A Moveable Feast (9 page)

Laurence Mitchell is a freelance travel writer and photographer with a penchant for places that are firmly off the beaten track, particularly countries in transition like the new republics of the former Soviet Union. Nothing makes him happier than a lumpy bed, an utter lack of tourist infrastructure and an indecipherable menu, although he is also pretty content with a decent
shashlyk
and a beer. As well as writing for magazines, he is the author of travel guides to Serbia, Belgrade and Kyrgyzstan. Laurence is also responsible for
Slow Norfolk and Suffolk,
a book that takes a personal, ‘Slow’ look at his home patch of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. His website may be viewed at
www.laurencemitchell.com
.

Georgia’s reputation as a place of great hospitality, wonderful food and dynamic people was well known to us prior to our arrival in the country, but it would be Kazbegi, high in the Caucasus mountains, about as far as you could go along the Georgian Military Highway without ending up in Ingushetia or Chechnya, where it would be put to the test.

We spent our first afternoon climbing up to the Tsminda Sameba church perched on a peak high above the town, the sort of location that was so impossibly picturesque it ought to figure on the cover of a guidebook – and in fact, it did. We had been in Georgia only three days, yet already we had a strong impression as to the character of the country – it was a place of strong opinions, uncompromising geography and almost unbearable beauty. Everything was a bit larger than life, especially here in the mountains, something akin to a scruffy yet extroverted Switzerland on acid.

We were hungry after our walk but an electricity breakdown meant that the evening meal promised by our village hosts would be delayed for some time. We waited as patiently as we could and eventually the solitary light bulb in our room flickered back into life. An hour or so later, tantalising savoury smells started to spike the air, already mountain-cold now that the sun had slunk behind the white cone of Mount Kazbegi. A further hour of stomach rumblings went by before we were finally called through to the dining room.

We were to eat with Giorgi, our guide, along with his friend from the village, also confusingly called Giorgi (‘Giorgi 2’), and Jimaal, the homestay owner. Following tradition, the women of the house would remain out of sight in the kitchen, preparing food and generally keeping out of the way of the serious men’s business of eating and drinking.

Entering the dining room, we found the rough wooden table in the middle of the room was groaning under the weight of numerous bowls, dishes and plates of food. I could not help but notice a prodigious amount of booze at the ready too – wine, vodka, beer. Was this to be some sort of village party? ‘No,’ said Giorgi with some bemusement, ‘just the five of us.’

Giorgi explained, ‘In Georgia, we think it is good to have too much food like this. Our hosts would be ashamed if they did not
provide you with enough to eat and drink. There should always be too much food.’ Quantity aside, the variety on offer was quite staggering, even more so considering that much of it had been home-produced in one way or another. There were green beans in garlic and butter, a heap of freshly baked bread, a rich stew of meat and vegetables, fried potatoes, plates of tomatoes and cucumbers, and slices of salty homemade cheese. Naturally, any such spread would be unthinkable without
khinkhali
– Georgia’s signature steamed meat dumplings – and a large plate of these sat steaming away centre stage. Even more tempting were those dishes that allowed for Georgia’s flair for improvisation: boiled nettles with garlic and pomegranate seeds, and the almost unpronounceable
pkhali
– young beet leaves mixed with crushed walnuts and garlic. And on top of all this there was that serious quantity of drink to consider.

Georgian feasting tradition dictates that you should drink only after a formal toast has been made by the toastmaster, and that you should never make a toast with beer as that would be highly disrespectful. In practice, this meant that you could drink as much beer as you liked but you would still be required to sink an unfeasibly large amount of alcohol in the form of wine and spirits as well. Giorgi was appointed
tamada
– toastmaster – for the evening and he started off with a couple of meandering, fairly run-of-the mill speeches in Georgian and English. Many more were to follow: toasts to us, to our Kazbegi hosts, to Georgia, to Great Britain and so on. Initially, we responded as we thought was expected of us, draining our glasses to the bottom, but we soon changed this to reducing our draughts by half a glass at a time when we realised we could get away with it.

