was a reprieve that meant another hour of conversation over tea, sixty minutes less loneliness in a country that was his, yet not altogether his, in a war that was neither his nor anyone’s in particular.
The airport, once I did reach it in spite of Aleksandr’s gentleman’s loneliness-laden chivalry, was a war zone of a different kind.
When one of the planes would land, near-riots ensued. Screaming women fought with the paramilitaries, themselves trying to escape. The fighters waved Kalashnikovs and barged their way into the planes. The power of their weapons determined who would get on. The battles were nonsensical. The planes landed and took off until everyone who wanted out was out. Then the fighting would die down again. Ethics held little sway. It was often women and children last.
There was, however, one cardinal rule.
The dead were given priority.
In Georgia, the dead are more alive than the living. The culture enshrines a cult of funerals and wakes. Georgians—as well as Abkhaz and many in the Caucasus—feast around the graves of their departed every year on their birthdays. They leave succulent food, jugs of wine, and even cigarettes for the dead.
The dead.
They were stacked in simple zinc coffins and loaded onto the planes. Not military aircraft—just more requisitioned former Aeroflot passenger jets.
A fighter with a clenched face guided me up the ladder and past the screaming women and shouting paramilitaries. The Georgian custom of chivalrous hospitality can reduce one to a state of embarrassment. This was, after all, a flying hearse, and I was jumping the line. Below the plane echoed the shrieks of women and yells of men, and the larger sense of noisy Georgian chaos of the time. But inside, those shimmering, clean, perfect zinc rectangles of coffins stacked high conferred a feeling of pedantic order.
The fighter took me into the cockpit. The Pilot was a thickset man with a pencil mustache. He welcomed me in the same cheerful, oblivious Georgian spirit, as if I had walked into a wedding party, not a plane of rotting bodies.
From the cockpit, the Pilot watched nervously out the window as more people jammed aboard the plane. I tried to open the door to the cockpit to take a photo of the cabin, but it was so overloaded with coffins, refugees, and fighters that I had trouble pushing it open. The air was stifling, one hundred degrees of sweltering humidity.
His face turned from apprehension to anger. He looked at a weight indicator dial nervously. “We’re overloaded by thirty percent. We’ve been flying regularly twenty percent overweight,” he told me. “But thirty is pushing it. You see the condition this plane is in. The tires are bald. The fuel is of rotten quality; I think they’ve been watering it down.”
The Pilot put on his headset and barked at the dispatcher. “We’re not taking off. Do you want us all to die or something? We’re overweight. Unload some of them or I’m not flying anywhere.”
No one budged.
I could hear commotion coming from outside the cockpit. It swung open, and a fighter glared at the Pilot, gripping his AK. “Start those damn engines or we’ll bring another pilot and leave you here.”
The Pilot swore and began going through the preflight checklist. Sweat accumulated on his forehead. The engines roared to life. We taxiedto the runway and then went all the way back to the end of it—to give us as much length as possible to take off. The plane groaned and picked up speed. We hurled toward the end of the runway. We lifted off with only a few feet to spare.
FROM THE WINDSHIELD , I watched the crowd of waiting women would-be escapees with their woven bags. They and the fighters left around them slowly faded from view. We passed over those bright mandarin groves full of wandering cows, derelict tea plantations, and the bougainvillea-lined main road along the beach. That misleadingly serene beach, devoid of holidaymakers, devoid of women in bikinis, devoid
The airport, once I did reach it in spite of Aleksandr’s gentleman’s loneliness-laden chivalry, was a war zone of a different kind.
When one of the planes would land, near-riots ensued. Screaming women fought with the paramilitaries, themselves trying to escape. The fighters waved Kalashnikovs and barged their way into the planes. The power of their weapons determined who would get on. The battles were nonsensical. The planes landed and took off until everyone who wanted out was out. Then the fighting would die down again. Ethics held little sway. It was often women and children last.
There was, however, one cardinal rule.
The dead were given priority.
In Georgia, the dead are more alive than the living. The culture enshrines a cult of funerals and wakes. Georgians—as well as Abkhaz and many in the Caucasus—feast around the graves of their departed every year on their birthdays. They leave succulent food, jugs of wine, and even cigarettes for the dead.
The dead.
They were stacked in simple zinc coffins and loaded onto the planes. Not military aircraft—just more requisitioned former Aeroflot passenger jets.
A fighter with a clenched face guided me up the ladder and past the screaming women and shouting paramilitaries. The Georgian custom of chivalrous hospitality can reduce one to a state of embarrassment. This was, after all, a flying hearse, and I was jumping the line. Below the plane echoed the shrieks of women and yells of men, and the larger sense of noisy Georgian chaos of the time. But inside, those shimmering, clean, perfect zinc rectangles of coffins stacked high conferred a feeling of pedantic order.
The fighter took me into the cockpit. The Pilot was a thickset man with a pencil mustache. He welcomed me in the same cheerful, oblivious Georgian spirit, as if I had walked into a wedding party, not a plane of rotting bodies.
From the cockpit, the Pilot watched nervously out the window as more people jammed aboard the plane. I tried to open the door to the cockpit to take a photo of the cabin, but it was so overloaded with coffins, refugees, and fighters that I had trouble pushing it open. The air was stifling, one hundred degrees of sweltering humidity.
His face turned from apprehension to anger. He looked at a weight indicator dial nervously. “We’re overloaded by thirty percent. We’ve been flying regularly twenty percent overweight,” he told me. “But thirty is pushing it. You see the condition this plane is in. The tires are bald. The fuel is of rotten quality; I think they’ve been watering it down.”
The Pilot put on his headset and barked at the dispatcher. “We’re not taking off. Do you want us all to die or something? We’re overweight. Unload some of them or I’m not flying anywhere.”
No one budged.
I could hear commotion coming from outside the cockpit. It swung open, and a fighter glared at the Pilot, gripping his AK. “Start those damn engines or we’ll bring another pilot and leave you here.”
The Pilot swore and began going through the preflight checklist. Sweat accumulated on his forehead. The engines roared to life. We taxiedto the runway and then went all the way back to the end of it—to give us as much length as possible to take off. The plane groaned and picked up speed. We hurled toward the end of the runway. We lifted off with only a few feet to spare.
FROM THE WINDSHIELD , I watched the crowd of waiting women would-be escapees with their woven bags. They and the fighters left around them slowly faded from view. We passed over those bright mandarin groves full of wandering cows, derelict tea plantations, and the bougainvillea-lined main road along the beach. That misleadingly serene beach, devoid of holidaymakers, devoid of women in bikinis, devoid
Similar Books
