Escape from the South Fork
and other stories
by Redjeb Jordania
Copyright Redjeb Jordania 2012
Published by Driftwood Press at Smashwords
Cover drawing by David Stiles
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Table of Contents
Part One:
from far away in time and space …
1. A Hunting Trip to Daghestan
2. Closing the Circle
3. The Music Lesson
4. My Mother was a Cat
5. First Love
6. Adrift
7. Anyone There?
8. A Surprise Party
Part Two:
closer to home
9. Escape from the South Fork
10. An Encounter with the America Cup
11. A Visit to the Dentist
12. Linda Mother-of-God
13. Yellow is the Color of Mourning
14. The Screamers
15. Letter from New York
***************************
Part One:
from far away in time and space
1. A Hunting Trip in Daghestan
There I was, perched on a skinny horse on a skinny path meandering on the skinny crest of a mountain ridge in Daghestan, my swollen right ankle dangling, doing my best to maintain my balance while glancing apprehensively at the chasms beckoning enticingly on both sides. I was no stranger to mountaineering, and normally had no fear of heights. But I was no horseman, and it is amazing how it seems to be so much more precipitous and dangerous when on horseback than when on foot, even though one is barely four feet higher!
I certainly did not foresee this outcome when I accepted an invitation to go bear hunting in the Caucasus, even though I do not hunt and did not expect to start at this late stage of my life.
That summer of 1991 I had organized an intensive course in English as a Foreign Language in Tbilisi, the capital of The Republic of Georgia, to assist the newly independent Georgians in fulfilling their Western-oriented aspirations and help open up to them a world that they had been cut off from for nearly seventy years.
After the course was over I remained in Tbilisi to watch the unfolding of the rebellion against the strong-armed rule of Georgia’s President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who would eventually be obliged to flee the country. My sympathies were with the rebels, among whom I counted many friends, but I did not actively take sides: after all, even though I was the son of the very first President of pre-soviet Georgia, Noe Jordania (1918-1921), I was a foreigner in my ancestors’ country, born in France, living in East Hampton, barely able to speak the Georgian language.
Among those taking part in the rebellion was David Nadaradze, a young man who had attended our summer English course. David was then about thirty years of age, spoke English very well, but in a stilted manner. Many of his words and expressions sounded rather quaint to our ears because they were often taken directly from his readings of 19th century English literature. He was a lawyer by profession, had had occasion to travel abroad, in Japan in particular, but had never been to America. He was planning to go to the U.S. for further training as an international lawyer, which is why he took our summer course.
We had become friends, and after the course was over he often came to visit me at my hotel, keeping me abreast of the political and military fluctuations of the struggle. Towards the end of that September the fighting in Tbilisi seemed to have calmed down. Taking advantage of the lull and anxious to help me fulfill my wish to visit as much of the country as I could, David invited me to come hunting with him and some friends in the mountains of Daghestan.
Daghestan is a semi-autonomous region of the Russian S.S.R (Socialist Soviet Republic, now part of Russia) It is located high in the Caucasian mountains between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, on the border of the Georgian province of Kakhetia. David explained that the trip entailed driving first to a small village in Kakheti to spend the night at his friend Merab’s country house. Early in the morning we would be transported in a special 4-wheel-drive vehicle up to the point where we would start climbing on foot. He added that the hard climb would last no more than one and a half hours, and then it would be easy going. We should reach the camping site two or three hours later.
David’s offer sounded very enticing, so I jumped to the occasion, even though, as mentioned above, I had no intention to even try my hand at hunting. I hadn’t brought with me any suitable clothes or footwear. I borrowed a couple of heavy sweaters, since it can get very cold at night at 12,000 feet. David procured two knapsacks and somewhere found a pair of lightweight soccer boots for me, the kind with canvas high tops and spikes underneath to dig in the turf, which I would have to wear with heavy socks that he also brought along. We bought all kind of food to take with us, and he also carried his rifle and ammunition, since we were supposed to be hunters.
Off to the Mountains
We left Tbilisi in his old car in the late afternoon on Thursday, stopped on the way at a roadside stand, quite an elaborate affair under a simple roof with long counters where drinks and food were piled high. We had some delicious Mtzvade, a sort of pork meat shish-kebab roasted on open fires with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and some of the wonderful Georgian bread—the whole washed down with bottled fruit juice and Borjomi mineral water.
We arrived at his friend’s village around eight in the evening. Merab’s mother, Nino Burgiashvili, was waiting for us. Naturally, in keeping with the norms of Georgian hospitality, even though we just had all that food, Nino insisted upon putting out a lavish spread for us. The only other people there were Merab’s wife Ethery, a young Georgian woman who spoke only Russian because she had been raised in Leningrad, and their little daughter, who was about three years old. I was to learn that Merab and Ethery were both opera singers who lived in the city of Kutaisi, where they were employed at the local opera house. Merab had left the day before with a friend to establish camp in the mountains, where we were expected to join them in a couple days. But the Gods had other plans.
