful and happy jelly legs we were escorted back to the bus.

We had just settled quite into the loveliness of the landscape when the driver pulled up to a station oasis in the middle of nowhere and told us to get out.  That the direct ticket was sort-of direct. A little minivan would be here in 45 minutes. We could take it to Kars. It would be free.

I climbed out, reveling in the stark beauty. A white star and crescent were emblazoned on a hill opposite a small stretch of water.

B looked at me through the bus-dust as it pulled away. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

I explained.

He studied me and then asked respectfully, “How good are you at telling time in Turkish?”

I blanched. “No, I’m pretty sure.”  Then I walked toward the short building opposite.

B followed. “Shouldn’t we wait here?”

“Nah. We should have tea. We’re in Turkey. Don’t worry. I’ve never been wrong yet in telling time in Turkish.” Then again, I’d never been right yet either.

I’ve had time to look back on that Turkish officer and his little joke. I suppose few Americans cross into Turkey overland through Georgia, and I suppose my smile and B’s constipated look were just too tempting. I can see that I should never be a person in uniform; my sense of humor isn’t cut out for it either.

Across the water from the station

My Russian: An Unrequited Love Affair

I love Russian. I love the sound of it and the feel of it. It’s a language more beautiful than tiramisu is delicious, and that is saying a lot.

My love for Russian, like many passionate affairs, is one-sided. Spoken by me, that language to melt your sins …stumbles.

Exhibit A: Visiting Moscow that first time, I fall desperately in love with peach juice.   At a kiosk, I request “the juice of the fruit of the orange paint.”

Yes, Russia enamored me; I sank into linguistic bliss. Back in the US, my professors signed me up for two intensive classes, and before long I was overwhelmed and had resorted to triaging words, studying “important words” and ignoring “irrelevant words I shall never use in my entire life.”

These last included those pertaining to the household, most particularly bed furnishing.

Foolish child. Thrice life would show me the error of my choice.

Russian Life Lesson One: Crime and Punishment

One particular week, when Russian Speech focused on “the apartment” Intermediate Russian was centered on crime. Jolly, I know.

We had just learned how to use the instrumental case to indicate the means by which a crime is committed (ie with a knife).  This was fascinating, and so I ignored my upcoming oral exam in the other class.

I did have a plan, though. I often have plans, and they are often genius. In this particular case, the plan was to duck low and cram as many words as I could while the others were tested first.

This genius, cutting-edge plan was destroyed by my professor’s unfortunate predilection for outsmarting me.

“Ruth,” he said as I ducked in and made like I was invisible, “you can start. Please describe your apartment and your roommate.”

I thought on my feet.  Which was quite something, considering I was sitting on an entirely different part of my body.

“My apartment,” I said in flawless Russian, “is beautiful.”

I looked at him with resolve and he nodded, doubtless waiting for me to describe my carpet, my duvet cover and my remodeled kitchen. But I had other plans. “But my roommate is a murderer!”

His pen stopped moving over his pad.

“She is a skinhead wanted by the police for theft, and she embezzles money, and I suspect that on Thursday she killed my cat.” Blessedly, I suddenly remembered a household word and whipped it out for my A+. “She killed it—by toothbrush!”

I was told to stay after class.

Russian Life Lesson Two: Meanwhile, In the Bedroom…

A week later, Intermediate Russian turned to “your house,” and my weekly quiz included the following unwelcome question: List four things found on your bed.

I thought hard.

I answered:

1. another bed
2. my husband
3. my lover
4. my chauffeur

I got half a point for my husband.

Russian Life Lesson Three: The Curious Case of the Mustard

A year later, I picked up a book by Ivan Bunin and tried to read it without a dictionary. Not far into the story, I noted an odd thing. Namely—talking mustard.

“D,” I asked a friend, “is Bunin supposed to be surreal?”

“Um, yeah, I think so,” D answered, and like a total dork, I didn’t check.

A month later, I’m in Moscow again for a wintery semester. The city isn’t exactly easy on strangers, so I welcome a weekend trip to Saint Petersburg, that gorgeous Venice of the East that Peter the Great built.

The train ride inevitably brings the weary traveler into the imperial city around 6 or 7am, and the first thing I did upon dropping my luggage in the room was to take a freezing cold shower (for lack of hot water, not a masochistic preference) and roam the city.

When I returned at night, I noticed a slight problem.  Gentle Reader, my bed had nothing on it. No other bed, no husband, no lover, no chauffeur, but also, and this was at least as regrettable: no sheets, no blankets and no pillows.

