I came back. After the four months.  In that time  – Damascus, Jerusalem, Istanbul. Now, in Batumi  waiting for the bus to fill with people. It is damn hot here now. An elder lady, dressed in pink satin shirt and a straw hat comes up to sell me a new issue of playboy. After a while, another lady dressed less excentrically sells chachiapuri.

 Well, as the saying goes, one cannot enter the same river twice. The first time I entered Batumi was a half year ago. After a hard trip through the Turkey, Georgia was like an island in a chasing game, where you have to jump on something above the ground in order not to be caught. At that time I did not have any notion, that jumping on an island I would engage in another game with different rules.  This time I feel so much more empty. Not because the bike is not here and because all my load is one bag instead of usual five bike bags. No, I guess emotionally I just hit the bottom. The emptiness. Absolute emptiness. And if usually I swear I would like to become a complete sclerotic in order not to remember the moments that hurt with the same intensity every-time they appear on the surface of your consciousness, this time I try to scratch all the crumbs from the corners of the pockets, remembering details and spreading them over the hurting emptiness.

 These were the last kilometers before entering Georgia last time, in October. The road from Ardahan to Artvin is I would bet the most wonderful I have seen in Turkey and as enchanted as I was rolling down the winding road in the valley of amazing mountains coloured with November colors I realised it was time to find a shelter for the night. Since the valley road is narrow, there are almost no suitable places for a tent, so I looked around.  He came out from the yard and closed the fence after him, which looked as a dance, or a prayer, the calmness the whole process was radiating. He wore a suite. And a decent hat, that postman are supposed to wear in old fashioned books.  A tent? Come in. We entered a lawn. I was expecting to go into a house full of his daughters and grandchildren. But we turned from the house. There were in-numerous bee houses. And then I saw it in the end of the field. A tent. My first though was that it is his summerhouse. With the mixture of the languages I learned in Turkey on the way I asked, if he was living here. Since he spoke some unfamiliar to me dialect, I thought he did not understand. But during that day and the coming day I realised this phenomena of not speaking the language, but understanding so perfectly.  He indeed lived in the tent. A nomad. In winter also? Yes, in winter also. And then he would show me the enhancements on the tent he did in order to insulate it. I could hardly believe it. A soul-mate.. I thought to myself. A real nomad, detached from the pleasures or hardships of the sedentary life. He would bring the bees to the fields of Ardahan in the summer. And then his sons would sell the honey in Istanbul. He makes very good honey. He smiled at me. And he looked like some dwarf from a fairy tale sent to me just to make me believe, that there are people like him and me.  While the sun was setting beyond the mountains, the water from the river was setting on the grass and on the air. Guelverdi made some more tea. Do I want to see something else? Sure. He was connecting some kind of cables and before I realised what was really happening the was an extremely loud shot. Against thieves and robbers he said, and showed me his device. It was like a miniature bomb machine from the military fields. It is only to make a sound, he said proudly turning off the gas.  In his tent there were drawers and bags neatly stacked one on the other, everything like from some hobbit like shelter. I asked about his wife. She died long time ago, he said, and offered me walnuts. I met so many people on the way. Every time I would become more and more tired forcing myself to be polite and excited. At a certain point you get tired, socially tired. I felt as if I hit the secret place in the game, where one does not have to play, where one can have a legitimate rest. We sat in silence and it felt exactly the right thing to do. We ate, he told me some more stories, and it felt as if I had this babel-fish in my ear. I did not have to struggle to understand. It felt, as if he would tell me those stories for the one thousandth time, and I would know them by heart anyway, enjoying them as songs accompanying your movements.  I pitched up my tent aside to his. The day before I was almost forced by two men to make love with them. Somehow they did not loose their reason and took my explanations about being a mother of a child and so on. They watched their porno films. I slept, but calculating in my dreams, how I would be able to open the door of the bus in case they would change their minds again. Tired, I was tired of intensity of every day would bring to me in a positive or negative form. And I slept next to the tent of Guelverdi as sound as possible for people who live their set lives, where everyday comes back as a familiar soothing refrain.  Next morning I asked him. What can I do for you? You provided me shelter. Maybe I can saith? Wash your clothes? Bring something from the town? Guelverdi looked in my eyes as if we would know each other for years. Actually, if felt we never were separated. He smiled and said, can you cook for me?  Guelverdi was shaving, while the morning sun lazy came out of the hazy clouds. I would shout from the tent and ask, where do you have rice? And he would say, look in the box under the bed. And I would find some neat onions, some rice, and with the ceremony of the offering I would cook my best pilaf I could cook. Rice, the smell of fried onions, few tomatoes. We would exchange looks once in a while. Sometimes I would feel like his daughter. But no, the daughters are probably less idealistic about their own fathers. No, maybe I am like his granddaughter. They are caring for their grandfathers remembering all the extensive loving care they would give to them when the busy parents would bring them for the weekend.  We ate. And Guelverdi said slowly, it is very very tasty. And smiled. The midday sun came out. Time to go, my visa is ending in two days, still have mountains on the coast to go over. I will go now, Guelverdi, I said. I packed my bike bags and he opened the fence door to get out. We stood there, next to the road. He touched my face with his old wrinkled hand. I realised, I was not his daughter. In the last, or in the next life we were lovers.  

Love stories can be so short, ugh?