But the cataclysm that had turned my world upside down had drained me of so much energy that setting myself up again in England, and searching for freelance sub-editing opportunities while scouting out accommodation, loomed as a mountain too high for the climbing. I took the ticket home.
At least that is what I told Matron I was doing on the afternoon of the day I was to depart, accompanied to the airport by only a driver and one staff member from the newspaper (curiously, I cannot to this day recall whom). Matron sternly instructed me that, whatever else happened, I must keep taking the lithium.
Quietly I assented, but it was a lie intended to assuage her concern. Why would I need any more drugs? If I was travelling, it was because the psychiatrists thought I had recovered my mental balance. I felt well enough to travel, andâmost important of allâI was about to escape the danger zone, the hovering threat of invasion. Once safely beyond the reach of Scuds or tanks or âsupergun' missiles, not to mention a landborne invasion force, wouldn't my jubilation at having escaped the danger replace my terrors with a rational calm?
Convinced after phoning home that no one in Australia even knew anything had gone wrong in my life, I made a mental note to turn the Hong Kong stopover into a weeklong break. This would give me plenty of time to decide whether to fly on home or change direction. From a previous visit, in 1984, I knew of a wonderful getaway in Hong Kong, a guesthouse-cum-restaurant on the outer island of Lantau. That would be my refuge, I thought, my personal sanatorium.
As the plane lifted off from Bahrain under a starlit summer sky, my mood was buoyant, even a little smug.
I've escaped the worst
, I recall telling myself.
I could not have been more mistaken â¦
Chapter 10
CAUCASIAN FEATURES
I always go more boldly forward when I know nothing of what lies ahead. After all, the worst you can do is die, and you've got to die some time
.
MIKHAIL LERMONTOV
A H
ERO OF
O
UR
T
IME
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2001
In the ruff of earth bunched between the Black and Caspian seas lie three countries more striking for their differences than their similarities. The Caucasus is home to peoples of sharply conflicting outlook, sitting side by side but never in harmony, jostling not nestling. Above all, it is a place of instability, with an extreme liability to sudden upheaval, and has ever been thus: it was in the Caucasus that Prometheus, the bringer of fire, ended his days, vultures pecking at his vitals.
There are excellent reasons for things here being so unstable, so temporary, so edgy. Here, for centuries, empires have crossed, clashed, or been thwarted in their headlong rush. Today none of the three countries is officially at war, but Armenia enjoys the spoils of a vicious and little-reported conflict with Azerbaijan that raged for much of the early 1990s. To seek evidence of more recent instability, you have only to recall the bloody pictures of members of parliament being massacred inside Armenia's legislature in November 1999 or gaze in disbelief as Georgian businessmen walk down the pavements of their stylish capital with pistols on their hips.
Religious differences offer a clue: after all, this is where the Muslim world meets some of the earliest Christian lands. Georgia and Armenia vie for the title of oldest Christian country in the world: my visit coincided with the 1700th anniversary of Armenia's declaration as a Christian state. A generation later, in AD 337, Georgia began its conversion to Jesus-worship.
However, âwatching your back' seems to explain the divisions between these countries better than anything else. For these three small nations occupy precariously small spaces with, at their back, powerful and numerous populations: Russia's 150 millions, Iran's 70 millions and Turkey's 70 millions. At their backs lies one big menace apiece, a threat to their very survival (Iran at Azerbaijan's; Russia at Georgia's; Turkey at Armenia's).
All three now want to link themselves with Europeâthey woo NATO and eye off the European Unionâbut Europe is inevitably more important to them than vice versa. Geographically, they are not even part of Europe, just eternal wannabes, and all the technical assistance and commercial interest in the world (the Caspian's oil reserves are mighty indeed) are never going to change that.
Finally, âCaucasus' reminds a Westerner of âCaucasian', the predominant racial grouping that conquered the West and, through imperialism, the Old and New Worlds: the Americas and Australasia. When looking from afar at the region's brutality and even genocide, we really cannot afford any conceit.
AZERBAIJAN: 20 AUGUSTâ3 SEPTEMBER
DAY 112 (20 AUGUST): BAKU
âKhosh gyalmisinis'
means âWelcome' in Azeriâand they do mean it. After four months on âthe road', this is the first destination where I have been met on arrival. Ismail, an employee of the Deugro freight-forwarding companyâwhose factor in Turkmenbashi ran into me before I boardedâis on the other side of the Customs barrier. This is a doubly pleasant surprise because, for once, the sight of my wheelchair doesn't soften an official's heart but has quite the opposite effect and, before Ismail pipes up, I have been sent to the back of the queue for an exhausting game of bureaucratic patience. Ismail's presence and quiet but firm manner convince these bombastic types that somehow I'm connected to the regional transport leviathan, and I'm not saying anything to âunconvince' them.