Have I mentioned it was winter? Have I mentioned that I have never—TO THIS DAY—bothered to learn these critical words?

I braced myself and went downstairs to ask for some bedding. Before I reached the rather strict matron in her office, I snuck up to the guard, hoping for an ally.

“Sir Guard?” He clearly was rarely addressed this way and hid a smile.  “What is it called in Russian, that small thing on the bed that is under your head?”

“Under your little ear.”

Um, well, if you want to go there. “Yes, under my little ear.”

“Under your little ear.”

I try to discern if he’s a pervert or just mad. “Yes, the thing under your little ear, what is it called.”

“It’s called under-your-little-ear,” he explains slowly.

“Oh God,” I say in English. “No wonder I never learnt that word.”

I thank him and tip-toe to the temperamental matron’s office. I knock. She’s not pleased to see me.

I smile hopefully. “Thank you again,” I say. ”I’m sorry for interrupting you, but I do not have an under-your-little-ear on my bed, or any of the other things.”

She’s irritated, very irritated. “Why didn’t you tell the mustard!?”

I gape. What is it with Russians and mustard?

“The mustard was on your floor today! Why didn’t you tell the mustard THEN?”

I’ve never considered telling mustard anything before. I don’t know where to begin answering this question. My stupefaction is only aggravating the situation immensely.  I try to have a rational conversation.  (Things always go wrong when I am forced to take this step.)

“I… I didn’t know that I should tell the mustard.”

“Oh? And who would you tell?”

Well, not the mustard.

“Now that the mustard isn’t here—now you want [insert immediately forgotten words for bedclothes]!”

“I can tell the mustard. Is the mustard in the kitchen?”

“The mustard WAS everywhere! In the kitchen, in the bathroom, everywhere!”

“And now? Is the mustard in fridge or in the cupboard?”

She’s really angry now.  “Why would the mustard be in the fridge?  The mustard has gone home!”

My brain, already exhausted from the long day, is beyond fried. It’s whizzing like a crazy deflated balloon. She begins to stomp out, grumbling loudly about my lack of consideration. I follow in a stupor. She grumbles along the corridor and past the friendly guard, who I barely see in my dizziness, and she grumbles up the stairs where I dazedly stop.

And then it occurs to me. I see a vision of a hot dog stand with a sign advertising ketchup and mustard. And the word for mustard is…different.

My Russian lessons brain began to scroll through short stories by Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and then it arrives at the answer; and there at the bottom of the steps I grabbed the word (so similar!) by its beautiful font and shout it up at her.

Most unexpectedly she storms down to shake me in laughter and I am half-hugged, half-heaved up the stairs. 

I’d muddled the word.  What I’d thought meant mustard was actually another word I’d considered irrelevant and useless: “cleaning lady.” No wonder she thought me crazy (or rude) asking if the cleaning lady lives in the fridge.

Perhaps it is no wonder that my love affair with Russian is a one-sided affair. At least I have my bed, my husband, my lover and my chauffeur to keep me warm.

FYI: the two words were: gorchitsa (mustard) and gornichnaya (cleaning lady). Come on, they’re awful similar.

Menu in a Tbilisi Restaurant - no longer serving Putin

War and Peace, a tale of class warfare

I had a Russian teacher once who didn’t much like me.  In her defense, I did not attend class with particular regularity.  In my defense, this was because she had committed two terrible indiscretions, the second being worse than the first:  she had a class favorite, and it wasn’t me.

Instead of witnessing such wrong-headedness, I took to lolling about in the park with my friends.  But come the final exam, I made sure to attend.  I am nothing if not a model of propriety.

It was an oral exam, and it was worth the bulk of our grade. 

“Ruth,” she said, “as you may have heard, we read War and Peace in class.”  I had not heard this.  To have heard this would have required me to associate with my classmates.

Instead of answering, I genteelly scraped my jaw off the floor and rearranged my features into a stretched, sub-par variation of “oh, did you not notice me in class?”

All this time she was looking at me from the top of her eyes, and I was steadily smiling back.  Maybe overly widely.  Never show fear, shock or complete consternation to the enemy.

“Ruth,” she said, “please tell me about Prince Andrei and Natasha.”

I nodded.  Like many a Russophile, after all, I HAD read the damn book, or at least the Peace part of it.  But in English, my friends.  Not in Russian.  Not after but three months of the language!  I could not FATHOM how the class had done it.  But fake it, I would. 

