Georgian Independence Day

A few days prior to 26th May, my Georgian colleagues darkly joke that this might be one of the last independence days. On the same day, my friend tells me he wants to live in Europe because he is sick of living under the constant fear of a full-scale Russian invasion. This stress of insecurity has intruded on his whole young life. His childhood village was in South Ossetia which was stolen by the Russians in 2008, robbing him of memories that once were simply part of a happy childhood. Now it's painful for him to remember.

I am squashed within the patriotic crowds. Children are on men's shoulders and wave Georgian flags clutched in sweaty hands. It's getting hot. Children clamber up pillars and wave flags on the ledges. I see a kalashnikov tattooed on someone's neck. Children are crowned with flowers and wave the flag of the European Union. I can smell puffs of garlicky breath. Sweat beads on faces. Children's backpacks, of the flowery or ladybird or superman variety, are worn by their fathers, one big safe hand holding a clammy small one. A woman sells flags, Georgian, Ukrainian, European ones, from an old pram piled with disused banana boxes. The loudspeaker starts giving a speech that I don't understand apart from Sakartvelo ('Georgia' in Georgian) repeated 100 000 000 times and choirs come on the stage and sing and a flag is raised and troops march neatly in columns, each representing a different regiment. The American troops are cheered slightly more enthusiastically by the crowd, and over the American flag I see across Liberty Square the Information Centre on EU and NATO. I think of Kyiv and its Independence Square. It's where I learnt the word 'independence' in Russian from hearing it repeated at metro stops. I think about whether there's much difference between the words 'independence' or 'liberty' and why each country chose to name their major squares thus.

I am very interested in the children. I'm not sure if the very younglings understand what's going on exactly, as far as they're concerned this day is an excuse to whoop and romp and cavort to their hearts' content, delighting in their influence to roil the crowd into one clapping and cheering body. I love their ability to make us noisy. Their outlook on the world is untainted, they aren't part of a Soviet generation who've first-hand memories of trauma or nostalgia or disillusionment. That said, these memories have all the same leaked through families and worked their second-hand experience on the young born post-1991, counting just as strong, if not stronger. This flag, brandished high above heads, high above the crowds, high above Liberty Square, promises those little faces, wide open with wonderment, that their country is an identity unto its own.

Later the same evening a friend asks me, 'so when's your independence day?' Um...


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