Within minutes, Ismail has driven me into the centre of Baku and waits while I complete the formalities at the imposing Hotel Absheron and secure a room with a magnificent view of the city square and the sun-spangled expanse of the world's largest lake. From here it is off to meet his boss, Katya, who insisted on this totally unexpected welcome simply because the idea of someone travelling across these lands by public transport struck her as so exceptional it called for a celebration.
An hour later I have negotiated the cobblestone lanes of the Old City and we are dining in the Caravanserai Restaurant, a place where cameleers and other transients have been putting up, feasting, or both, since the 15th century. On this simmering summer's afternoon we sit like old friends at a table in a shaded courtyard surrounded by eighteen pointed arches, formerly the entrances to the inns, the cool flagstone-floored cells where the caravans used to stop a night or two before moving on. Of course I offer to pay; of course they refuse.
Later in the afternoon comes one of those time-out-of-joint experiences. Turning the TV on in my hotel room I hear Australian actor Bill Hunter's gruff voice dubbed into Azeri: they're screening
Muriel's Wedding. I
collapse onto the bed and lapse into a reverie in which I endlessly haul myself up a ship's gangway,
a posteriori
, while Captain Turkmenbashi hand-cranks a gramophone that sends Abba tunes wafting over the Caspian.
DAY 116 (24 AUGUST): BAKU
I'm up ISR Plaza Tower, Baku's only skyscraper (well, at five storeys, skypointer might be a better word). The idea was to get an overview of the New Town: instead, it's not only the building pointing skyward but our eyes as a formation of Turkish NATO jet fighters soars overhead. This is sabre-rattling or gunship diplomacy, modern-style. The Iranians sank an Azeri fishing boat in the disputed southern Caspian last month. The Azeris are a Turkic-speaking people and there is great official friendship between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Tension, and sonic booms, are in the air ⦠now you can feel the instability.
DAY 119 (27 AUGUST): BAKU
This afternoon I hook up with Fuad Axundhov, the best city tour guide it's ever been my luck to encounter. He takes one look at the wheelchair and sees the hilarity in my wanting to join his âWalking Tour'. Allowances are made, he goes at my pace (faster than he would like downhill), but in terms of understanding I'm puffing to keep up with him. What Fuad doesn't know about his beloved hometown probably isn't knowable.
Although a specialist on Boom Town, the first city anywhere to be built on oil wealth, he is equally expert on the Soviet era or the works of Azerbaijan's great literary hero, the 12th-century Nizami. He has a literary turn of phrase himself, does Fuad. âStalin's chessboard' suddenly sounds too tame a way to describe how the Georgian-born Soviet dictator created countries and âinternally deported' whole races: my guide, more pointedly, calls these new republics âStalin's time bombs'.
DAY 126 (3 SEPTEMBER): SEKI
I'm in luck. Staying at this 17th-century caravanserai, I meet an American couple who have been taking a break from their work in Georgia. They are driving back to Tbilisi and are happy to cram me, chair and baggage, into their car.
GEORGIA: 3 SEPTEMBERâ3 OCTOBER
DAY 126 (3 SEPTEMBER): TBILISI
Just before dusk we arrive in this hilly, elegant capital. The muddy Mtkvari, coursing past the longest-settled districts of this 1500-year-old city, is about the same width and texture as the Yarra, soâstartlinglyâI feel at home.
Finding somewhere affordable to stay âat home' is even more startling. The Americans introduce me to a Georgian woman of their acquaintance who asks US$90 a night for her barely furnished studio, above a street as steep as a ski jump. Spoilt by Asian prices, I plead an upper limit less than half that. She lets me stay one night on my terms. The next day I move out to Nika's Guesthouse, a charming
pension
in Saburtalo, 5 kilometres out of town, run by a widow of 60 and her niece.
After four months of travel, perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that one of my chair brakes has chosen this moment to lose its grip. Twice in the past week it has actually fallen off, astounding passers-by just as much as me. Not being mechanically minded, I have had to study the ingenious complexity of this model, even though it takes the worse part of an hour to reattach it.
