treacherous things at a time. Grads were conceived by Soviet munitions designers to frighten incoming infantry, not for precision. The effect was, predictably, devastating. The attacks rarely hit anything strategic. Sometimes they simply decapitated innocent pedestrians brave enough to venture out for food or supplies. The Georgians would answer by firing the same inaccurate grads at the Abkhaz positions.
From our nighttime perch on the veranda, we had a perfect view of the entire bay. It would have been possible to watch the movements of naval ships or patrol boats. Except that neither side had a real navy.
Life went on, amid the bombardments. From my post along the veranda, I occasionally heard cries of passion wafting from rooms of the sanatorium. I wondered if it could be Marina. I wondered if she was gleefully taking revenge on the wives of those haughty military generals. They had sometimes vacationed at the sanatorium alone, away from their military husbands. Perhaps Marina was making the most of those oversized beds, before the war took that away from her.
More cease-fires came and went, and as missiles continued to rain down on the city, a silence descended. The wide avenues, lined by incongruously pastel buildings and botanical gardens, emptied by the day. Pedestrians deserted the promenade along the seafront, where ships full of tourists had docked just a summer before. The exodus began with the start of the war. Now it accelerated. It was a gradual march out of the capital, done stealthily, like a family facing eviction. Just as no one wants the neighbors to see the truck backing up at the door, the men who could have fought at the front did not want to be seen abandoning their city. They seemed to look away on their way out, avoiding eye contact.
THE STREETS STREAMED with women dragging bags, bright woven bags with stripes, full of family albums, heirlooms, and clothes. Bags became a main topic of discussion. Who was selling them, where to buy them, when more might arrive at the bazaar? Which kinds were strongest and which would rip, which were the easiest to sling over one’s shoulder, which ones were waterproof? Once the bags were filled, families would haul them to a curbside and wait for a passing bus to come, at least during times when the only road out was not cut by battles. The lucky drove out with their cars stacked high with belongings. But the preferred method of escape was through the airport.
Of course, by now, scheduled passenger planes were no longer flying. People wanted out, not in. Getting onto one of the departing planes was a matter of persistence, luck, and social position. I had an unfair advantage. At the press center, a man handled getting journalists out of the capital.
Aleksandr Khaindrava was the uncle of Sukhumi’s military commandant—the actor Giorgi Khaindrava, whom I’d met on my first trip. A septuagenarian, Alexander projected the avuncular aura of a southern college professor. He occupied a room in Stalin’s summer retreat. As a young man, he’d grown up in China, in the city of Kharbin, among a community of Soviet exiles who fled amid the Bolshevik Revolution. His King’s English empowered him to deal with the press. Fewother people around spoke English at all, and he delighted in me as a captive audience.
ALEKSANDR KHAINDRAVA WAS a man shipwrecked by the shifting fortunes of empires and exile. This made a lonely soul of him. And so, instead of expediting my way out of the city, he impeded it. He pretended not to know when the next plane full of Georgian paramilitaries would land, making space for escapees. On an old plastic rotary phone, his long crinkled fingers dialed the numbers for the airport with excruciating slowness. He knew himself that the city’s telephone lines were so bad that barely one call in a hundred might get through.
When Aleksandr did get through to the airport, he’d often say, beaming, “I’m so sorry, the plane just left.” For him it
From our nighttime perch on the veranda, we had a perfect view of the entire bay. It would have been possible to watch the movements of naval ships or patrol boats. Except that neither side had a real navy.
Life went on, amid the bombardments. From my post along the veranda, I occasionally heard cries of passion wafting from rooms of the sanatorium. I wondered if it could be Marina. I wondered if she was gleefully taking revenge on the wives of those haughty military generals. They had sometimes vacationed at the sanatorium alone, away from their military husbands. Perhaps Marina was making the most of those oversized beds, before the war took that away from her.
More cease-fires came and went, and as missiles continued to rain down on the city, a silence descended. The wide avenues, lined by incongruously pastel buildings and botanical gardens, emptied by the day. Pedestrians deserted the promenade along the seafront, where ships full of tourists had docked just a summer before. The exodus began with the start of the war. Now it accelerated. It was a gradual march out of the capital, done stealthily, like a family facing eviction. Just as no one wants the neighbors to see the truck backing up at the door, the men who could have fought at the front did not want to be seen abandoning their city. They seemed to look away on their way out, avoiding eye contact.
THE STREETS STREAMED with women dragging bags, bright woven bags with stripes, full of family albums, heirlooms, and clothes. Bags became a main topic of discussion. Who was selling them, where to buy them, when more might arrive at the bazaar? Which kinds were strongest and which would rip, which were the easiest to sling over one’s shoulder, which ones were waterproof? Once the bags were filled, families would haul them to a curbside and wait for a passing bus to come, at least during times when the only road out was not cut by battles. The lucky drove out with their cars stacked high with belongings. But the preferred method of escape was through the airport.
Of course, by now, scheduled passenger planes were no longer flying. People wanted out, not in. Getting onto one of the departing planes was a matter of persistence, luck, and social position. I had an unfair advantage. At the press center, a man handled getting journalists out of the capital.
Aleksandr Khaindrava was the uncle of Sukhumi’s military commandant—the actor Giorgi Khaindrava, whom I’d met on my first trip. A septuagenarian, Alexander projected the avuncular aura of a southern college professor. He occupied a room in Stalin’s summer retreat. As a young man, he’d grown up in China, in the city of Kharbin, among a community of Soviet exiles who fled amid the Bolshevik Revolution. His King’s English empowered him to deal with the press. Fewother people around spoke English at all, and he delighted in me as a captive audience.
ALEKSANDR KHAINDRAVA WAS a man shipwrecked by the shifting fortunes of empires and exile. This made a lonely soul of him. And so, instead of expediting my way out of the city, he impeded it. He pretended not to know when the next plane full of Georgian paramilitaries would land, making space for escapees. On an old plastic rotary phone, his long crinkled fingers dialed the numbers for the airport with excruciating slowness. He knew himself that the city’s telephone lines were so bad that barely one call in a hundred might get through.
When Aleksandr did get through to the airport, he’d often say, beaming, “I’m so sorry, the plane just left.” For him it
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