Hardly surprisingly, the conversation around the table became quite animated after a while; at the same time, none of the Georgians showed any obvious signs of drunkenness – that would be unforgivable in this booze-soaked yet proud land where
you were meant to able to take your drink like a man. As is often the case in Georgia, the conversation inevitably turned to the subject of one Josif Dzhugashvili – better known to the world as Stalin – the country’s most (in)famous son. Giorgi fielded our questions about the man, undoubtedly the world’s best known Georgian, with skilled diplomacy and not a little patriotism. ‘Some people in Georgia still admire him as a strong man. We all know that Stalin was a mean
sonofabitch
but at least he was
our sonofabitch.
’ Actually, he didn’t say
‘sonofabitch’
but instead used a rather ruder pejorative that suggested even unhealthier family relationships.

Another Georgian tradition states that once present at the
supra
– the feast table – you should not leave it under any circumstances until the proceedings have run their full course. However, with a large volume of beer, wine and spirits swimming around inside me, I hoped that an exception would be made. I offered my excuses, mostly because I badly needed to pee but also because I wanted to see if my legs still worked; they did … just.

The outhouse was at the end of the garden across a small lawn. With no moon, the night was molasses dark and from the house I headed blindly in the appropriate direction with my arms outstretched in case of unexpected obstacles. Halfway across the garden I actually did come across something quite unexpected when my hands made contact with what felt like a warm hairy wall. Unable to see what it was even at this close range, I ran my hand along it to explore, and discovered the unmistakable furry notches of an animal’s backbone. Luckily I had enough drink inside me to remain quite cool and concluded that this was either a really large dog or a rather small cow. I skilfully circumvented the animal – the latter of the two possibilities as it turned out – and went on my way in search of the outhouse.

I related this little adventure to my table companions when I returned. Giorgi found the whole incident highly amusing and
translated for his friend. This caused great hilarity and Giorgi 2 responded in Georgian in-between guffaws. Giorgi translated in turn: ‘My friend said that you should have known it was a cow. If it had been a Georgian dog, it would have killed you.’ I am sure he was right, although I wasn’t particularly impressed with the way he seemed to delight in the viciousness of Georgian dogs. Thankfully, the cow in question was anything but aggressive and was no doubt quite used to drunks bumping into her in the dark.

More food and drink followed and I soon found myself looking forward to the time when the two, now almost empty, half-litre vodka bottles would be polished off and we could all head to bed. But this was not to be, as Jimaal quietly slipped away for ten minutes before returning with two more bottles he had bought at the kiosk near the bus turnaround. More toasts and further immoderate drinking was necessary before we could finally stagger off to our room.

Next morning, I woke up severely dehydrated and with a poisonous headache. By the time I emerged to join the others, breakfast had been neatly laid out in the kitchen. There was herb tea and some of last night’s leftovers as well as freshly baked
khachapuris
– the Georgian snack staple, a deliciously rich variety of cheese bread. Little pots of molten butter were placed at the side to enrich the bread further – the product of my friend, the family cow, as was the cheese for the
khachapuris
. Standing beside these offerings were some ready-poured glasses of vodka and the bottles with the dregs from last night’s session. This time I felt able to refuse with impunity. Even in Georgia, they would not wilfully set out on a drinking session first thing in the morning. Would they? They might, however, be tempted by just a little ‘hair of the dog’ – or in this case, perhaps, the hair of the cow.

Anthony Sattin is a journalist, broadcaster and the author of a number of acclaimed books of history and travel, including
The Pharaoh’s Shadow
and
The Gates of Africa
. Anthony has spent much of the past couple of decades travelling around and writing about North Africa and the Middle East. He was described by one British newspaper as ‘like a cross between Indiana Jones and a John Buchan hero’, and was voted one of the ten greatest influences on travel writing by
Condé Nast Traveller
. His most recent book,
A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt
, has been called ‘a triumph of the historical imagination’. You can find out more at
www.anthonysattin.com
.

I have eaten chicken in many places around the world: served on a stick at the Satay Club in Singapore, around a fire on a starry night in the African savannah, curried in an Indian palace, straight off an Argentine an grill, wrapped in a Shanghai dumpling. Yet whenever I think of chicken, I think of a place I have
never been, Siberia, and of a long train ride with a pair of lively women.

I suppose I have the international railway bureaucrats to thank for the women. In 1995, I set out from London to travel to Moscow by train on the aptly named
Ost–West Express.
I was hoping to travel through to Moscow on the Russian car but, for a reason I could never fathom, it was impossible to reserve the eastern leg of the journey in advance. When I reached Warsaw, I found the train was full. Instead, there was space on a later train, the
Polonez,
a Polish service that followed the same route.

