Good Friday

This post has nothing to do with Tate or Boo, both of whom are knee-deep in their own adventures. It is a long post, written about an experience that I had in Georgia that I hope to submit to a literary publication here in Portland. I thought that it would be appropriate to share today, Good Friday, as we reflect on our faith.



George lived on a mandarin orange farm in a town called “Fig.” Or rather, that is its English translation from the Georgian word “leghva.” George himself always mispronounced his town name as “lekhvi”, so people thought that he lived in a place called “Puppy.” Maybe it was details like this that made it so easy for people to rob people like us, and that eventually left George in an open field with no cell phone, no wallet, no shoes nor belt, watching his taxi driver speed off into the distance through a cloud of mandarin dust. But the great thing about living in a town called Fig that grows mandarins is that people are always giving you bags upon bags of free fruit, particularly during the fall harvest. So, when Warren sent out a text message to the four of us, suggesting that we go hiking during one of the incredibly abundant fall school holidays, George offered to bring the mandarins.

We came from all parts. George, who grew up on the rowing team at an elite preparatory in Connecticut now lived in Leghva; Ross, the harmonica-playing Catholic-Buddhist from New York now lived in a tiny village near the war zone of Abkhazia; Warren, the nearly 7 foot tall balding and perpetually smiling Marylander was now a resident of an idyllic mountain town that was covered in lilacs each spring; and I was a 24 year old former Texas sorority girl that now lived in a debunked Soviet cement factory called Kaspi (meaning “Windy.”)

The four of us headed out in the early morning mist through the town of Kazbegi and stared up at a little brown square perched atop the mountain: Tsminda Sameba, an ancient cathedral and the goal of our morning hike. We were going hiking because we wanted an invigorating morning workout, because we enjoyed each other’s company and light banter, because we wanted to take in the incredible views on our ascent and because we wanted to feel gladiators when we finally reached the summit. But most of all, we were going hiking because we were young, happy and healthy Peace Corps volunteers that donned steel-toed hiking boots and double-lined North Face jackets, and because we could. Needless to say, we didn’t encounter many Georgians along the path – not that there was an actual “path” to mention. Yet, about a third of the way up the mountain, we did encounter two.

We had stopped at an outcropping of rocks that offered a generous view of the town below and leaned our backs against the sundrenched boulders, catlike, trying to warm up. As George passed around the water and mandarins, we heard a voice. “Ah! Hello, young people!” a woman’s voice sliced through the mountain air. We looked down to see the owner of the voice, a darkly dressed middle aged woman, and a young boy making their way towards us, slowly and methodically.

Georgian women never ceased to amaze me, particularly when they were hiking. Wearing perfectly pressed long skirts and sweaters and with their dark hair perfectly coiffed, they clamored over rock and stream clad in spot-free, high-polished heels. They never stumbled, fell, swore, or even sweat. It was sort of inspirational and disconcerting at the same time. Our fellow hikers approached us with shy smiles, amused to see others, particularly Americans, along this arduous and lonely trek. We offered our mandarins to them with outstretched hands, mirroring their own custom back to them by begging – even ordering – them to SIT! EAT! PLEASE! They politely refused and continued on past us, woman and boy, swinging a large straw bag between them as they went.

We sat a little longer, gathering our energy and mandarin peels, of which we now had enough of to start a productive compost pile, and started again. It was another two hours before we finally reached the summit, and when we did, we were greeted with howling, icy winds that found all of the secret places that our coats and socks forgot to hide, and chilled us to the bone. The sky was blindingly bright, and the country of Georgia unfolded before us: its hills and valleys that rolled in hues of greens and browns, its wisps of smoke rising upwards from wood stoves that warmed houses and cooked hot khachapuri, its rivers that flowed and converged rapidly downstream and snatched children off of my town’s riverbanks each summer, the street vendors that sold petrol and notebooks covered with pictures of Britney Spears and unfiltered cigarettes, all in one place. I zipped my coat up over my nose and looked up at the magnificent structure that loomed over us. It was erected in the 14thcentury and stood solid: neither its design nor its construction have been altered since. It was made of stones measuring two feet thick on all sides, and stepping inside it was like entering a tomb: cold, silent, holy, and dark. The only light that entered was from tiny little rectangular holes that dotted the tops of the walls, letting in beams of light that fell softly onto the bare earthen floor.

I stepped over the threshold and onto the cathedral floor, and as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I made out a figure. A woman. I blinked and saw that tiny candles had been lit all around the room and were pressed against the stone walls, wax silently dripping into little golden puddles on the floor. The woman, the very woman that we had met along the trail, stood hunched over, bent at the waist, feet dragging along the dusty floor. She did not look at us. She was chanting in a low, moaning voice - a voice that sounded desperate and pleading, that was strained from a tightness in the chest that only comes from deep sadness. She was wearing a long, thick black iron chain around her neck that dragged on the floor behind her as she trudged across the floor. Each link was the size of my palm. I had no discreteness, no politeness, no ability to conceal my awe, like a child that sees a deformed figure for the first time and hasn’t yet learned how to conceal his curiosity or amazement.

George, Warren and Ross turned and left, but I stood still, awestruck. She continued moaning, chanting, and dragging, walking slowly around the interior of the church’s perimeter, stopping at times to cross herself or to kneel along the wall beside the candles. I began to cry for reasons I did not understand – I was witnessing something very intimate between this woman and God, a ritual of corporal mortification that was obviously physically painful but also beautiful in its rawness and purity.

She encircled the church three times. Then she took the chains off and began to pack them back into her bag again, the ritual complete. The boy stood up from the corner where he had patiently been sitting and watching, and dusted off his pants. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, but I think that in my colloquial and broken Georgian it came to something like, “Excuse me, my dear woman, but is it all good?” She explained that her sister, the boy’s mother, was dying of breast cancer, and that it was believed that this church, Tsminda Sameba (Saint Trinity) had the power to heal her. She had been instructed to fast for three days, and then walk up the mountain with these heavy iron chains, put them around her neck, and carry them around the three corners of the church, three times. This, she believed, was the only thing that would be able to save her dying sister: this physical manifestation of ardent and unwavering faith. I walked outside, shaking and humbled, not able to utter why I was so affected by this woman and her act. I had nothing to say.

The four of us decended from Tsminda Sameba silently, finding our forgotten mandarin peels along the way, and tucked them gently into our pockets and backpacks. We walked down off the mountain, packed our bags and headed back to our respective villages: Leghva, Kaspi, Sagarelo and Zugdidi.