And so, with a polite cough, I passionately brought Tolstoy down a notch, to my simpleton’s grasp of Russian.

Once upon a time, there was a Frenchman called Napoleon.  Napoleon did not like Russia.  No!  Napoleon told himself, Russia must—suffer!  Russia—bad!  (This is Napoleon, not I.  I like Russia.  But Napoleon—No!)

Napoleon with many Frenchmen came to Russia, and then Napoleon—with pistols!  Bad!  Very bad!  Many pistols!  More than before!  The Russian people—sad!  War!  Many men come in to war!

Prince Andrei also.  But Prince Andrei loves Natasha!  Natasha additionally loves Prince Andrei’s!  They have met each other to dance in a nice place.  She is beautiful.  He is—there!  They dance!  And they love each other.

Then Prince Andrei asks Natasha to—live with him forever!  Natasha agrees!  Prince Andrei is in the war!  It is bad!  Natasha is at home.  France is bad!  Napoleon!  War!  Pistols!

Suddenly, Prince Andrei is—A gun!  No!  Pain!  In his body!  Prince Andrei—it is very sad!  Prince Andrei’s soul!—leaves him!  Forever!

It is very sad.  There, that is the anecdote of Prince Andrei and Natasha in War and Peace.  Thank you.

She looks at me.  I’m sweating and congratulating myself on my genius.  It is incidentally the first time I truly realize how flexible one becomes with a new language when one doesn’t have a full vocabulary.  And that one should always know the verb for dying.

“Ruth,” she says, in English now, “we only read one scene.  When they met, at the ball.  Not the whole book.” 

“Ah,” I say, growing hotter.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Ah, this is great.  I hadn’t realized I would get a vote here.  I am very good at advice.  I lean forward.  “If I were you, I would either fail me or give me an A+.”  I nod.  “I would lean toward the A+.”

She dismisses me.  I don’t get a chance to explain why I would give myself the A+.

My grade comes in two weeks later.  She’s had the audacity to give me a B+.  I fume.  I would have preferred a stronger statement, one way or another.  But I guess this is what she did, nick the pleasure from a high grade, showing ultimately the point is knowledge but also respect.

Years later we met again and I can say I was still not her class favorite.  And once again hers became the only Russian class I ever skipped.

I’m just sayin’….

I remember when my good buddy and former Peace Corps sitemate asked me if I knew the Russian for “it goes without saying.”

I looked at him for one long moment.  “Are you sure this is a phrase you need?”

“Yeah,” he answered seriously.  “I say it a lot.”

I admitted I had no idea what the Russian form of this idiom is—if indeed they’ve bothered to have their own version for a basically ridiculous expression—but that I thought he could get by perfectly well by simply omitting the phrase.

Instead of saying, for instance: “It goes without saying that when the sun shines we call it daytime,” he could simply say a) “When the sun shines we call it daytime,” or better yet, b) nothing at all.  Perhaps squint at the sun happily in silence or summat.

My friend felt my answer was lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, and squinted at the sun silently, ruminating perhaps on what else went without saying.

Then again, there also things that require saying.  That require spelling out.  In fact, two years on, I wonder if perhaps I prefer, indeed, to be told what goes without saying over not being told what requires saying.  But what sparks this, you ask, wondering if I will say…

Funny you should ask.

Flash forward to this weekend.  While the snow falls gently outside, I sat reading Paul de Man’s “The Rhetoric of Romanticism.”  I plugged through the book and even found interesting passages. 

Why “even?”  Am I implying the book’s boring or ill-crafted?  No.  But it’s been a long time since I bumped into a book like this.  An “academic” book of “scholarship.”  A book of literary criticism which doesn’t deign to translate the original texts it quotes at length into English.

Which would be fine if, say, the book was entitled “Die Redekunst der Romantik” and intended for German speakers.  Or “La Rhétorique de Romantisme” for French speakers.  Oui, then it would be fine.  Danke, I would say.  (Apologies for, uh, you know, language mistakes.)

You get my point.  Its title is in English, the author clearly prefers to write in English, and English-speakers are reading it.  So why is Holderlin cited only in German?  Why must I glaze past entire paragraphs of French only to find neither footnote nor in-text translation of the foreign material?  Is the literature cited not abundantly important—as in, say, the point of the entire book—such that the author doesn’t deign to translate it for his readers?

Now, when I was in college, I came across this often.  Back then I would curse my ignorance, my feeble mind and derelict priorities, and imagine I was missing the kernel of wisdom that could somehow make me a sufficiently knowledgeable person. 

