SUKHUMI: CAFE LIKA ON THE BRINK OF WAR
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski
OpenDemocracy
August 14, 2009
I’m not sure I can recommend the Abkhazian house wine that gets
served in the bars and restaurants of Sukhumi. The Abkhazians make
some drinkable wine, like the ‘Psou’ brand that is served in Moscow’s
upscale Aromatniy Mir supermarket chain, but their rough and ready
house wine is something to be avoided.
That’s why, on a summer evening in a Sukhumi cafe, in the company of
tourists from St Petersburg, I was sticking to glasses of chacha –
a local grappa that is as strong as hell and as cheap as bananas in
Central America. Saturday evenings in Black Sea resorts are times for
promenading, browsing the bars and restaurants and possibly planning
a late night visit to a disco. At least that is what happens in the
other resorts that circle the Black Sea, from Sozopol and Yalta to
Sochi, Constanza, and even Batumi, just down the coast in Georgia.
But this was Sukhumi, the capital of the self-proclaimed independent
country of Abkhazia. I stepped out of the bar on to a side street away
from the sea and was enveloped by silence and the feeling that I was
lost. Side street met side street in the darkness, and I wandered past
half-ruined buildings, their broken doors and smashed windows not yet
repaired after the war that had finished a decade and a half earlier.
Around one corner I at last found a sign of life, a poorly-lit grocery
store that was open around the clock. A couple of customers were
inside, buying beer and Coke.
Something about the scene depressed me. This Black Sea town had none
of the sounds, lights and life of a resort at the height of the summer
season. It seemed rejected, outcast, cursed. What unspoken sin had
it committed to be condemned to such total abandonment?
Left, left, right, straight a bit and then left again. I wandered
aimlessly through the gloomy streets, leaving the grocery store
vignette behind, hoping to find something to lift my melancholy. On
the corner where Lakoba Street met Confederates Street, I found it.
Cafe Lika was still serving its guests. They sat outside, their drinks
arranged on two tables set on the sidewalk. It was like a scene from
a Jim Jarmusch film: strange types, absurd questions and answers,
and all lit by dim, moody lights.
A fat oriental-looking woman with black hair invited me to sit down. I
sat, and we both watched two unshaven characters talking drunkenly
in front of their damaged old Lada car.
"At first I thought it was a UFO landing on my car," one of them
explained.
"Have you ever seen a UFO with horse’s hoofs?" countered the other. "I
knew it was a horse on the car from the moment it made a horsey
noise. Jihahahhaaa!" The man started trying to neigh, just like the
horse that had landed on their car.
The two had been driving slowly along a bumpy, muddy country road,
down from the mountains towards Sukhumi. Suddenly a horse had jumped
out of the bushes, nearly killing them both.
"Does this happen in your country too?" one of them asked me. "Horses
jumping out and smashing up cars? Where else do things like this
happen?"
I ordered another glass of chacha, and watched the two guys driving
away with a screech of tyres. The large woman who served me was Lika,
the owner of the cafe. She too took another drink – rough house wine,
drunk from a coffee cup with a broken handle – and began talking.
It’s a pity, she said, that we didn’t meet twenty years earlier, when
life was at its best. Back then she used to work for Sovyetskaya
Torgovlya, the Soviet retail industry. At a time of massive
shortages of food and consumer goods, working in department stores
or supermarkets was a dream job. Her old store was located in the
northern suburbs of Sukhumi. It was destroyed during the 1992-1993
war against Georgia, its ruins a haunting reminder to drivers passing
by of happier times.
Back in 1992, when Georgian troops entered Sukhumi, her job put her
on the mafia wanted list. Lika was thought to be rich, as everybody
knew that shop staff accepted bribes or channelled goods to favoured
customers at inflated prices. Luckily she was in Sochi when the
looters came. If she had been at home, she would have been killed
trying to protect her possessions.
She isn’t an ethnic Abkhazian, although that wouldn’t have saved
her. Lika Bogdanesyan is Armenian, one of the sizeable Armenian
minority that has always lived along the Black Sea coast. Even now,
over forty thousand Armenians live in separatist Abkhazia, making up
a fifth of its population.
When Lika returned from hiding with friends in Sochi, she found
her flat looted and empty. There was nothing left. No carpets, no
furniture, no television set, no clothes, no refrigerator.
"Our Georgian neighbours did that. One guy who lived in another part
of our apartment block was seen taking furniture away. Two others in
the block tried to protect their belongings and were killed. But not
all our Georgian neighbours behaved like that. There was one couple
living next door – he drove a taxi and she was a nurse in the drug
addiction clinic. We were like one big extended family. Whenever
somebody needed something – sugar, butter, money, washing powder –
we always knew we could borrow from the others."
