The road to Tskhinvali, now lost to us, still carries the sharp scent of war. Seventeen years have slipped away, and yet it feels as though it all happened only yesterday. I walk beside my father beneath rows of plane trees, the road pulling me back into childhood—into laughter, into grief, into the years that shaped me. The orchards bloom again as if nothing had changed. Farmers bend quietly over the soil, their faces betraying none of the burdens they carry.
With every step, old horizons return. I see the colors I once knew, from the time when this road led not to separation but to endless summers with friends. We cross the bridge over the Liakhvi River, where we once swam in the heat, stealing apples and plums from nearby gardens—fruit that tasted better than any feast.
Beyond the river stands an abandoned mill. A decade ago, when it lay in ruin, we restored it for Gogia, the old miller. I can still recall the scent of cornmeal, sifted for the first time after so many silent years, and the glow on our faces—the quiet happiness of bringing something back to life, if only for a day.
Now the mill stands deserted, a husk of stone and timber. In our restless modern age, who still has need of such a relic? Yet within those walls once lay a treasury of memory. For one man it was not merely a building but a name—the miller. That single word held his whole life, and with his passing it has vanished too, as though carried away into some celestial archive, leaving only silence behind.
We climbed the short rise, and at its crest the great eighteenth-century church of St. George appeared, still standing proud, still crowning the landscape just as it had more than two hundred years ago. Soon I reached the lane to my old home. I have not forgotten this place: the bicycle races, the runs through cornfields, the games at my uncle’s house with my cousins. Today my uncle no longer lives there, and my cousins are gone from these streets.
Along the road we met Gia, my father’s childhood friend. They greeted each other with the unguarded joy of boys, as if the years had melted away. Gia has never left this place. Even during the war he stayed—an unmarried man with nothing but his house and orchards. He never shirks work, but today a shadow crossed his face. My father asked him what troubled him.
“Ah, the frost ruined the whole crop,” he said. It was true. That April, an unexpected frost had struck the plain of Shida Kartli, scarring every harvest. Gia had fared no better. “I worked hard, I really did,” he sighed, then managed a thin smile. “But may God not take away our hope.” We parted with quiet words and walked on toward home.
At the house, I found the fence smothered in weeds, as though time itself had taken possession. City life leaves little chance to tend to such things. I pushed open the gate, and there it was—my old home, unchanged, waiting. At once, memories came rushing back.
The garden stretched before me, and I saw myself and my brother racing through it. How many times had we stolen corn cobs to roast over embers? Sometimes, still damp from the river, we would sit together and laugh, sharing stories with the village children. In summer, this place brimmed with life. Now everything bore the marks of age, yet that very age gave off a warmth, leaving me strangely at peace.
My father noticed my gaze. “Come, help me unload the groceries,” he called. I rose and helped him. He smiled, and when the work was done, settled into the hammock.
“I know what you were looking at,” he said. “This oldness. I look at it the same way. My childhood is here too. That’s why I come, to unburden myself of life’s weight.”
I only smiled back.
Then came the loud cry of our neighbor: “Heeey! So you’ve finally come down from the capital?” We invited him in, as always. This was Sograti—though he prefers to call himself Socrates, after the Greek philosopher. The name suits him. He is a gifted man, though few would believe it now: two university degrees, both completed with honors, a hand for bass guitar, piano, classical guitar. He knows Georgian and foreign poetry, can speak brilliantly of literature and philosophy. As a boy, I could sit for hours listening, never bored.
But the man I knew then no longer exists. Now his brilliance is wrapped in the life of the village drunkard. Even as he greeted us, it was with a polite, almost shy request for alcohol. We could offer no comfort. He sat briefly, asked about our lives, then rose abruptly to resume the routine that consumes him.
Each time my father sees him, he shakes his head and says with quiet regret: “What a man he was, and how mercilessly life has treated him.”
After he left, we shared a modest supper. The food we had bought at Gori’s market, drawn from the soil by farmers’ hands. Its taste was different, honest. A cucumber, a tomato’s scent—enough to remind you nature still lives.
When the meal was done, we worked again: my father with axe and mallet, I among the thorns and weeds. Evening settled. My father, weary, climbed upstairs to rest, but I remained restless.
I brewed a cup of mint tea. Everyone knows I never drink tea—except this one. My grandmother gave it to me each night as a child. “Remember, child,” she would say, “mint soothes the soul, it is sweet and good for your health.” Perhaps it was her memory, perhaps the quiet of this place, but tonight I longed for it.
I sat in the hammock, sipping slowly, my mind wandering to life—lost love, daily routines—and felt, for a moment, free of them all. I leaned back and saw what no city sky can show: a canopy of stars. Cassiopeia glimmered, sharp and clear. Its light calmed me, even as it weighed on me.
I folded the hammock and went inside, seeking sleep, to escape my thoughts, and to hold on to hope for what is yet to come.