The train was almost empty when it pulled out of Warsaw central station. Alone in the carriage, I stretched out on one of the benches, worked out how to flip it over into a bed, pulled down the window to watch the city slide behind us, and saw the River Vistula sparkle in the afternoon sun. A few minutes later, we reached the east side of town. The platform of Wschodnia Station was heaving and even before the train stopped, a large bag was pushed up to my window. When I stood up, I saw two young women shouting at me in Russian and gesticulating that I should take it. Five more packages followed. Another four were dragged in by hand.

The women filled the luggage racks with their bags and then covered the floor. They even managed to raise the level of what had been, until then, my bed. My bed? Nothing was mine now.

As we pulled out of Wschodnia Station, the women introduced themselves. This one was Katya, short, dark-haired, plump, with a melon face. The other was Svetla, who was pretty, fair-haired and big-hipped. She was obviously proud of her flatter stomach, for she wore a T-shirt that was both too short and too tight. She was also halfway to filling her mouth with gold. They were both in their mid-twenties, lively and in good humour. We shook hands and there was a moment of laughter at this gesture. With
the formalities over, they took off their coats and checked that their bags were properly stowed – this was a business trip, after all. Then they set up a table on one of their bags, spread out some paper on it, and unpacked a bag of food. They ripped apart a roast chicken, while we ran the gauntlet of international conversation: Charles’n’Di (still!), Gorbachev and Putin, Chechnya, children, the goods they were travelling with (‘clothes’, they insisted, which they would sell back home). That, and the weather back home in Irkutsk.

From Poland we were heading towards Belarus. The Belarus Embassy in London had assured me that I could cross their country if I had a Russian visa, which I did. But I had been woken in the night on entering Poland, had had a torch shone in my face, and had been questioned about the Middle East stamps in my passport, my name, and my origins. So as we approached the border between Poland and Belarus, I became quiet. But while I was a little tense, Katya and Svetla were unmistakably nervous.

The frontier between Poland and Belarus follows the River Bug. I traced its movement across my map: it was one of the fault lines between East and West, a crossing place, as slender and sensitive as an exposed nerve. We came up to it across open countryside and slowed as we approached the border: two rows of fences and rolled wire. I assumed the space between them was mined.

Guards in towers watched over the stillness as we clanked onto an iron bridge over the river. The train was moving slowly enough for someone to have jumped off without getting hurt, and for guards to have shot them before they hit the ground. Across in Belarus, beyond the electric fences, a phalanx of officials in great coats and high, peaked caps waited for us. Katya looked at them and crossed herself.

Unlike the Polish police, the Belarus immigration official spoke excellent English. He asked for our passports and returned them duly stamped. Then a customs officer came on board to
check the luggage. I held up my British passport and he smiled, so when we started moving again I assumed, in my innocence, that we were in the clear and that whatever followed would be a brief formality. I was wrong.

It didn’t take the officer long to spot the bags under my bed, and to guess that they weren’t mine. He demanded my neighbours’ passports, and when the train came to a halt a few hundred metres further east in the imposing station of Brest, he put the documents in his pocket and signalled for Svetla to follow him over to the customs shed. Katya sat with her head in her hands.
Problemi!
Meanwhile, babushkas, old farm women in heavy dark clothes and flowery headscarves, appeared at our window offering bread and milk,
shampanski
and
wódka.

Soviet-built tracks are wider than those in the rest of Europe, apparently to stop armies invading by train, although as Hitler followed this route, it doesn’t seem to have worked as a deterrent. What it did now was delay us for several hours while the
Polonez
was shunted into sidings to have its bogies replaced. The shadowy, cavernous shed, the team of oil-blackened men winching up each carriage in turn, all that banging and clanging was like something out of a Soviet propaganda film.

After the shed, we were shunted onto the station platform. Katya remained sombre, playing with her calculator and flicking away the unwanted attentions of bag ladies. I went over to eat something at the unexpectedly grand station restaurant. Unable to read the menu or to understand the waitress’s explanation, I ordered the only thing I could: chicken and vodka.

An hour or so later, the light faded and disappeared, the waitress handed me a bill, guards marched up and down the platform, and the driver sounded the train whistle. Katya said nothing, but looked even whiter than before and as brittle as a doll. Then, just as the last whistle blew, Svetla jumped on, breathless, triumphant.

Dollari
and wits had got her through. The friends hugged, cried and giggled in relief.
‘Shampanski?’
asked the last, desperate babushka. ‘No,’ Katya insisted, already worrying about the
problemi
ahead, of getting their bags onto an internal flight from Moscow, of getting out of the airport in Siberia. ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking we would need some cheering, and bought several bottles and a bottle of vodka to chase the bubbly down.

The
Polonez
finally lived up to its express status: we shot through the Belarus and then the Russian night. While Svetla remained quiet and Katya was tense and terse, the rest of the carriage was in celebratory mood. Someone unpacked a new tape machine and the corridor was transformed into a casino, cluttered with small gambling tables and already opaque with smoke. The
shampanski
and vodka flowed faster than the River Bug. The attendant, who knew what was coming, locked himself into his compartment.

When my neighbours finally caught up with the mood on the train, Katya pulled out another plastic bag: while I had been in the station restaurant, she had found another chicken. We squatted around the offering, greasy hands dismembering the bird and passing around the first of the bottles I had bought.

‘Mmmm, chicken!’ Katya cooed, to which I couldn’t resist asking, ‘Don’t you have chicken in Siberia?’

The women laughed at my simplicity. Of course they had chicken in Siberia. Was there anywhere that didn’t have chicken? Chicken was one of the world’s great levellers, something we all have in common.

‘But it tastes different in different places,’ Katya explained. ‘I bought this one in Brest from a woman who raised and cooked it herself. See how much flesh it has! In Siberia’ – and she said that word with such emotion that even I had to sigh, ‘in Si-bare-ia, it is cold. Very cold. Our chickens have to stay inside. They don’t get fresh air, they don’t exercise, they are not meaty, they have no fat.’

‘It’s not just the taste she likes,’ Svetla said, teasingly, slightly drunk, patting her firm, flatter stomach and flashing her gold teeth. ‘She thinks that if she sticks to chicken then she won’t get fat.’

‘No, no. It’s not that. I eat them for this,’ and she pulled off the wishbone. ‘Come, Englishman, let us pull and see if you will be lucky. If not, we will drink your other bottle.’ From the outcome, it was clear she had pulled that trick before.

By the time we reached the third bottle, the Siberians were swinging between glee at having got into Belarus and gloom about how much it was going to cost to get home. By the end of it, chicken bones had been thrown around the compartment and we were all out in the corridor, laughing, wise enough to stay off the gambling tables and drunk enough to try dancing to the rhythm of Russo-Balkan dance anthems.

The bunk was short and the celebrations long, but I was eventually lulled to sleep by the rocking of the train on the Russian track. I woke to silence (earplugs), to the sight of snow, and to the sweet, smoky smell of cold roast chicken. But Katya was not eating again. She was not even in the compartment. Instead it was sweet, slender Svetla. Thinking I was asleep, she had the chicken out of the bag and her hand inside its cavity, extracting a small plastic wad. I couldn’t see clearly what it was, but it was definitely not giblets or other innards. She wiped it quickly, divided it into two smaller wads and used them to pad out her bra.

The small-town factories and villages of wood-clad houses looked derelict after all I had seen further west, in Belgium and Germany. At each country railway station, there was only one sign, a red arrow pointing to Moscwa.

Moscow came up fast and suddenly we were out of the empty snow-white countryside and into the city. The roads alongside the track were jammed. When Katya tried to open the
compartment door, it was already too late; the corridor was full. ‘Ah, Moscwa,’ she said, excited. ‘Ah, Bolshoi,’ I added. ‘Kremlin,’ said Svetla. ‘Pushkin,’ I said. ‘McDonald’s,’ said Katya. ‘Chicken burger,’ said Svetla. We all laughed.

At Moscow’s Belarus Station, a porter forced his way in and tried to grab the nearest, lightest bag – mine – but we chased him out again. Cases went flying through compartment windows. On the platform, people carried clothes, electronic keyboards and other Western, capitalist produce past statues of Marx and Lenin.

This was the end of my journey, but not of Katya and Svetla’s: Siberia was still far, far away. The formality that had hung over our first meeting was now forgotten and when we parted, we kissed and hugged. I watched them disappear into the crowd with their many bags and their two wads of – what? Cash? Drugs? Forged papers?

That night, unpacking my bag in my hotel, I found a chicken bone among my clothes, a reminder of the party. The bone was soon discarded, but the memory remains.