No longer.  Now I mirror the scholar-author; I raise my own brow in disdain.  The author wants to appear smart, does he?  Or he wants to protect his teaching from the masses; why else would he raise a barrier like that, or rather, seeing it up, feign lowering it (after all he is writing an entire book supposedly elucidating the matter)?  Yes, yes, I know: he’s not writing for the masses. 

Meh.

Must literary criticism remain the domain of the select few who can puff themselves up with allusions and jargon, and feel important in the blank and frustrated gaze of the apes outside their pristine self-erected gates?  How banal.  I try to hush my ire, telling myself this book is from another time, when knowledge was considered the pleasure, office, vestige and flourish of a select few. 

And because I’m stubborn and know there’s what worth knowing in there, I trampled onward. 

Can I curse myself that at age 33, I still don’t know French and German?  I guess so, but the little dingdong hasn’t yet quoted a Russian (were there no Romantic Russians?) and I could quite read that just fine–I’ve traveled the world speaking a variety of languages; I will not blink in the face of French and German and imagine myself an ignoramus because the author treats me as such.  Nay, I will not blink! 

*blink*  Did I just call the author–  Oh.  Not that the author is a little dingdong, of course.  (Did I really say that?)

*imagines a world in which an irate reader calls me a little dingdong*

*realizes this implies I have a reader*

*smiles in bliss*

Anyhows, that journey’s over with now and I’ve gleaned what I could, not knowing any of the Romance languages.  I’ll have you know I tried; I read some poems and passages aloud in the hopes that spoken, the foreign words would conspire with me to share some of their meaning.  I may have made up interpretations wildly off-base.  Or written even better poetry. 

Or maybe not.  Maybe not at all.  Thanks for that ego tripper, de Man, my would-be teacher.

It goes without saying that…  Ah wait, let’s at least have integrity: I shall not say what goes without saying.  Let the phrase keep its honor and truth.  To be robbed of it in the speaking is just painfully wrong, and the more so in the writing.

What about you–any peeves to share? 

In Armenian Turkey--in a long-crumbling church in Ani

Proof I Don’t Sprechen Deutch, But I Try. God, Do I Try. ;-)

We were in Austria, visiting my mom’s cousin.  She wasn’t home, but she’d left the key with a neighbor in another building.

“You go get it,” my mom said, and stood sentinel by the door to the apartment building, in case someone came in or out, giving her access. Now, my mom does understand some German.  I, of course, do not.  So mayhap it wasn’t the wisest division of labor, but I trundled myself off anyway to find the neighbor in her building.

Ever the intrepid traveler with no fear of tackling conversation, somehow under the illusion that I must have the necessary tools for all communication, I pressed the elevator button and scrambled in my mind’s flotsam and jetsam of senseless words to find something German in there.

By the time the doors opened on her floor, I’d picked out some shiny and rarely used gems in my international lexicon.  I had it!

Now, my cousin’s last name is Junger.  Which, believe it or not, is relevant.  For this was my sentence, my first in German:

“Ich bin kleine Junger. Schlussel–nichts!”  After which I planned to shrug expressively.

In my mind, you see, the above sentence, cobbled together from a collage of German words floating about in the ether, meant: “I am the small Junger.  Key–not here!”

Really logical, no?  She’d know she could give me the key as I was related to my cousin.

I still think it might have worked, if she’d not been patrolling about at this very time downstairs, where she found my mom and chatted happily to her in grammatically correct German, giving her the key and waiting with her for me to give up knocking on her door an apartment over.

About a year later I finally asked a German-speaker what I’d said.

“I am a small young one.  Key–nothing.”

Well, we can’t all be Shakespeare.  Or Goethe.  :)  Or Rainer Maria Rilke…  HAWT writing that man had…  :)  (And absolutely randomly, are any of you guys Rilke fans?)

Random Vehicle in Eastern Anatolia

I don’t speak German. Or DO I…. :)

I flattened the shred of paper I’d been carrying around like a talisman, and showed it to the waitress. She squinted at it, then looked up. Over her shoulder, she loudly asked the diners if anyone knew the directions to the address in question. One woman answered.

Thing is, she answered in Georgian, and… I’m embarrassed to say it, but I never got very good at memorizing directions in Georgian. I turned to my fellow volunteer, but his vacant and mildly horrified expression told me we were pretty much screwed on this one.

I grimaced apologetically and in broken Georgian thanked the lady for trying to help us.