A bone-shaking drive
After a good night’s sleep, at 5.30 in the morning we started on our way by truck: huge wheels heavily studded like a bulldozer, 4-wheel-drive, 16 speeds, two gearshifts, and a cabin good for only two persons since most of the space was taken up by the engine. I don’t know if it was really a privilege, but I was invited to sit in the cabin, while David and two other young men climbed onto the open bed behind. What a trip! We started on a track which I thought was very rough, but turned out to be quite good in comparison to what was to come: its only pitfalls were huge pot holes, streams flowing across, and deep mud.
As we went up the mountain the dirt road became more and more horrendous. I never thought a vehicle could negotiate such obstacles: the truck would plunge down into a ravine strewn with man-sized boulders, rear over huge stones, roll from side to side while bucking like crazy, and squeeze between huge trees. The driver meanwhile nonchalantly went on smoking nonstop, lighting cigarette after cigarette, while struggling with the wheel and handling the two gearshifts—one of which was placed behind the engine, so that he had to reach practically behind his back each time he needed it, which was about every twenty seconds. I had to hold on with all my strength, bracing myself with both feet and hands. I could easily have used a couple more. I can’t imagine how the guys in the back managed.
That part of the trip lasted a good two hours. By the time we arrived at our destination I felt it was enough work for the day, as I was already stiff and exhausted from my struggle to keep from banging against the sides of the cabin. Incidentally, all this happened without any breakfast whatsoever, unless one can dignify as breakfast the glass of water I managed to gulp before leaving the house.
The end of the so-called "road" was marked by a shepherd's hut: walls made of flat stones piled on top of each other without any attempt to fill the cracks and holes in between; overhead some plastic fabric was stretched between poles to serve as a leaky roof. And that was all. In this part of the world people bring their animals to the mountains in spring and herd them back to the villages in fall before the snow. Perhaps the trek back had already started, since the place was deserted when we arrived, except for a young man on horseback who came galloping through the woods, exchanged a few words with my companions, and galloped off again: a real person on a real horse going about his real business.
A humbling experience
David and I shouldered our knapsacks, said good-by to our driver and his companions and started walking. Very soon we were above the tree line, climbing on a path that followed the wide bed of a rock-strewn mountain stream. I could see that David was pacing himself so I could keep up with him. No wonder: he was thirty years old, and I was seventy!
I thought the path was quite steep, but after perhaps one hour, when once again I stopped to catch my breath, I happened to look up, and there looming before me, majestic and straight up, was the mountain we had to surmount to reach the pass into Daghestan. Up, and up, and up: I had to crane my neck back quite far to see the top of that barren mountain, the path zigzagging along its flank. David tried to reassure me: "It is not as far as it seems," he kept saying, "We'll be up in less than two hours." Well, perhaps he could do it in that time, but I had my doubts and rightly so: it would take me a good four hours with many stops, David patiently waiting for me along the way.
Half way up was another shepherd's hut, well guarded with barking dogs. They started their noisy barking while we were still quite far away, no doubt warning all and sundry about the invasion of these strange looking beasts coming up the mountain. And they barked, and they barked nonstop, until finally we got up to the hut, sat down, and talked to them. They reluctantly came close, smelled my hand, and accepted to be petted. There was water from a stream right beside the hut, which incidentally was much better built than the one down the valley. That water tasted delicious!
David then asked: "Would you prefer to have a snack here, or wait until we get to the top?" “But,” I said: "It looks still quite far away, and the path is becoming even steeper!" To which David replied: "No, it's not that far, we'll be there soon." So I agreed: "O.K. we'll eat later," and we went on our way.
Indeed it got steeper and steeper, and I reached the point when not only was my heart beating madly, but, try as I might, my legs refused to move! It had never, never happened to me before. I could take - I counted - 60 small steps, and then my legs would just go dead. Never mind going up: I could not even lift my knees. I managed by resting, then taking another 60 steps, then resting, repeating this painful pattern again and again. David became very concerned: "Will you be able to make it? Perhaps we should turn back," he offered. But I reassured him that I would make it, that he only had to give me time. And while I was struggling, what really hurt my feelings was that a bunch of cows, who hardly seemed to move their legs, contentedly chewing their cud, caught up from behind, passed me and leisurely continued climbing up the mountain, disappearing behind the trees!
