Soon it will have been a year since the prime minister of the puppet government of pro-Russian oligarch Ivanishvili officially proclaimed Georgia’s refusal to integrate into the European Union. Since then, protests in the country have known no respite. The autocratic oligarch has had numerous citizens locked up in prison: today we call them prisoners of conscience. The heart of the revolt beats in the center of Tbilisi, along Rustaveli Avenue, where day after day crowds pour out and occupy the street. Sometimes the protest dresses itself in creative forms, and this very text is born as an attempt at artistic reflection on that resistance.
Since last century, Rustaveli Avenue has been a place of confrontation with Russia: first Soviet, then post-Soviet, finally Putinian. Here demonstrators were massacred by the Soviet army; and here, by order of the pro-Russian oligarch, pro-European demonstrators are dispersed, beaten, tortured and arrested.
And this nightmare has not yet stopped: it still goes on.
Sometimes I don’t have the strength to stay here, on Rustaveli Avenue. Yet I don’t find the strength to leave either. Here I feel safe, protected, because between me and the others there is no distance. Elsewhere, yes. I don’t feel at peace with those who can’t stay here, for whom this reality is not the only reality. With those who are not present. With them I have nothing in common. With them I cannot feel serene. Here instead I find my peace.
Sometimes I fear I won’t resist anymore; that I won’t bear any longer the same faces, the same words, the same questions and the same answers. Everyone carries the same sign of unease on their face: the fear of uncertainty.
What will happen tomorrow? How long will we have to remain here? Until tomorrow. And how long will that tomorrow last? When will everything truly stop?
Tomorrow devours me, tomorrow is a threshold beyond which I don’t know how to live. I come here and find quiet. I choose my place, I stop. I plant myself. Or I move… among masks, voices, faces, names – and I know what each one feels, because I myself feel the same things. Like the others. Stubborn and confused, motionless and in motion. Obsessive. Full of rage, full of rage.
I have my hand tight around the assassin’s neck… and he meanwhile devours my liver. He tears it with his bites and drains my blood, here chained, handcuffed to this rock. And I keep my grip on the assassin’s neck, I suffocate him, I strangle him, my hand doesn’t tire… remains tense. I am bound… nailed down… And he continues to devour my liver…
What creature is this? A monster, a mutant – with two heads… a two-headed eagle, deformed… with bloodied beaks…
And I suffocate, he empties me of blood, I suffocate trapped between these stones, on this rock, with my face caked the color of stone, with liver torn and mangled, my hand still tight around the assassin’s neck…
And I whisper: Until the end. Until the end. Until the end.