The couple offered to hide the valuables of their Abkhazian friends so
the looters wouldn’t find them. When the danger was over, they returned
the items. But then they realized that Abkhazian troops were about
to recapture Sukhumi and they fled. Lika has not heard from them since.
Many other Georgians lived in their concrete apartment block in the
northern suburbs. They were mostly Svans, highland Georgians who had
moved in from nearby villages. They had all left, and when the war
ended they were replaced by new tenants, mostly Abkhazian.
"Shevardnadze and the Georgians shouldn’t have started the war,"
continued Lika. Even fifteen years on she could barely hide her
anger. Her friends in the cafe felt the same. "The Georgians were
our neighbours. We lived peacefully for generations. There were mixed
marriages. And then in one single moment this peace was ruined."
"How can I forgive a man who was my neighbour for years and then
suddenly wants to loot and kill me? You never know what these Georgians
have on their mind. Blood stains can’t just be wiped away like water."
But Lika doesn’t hate Georgians. How could she? After all she married
one. It was a true love story. They had founded Cafe Lika together
ten years ago. Without her he probably would have left Abkhazia,
moving away just like all his relatives.
"Was it dangerous for him after the war?" I asked Lika. "To live as
a Georgian among Abkhazians?
He suffered terribly during the war, she replied. "He faced firing
squads on three different occasions. The Georgians wanted to shoot
him as a traitor. The Abkhazians wanted to shoot him because he was
Georgian. Each time he walked away alive it was a miracle. But his
heart couldn’t take it. He had two heart attacks afterwards, and the
doctors were able to save him both times. But then he had a third
one a year ago, and the doctors couldn’t do anything."
None of his relatives came to his funeral – only Lika and her son. A
few months ago his sister was allowed to make the journey from her
home in Georgia to pay her respects at his grave.
The couple had worked hard to make the cafe a success. In the
beginning, penniless, they brought every cup, plate and glass from
their own home for their customers to use. Friends also helped
them. At first Lika and her husband lived in the cafe around the
clock. Step by step they built the business up, buying new equipment,
fridges, an oven and a microwave. Two or three years ago they had
made enough money to hire a waitress and an extra pair of hands in
the kitchen. In the summer season they helped visiting Russians to
find holiday accommodation, bringing in a few more pennies.
Lika agrees that life has improved in Abkhazia a great deal over
the last few years. The worst time was straight after the war, in
1993. Yeltsin’s Russia introduced sanctions blocking supplies of food
and medecine. People were surviving by shuttling back and forth to
Russia, selling Abkhazia’s most popular produce – tangerines. They
were restricted to 20 kilos per visit. So Russian "kommersanty"
would park their lorries just over the border, and set off back for
central Russia as soon as they were full.
I remembered that overcrowded border on the outskirts of Sochi from
a visit in the nineties. Under the October rain thousands of people
with bags, boxes, or trolleys full of tangerines were waiting patiently
for their passports to be inspected. On the way back to Abkhazia they
would take salt, sugar, rice and other basics.
When Putin’s Russia lifted sanctions and opened the border for its
own citizens Abkhazia became attractive as a tourist destination. It
did not matter to Russians who could not afford holidays abroad or in
the neighbouring Sochi that service in Abkhazia was poor. Most were
just happy to be able to return to a region they fondly remembered
as a Soviet paradise.
"Of course there are more customers in summer. But if only the
politicians could sort their problems out it would be even better."
The locals keep coming even in the winter months. Now that her husband
is dead, it is their companionship that keeps Lika going with the
cafe. She meets people, she socializes. Otherwise she would suffer
the bitter loneliness of living alone at home.
"Now they are preparing for war again". Lika watched TV every night
and had no doubts about what the politicians were cooking up in their
political kitchens. "They don’t care about us ordinary people", she
says. She had lost any respect for presidents, ministers or members
of parliament a long time ago. "Saakashvili, Putin, Bagapsh, why don’t
they sit down together at the negotiating table and sort things out?"
Lika’s monologue was suddenly rudely interrupted by the sound of a car
being badly parked in front of the cafe with the engine being revved to
breaking point. When it was switched off a different noise took over.
"Liiiihhhhahaaa!"
"Brouhhhh hhahahhhhaaaa!!"
"Jiaaahahhehaaa!!!&quo t;
The two drunken men were back, still trying to make the sound of a
horse landing on their car. They had also picked up a passenger, the
owner of that very same car-damaging horse. The three were determined
to have at least one more drink before the night ended, and Lika’s
cafe was the only one remaining in Sukhumi open so late. How lucky,
I thought, that they had not tried to bring the horse along too.