“Sprechen Sie Deutch?” she asked.

You know me by now, right?  I can’t drop a conversation short if it promises the chance to practice any language I know.  Or don’t.

I dug about in my brain, and came up with the answer.

“Nein.  Danke!”  I smiled beatifically and made for the door.

My fellow volunteer grabbed me by the arm and whirled me around.

“Are you mad?” he whispered.

“What?”

“Do you speak Russian or not?” he growled.

Ah. The light switched on.

I turned back to the helpful diner, and got our full directions in Russian. All was well with the world. I’d forgotten, in my wish to only speak Georgian in Tbilisi, that in a pinch I could use my Russian, too.

We, of course, did manage to get lost anyway, but that was more due to the fact that all Georgian street names have approximately 47 syllables too many in them, making them impossible to memorize. But over time, yes, we did get there.

Church along the River Road, Tbilisi

In the Beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was…

“Come and translate for me,” he said, and my gut sank.  It’s one thing to translate, you know, unofficially and with only your personal pride at stake.  I lost that a long time ago, linguistically speaking, at least.  But to actually translate at what amounted to an official meeting between representatives of two governments…

Let’s just say I was not thrilled.  Or, if we must cleave to honesty, I was set against it with all of my heart, and made this clear.

He wheedled and pled.  I stood firm.  He pulled puppy dog eyes.  I stood firmer.  He said, “Really, just come there and if I make a mistake, you’ll step in to help.”

Mmph.  I stared him.  Tried to discern his honesty.

“You can speak Russian, you know,” I groused.  He nodded. “Better than me,” I added.  I cut off his objection with a cold glare.

“Will you come?” he asked.

“You will speak.  And only if I think it would be helpful will I add a word here or there.”  He nodded. “And I am not responsible for any international disasters,” I added firmly.  He nodded again.

So the date was set.

And because it was Georgia, it was postponed.  Mind you, for any international development nuts out there, particularly those prone to laughing off all delays on other countries’ cultural foibles, I’ll tell you this was AT LEAST as much due to the expat as it was a local cultural phenomenon.  Let us not cast stones…

Anyway, the day did come.  I was summoned, and I went to the meeting.

“Please let me not cause an international catastrophe,” I prayed to the same God who saw fit for me to freeze during that winter like most of earth’s population.

So the meeting began, and to my surprise and gratitude, the man who’d asked for my help did indeed lead the conversation without expecting me to serve as a real translator.  I began to relax.

Pff.  Never begin to relax.  That is PRECISELY when international catastrophes sense a crack in your armor.

He was describing something and I’d drifted off somewhat.  He turned to me with a frown, his hand gesturing like he was sifting sand through his fingers.  I knew that mildly desperate look in his eyes and leaned forward to hear what word he needed.

“Forestry?” he asked.

Forestry?  FORESTRY?  What, he couldn’t pick a simple word?  FORESTRY?  Who KNOWS that word in a foreign language? Dude, I don’t even know what that means in ENGLISH.

I looked at him poisonously.

That was the only thing he asked of me.  I shrugged helplessly.  I didn’t cause an international scandal.

That night, however, I did look up forestry in the dictionary.  Learnt two different words for it.

I have never used those two words since.

New York

Falling Upon the Thorns of Language. Every Language.

It’s one thing to mess up in a foreign language.  And it’s quite another to do it in your own.

The Georgian language is its own language group.  Trust me, I’ve dabbled in enough to know: it’s unique.  Well, and I read what linguists tell me.  Ain’t no way knowing any other language can help one learn Georgian.

So when I made mistakes out yonder and felled nigh near everyone with my errors, I took it quite in stride.  Yes, maybe these were not my prouder moments, but they were, as they say, “teachable moments.”

Experience is the name men give their mistakes.

~ Oscar Wilde

Like the time I was in a hurtling minibus, full to the brim and beyond with villagers, and I meant to tell the driver I needed to get out.  In Georgia, you see, you travel precisely as far as you want to on a route, and then you yell, “Stop for me!”

Unless, of course, you’re me.  In which case you yell something more like:

“Stop me!  Stop me now!  Stop me here!  Stop me!”

As I said, these were not my brighter moments.

But in English, to err feels slightly dumber.  I mean, one has theoretically had years to cull words and expressions and to gain basic reading comprehension.  One ought not sound like one is speaking Georgian, then, you know?

When I was fifteen, I was selected to participate in a rather prestigious English competition of some sort.  (And yes, it’s worse when your mistake happens after you’ve been selected in hopes that you won’t embarrass your school in exactly such a way.)

