2023-10-19 08:41:23
As soon as the high metal gate has closed behind us, a green silence surrounds us. Pergolas covered with vine leaves protect the garden from the dusty street. A carved wooden veranda invites you to linger. The wooden floorboards creak slightly as we move into our rooms. White curtains billow in the wind. Three simple and tastefully furnished four-bed rooms and one double room are located along a glazed veranda overlooking the garden. But above all, it is Nazy’s smile that makes us forget our nervousness about what awaits us in Pankisi, in a valley where our Georgian bus driver didn’t even want to stop for a picnic because “our people don’t live here,” like he warned us.
Nazy is a beautiful woman, her face has a calm clarity and presence. She smiles when we tell her about our driver’s reaction, but her smile is mixed with bitterness. Here, on the edge of Kakheti, in a fertile valley, framed by dark forested mountains at the foot of the Caucasus, live the Cists, a Chechen minority. They fled about two hundred years ago when the Russians conquered the North Caucasus and again from the Russian invasion of Chechnya after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, thousands of families walked along icy mountain paths to seek refuge with their relatives in Georgia. But unfortunately criminals also took advantage of the chaos caused by the war and spread unrest. “But that was thirty years ago. The whole of Georgia suffered from abject poverty and corruption. Most refugees have long since traveled on to Europe. We are a peaceful community,” says Nazy, and it doesn’t take much to convince us.
Dark mountains, fertile valley: Many Georgians don’t trust the peace in Pankisi. : Image: Reuters
Before we move into the rooms, we are first informed about the order of the slippers. You cannot enter the living area or the modern bathrooms on the other side of the courtyard with street shoes. We are also asked to wear “discreet” clothing in the house, not to cross the garden in a bikini and, above all, not to drink alcohol, because we are in a Muslim house. The food that awaits us at a large table in the garden in the evening is overwhelming. We are in Georgia and are already used to lavish hospitality (as much as one can ever get used to tables overflowing with delicacies), but the dinner Nazy prepared is something special. Lentil soup and tomato and cucumber salad, cheese and handmade pasta reminiscent of gnocchi, zucchini rolls filled with homemade mayonnaise. Home-brewed beer made from bread, plums and wild rhododendron. Alcohol-free and refreshing. A large bowl of cooked beef mixed with short wheat noodles to make a pure garlic sauce.
The Kakhetian king once gave the Kisten refuge in the Pankisi Valley so that they could protect his country from the raids of the Dagestani mountain tribes, says Lascha, a young man who shows us through the village the next day, not without pride. The warriors would have tied dried beef and wheat flour to the backs of their horses as provisions when they went into the mountains. Lascha is seventeen years old, slim and shy and doesn’t look like a warrior at all. His English is surprisingly good for the remote village school on the edge of the mountains that he attended. He tells us that he also took private lessons so that he could guide tourists. And that he will study in Tbilisi in the fall. Economy, the dream of almost every young person here. Lascha leads us along meadow paths to a medieval lookout tower and then back to the village.
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