I returned to my Ritza hotel room late at night. From the balcony I
watched the dark sea barely lit by the moon and the stars. The room
in which I was staying was very special: none other than Comrade
Lev Trotsky, one of the top Bolshevik leaders, had stayed there in
the early twenties. Stranded in Sukhumi, unable to return to Moscow
for Lenin’s funeral, he delivered an inspired speech to the local
residents praising the achievements of the leader of the October
Revolution. His absence from Moscow cost Trotsky dearly. Stalin took
firm hold of the reins of the communist party and several years later
expelled his chief rival from the USSR.
This was life in Abkhazia in early August 2008. The holiday season
was quiet: increasing tension over the preceding months meant that
there were fewer visitors. The border with Georgia had been closed
after the spring terrorist attacks in the south Abkhazian district of
Gali and there had been media reports of military incidents involving
unmanned aircraft.
Officials in Sukhumi were alarmed by Tbilisi’s summer military
exercises. Even before that they had the impression once or twice
that the Georgians might attack at any time. Abkhazia’s armed forces
had been on the highest degree of combat readiness for months. Their
biggest worry was the enemy military presence in the upper part of
the Kodori gorge.
"For the Georgians it is the shortest way to recapture Sukhumi. Their
military vehicles can be here in two hours," pointed out Nugzar Ashoba,
speaker of the Abkhazian parliament, before proposing a toast for
peace. We were sitting in a small cafe on the outskirts of the capital,
tasting Abkhazian wines and eating that favourite dish of Abkhazians,
mamalyga, better known as polenta.
Ashoba, a former Soviet Komsomol apparatchik, had become an expert
on wine since the fall of communism. Using his Russian passport he
had travelled to France and South America to learn more about wine
production. He much preferred discussing chardonnay or merlot grapes
to talking about politics. A couple of years ago he had invited a
well known Georgian wine grower to come to Abkhazia and establish
up new vinyards. A Georgian? I was more than surprised. Wouldn’t
he be afraid to come here? He should not be, Ashoba replied, for he
personally would guarantee his safety.
Ashoba is confident that if Abkhazia’s soil is fertile enough to grow
first class tangerines, it can produce wine of the highest quality. He
looks forward to the day when Abkhazian wines will be able to hold
their own in Moscow, or any city in the world.
After the first bottle we discussed the Abkhazian budget. The breakaway
republic did not have its own currency. It used Russian roubles. At
one stage he feared that the state budget would not be able to meet
its obligations. But for the last few years the thousands of Russian
holidaymakers who had flooded into Abkhazia, the old Soviet Union’s
Costa del Sol, had brought with them badly needed roubles. Even those
who just came from Sochi for the day spent at least 100 dollars a
head. For those who remember the good old Soviet days, Lake Ritsa,
the monastery Novy Afon, Stalin’s dachas scattered round Abkhazia
and the old resorts of Gagry and Pitsunda are national treasures,
like Stonehenge or Windsor Castle for visitors to Britain.
Abkhazia has a much stronger economic potential than South
Ossetia. Ashoba, who has helped set up his sons in business, is
confident that, if peace could be brought to the republic, its
economy would soon prosper. One of his sons rents TV sets out to
Russian tourists living in the local hotels.
For the last few months he has been afraid of outright military
confrontation, on the scale of the war of the early nineties. Bringing
Abkhazia back under Georgia’s power appeared to be a much higher
priority for Mikheil Saakashvili than regaining control over South
Ossetia. "If the Georgians attack us, we will retaliate", declared the
Speaker of the Abkhazian Parliament. He seemed fairly confident that
Abkhazia’s independence could be defended. "In 1992 the Confederation
of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus mobilized volunteers representing
ethnic groups like the Cossacks, Adygees, Abasins, Kabardians,
Circassians, Ossets, Chechens and many others. They will do it again –
the whole of the northern Caucasus will rally to our side."
– And Russia?
– Yes, Russia would help Abkhazia too.
But for all that, on the following day, August 1, one week before
war broke out in South Ossetia, he was preparing to go on vacation,
in Sochi.
Abkhazia’s president Sergei Bagapsh was also planning his summer
break with never a thought of war. The Bejing Olympics were only a
few days away and he saw no reason to cancel his holiday. After all,
Abkhazia didn’t exist officially, and there would be no Abkhazian
athletes in Beijing for him to cheer.
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski’s last year travel to Georgia and Abkhazia was
supoprted by the grant from Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting