It was forever until it ended

‘Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) was incorporated within the Russian Empire and later annexed by the Soviet Union. 

‘Of course, we wanted independence, and wanted to manage our own affairs. But no one could imagine the price we were going to pay for such liberty.

‘It happened back in 1991. By that time, I finished Georgian Technical University and read lectures to young engineers. The pay was eaten by inflation and shrunk to the miserable five dollars per month. But my academic career wasn’t destined to continue. A tsunami of historical events destroyed everything.

‘Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union and was building its own political institutions, when different parties began a great struggle for power. Zviad Gamsakhurdia—the first democratically elected president—brought nationalist ideology on the table. Georgia for Ethnic Georgians, he said. We are a multinational country. Large groups of Abkhazians and Ossetians got frightened by that political discourse and voiced their desire to be sovereign on their own territories. Plus, Russia stood behind their back urging destructive action. A hot conflict began. Tbilisi descended into chaos. Weapons materialised out of thin air. They had guns, grenades, tanks,... whatever you saw in war movies and video games.’

‘You think…’

‘Yes, there were sponsors, big players behind the back of those warlords. They ruined the city. Only rubble and glass shards were left in the centre. But that was not all. As a reaction to our independence declaration, Russia cut us from their electricity and water infrastructure. Heating too. We had a kerosene stove to put a kettle on. Once a day a water truck would stop at our house. Every apartment was allowed one bucket of water (ten liters). It all went into making tea and food. People couldn’t take a shower or do laundry. Everybody stunk.’

‘And how did you…’

‘We didn’t have any options. The trains didn’t go without electricity, gasoline was in high demand. My brother managed to move to Moscow and get a job there. He sent money to us. And we waited and waited for a peaceful tomorrow. One day my brother called and asked me if I wanted to move to Moscow. He was about to be admitted to a hospital and needed someone to take care of him for the recovery time. I accepted the invitation, bought a flight ticket and waited for the plane. You had to wait till they found enough fuel to equip a plane. I wonder how my life would have gone if he didn’t get sick.

‘My uncle, who also lived in Moscow, had some spare square meters to share. And I found a job. It all happened pretty much accidentally. You cannot imagine. Moscow is a gigantic city, a capital of the country that just entered what they later called the wild nineties. I was a Caucasus nation person—a discriminated minority. Plus, I didn’t speak fluent Russian. What were the chances of me finding a job? But, as fate would have it, I found a secretary position with a salary of three hundred dollars. A huge increase from my former five dollars per month. My manager was dismissed a couple of months later and I took his place. That was the time of my life when I worked night and day. Typically, we arrived at the office at 7:30 and left it around midnight. I had to run to catch the last metro train. Work calls at two in the morning weren’t unusual as well. My American colleague who called me would open a conversation with Why do you sleep, Tamara? Already became a millionaire?’

‘But the roaring nineties?’

‘Yes, there were criminal bands and skirmishes here and there. But after the hell of a civil war that I made through, it didn’t shock me that much. When in Tbilisi I needed to go outside sometimes. The schools and the most public places were closed but people needed food and other essentials. So you go. And if you hear shooting you drop to the ground, cover your head with a bag or whatever you have with you, and wait for the fighting to be over. Then you get up and go about your business.’

‘It must be difficult to consider moving abroad again, after you got comfortable in Moscow?’

‘I was terrified. I had never been to the Netherlands as a tourist. It was a fairy land to me. But then I married a Dutch man. You are going to think I’m having you on, but it was a lucky fluke. There’s no time for private life in our 7:30 to midnight schedule, but a spam email entered my inbox. Those men are looking for women to meet, it said. Create an account to see their profiles. I made one. You need some entertainment in life. Those were my joyfull coffee-breaks scrolling dating profiles. I texted some men that looked interesting. For me it wasn’t serious until I met my future husband. He visited me in Moscow. After a while we got married and I left Russia for good. It took me a year to accept the idea of jumping into the unknown future once anew. Frightening? You cannot imagine.’

‘How did the Netherlands welcome you?’

‘They welcomed me with obligatory education and integration procedures. It was a school with compulsory attendance and an integration course for three years. The classes were odd. One day we were lectured on how to shop at a supermarket, another time—how to behave in a theater. It was like they treated us as aliens, extraterrestrial life forms. One good thing that came out of it was my new friend group. Those were the first people I met here. The exams were a nightmare. You have to pass a bar for the four language skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Listening proved to be impossible for me. I took the exam so many times, visited Immigration office locations in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. To this day, I suspect that they just let me pass after so many attempts. Languages are difficult. I still speak English with my Dutch husband.’

‘How do you see your future in the Netherlands? I mean, we (immigrants) cannot expect a good pension by the time we need it.’

‘It’s optimistic to think we live that long to get to the age of retiring. I’d say focus on today. The world is changing so fast—it can be foolish to make long-term plans. I have seen things that seemed as stable as the planet Earth disappearing into nothingness. We thought freedom and independence were there to stay but they vanished into the civil war. Then it looked like armed conflicts would never cease, but they did. My father worked hard to provide for his family. He arranged for emergency savings—each of us had ten thousand in our bank account. He bought me and my brother an apartment in Tbilisi—a place to live. It’s all gone now like it has never existed. The village where my parents grew up was burned to the ground. Life is a losing game. You must learn to lose gracefully.’

‘Did you experience a cultural shock in the Netherlands?’

‘I started reading books here and was shocked by how much propaganda distorts the history of Russia and the world. I realised that all I knew was total untruth. Many social sciences works were censored, altered or forbidden for publishing on the Russian market. It’s like the government wished to keep the citizens in their infantile stage of development, and wanted to keep their minds easy-to-influence. I had to start my education (especially in history) all over.’

‘Yes, information is power. Thank you for the interview.’

Tamara is our guest today. We met working as volunteers at Mauritshuis (a museum in The Hague). We spoke on many topics. It was interesting to notice that as much as the Dutch know little about Georgia, people in Georgia know even less about the Netherlands. The key-words that pop up in Tamara’s conversations with her relatives are: gays, parades, tattoos, men wearing jewelry.  I hope that this article helps us to learn more about each other.

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For those who are new here. At Foreign Tales, we take interviews with real people and fictional characters. How is it possible? The same way you feel sadness reading about Otello killing his beautiful young wife Desdemona. Those characters are fictional but the emotion is real. It’s fascinating to observe how fictional might feel real and how true life events might feel fictional. What do you think you have read today? Please, vote below. An update with a right answer will follow in two weeks time.

Do you think Tamara is a real person or a fictional character?

• Tamara is real.
• Tamara is fictional.