Max is taking me for a tour of the main Sukhumi waterfront. For me this means a stroll along a closed road with a tropical park on the one side and a curious collection of buildings on the other.
The buildings go from the fresh and shiny Ritsa hotel to the burned out shell of the Hotel Abkhazia which stands in glorious ruins as a reminder of the bloody 1992 war that gave the Abkhazians freedom from Georgia on one hand and the armed peace that created this gilded cage which trapped the Abkhazians in and the rest of the world out.
It is ironic that the Hotel Akbhazia is a ruinous symbol of the war but I was told it actually burned down a couple of years before the war.
There are a few restaurants in the few blocks that we stroll. I get the impression that a strange face here would be noticed among the locals pretty quickly. Elderly men play chess and backgammon near the large blue pavilion where I had gotten a superb cup of coffee earlier in the day.
The shadows of the palm trees grow longer over the road and reach towards the buildings. Out on the water, the massive piers that just into the Black Sea begin to turn orange. One has small black figures moving about the restaurant perched over Sukhumi Bay. The other is deserted except for a lone fisherman hopefully perched like a shadow puppet over his potential dinner.
As we pass an outdoor patio, Max stops to talk to two people who were clearly from the outside world. After weeks of being submerged in
Russian language that was just now becoming a melodic sound, it was a plunge in cold water to hear Teddy’s friendly booming Irish lilt, and his friend, when he made a less garrulous introduction, spoke in a Macedonian accent. Something is up!
Max introduced us. Teddy and his friend were part of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) whose mission as unarmed observers was to represent the United Nations in maintaining the peace between Georgia and Abkhazia. They were a part of a multinational team that took long walks in the woods which had once been described as one of the most heavily mined area in the world looking for signs of aggression. This was Teddy’s realm, hospitality. In the Caucasus, one of the most hospitable bunches of people in the world, the Irishman was able to come out large and more hospitable. I was no longer in Abkhazia when I accepted his invitation to sit down at the table. I was now in Teddy’s world.
For the next couple of hours, we talked all over the world, and I got to eat some amazing cheeses, fabulous fish, and some passable wines that were made superb by the company, the conversation, and the setting sun in this gilded cage called Abkhazia.
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