TBILISI from Page 2
Georgians dressed in dark colors lit
candles during a church service.
The Georgian tour guides
seemed very proud of the church.
Another guide, Marina, who had
followed the group from Moscow,
seemed indifferent.
It became evident that part of
Marina’s job as a government
employee was to make sure the
Americans were kept busy during
their stay in Tbilisi, and that their
attention was not diverted from
sightseeing.
Marina already had admitted on
the plane ride from Moscow that
she was skeptical of Georgian
people, and seemed to view them
as troublemakers in the midst of
the many good changes she saw
occurring in her country.
During the next few days, the
group of 27 was herded around
Tbilisi and its surrounding areas to
witness “safe,” culturally signifi
cant attractions. We separated from
them often, hunting down nation
alists with the help of Eka and Eka,
and interviewing nearly everyone
we met.
On the street, Georgians took
instant notice of us. We were light
skinned women in Western cloth
ing walking with notebooks and
camera equipment. They stopped
us and asked if we were American.
They said they loved the United
States and everything it stood for.
They offered us rides throughout
the city for free. In restaurants, they
bought wine and champagne and
toasted democracy.
Our second night in Tbilisi, Eka,
Eka and a small group of student
nationalists drove us to a massive
meeting at Tbilisi’s main university
building. The meetings were held
nightly while the Soviet Congress
of People’s Deputies was in ses
sion, they said.
Cars jammed the streets as we
neared the gathering. Everywhere,
Georgians waved their flag of inde
pendence, which had been legal
ized only a few weeks before.
As we made our way through
the crowd of more than 3,000, we
listened to a student leader relay by
megaphone the events of that day’s
Congress.
During the meeting, witnesses
of the April 9th demonstration took
the megaphone and shared horror
stories. At one point, the crowd
began to cheer, “Who ordered?
Who ordered?” -- demanding to
know who was responsible for
ordering Soviet troops into the city
April 9.
we watched the meeting, talk
ing to people in the crowd, and
listened as Eka and Eka translated
what leaders said. We left that
night excited from the intensity of
the meeting and from the Georgian
unity.
The following day, we were met
in the hotel lobby by Eka, Eka and
two male student leaders carrying
bouquets of Chinese roses. The
yellow flowers grow wild in the
hills near Tbilisi. They gave us the
small bouquets, wrapped in twine,
and said they hoped we would
remember Georgia’s beauty.
Insisting that we had not yet
tasted authentic Georgian food,
our escorts took us to a small res
taurant overlooking the Georgian
countryside. Our multi-course
meal lasted several hours. We
drank Georgia’s famous sweet
wine and ate its spicy, Mediterra
nean food. We laughed and sang
"Happy Birthday” - one of the few
American songs the Georgians
recognized. This was perhaps the i
lightest moment of our trip; and the
only time during our stay that our
Georgian friends seemed com
pletely at ease.
We spent the rest of our time in
Tbilisi in back-to-back interviews
with several students and under
ground leaders. We managed to
meet outspoken Georgians and
kept out or trouble, until the night
before we left Tbilisi.
We had been interviewing Irena
Sarishvili, an outspoken Georgian
dissident, and her husband George
Tchanturia, the leader of the re
public’s largest unofficial political
party, in their home in old Tbilisi.
Irena and her husband seemed
relatively relaxed compared to
others we’d interviewed, though
they knew they were followed
regularly by Soviet police.
When we left, Irena and her
husband told us to be careful. They
said we should fear Soviet police
and “expect everything.” We left
the old apartment building with
our escorts for the evening ~ two
Georgian students who didn’t
speak English.
Out on the street, the students
pointed to a car parked parallel to
the one in which we had ridden. In
Russian, they told us the man sit
ting inside the car was a KGB
agent.
He followed us back to our
hotel.
Though we were shaken by our
“tail,” we were exhausted from the
excitement and eventually fell
asleep.
We boarded our plane that next
morning, leaving Eka and Eka in
the airport terminal. Though our
tour ofEastern Europe was not yet
completed, for^us, the trip was
°ver -Lee Rood
JwarL, a Georgian Orthodox church built in the fourth century,
when Christianity first spread to the region.
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