Actually there was a reason why the cows started following us: part way up, seeing we would not reach the pass anytime soon, we stopped for something to eat. David left his knapsack some 30 feet from where we were sitting. I happened to turn around, and yelled: "David! A cow is stealing our bread!" He ran up, and wrestled the loaf of bread from the cow's mouth, rescuing about half. After that there was no stopping the herd: they all followed David and his knapsack, sometimes sneaking up to him from behind and nudging him, until he lost his patience and with stones and yells shoed them away; that is until they passed me going up the mountain!
The bard in the pass
Finally we got to the top. Pausing to look back, I could see the vast expanse of the grassy mountain dropping seemingly vertically under me, rocky ridges rearing here and there; far below meandered the bed of the mountain stream, in contrast appearing rather flat, and even lower the thick forest sloping toward an unseen horizon. The climb had taken me four and a half hours, instead of the one hour and a half that David had said it would take. As for the young man in Tbilisi who claimed he could climb it in 30 minutes, that's sheer Georgian boasting: even running all the way up no one could have done it in that time.
The weather was still very nice, the sun shining in an incredibly blue sky with scattered white clouds, but it was a bit chilly with a crisp breeze channeled by the rocky peaks looming on each side. "Up there is where we used to go to hunt ibex —Caucasian mountain goats", David told me. "That's a really challenging hunt, as they are very hard to approach. Now there are not so many, so we don't even try anymore."
On the pass we met a man on horseback coming our way. His name was Hamlet: There are quite a few Hamlets in Georgia, and also Othellos, Desdemonas, Ophelias: Oh, the far-flung Shakespearean influence! Our Hamlet, it turns out, was the shepherd who lived in the hut we had visited half way up the mountain. We chatted for a few moments. He asked David — under the impression I didn't understand Georgian: "How old is he?" To which I answered: "I am 70." "Oh, not bad," he said approvingly, but I don't know if he approved of my speaking some Georgian or of my climbing the mountain at that advanced age. Anyhow, before taking his leave he insisted upon giving me his walking stick, which came to be more useful than he ever expected! He had fashioned it from a tree branch and carved on its entire length intricate traditional Caucasian designs, into which he had incorporated his name in Georgian script.
The pass proper was perhaps one mile long. What a pleasure to walk on a more or less level surface, not to have to summon one's last ounce of energy just to raise one's knee for the next step. The path meandered between hillocks, alongside ponds of fresh water where our cows already were quenching their thirst. There were no trees, of course, since we were way above the tree line, but there were scattered bushes and many wild flowers. From the base of the rocks above came some shrill whistling: "Do you hear that?" asked David. "The marmots are objecting to our presence." We soon reached the other side of the pass, and for the first time I could contemplate the mountains of Daghestan rearing majestically as far as the eye could see.
Shamil’s kingdom
All my life I had heard about Daghestan, with its lofty mountains, beauty, greatness, immensity, and its fierce mountaineers, most of whom are Sufis, a peculiarly esoteric branch of Islam. One of the most romantic figures of my childhood was the Imam Shamil, the famous Chechen-Daghestanian hero of the uprising of the North Caucasian tribes. Shamil fought the Russians for some 40 years, until he was finally captured and sent under escort to St. Petersburg, where he died in a somewhat golden captivity. Legend has it that after arriving in that town, Shamil was granted an interview with the Tsar. Having spent those many weeks in a horse drawn carriage crossing the vast Russian steppes from the Caucasus to the Baltic, Shamil would exclaim: "Oh Great Tsar, you who own such immensity, why, oh why did your soldiers fight for so long in order to capture that insignificant kingdom of mine?"
From then on the walking was indeed much easier; the path followed the crests with a gentle gradient going down most of the way. Like all mountain paths, it was basically just a few inches wide, often with a precipitous drop on one side or sometimes even on both sides.
A while later we reached a place where a few small streams crossed the path. "What about some lunch?" David asked. To which I replied, "How long to where we're going?" He explained that from where we were to the campsite would take about two more hours. "But at my speed?" I objected. "Well, probably three hours," he said. "But we have plenty of time. It's only one o’clock; there are still at least 6 hours of daylight." I thankfully unloaded my knapsack, David also. He had taken most of the supplies, so that his load was much heavier than mine. And in addition he carried his heavy rifle. We then partook of a leisurely lunch of suluguni cheese, sausage, fresh tomatoes and cucumber, and the bread the cows had kindly left us.
Soccer boots are not for hiking
After a short rest, I got up to fill my canteen at one of the wonderful streams running down the mountain. As I was crossing a gently inclined flat rock, my left foot slid brutally sideways, the spikes on my soccer shoes failing to get a purchase. I didn't fall, but somehow this slide caused my right foot to twist severely. I felt a sharp pain shooting up my leg, sat down, hurriedly took off shoe and sock, and started massaging my ankle. David scrambled down and helped me apply cold compresses; indeed one of the streams was just a couple of feet away, and the water descending from the summits was ice cold, probably no more than 35 degrees.