DAY 127 (4 SEPTEMBER): TBILISI
After a generous breakfast I'm off to the central post office to phone my wheelchair-parts supplier in Melbourne, then to DHL to notify them that new brakes are on their way: should be five or six days away.
Rolling down the pavements of the city's central boulevard, Rustavelis Gamziri, is enough to impress me with what a cultured and appealing place I am in. By contrast with the often European-style architecture, all street and commercial signs are in the straggling, Tolkienesque script that looks to my untrained eye like no other alphabet on Earth.
Halfway along Rustavelis, I pop into Laghidze Café, a local landmark, and discover a highlight of Georgia's unique cuisine:
khachapuri
. Picture a platter of golden-crusted bread, shaped like a clam shell as wide as a computer keyboard and fresh from the oven, with the base covered in melting cheese and, in the centre, soft, fresh egg yolks, slightly runny. âScrumptious' doesn't begin to do it justice. Georgian cooking is richly original but to my ravenous taste nothing could match the discovery of
khachapuri:
this is what we would order from a million home-delivery outlets if Georgians had beaten the Italians to New York.
DAY 130 (7 SEPTEMBER): TBILISI
I locate the tourist agency that has obligingly agreed to hold mail sent from home. One of the great joys of long-distance travel is receiving a satchel full of mail and absorbing all the personal news of three or more months at a sitting, preferably over coffee.
This post brings a letter from my parents informing me that sometime in June my bank balance fell to $7.67 but that newspaper payments for some of my âEmails from the Edge' articles have since retrieved the situation. This is why I like to get the mail only periodically.
This afternoon, my humble taxi is cut off by an arrogant silver Merc and, unwisely, I poke my head out the window and shout, âMafia!' Three minutes later, our modest vehicle emerges from an underpass and is again cut offâforced off the road, with no way outâby the same car.
The driver and his henchman both step out and stride towards our jalopy. The offended man, who looks like a cross between Schwarzenegger and the Incredible Hulk, could pick up the car and throw it away, or eat it, but clearly intends something more specific, balling his fist and rapping on my passenger-side window (which I've hastily wound up). The driver pleads that I'm a foreigner, tourist, idiot (I think the Georgian word may be the same for all three) while I nod like an idiotic foreign tourist. His anger unassuaged, the Georginator demands I wind the window down, but then, in a moment of inspiration, the driver points to my wheelchair stowed on the back seat.
Mafia man utters a kind of grunt and follows his minder, who is now grinning, back to the parked Merc. Halfway there, the
mafioso
turns round and cups his hands around his groin, giving an emphatic thrust to the gesture I would have associated with an Italian rather than a Georgian. The message is unmistakable but it doesn't require a reply.
DAY 131 (8 SEPTEMBER): TBILISI
This early Saturday afternoon I enjoy a meal at the Borani floating pontoon restaurant moored on the Mtkvari. Between the soup and the
khachapuri
, unusually dark clouds build behind the hilly city's spires, and raindrops begin spattering with increasing vehemence on the previously placid waterway. The smell of summer meeting autumn is intoxicating. Change is in the air.
Tonight I satisfy the curiosity spawned by my discovery that the capital of this country, better known for its monasteries and urban mafia, is also home to the Beatles Club. Impresario Murtaz Khudoev has re-created the best of the Sixties in a replica of the Liverpudlians' favourite haunt, the Cavern. The club occupies a superb location, astride two avenues on the city's edge just where they funnel into Rustavelis.
I descend the stairs to the basement, after pausing at the entrance to note the words: âThis club is dedicated to the memory of Sir John Whinston [sic] Lennon.' At the foot of the staircase are strobes of various hues, mostly blues. By now my eyes, gradually acquiring their night sights, gaze in disbelief towards the far end of the ⦠well, âroom' hardly describes it; we're in a barrel-vaulted brick-walled carbon copy of the famous Merseyside dance hall.
I gasp in admiration. They've resurrected the music, the architecture and an entire era. Have they also resurrected the Beatles? Well, there are limits, but the illusion is convincing enough. The âBleats' are technically flawless Georgian Beatles, dressed in Epstein suits à la 1964. During a break, I'm not surprised to hear from Khudoev that this Fab Fourâwho have been together now for fifteen years, longer than the originals themselves wereârecently won first prize in a contest for Beatles impersonators held in Liverpool.