We were asked to read a book and be ready to answer essay questions on the short stories within.  I was a voracious reader and wasn’t concerned at all.  Until I read the book.  Which was, I declare, full of the least interesting essays I’d ever read.  Mind you, these were travel essays, so it truly is almost unfathomable that I could have been bored so painfully, but I was.

My brain hurt with the effort of not revealing I’d found the stories almost uniformly insipid, uninspiring and turgid.  I was fifteen, and unaware that I was allowed to not like literature.  (I was also perhaps a mite judgmental.)

At any rate, all the shrouding of my true feelings must have exhausted every last gray cell, because I found myself suddenly, agonizingly unable to remember a rather basic word that I needed.  Believe it or not, considering how much I hated the book, I was looking for the word “awe-inspiring.”

Ahem.

So I squinted.  I screwed my eyes shut.  I breathed heavily and hit my forehead against my eraser.  And then I sadly wrote down:

awefull.

Yeah.  Not just the wrong word, but pathetically spelled.

Needless to say, I wasn’t called back for any further rounds.  And thusly ended my short flirtation with literary prestige.  :)

In My Defense: The Georgian Alphabet

Thwarted: A tale of pathos and Georgian swat teams, but no Thai food

Yes, it became common knowledge rather rapidly in Georgia that I would do just about anything for Thai food.  If I could swing a meeting in the capital, which boasted exactly one great Thai place, I would be pretty sure to time it such that a meal was in order.

Even when I had dysentery I managed to squeak in a visit to the Thai place.  At that time, I could barely even handle the scent of food, and plain rice was all I could stomach.  Still, I was there.

When I returned to my site–the name Peace Corps gives the village, town or city in which a volunteer resides–my host mother asked me if I’d really gone for Thai, sick as I was.  I sheepishly admitted that I had.

“But what could you eat?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Rice with dry bread,” I thought I said.  ”Rice with joy,” I actually said.  She collapsed in mirth and I left her for the facilities.

The only problem with my Thai addiction, other than the dearth of Thai food in Georgia, was that half the time I was there, the country managed to be politically unstable.

As a result, volunteers were pretty much told to steer clear of the capital for the most part.  Tragic.  So beautiful a capital, so ancient, and so beneficent in Thai food.

Finally the day came when we were allowed in Tbilisi (with restrictions.)  I stormed the city.  By this I mean I climbed into a shattered yet miraculously moving minibus and hurtled down the potholed highway to Tbilisi, where I fell out shaking and breathless about 45 minutes later.

“Come,” I said, and began the march from the river up through Old Town to the Thai place.  ”Nothing can keep me from Thai food now!  Nothing!”

My companion said nothing as we saw the first signs of a noticeable police presence.  I too maintained a prudent silence.  He might have cleared his throat as we ran past a barricade.  I may have glared back at him, but my memory’s hazy on that.

“Nothing,” I repeated firmly, and stalked forth.  We told ourselves everything was normal.

Old Town was pretty desolate.  We walked those tiny alleys and gorgeous balconied roads, finally emerging just a few streets down from the restaurant.  My internal soundtrack was almost back in happy gear.  Thai food was so close, so tantalizingly, deliciously, irresistibly close.  And everything had been calm and normal.  We’d been overly sensitive to the sight of the police.  I relaxed my shoulders.

Then we passed a huge swath of dark buses filled to the brim with soldiers.  I frowned, but we sallied onwards.

“I guess you really meant it when you said nothing would stop you,” my companion remarked.  I nodded silently, but I was beginning to feel perturbed.  I know:  late.

We turned the corner.  We had arrived.  It should have been the most joyous of moments.

But opposite us, across from the Thai place, were two huge groups of swat forces, dressed head to foot in black gear, including such bullet-proof vests as I’d only ever seen on Batman.  Huge truncheons, machine guns, glass barricades, the whole shebang.

We looked at them.  They looked at us.  My companion raised his hand to knock at the door.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“It’s locked,” he answered, as if we weren’t gazing at two hundred deaths’ worth of men in black.

“Gah!” I responded reasonably.  And grabbed his arm and began pulling us down the street and away.

“But I thought nothing would stop you–!” he protested.

“Nothing but swat teams,” I answered irritably, “Swat teams will stop me.”

We broke into a desperate jog.  No Thai food for us.  Not for weeks.

Foiled again.

What would you do, opposite a door with this painted on it? (That's what I did, too.) ;)