Half an hour went by; my ankle was still in pain, but there was no swelling. I tried walking, leaning on Hamlet's providential stick. I could do it, but very slowly. We held a war council: what to do? The campsite, three hours away when I was OK, would now be too far to reach before nightfall, assuming I could walk the distance. To go back was out of the question, since the base was even farther away. From where we were we could see another shepherd's hut with sheep grazing on the slopes above it. David estimated that we could reach it in about one hour. It was in the same direction as the campsite. We decided to proceed. If, when we arrived close to the hut, my foot felt well enough, we would continue towards our original destination. If not, we would ask for shelter.
By the time we arrived at the nearest approach to the hut, my foot was getting worse: the ankle was quite swollen, and I could hardly hobble along. We decided to try to stop for the night. The hut was quite a ways down from the path, located at the bottom of a valley near a stream running between the mountains. The slope down was very steep, so much so that most of the way I had to slide on my backside. We had hardly started down when out of nowhere three dogs appeared, barking furiously, snarling, and approaching as much as they dared. They were just doing their job, guarding the sheep and warning of the presence of dangerous strangers, yet that nonstop barking was extremely annoying, even nerve wracking.
Half way down I sat on a rock to rest, while David went ahead to investigate the situation. After a while he came back: "There was only a boy at the hut," he said, "the others are down by the stream washing their clothes and doing chores. But we are welcome to stay." And he added: "You know, these shepherds are not Georgian, they are Avar, so be careful: these people steal everything."
At that point it was only three o'clock. The valley was so deep and narrow that the hut was already in the shadows, so we stayed for a while where we were, in the sun. Toward six we went down to the hut, me sliding on my backside all the way. By that time we could see the shepherds returning, and the dogs had mercifully abandoned us to attend to their evening duty, which consisted of bringing the scattered sheep back to the compound all by themselves, without the help or direction of a human being.
The good shepherds
Getting closer we could see that the shepherds' encampment consisted of a canvas tent, set on poles and anchored in the usual way, which we later learned was only for sleeping. Next to it was a sort of kitchen/living hut built of shoulder high walls of flat stones, with a canvas roof flopping in the wind. Inside a large flat stone served as a table, and all around other stones covered with mangy sheepskins served as seating. All in all, a scene straight out of the Flintstones!
The stone walls were riddled with gaps through which the evening breeze merrily whistled. One wall was higher, in which a hearth had been hollowed for cooking. But there was no chimney, not even an opening above the hearth, so the smoke would billow right back into the "room", to eventually escape through the many holes in the canvas top and the walls. The system worked well enough, if you didn't mind a lot of smoke in your eyes—as seemed to be the case with our hosts.
So there we were in Daghestan. Our shepherds were Leke, one of the more than 40 national groups who live side by side in the territory. Each group has its own culture and its own distinct language, some of which are spoken by less than 10,000 people. Since the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century, the common language throughout the area has been Russian.
Our hosts Ahmed and Mohammed proved to be very hospitable: Mohammed led me inside the stone hut and handed me a Burkha, a marvelous cape made of tightly woven felt, reaching to the ankles. As soon as I put it over my shivering shoulders—the temperature in the shade must have been barely above freezing—I felt a welcome warmth spread throughout me.
The healer
Ahmed seemed to be in charge of domestic arrangements. While Mohammed and the boy, whose name I never did get, went out to lock the sheep in their corrals, Ahmed busied himself organizing things and cooking. But before that he explained to me in broken Russian, our only common language, that he had some talent for curing people, which he had inherited from his grandmother and his mother, who were very famous healers. (This is not a put down of his linguistic abilities. My Russian is just as broken as his, or even worse, but in a different way.)
"I am far from being as good as they are," he said," but I know a little, and I think I can help your ankle." He made me take off my shoe and sock, and very gently rubbed in some sort of cream he took out of an old glass jar. He went on massaging. "What I am doing is calming down the flesh that got bruised before the hurt reaches further and gives the bone the idea that it too should start feeling bad. Only then will I be able to attend to the real hurt," he explained. Very gently then, he massaged all around, slowly getting to where it was the most painful. He went on massaging that spot, while he directed Mohammed to take my foot in his hands and exert a steady pull at first, then in a semi rotary direction. That hurt a lot, but the kind of hurt that you know is good for you. Indeed after a few minutes the pain subsided. Ahmed then rubbed on more of his cream, to which he added a handful of salt, bandaged my ankle tightly and explained that I would feel much better in a few moments. To celebrate the occasion, David pulled from his knapsack a bottle of cognac, which we all proceeded to drink. Indeed my foot soon felt much better, but whether it was thanks to Ahmed's ministrations or the cognac, I couldn't say.