Premonition
On Wednesday we were divided in two groups for an assignment and I thought to myself maybe I’m too old for this. I’m not exactly sure how I should feel about being 26. The so-called middle twenties. Is being in your middle twenties similar to being middle height? Which is a tale short people like to tell themselves?! Middle height. I think that’s the tale my mother told me, so I would not worry when the girls in my class were growing up tall as the sugarcanes. I don’t think I’m middle height in truth, but that’s fine. I don’t need legs long enough to cover the distance between two cities to go places. I’m going places just as I am, 163 centimeters, and nothing and nobody can ever change that.
Anyways, the assignment was for each of the eight participants to pick a political figure, but they had to be dead. Then we were divided in two groups and each member had to convince the other three why their chosen candidate was so much more significant and everyone had to agree on one final person. Each one of us had their reasons and, of course, each wanted their choice to be picked as the final one. But not to bulldoze over people and be me-me-me (which I was very successful at in my early twenties, but I’m getting elder and better, I guess), I supported Tetiana’s choice who was in my group and had picked Princess Diana. I myself had chosen Alexander the Great, but I was fine with Lady Di and, eventually, everyone else agreed.
The reason I was so fine with Diana, besides her being a great woman, was something I did not share with the group, something she even had in common with Alexander, if you ask me. Something that is perhaps called a premonition; a sense of destiny and chase for greatness in their case. Mind you, I don’t mean fate. I don’t mean a silver-bearded man sitting up in the clouds writing what will happen to us, like he does in Georgian folk tales, or the infamous Moirai, weaving, spinning or cutting our life threads. What I mean is a knowledge that a special place is waiting for you, sky is your limit, you just have to walk up a long starry stepladder. I had it in my head from the time my mother was conducting my social trainings, as early as the time when I was learning strangers are danger and it’s impolite to chew with your mouth open or sneeze without covering your mouth first. Sometimes the feeling was so strong, it reminded me of a glaring sun that pops stones like corn in summer, sometimes it was covered by clouds that are everyday troubles. But it was always there. So, we shall see, we shall see…
Mariam Gurgenishvili
My name is Mariam, like any other girl’s, born during the 90’s in Georgia. In my case, it was 1996 and late May – a month of clear, balmy days and enthusiastic, newly awakened mosquitos. Ever since then, each and every birthday I had to listen to the toasts of my father’s friends about Jesus and Mary, how I was a bearer of the greatest name and had to lead an equally great, worthy-of-the-name life. Often mid-toasts I felt like asking them to focus a little on me, too.
Despite all the birthday wishes, ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a witch and a writer. Perhaps it began at the gates of Villa Villekula where I met Pippi who could do anything or in the magical forest where the little witch lived with her talking raven, Abraxas. In any case, I started daydreaming and writing around eight years old and still have tons of finished and unfinished stories from my primary school years, partly inspired by Colombian soap operas I watched with my grandmothers and partly by the tales of Hans Christian Andersen I read every night. I wrote all those stories during my gym classes where some part of my body was always hurting and I needed to be invalided out and carried inside a school library. I used to sit there gleefully and write about John Smiths and Bridget Watsons who drank Gin and Tonic and ate pineapple cubes with sugar coating and called one another “darling” and “beloved”, instead of “dumbhead” and “scumbag”, like the women in my neighborhood called their husbands. I was seventeen years old when I took a part in an exchange program and went to the United States to study there for a year. I have met many John Smiths and Bridget Watsons I had been admiring from books and films before, I tried pineapple cubes too for the first time (too young for Gin & Tonic), got called “darling”, “sweetie” and “love” and had a beautiful experience overall, but my deepest feelings, impressions and memories still belonged to the people I had left behind. People who had never tried pineapple cubes or Gin & Tonic in their lives. Those were the people that raised me and the people I grew up with. My first novel “Pearls”, which debuted in 2021, is a collection of those childhood impressions and memories, not only mine, but also of my mother and my grandmothers. It is mainly inspired by the women in my family and is about sisterhood and survival during the 90’s Georgia. I want to keep telling stories of young girls and women who were silenced, who were made to believe they were unimportant, so that those stories can bring them back their voices and their strength to make big old mountains tremble like tiny baby leaves. For me to continue writing, especially about the topics that require both courage and delicacy, I will have to grow, learn and evolve myself and I am deeply grateful that I am given the chance to do so.
